italy in april

spontaneous outing: friends from Seattle invited me to join them in italy for a holiday. i met paul at microsoft back in '92, since then we've been great pals. he was going for work, and thought i might enjoy hanging out with megan, his wife, and also a good friend of mine. i was more than happy to oblige, and bought my ticket 1 day before departure. first i went to pisa, before joining them in florence. in pisa i met several really cool people, and we trained together to florence. the weather was perfect, the views incredible, and the people-watching and moped-dodging made it a near-perfect experience (more time and a cheaper euro would've been icing on the cake.)

on a typical day i hit the ground early and didn't start dinner until ~10pm, so i saw a lot in a short amount of time. the uffizi gallery was incredible, i hooked up with an art professor who was guiding a group of artists. it was so interesting i bought 2 books; the history of the medicis, and toiletry habits of the early centuries (hey, if you saw how these people lived, you'd want to know how they did things too...)

our hotel, in a perfect local for wandering at all hours

still life with monk, in blue

art art everywhere, even on the wall outside a laundrymat

ah, the food. there's much that could be said about non-processed fresh ingredients, fresh pasta, and herbs and spiced olives and fresh bread.... well, you'll just have to try it yourself.


florence has very very little grass or trees. very surprisingly little. in fact, i can imagine how intollerable it must be in the heat of summer, with nothing to cool it down. just stone, stone, and stone.

when i walked past this cobbler later in the day, these leather soles had become a pair of men's dress shoes.

these (real) stuffed pigs were eating acorns in the meat shop

across the river we found tiny alleys and impossibly narrow sidewalks. walking was an adventure in itself. this square had 6 streets meeting in such a small area, only one car could pass through at a time. megan, paul's wife, is at the far left at the vegetable stand.

walking along the arno near the ponte vecchio


paul and megan cruisin for gelato. we found plenty. often.

lion pigeon lion goat sandwich
+++

towards the end of our trip we went to rome. i fell in love within the first hour. i really thought florence was amazing, but rome, ah, wow. just a totally different feel. we focused on the ancient ruins, and came across a political rally, and put more miles on our soles.

this was the hotel in rome. paul travels a lot for work, so he gets really nice digs. just for the record, none of us used the bidet. i'm not sure if that's good or bad. anyway, did i mention the food? this place was nominated twice for the best restaurant in europe by zagat. i wish i'd known that before i got dressed for it. anyway, i could eat the same dinner I had in this hotel, over and over- an amuse-bouche of 3 fishes with caviar-topped salad, 5 types of bread, pumpkin tortellini in ham fondue with pine nuts, sauteed figs, wine, capuccino...

the coliseum

really old. really, really, really old.

(really old) bridge going to a (really old) hospital. i can't help but think of the manual un-mechanized labor that built this city

one of many many cats hanging out on the ruins. just sittin, and lickin, and sleepin...

on the late train
after our super duper dinner i said ciao to megan and paul. i then fell back on my old school days of saving money by sleeping on trains or in airports instead of hotels. so i stayed in rome as late as possible, and planned to sleep a bit in the florence airport until my early flight. unfortunately i didn't count on the airport being closed, nor the taxi driving off before realizing the airport was closed. so i ended up reading my entire medici book under a street lamp in the airport parking lot. needless to say, i am still sleepy...