(no subject)
Italy, and it's most random moments:
- In Pisa, getting back onto the bus. One of the vendors outside selling knockoff designer handbags and sunglasses had a boombox playing and the song was "Pretty Boy" by M2M.
- The blow dryers that looked like vacuums. They were just long nozzles connected to the bathroom wall where the blow dryer should be that spit out semi-hot air. It looked more like something you'd use to dry your vagina with. Europeans seem to be very caught up in the vagina (Maybe this is TMI, but I used a bidet for the first time and I must say, they're quite refreshing).
- In Rome on the second to last day in Piazza Navona, watching all of the vendors - and there must have been at least sixty of them - scramble to pack up their hot merchandise once someone tipped them that the police were coming.
- I totally didn't know this, but there are stray dogs everywhere. Translation: dog shit everywhere you look, if you're not careful. I learned the hard way.
- Going to the Villa di San Michele in Capri, and not knowing its importance until after I got home and Wikipedia'd it.
- Naples looks like Jamaica, Queens. No, seriously.
- Rome. There's something so powerful about being someplace that holds that much history, and I'm not even a history buff. It really is like being in one open-air museum.
- The color of the water in Capri and all along the Amalfi Coast. It took my breath away.
- How nearly everywhere we went, it looked like I was walking on a movie set.
- Wondering constantly how anybody could ever leave this place.
- Venice at night. It's beautiful during the day, but at night it's magical, almost dream-like. Even St. Mark's, in all its Greek-style, overdone, gaudy glory, is enough to leave you speechless. Also, there are no pigeons around.
- The gelato. Smooth, creamy, addictive. I ate it every day.
- Basilica di San Francis and St. Peter's Basilica.
- The David. The David. The David. The David.
- The delicious leather goods, especially in Florence.
- The weather when we were there. 65 and sunny, every day.
- The quiet, humble little town of Assisi, in which we didn't spend nearly enough time.
- Pasta and pastries and cakes, oh my!
- Cappucino in the middle of the day? For only one and a half euro? I'm always down.
- Standing in the Colloseum and being almost in disbelief that this moment was really happening, that I was really there.
- How buying things that I would never normally buy in the US, like Prada sunglasses, are suddenly not such a big deal.
- Coccinelle brand handbags and accessories, which is like the Coach of Italy.
- Capri, with its mountains and cliffs and amazing ruins, which offered amazing views no matter where you were on the island.
- The fresh mozzarella, which had the most natural, milky taste. I had caprese salad as an appetizer at nearly every meal.
- Don't even get me started on the olive oil.
- The pigeons during the day in Venice. Disgusting.
- Harry's Bar, a complete total tourist trap. 15 euro for a Bellini that tasted better when I ordered it in Capri. Glad to say that I've been there once, would never go back.
- How crowded it was, but it was our fault because we chose that time of year to go.
- Pisa, which is really dirty and laden with things that aren't so pretty. There is nothing else to see but the tower.
- Speaking of which, taking The Picture at the Leaning Tower. So cheesy, but you have to do it I guess.
- The Sistine Chapel. Crowded, stuffy, dark, loud. Total disappointment.
- The US dollar to Euro conversion rate, which was downright crippling.
- The pizza. And all of the bread that we tried, for that matter.