Sunday 23 July 2006
We made our way out of the Gallery at the Accademia after our encounter with Michelangelo's David, which had certainly taken me by surprise at the depth of emotion the thing had conjured out of me for being such a recognized image. Time was running away from us and our time with the David meant that I now had to sacrifice the ( Read more... )

I know, I know ... it's completely absurd that I'm still typing up my travel journal from July. What else can I say except that it's been very busy since I got back? So, picking up from our last entry:

Sunday 23 July 2006
7:35am

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Now, I'm not holding my breath that these are the actual remains of Paul of Tarsus. (Although there's reasonable evidence for the authentic tomb of Peter to have been excavated in modern times from the ancient cemetery the Vatican was built upon.) But it is going to be an interesting find for early Christian archaeology if this is even just ( Read more... )

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Florence, Sunday 23 July 2006, 12:27am


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Sunday, 23 July 2006, 1:07am

Well, even though I just signed off in Florence just now [coming soon to a journal near you], up on top of the tower, I think I'll make a couple of quick notes about Venice and how that ended, because I certainly didn't have time, or was cut off yesterday as I was trying to record it.


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Friday 21 July 2006, 8:40pm ( Read more... )

Wednesday 19 July 2006, 5:36pm (local)

So much craziness already. I'm at the airport in Newark, and today has not been my day. The first thing was, I had to wait half an hour for a bus to show up: any bus. So my plan to get to the airport on time already seemed to be off to a bad start. This got worse when it turned out that after transferring ( Read more... )

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Maybe alarmist, maybe not? Still, as an historian, particularly an ancient historian, and as one for whom Rome is his favourite city on the planet, it's the kind of thing to keep me concerned....


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