…mmm, sexy pasta.

This morning, we woke at 6:30, completely well-rested, despite the fact our power (and subsequently, air conditioning) went out immediately after I finished yesterday’s entry. To accurately portray how much walking we did over the past several days, I woke up with my calves burning. Yes. MY calves were sore from walking. We set off for Firenze immediately after breakfast, stopping only for a sightseeing fiesta in Siena. For those of you who have never heard of this city, it’s the place where the opening parcour chase scene of Quantum of Solace takes place. The scene also portrays the Palio di Siena, which is a horse race that occurs twice a year. There are 17 neighbourhoods in the city; however, only 10 are represented at each event (I’m assuming there’s some form of qualifier). Each neighbourhood has its own coat of arms and flag, and its own horse in the race, so the rivalry is pretty intense. I wish I could be here for it, but we’re only staying the night, and it takes place the 2^nd of July. In any case, that was pretty badawesome. Also, near the Piazza del Campo, there was a store selling “sexy pasta;” that is to say, pasta in the shape of genitalia. Wonderful <3. We drove to Firenze soon after eating paninis for lunch (quelle surprise) and arrived around 3. At that point, I discovered our hotel had free wi-fi and got all excited. That is when I got my facebook/blog on. Heyo!

Later that night, while we were touristing around Firenze (post-dinner), my brother pointed out that we had eaten every meal that day in a different city. Story of my family’s life…and I love it! We visited the Duomo, il Ponte Vecchio and other various old things around the city. Awesome deal. No poor decisions were made today, alas, but I expect Zagreb to be the true kickoff, as I’m going out on the town with Marko. Allllright.

Tomorrow, we leave for Pisa in the morning (look out for <i> </i> jokes on my part), then hit Venezia in the late afternoon. It is now bathing time – ciao!

…”the polizia are a bit more beautiful.”

FYI…This is post 2/2 today; I broke the two masses of text up for ease of reading.

29.06.2009

Today, we were all up at sunrise, puttering about, and planning out our day. We had breakfast at the hotel, under the lurking eye of the (absolutely terrifying) owner. I felt that if we had looked at her in the wrong way, she would’ve beaten the crap out of us with a cappuccino cup and a danish. Immediately afterwards, we went on an adventure to buy bus tickets so that we could get to the Vatican. I have now officially established that absolutely everything here is gorgeous. The Vatican was absolutely stunning, with St. Peter’s Basilica taking the cake. We didn’t stay inside for very long, since large hordes of people had arrived to attend the holiday mass, but it was enough to marvel at the grandeur of the building and its art.  The choir was lovely, though, and we got to see the new pope being pope-y. After frolicking around, we walked to Castle St. Angelo and took some more photos while listening to some Aussies being…themselves. At this point, my mom and I were really curious as to what the difference between the Carabinieri and the Polizia was (we had seen a lot of both over the past two days), so we found some policemen and asked them. Here are the facts: The Carabinieri are more of a local police, whereas the Polizia are state police. What you should also know, as said by the youngest of the three policemen we had consulted, is that “the polizia are a bit more beautiful.” Now you are up to speed.

As far as the rest of the day goes, it was mostly spent doing more touristy biz; that is to say, we actually went INTO the Coliseum and ye olde fangirled before hitting up the Parthenon and several other awesome Piazzas. What is absolutely fascinating about Rome is that no matter where you go, there will be some gigantic, beautifully constructed marble building just hangin’ out. It is usually a church, with hilarious Latin phrases like “Always Immaculate Virgins” carved into the stone above the entrance. The scale of these buildings is preposterous, and completely awe-inspiring. Honestly, just staring at the Parthenon’s marble columns and attempting to fathom their dimensions gave me an aneurysm.

Fun foreign misspelling of the day: “Sanwechees” = “Sandwiches,” apparently.

It’s not even 9 pm, but after 6 solid hours of walking in the sun, I am about ready to collapse. I bid you adieu til tomorrow, and our drive to Firenze!

…i fell in love, and his name was Lamborghini.

27-28.06.2009

The day slowly draws to a close and I am hanging out here, in our nearly 15 square metre (haha) hotel room, just chillin’. I am 360 degrees of tired, but I don’t want to go to bed yet, as I’ll wake up at 3 am craving prosciutto, bocconcini and tomatoes. That’s just me, though. Anyway. Our trip started off really well, with a gloriously comfortable flight on a Boeing 767 that actually had LEG ROOM. Airbuses can suck it.

First irrelevant fact of the entry: today was the first time I had ever eaten my airplane dessert (for the record, I absolutely love airplane food).

I sat next to HawkMom, directly behind her two offspring, Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. When we were 15 minutes from our destination, the girl asked, really loudly, if the body of water below us was the ocean, when a) that is impossible if you know ANY geography, and b) the map 15 cm from her face showed us flying over the MEDITERRANEAN SEA. The duo also said a variety of other equally stupid things throughout the flight, but nothing particularly noteworthy. The stupid quotation of the day instead came from a septuagenarian seated diagonally across the aisle from me. The sunrise over the wing was absolutely gorgeous, and like most of the people on our side of the plane, she wished to have a photo. Given the fact she was too far from the window to get a decent shot, she asked Tweedledumb to take the photo for her because, and I quote, “My friends in Nova Scotia will never believe that it was sunny here when it was near midnight over there!” Apparently, her friends were never introduced to the concept of Earth’s axial rotation…and the fact it is round. Is it Nova Scotia that has its own time zone? Maybe that’s why they’re day/night retarded. I don’t know. In any case, we landed in Leonardo da Vinci airport soon thereafter, and proceeded to try to navigate an airport designed by the bastard offspring of the creator of DDR and a hobo. There were arrows everywhere, but none of them led us to where we wanted to go, and wherever we did end up, was covered with filth. I definitely had huge expectations of the airport and was sorely disappointed. Way to name an ugly and confusing airport after one of the greatest artists of all time, douchewads. However, all our walking was not in vain! I discovered something very crucial: Italian men, contrary to popular belief, are actually good-looking. None of this greasy, furry-chested nonsense. They’re actually attractive. Christ, I love Europe.

We finally got to our hotel, after surviving 45 minutes on Roman roads. There is nothing quite like getting caught in a circus of 13 cars executing some sort of twisted three-man-weave in the middle of a turn. Did I mention there were 4 lanes of cars on a street with only 2 lanes? I’ll let your imaginations fill in the rest.

**Imagination hint: Think of the game Rush Hour, but instead of being completely stationary, it’s happening at 60 km/h with hilariously tiny cars, Vespas, honking and angry Italian men.

For lunch, we had authentic Italian pizza (So. Damn. Good) at a little pizzeria by our hotel, and then we went back to our room to pass out until dinner. After waking and bathing, we got dressed up and headed out to sightsee like good little tourists. I can’t really do any of the locations justice, no matter how hard I try to describe them, so you will have to wait for the (many) photos. All I can say is that it was breathtaking. I wandered the streets, staring up at the architecture like it was about to shower me with money, shoes and carbs. We went to il Colosseo, the Forum of Peace, la Fontana di Trevi and la Piazza de Spagna (I probably spelled these incorrectly), stopping to grab cappuccinos and paninis in between.

Sidenote: The waiter at the panini place was possibly the most entertaining man I have ever come across. He was just so lively and ridiculous that it brought me joy.

Sidenote 2: Everyone was so well-dressed.

On our way back, we came across an orange Lamborghini Gallardo (read: my dream vehicle) and took photos (in my dad’s case) and salivated (in mine). The owner came back as we were walking away, and the sound that car made while driving off made me more than a little happy in the pants. Mmm. Past the street my dream vehicle was parked on, there was a square with a large fountain in the centre. Italy, I am pretty sure, is the only place where a giant golden statue of a naked man kneeling and bathing himself with city water is considered art. After this glorious(ly alarming) sight, we headed back, as both my ankles were roughly the size of mangoes, only stopping to get some gelato at the gelateria directly across the street from our hotel. Awesome. I love Rome so far, and can’t wait to see the Vatican tomorrow! I am going to get my ass to bed now, kiddos.

I leave you with this overheard statement: “I don’t mean to stereotype, but I miss tacos and free water.”

…this shit’s definitely not about hair.

It is, according to my computer, officially Friday, June 26th. With that said, only 24 hours separate me from the total mental scarring I will be causing Italians, Croats and Bosnians (the latter is highly unlikely, now that I think about it. They do a great job of inflicting that upon themselves by merely existing). I am nearly done all my packing, and have several errands still to run (hey, fuck you, OSAP)…in addition to seeing a few more people and gettin’ paid, dammit! YEAH.

Goals for today:

a) Don’t forget all your stupid coaching paraphanaelia

b) Mail OSAP forms, as my work hours completely obliterate any chance of me being able to actually hand shit in to the useless office on campus

c) Buy several irritatingly absent items from Shoppers

d) Finish Cuppedia poster while entertaining a room full of children at lunchtime (and subsequently scan & email it to my boss)

e) Go out for drinks with the head coach at our club

f) Make questionable purchase of unnecessarily gangster Famous hat so that I may further confuse both my family and the general populace of Europe with my impressive caucasian-ness.

g) SEE THE CREW. I loves.

h) PACK.

i) CHARGE ALL MY GODDAMN ELECTRONICS (iPod, mostly – p.s. Eleni, I renamed it Wade Wilson).

I can do it. I have faith. In any case, I never sleep the night before I travel, anyway, so no harm done.

Also, in other news, airplanes should have places for me to plug in my computer so that I may watch Battlestar Galactica in lieu of shitty in-flight movies that severely lack cylons, shit blowing up, and Jamie Bamber.  I wonder what season I should bring. 3? I think yes.

I also feel the need to buy myself an entertaining novel, or two, just for beach/travel purposes. Yay for frivolous spending! Whoo!

…aaaaaaaand that is all for my late night, pre-trip word vomit. I swear, my later posts may actually…MAKE SENSE?! *le dramatic gasp* Actually, that’s a fucking lie. Word vomit is how I roll, son.

P.S. The new Alexisonfire is deliciously mature and is making for some great summer listenin’.

P.P.S. I actually already have a tag for Alexisonfire…ha.

…real pain for my sham friends.

Okay. SO. Here’s the Earth…no. I am not going to write down the entire “End of the World” video from memory. What I am going to do, however, is share my decision on renaming my family trip and subsequently, this blog. The “Poor Decisions” Tour ‘09 kicks off in 16 days, and I am so excited to get everything underway. It is also named the “WWTRD (What Would Tim Riggins Do)” Tour, as that character pretty much does the opposite of what I’d normally do, in every situation. The aim of this vacation is, basically, to step outside of myself and experience life in a whole new way.

I ONLY DO IT FOR THE SCARS AND STORIES, Y’ALL.

I need to stop pretending to be southern. Just sayin’.

P.S. A cookie for whoever makes the connection between the subject line of this post and the content.