Italy - Sleeping and Sightseeing

While writing this, I was reminded of the famous saying, “Welcome to Italy, where everything is made up and the laws don't matter.”

I should probably add an asterisk to that statement: Italy isn’t a lawless wasteland where the locals roam around in Mad Max-style gangs, preying on unwary tourists with gelato and “skip-the-line” passes. This is specifically about the traffic. For those of you following along at home, you may be aware that I had some observations about the roads in Ireland regarding their signage (or lack thereof). Italy is kind of the opposite. There seems to be a perfectly reasonable amount of road signs - it’s just everything else.

Granted, the locals are equally as brazen.

My best guess is that a while back, traffic laws were proposed during a government meeting in an effort to make Italy more welcoming, but were mostly discarded due to the amount of work required and, what the hell, they’ll figure it out anyway. The end result is, by my best observations, a free-for-all. Drivers are diligently doing their civic duty of alerting other motorists and passing pedestrians every 5 seconds that their car horn is still fully operational. Traffic circles, known in the States as traffic calming, appear to have been constructed by a city planner with fond childhood memories of the game Frogger, and cars play games of chicken with each other as they take the curves at speeds reminiscent of Formula 1 racers (my grasp of Italian has slipped dramatically, but I can only assume that the words they shout at each other are phrases of encouragement). It reminded me of traffic in New York and Newark - you either embrace your inner daredevil, or you never get anywhere. I can think of few better places in the world for scientists to study the idea of “survival of the fittest” in real time than traffic circles in Rome.

I didn't take any more good pictures of traffic, so here's the Duomo in Florence.

One of the more “memorable” experiences of my first trip to Italy was a taxi ride to the airport. I gripped surreptitiously onto the door, my toes digging their way through my socks, as the driver and I chatted about nonsense while he sped through the narrow streets at a breakneck pace, appearing to have entirely forgotten the commonly respected social custom of only using one lane at a time. While Courtney and I were enjoying an olive and corn pizza, we witnessed the driver of a scooter decide that he’d had enough of parking 10 feet away from the restaurant in the designated scooter parking, and instead opted to drive it onto the sidewalk and leave it next to the railing surrounding the restaurant patio. Obviously, this man was as cool as they come.

Forgot to get a picture of the dude, but here's the pizza itself, which was pretty great.

Pretty much everything I’ve been talking about was in Rome. We only had time to see Florence and Rome, and Florence was mostly devoid of cars trying to abruptly invade our personal space. This wasn’t a huge deal; we had stayed in a different place each night (except for Cork) and the jumping around was starting to take a toll on our energy. There are times when traveling when you need to spend some time doing nothing, and Italy was perfect for that. We had gone from Dublin to Florence in a single day and, seeing as we were nodding off on the steps of a church while waiting for our AirBnB host to fluff the pillows, I think we had earned a few nights of solid rest.

Thankfully, the AirBnB was worth it, and came with all the essentials: a space barely bigger than my living room, a washer/dryer combination that took about 9 hours to give us slightly damp clothes smelling faintly of laundry detergent, a kitchen about 5 feet long, and the crowning jewel - air conditioning. We celebrated by drinking terrible wine we bought on the street, before collapsing on the bed, thoroughly exhausted.

I couldn't get a whole picture of the space, but just behind the curtain is the bed, and the bathroom is off to the left.

Our last night in Florence, I made a "Garbage Plate", where we cleared all the things from the fridge, tossed them on a plate and covered them in cheese.

Now, I love European architecture. It has a beauty rarely found in the U.S., where most cities are broken up by sprawling suburbs run by HOAs doing their best impression of a crime syndicate. Due to their age, the streets in many European cities are quite compact, which forces the buildings to all be multi-storied and share walls with each other. Our AirBnB was on the ground floor, and had only a single window that looked out to a small courtyard in the middle of the 5 story building. While the courtyard was open to the sky, the height of the building only allowed a miniscule amount of light to make it’s way down to our level. I discovered this when I awoke the next morning in the soft light of 7am, only to turn on my phone and discover it had actually just passed 1:30 in the afternoon. It took a few moments for me to actually process what I was looking at. I didn’t really complain though - it’s not everyday you get to sleep for 13 hours straight.

This was about midday. Cool courtyard though!

We were only in Florence for a few days, much of which was spent sleeping, drinking wine, and watching Netflix. Occasionally, we wandered out into the beautiful Tuscan city. Thankfully, we didn’t have quite the overpowering crowds we would have in Rome, and in spite of the heat, we were able to frequently find shelter to eat our gelato in peace. We usually weren’t out too long - there are only so many churches you can see before your eyes glaze over, and we had wine and Lucifer to get back to.

"Excuse me, sir? Sir? You're not supposed to hold children like that, sir! Sir! Don't make me call CPS on you sir!"

Of course, when we were in Florence, one of the things that we had to see was the big man himself. Out of the entirety of Florence, the biggest thing that stands out in my mind is Michelangelo's David. A nearby plaque summarizes the praise from Giorgio Vasari, an Italian artist at the time: “[Giorgio] continues by stating the statue so far surpasses both in beauty and technique ancient and modern statuary that one needn’t bother seeing other works in sculpture.” While seeing David was certainly incredible, it didn’t kill my desire to see other sculptures; the Accademia Gallery, however, put David on a pedestal as if they were actively trying to create that exact feeling in visitors. At a towering 17 feet, David is not a small dude, and he’s placed at the end of a long hallway illuminated by an impressive skylight. This has two major effects. The first is that the walk down the hallway is captivating, with this gigantic masterpiece waiting for you at the end. The second is that, because the hallway is designed to focus all your attention on him, it creates a scenario where, despite all the other artwork in wing, you walk away with the memory of a hallway that had David and some... Other Stuff.

You kind of can't not notice him.

Dis boi - he big.

Our final city was the big one (Vatican City was also on the docket, but we’ll get to that… business… in a bit). Rome is city that bleeds history. The entire thing is built on and around some of the most famous ruins in the world, and walking through streets where you can literally trip over history is like taking a step back in time to the ancient seat of the Roman Empire, though there are a bit more cars than were probably present the first time around. Fountains that have been there for hundreds of years are crowded with tourists and motorcycles, sometimes packed so thickly that it blurs into a sea of screaming children, selfie sticks and camera flashes. You could pick a random direction to walk in and you’ll undoubtedly come across a sprawling network of broken aqueducts, fountains, and ancient, dilapidated buildings shading pristine modern shopping centers jammed with vendors. The smell of freshly baked bread, intriguing spices, and sizzling meats spill into the street, teasing at your senses. An infinite number of things constantly vie for your attention. In the shade of the Pantheon, we stopped by a shop to sample some Limoncello, and each ended up getting about 10 small shots of different flavors. Thankfully, the beating sun didn’t last forever, and as we jumped from place to place, locals and tourists alike began squeezing their way into street cafes and bars, until the evening air was filled with laughter and the clinking of glasses. As a bonus, we were also in Rome during one of the World Cup games; the bars were so full, many had set up chairs on the street to accommodate the packs of people eagerly watching off the establishment’s singular television. Periodically, we would hear cries of excitement and outrage, and often times poked our head in to passing places to see the score. Never before have I been in a city so entirely passionate about a sport, and I would love to spend the next World Cup in Europe.

The Spanish Steps, with a modest amount of people.

The Fontana di Trevi, with a perfectly caught coin toss.

The Colosseum, lit by the late afternoon sun.

We saw most of the major spots: the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Fontana di Trevi, and an endless number of plazas. I’ve only been to Italy in the middle of summer, and I would love to return when I can wander around without rubbing quite as many elbows with fellow tourists. It’s a city filled with character and charm, rustic hospitality and incredible food. With all of these wonderful memories, it’s a shame that it also held the only black spot on our trip, a place that I will never return to: the Vatican.

This is one of the coolest things we saw in Vatican.

Let’s take a moment to think about the public perception of the Vatican. For many, the Vatican is simply the center of the Roman Catholic Church, a holy paradise where the Pope hangs out in his private gardens, eating grapes and being cool. One might also think of the incredible array of art the Vatican has in its possession: endless hallways of priceless pieces ending with the crowning glory of the Sistine Chapel. This might be thought of as a site of such intense devotion to God that just stepping onto the grounds might be enough to flood you with enough reverence to distract from all of the people.

The entrance hall of the Vatican museum.

Of course, when I say people, I mean crowds. Endless, eternal crowds, to the point where I can think of few things that can rival this level of audience participation. There is no off-season time for the Vatican: no matter the season, no matter the weather, there is an average daily attendance of 30,000-40,000 people. The line to get in very quickly skips right over ‘extensive’ and goes right to ‘absurd’ as it stretches multiple blocks away from the entrance. We decided to get “skip-the-line” passes, which gave us the privilege of waiting in a completely different line, with a bunch of other people also trying to skip the line, for about an hour.

I would have loved to stay in this hall full of maps for a very long.

Of course, once you get in, all these people have to go somewhere; they’re not just taken by the Catholic Church, never to be seen again (although that would cut down on attendance a bit). The entirety of the rather expansive museum is filled with a never-ending stream of people crammed shoulder to shoulder. Many places, the press of bodies actively forces you to move with the masses, taking you past all the wonderful art pieces begging to be looked at for more than 5 seconds. The Vatican museum and St. Peter’s Basilica are certainly impressive from an artistic standpoint, but the sheer amount of people pouring an endless amount of money into a city that seems to care very little for its visitors, combined with a complete dismissal of any sense of reverence (we passed some people in St. Peter’s Basilica who had just gotten pickpocketed), cemented in me the feeling that the Vatican is one of the least holy places I’ve ever been in.

This place is really beautiful, and I wish I could see it with a tenth of the people.

We also got a mild case of heat stroke, which didn’t help our mood.

Even when I was slightly delirious from dehydration, I couldn't stop myself from taking pictures.

Vatican aside, I remember Italy with great fondness. On the last day of my first trip to Rome, my friend and I ate dinner on the banks of the River Tiber and walked through the ancient streets, marveling at the sparkling city at night. I was elated when Courtney and I were able to spend our last evening doing just that. After a final meal of pasta on the river, we wandered through warm plazas shining in the moonlight to the top of the Forum, where we admired the huge, sweeping vista before us, filled with twinkling lights. As much as I wanted to skip Italy when we were in Ireland, I can’t deny how much I love this country, and I know I’ll never get over standing at the base of a building that has stood for hundreds of years. I can’t wait to return, and that happiness followed us all the way back to our hostel, where we fell asleep in the warm Italian night, dreaming of the Spanish adventures to come.

Our last sunset in Italy.