Roseyland

I was going to tell you all about Villa Borghese and the ancient Roman ruins today, but who wants to hear about that? Instead, we can talk about politics, everyone loves politics. I made the mistake of listening to the radio the other day, and they were talking about something called Prop C. According to the voices on my radio, a vote for Prop C will save freedom, strengthen families, and prevent the impending socialist take over of our country. Awesome! I’ll take two.

Being slightly more serious for a second, you can read a good summary of Prop C at Ballotpedia.org here. Make sure you read the opposition section. I know it’s all the way at the bottom, but you can do it. Basically Prop C bans the government from mandating that individuals purchase health care or penalize individuals for not purchasing health care. Prop C is mainly a protest vote against the recently passed federal healthcare reform bill, and since federal law trumps state law, Prop C will accomplish little, if it passes.

If the Prop C supporters want to make it more interesting, they should propose a law that forces employers to reimburse employees who opt out of their employer provided group health care. I get great health insurance through my employer, and I feel very fortunate to have it. According to my employer, my health insurance cost around $450 a month. I pay none of that. I could opt out of the coverage, but I would not get to keep any of the $450. So basically my employer mandates that I either accept their group health care plan or I am essentially fined $450. Prop C aims to prevent the government from doing this to you, but if Prop C supporters were truly sincere in their intentions, they would also ban employers from mandating health care.

I know what you are thinking, you can choose your employer, so it’s not the same thing. I can see that point, but I highly doubt I could find comparable employment with a company that didn’t also effectively mandate health care coverage. Companies do this, because it’s a good plan. It provides excellent affordable health care to all employees and their families regardless of medical history or preexisting conditions. Is there anybody out there that doesn’t want this? Would you rather have an extra few hundred dollars in your paycheck and tell your coworker’s kid with asthma to suck it? Because that is what you would be doing, and it’s exactly what Prop C attempts to do.

I absolutely believe that group health care plans in the United States offer the best health care in the World. Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t get into a group plan and are denied coverage or have to pay much more for much less. We need to ensure that every citizen of this country can benefit from the structure and protections of group health care plans, and the only way to do this is to mandate health insurance. I don’t like being told what to do by the “guvermint” any more than anybody else, but your “freedom” to not have health insurance is also your freedom to go into medical debt bankruptcy and pass your debt on to society, or your freedom prevent someone who really needs it from obtaining coverage. I don’t want these freedoms.

In summary, Prop C is dumb, vote against it.

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Today is a big day, we are going to Florence. I’ve wanted to go to Florence since I took art history in college. I looked back over my college papers, and it turns out I even wrote a paper on the subject of David from Donatello to Bernini. I totally don’t remember writing this paper, but you can read it here. If by chance you are a college student, I have some free advice for you. You probably have to take some type of upper level elective outside of your major. Take art history. I know what you are thinking, history is boring and I’m not into art. Wrong. Art history is like history with pictures, which is way better than regular history. Anyways, we spent a lot of time talking about Florence in my art history class, and I’ve wanted to see it ever since, and now I have.

Okay, so this is day 3 in Italy. We got up, took the metro to the train station, and took the train to Florence. The train was very nice. If you are traveling between major cities in Europe, you often have two choices. You can take a direct train between the two cities or a regional train that makes a few stops between the cities. The direct train is more expensive, but it’s a faster and nicer train. I’d go with the direct route if I were you. I’d also splurge on first class, because it isn’t that much more money, and it’s less crowded. The train got us to Florence in about one and a half hours, and we headed straight to the Galleria Accademia. If you are going to Florence, especially in the summer, you will want to make reservations to see the Galleria Accademia and the Uffizi Gallery. If you don’t, you will either not see them, or spend all day waiting in line. I used this website to make reservations, but I’ve heard that hotels can make them for you too.

The Galleria Accademia is where you can see Michelangelo’s David. You are not supposed to take pictures inside this museum. I did not know this, so I took out my camera, and took a picture of David. Then I realized that nobody else was taking pictures, which seemed odd, and then I saw the “pictures are strictly forbidden” sign. Unlike the Sistine Chapel, people seemed to be obeying the rules here, so I did too. From that point on at least.

After seeing Michelangelo’s David, the plan was to check out the Duomo, which is the big cathedral right in the middle of Florence. The line was super long though, so we skipped ahead to lunch. This was the only time I think we made a bad dinning choice. It was really hot, so we kind of just picked the first place we saw, and the food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, and it ended up being one of our most expensive meals for so-so food. We should have realized this, because the place had tourist trap written all over it, but unfortunately the heat had impaired our judgement. The picture below is of the Duomo, we’ll go inside later.

After lunch, I climbed to the top of Giotto’s bell tower, which is the bell tower right next to the Duomo. I love climbing to the top of domes and bell towers in places like Florence. It’s fun, because you have this mini shared experience with a bunch of other tourist from all over the world. I like trying to guess where the other people are from, and then sometimes you’ll say something in english as you are passing somebody, and if they speak english, there is this moment where you realize each other speaks english, and yeah, I’m a dork. It’s also a lot of work climbing these towers, so you get a nice sense of accomplishment and some great views. Here is a picture of the steps in Giotto’s bell tower.

Here is a platform partway up the bell tower. It was nice that the bell tower had these, because it gave you a place to rest. Most of the domes don’t have a lot of places to rest on your way up.

Here is a grate where you can look all the way down the center of the bell tower. Nice shoes.

Here is a view of the Duomo’s dome from the top of Giotto’s bell tower with florence in the background.

This is the platform on top of the bell tower. I kind of felt like a gerbil being inside the little tunnel cage.

After I climbed down from the bell tower, we went to the Uffizi gallery where we had reservations, which like I said earlier, you need. The Uffizi gallery is a world famous art gallery, and it was pretty cool, but you can’t take pictures inside. I did take this picture of the Ponte Vecchio from the Uffizi gallery though. The Ponte Vecchio is a bridge over the Arno river in Florence. The bridge contains a number of gold shops, we’ll go there a little later.

After the Uffizi gallery, we headed back to the Duomo to see the inside. The line was shorter this time, and it actually rained a little. It felt good though, considering how hot it was. See that building with the gold doors? That is the Baptistery, which is basically a mini church in front of the Duomo where they used to baptize people, and maybe they still do, I don’t know. The gold doors are the Gates of Paradise by Ghilberti. The doors on the baptistery now are just a replica of the original doors, which are now in a museum. These doors are one of the things from my college art history class that I really wanted to see.

This picture is a little out of order. First we went into the main level of the Duomo. It was very pretty, but dark, and my pictures didn’t come out all that great. Also, being that this is a church, they want you to be quite, and every few minutes, this creepy deep recorded voice says “Silenzio” followed by “Silence”. It was scary. After we saw the main level, I went to climb the dome, because as we discussed, I like climbing stuff. I took the picture below of the inside of the Duomo on my way up the dome. Look at the people below, they are so tiny, somebody should feed them more.

Here are some of the steps on the way up the dome. See, how cool is that, just think how old these steps are and how many people have climbed them. Are there any domes I can climb in St. Louis? I miss it.

Here is a view from the top of the Dome. Notice the hills in the background. They are covered with houses. I would like one.

This is the platform on the top of the Dome. I took some time to sit up here, relax for a bit, and send some SMS messages, which cost 50 cents a piece from Italy by the way.

After the climbing down from the Dome, we headed to the the Ponte Vecchio. Hey look, it’s a picture of me on the Ponte Vecchio. People are always like, why don’t you ever take any pictures of yourself, and I still don’t really understand why I would want to, but here I am, standing on a bridge, in Italy. Like I said earlier, the Ponte Vecchio is filled with gold shops. If you aren’t interested in gold, like me, the bridge also has nice views over the river Arno.

After the Ponte Vecchio we had dinner in Piazza Vecchio and then headed to the train station to catch our train back to Rome. Here is a picture of the tracks in the Florence train station. Cool picture huh?

The train ride back to Rome was nice. We sat next to an american couple who had been in Italy for 10 days. It was interesting to hear their stories. Also, on the train we were given olive flavored crackers. I thought they were okay. A few people have asked me whether I liked Rome or Florence better, and of course this isn’t really an answerable question. Rome has so much to see and do, but it’s also a big big city with a definite rat race feel to it. Florence on the other hand is smaller, and is more laid back and relaxing. Florence was also nicer and cleaner. I would much rather live in Florence and I do wish I had a few more days to just hang out there. Tomorrow we visit the Galleria Borghese and take a tour of the ancient roman ruins. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Welcome to day number 2 of the Roseyland Italian adventure. You have of course read day 1 already, if not, use the link above and go read it. Do not read day 2 without reading day 1, just don’t. Today is our first full day in Rome and there is only one item on the agenda. Touring the Vatican. Before we left, my aunt and uncle (who had just been to Rome) convinced us that we had to take a Context Travel tour of the Vatican. I had always planned to take a tour of the Vatican, but I was planning on taking one of the larger group tours. The Context tours seemed a little expensive and overly academic to me. I’m so glad I changed my mind. Context tours have a maximum of 6 people on their tours, and your guide knows everything about the Vatican, and I mean everything. It’s like strolling through the Vatican with your good professor friend that loves to answer questions. The larger group tours would be okay, but they are groups of around 30 people, and that wouldn’t be so bad, but there are like 30 groups of 30 people all trying to shuffle their people from place to place while they recite their script. I’m probably being a little too hard on the larger group tours, but the Context tour really was excellent. If you spent all that money to go all the way to Rome, spend a little more on the Context tour, and no, I’m not getting compensated in any way to say this. In case you are wondering, we took the Arte Vaticana (with Reservation) tour.

We met our guide in a bar (think coffee bar) just outside the Vatican museums entrance. There were three other people on our tour, a husband, wife, and son from Massachusetts (I think). They were nice. The husband liked to take lots of pictures, like me. I wonder if he has a blog. Anyways, we entered the Vatican and our guide gave us a good overview of the Vatican and it’s history. The we walked out on this terrace that was absolutely beautiful. It overlooked the Vatican gardens and you could see the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background. You can’t tell from the picture, but that dome is huge, and by huge, I mean really really big.

Here is a picture from a courtyard inside the Vatican Museums. See that sphere in the middle? That sphere used to sit right between the World Trade Center towers. I don’t remember the story, but somehow it survived 9/11 and now it lives at the Vatican.

The Vatican museums are filled with priceless art. This statue is apparently very famous. Of course I don’t remember it’s name, but I believe it was an ancient greek statue had been lost for hundreds of years but was still well known among ancient Roman artist. Then it was unearthed and people flocked to see it. I probably butchered that story, but the point is, this statue is kind of a big deal. He should probably be wearing sunglasses.

Here is a hallway in the Vatican museums. Very beautiful building, lots of people.

Ohhhh. This is one of my favorite parts. This is a Vatican parking lot. This is where people who work at the Vatican park. See anything unusual? There is a big yellow Hummer in the parking lot. Who at the Vatican drives a Hummer?!? Doesn’t that break a vow or two? And don’t say, “I bet it’s the Pope’s!”. That joke is far to easy to be funny.

This is the School of Athens by Raphael. I had just finished reading Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King, which talked all about the painting of the Sistine Chapel and the rivalry between Michelangelo and Raphael. The book also talked about Raphael’s paintings in the Papal apartments, and they sounded very cool, but I didn’t think I’d get to see them, because I figured the Pope still lived there. Turns out he moved a while back, and you can go see them. Hurray! I actually liked this painting more that the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but that might just be because you can get closer to it.

Here is the famous Sistine chapel ceiling. The picture is a little blurry, because you aren’t supposed to take pictures and I had to be all sneaky. The whole thing is kind of ridiculous. There were a few hundred people in the Chapel, half of whom are taking picture after picture and then the guards in thick Italian accents say, “No Phoooto… No Veedeo…”. On top of that, supposedly the only reason you can’t take pictures of the ceiling is because the images are copyrighted by the Japanese company NHK who funded the restoration of the ceiling, and supposedly that copyright has run out, so you can take pictures of the ceiling. It’s just that nobody has told the guards.

This is the official staircase of the Vatican. It’s what heads of state use when they visit and it leads up to the Sistine chapel.

This is the inside of St. Peter’s basilica. This building is huge, it’s as long as two football fields and ridiculously beautiful.

This is the alter of St. Peter’s basilica which sits directly under it’s massive dome.

Here is picture from St. Peter’s square in front of St. Peter’s basilica. See the building in the background with all the windows? The three right most windows on the top row are where the Pope lives and works.

Another shot of St. Peter’s square, this time with St. Peter’s basilica in the background.

Our tour concluded in St. Peter’s square, and just to mention it one more time, it was awesome. I learned so much that I could probably pretend to be catholic now. Our guide mention a couple things on our tour that were not about the Vatican, but have stuck with me. First he talked about the difference between the cultures of northern and southern Europe. Basically he said that the germanic cultures (Germany, the Netherlands, The UK, etc…) tend to be very orderly and structured cultures. On the other hand, the romance language countries (France, Spain, Italy, etc…) tend to be more chaotic and less structured. I think I experienced this last year when I went from London to Paris. I really liked London and I felt very comfortable there almost instantly. Paris on the other hand was a shock to my system. While I loved Paris, it felt very out of control to me. At the time I chalked this up to not understanding the language, but now I think it’s a deeper cultural issue too. Supposedly the U.S. is more like the germanic countries. I’ll have to test this theory with a trip to Germany. Rome was chaotic like Paris, but the people were friendlier, so it didn’t shock me as much. Either that or I’m just more used to it now.

The other thing our guide said that has stuck with me is that the European cultures are at serious risk of going extinct. The birth rates in most European countries are around 1.8 births per woman. 2.1 births per woman is the rate needed to maintain a population. On top of that, immigrant cultures in Europe have much higher birth rates and could over take the native cultures in a generation or two. This worries me, because the European people are wonderful, and I don’t want them to disappear. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the immigrant cultures, without them, Europe would be in even worse shape. Still, I hope traditional Europe is around for many generations to come, or at least for the rest of my lifetime. I did some research, and birth rates in Europe are increasing, so it looks like the trend is slowly reversing. It seems like an easy problem to fix. I mean Rome is filled with attractive young European women, how hard can it be to get them all pregnant? If by chance you are a European woman reading this right now, stop, go get pregnant, then come back and read the rest. Thanks.

After our vatican tour, we ate lunch and then headed back to St. Peter’s basilica to climb the dome. Unfortunaly, we had to wait in the security line, but it’s much shorter in the afternoon. Here is a picture of part of the staircase heading to the top of the dome.

Here is a picture of St. Peter’s square from the top of the dome with Rome in the background.

Here is a picture of the back part of the Vatican. Visitors aren’t allowed to go there, it’s where they have secret Pope meetings.

Here is the platform on top of the dome and all the people taking pictures.

After the climbing down from the dome, we walked to the Torre Argentina cat sanctuary. There are lots of stray cat’s in Rome. Something about italians not believing in sterilizing their cats. The Torre Argentina sanctuary has a little section of ancient ruins where the cats can live, and the sanctuary gives them food, water, and shots. The people that work in the sanctuary are wonderful wonderful people. You should go to the link above and donate. The cat below is Earl’s italian cousin. While all the other cats were sleeping, he was running and jumping from ledge to ledge. It was actually really hard to get this picture.

Here are more cats among the ruins.

The cat sanctuary is pretty close to the Pantheon, so we headed there next to see the inside this time. The Pantheon is (I think) the only ancient Roman building that has survived all this time in pretty much it’s original condition. At some point it was converted into a catholic church. Here is the inside.

Remember that great restaurant in front of the Pantheon that I talked about last time. Here is a view from our table, that’s my glass of red wine. I don’t know why, but wine tasted so much better in Italy. Maybe it was the atmosphere, but it seems like they serve it at the perfect temperature, or decanted it, or something. It was good, I wish I knew why.

Day 2 is now concluded. Tomorrow we travel by train to Florence. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Hey look! Roseyland is back. I know, you’re excited, totally understandable. I just got back from a trip to Italy, and now, I’m going to tell you all about it. I loved the blog post I wrote about my trip to London & Paris last year. You can read them here. I shouldn’t admit this, but I go back and read those post every few months or so. It’s a great way to revisit the experience. Naturally, I now have to do the same thing for my Italy trip.

Where to start? How about food. Ahhh the Italian food. It’s nothing like the picture below. This picture was taken in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport. They have great BBQ in the Charlotte airport. See that thing that looks like a giant french fry? That’s a fried pickle, and it’s awesome. I went to Italy with my Aunt (from Nebraska) and my Mom (from South Carolina). I arranged it so that we could meet up in Charlotte and fly to Rome together. This was our last meal before boarding our 9 hour flight.

After a couple hours in the airport, we boarded US Airways Flight #720 from Charlotte to Rome. This was on an Airbus 330. The picture below is from my seat. During the flight I was constantly comparing the US Airways Airbus 330 to the American Airlines Boeing 777 that I flew on to London last year. At first I liked the 777 a lot better, because it was a bigger aircraft and felt roomier inside, but the 330 grew on me. It might be a tad smaller, but the 777 had 5 middle seats, which means some poor sap get’s stuck with two people between him and the aisle. That would suck. Also, US Airways has a better in flight entertainment system than American airlines. I say this because the movies are truly on demand in that you can start them whenever you want, on American, they just play in continuous loops, and you have to catch the movies when they start. That being said, US Airways didn’t have a situational display that would show you where the aircraft currently was and how fast you were flying. Although I think the TSA might have made all airlines get rid of those.

Despite my best efforts, I didn’t get any sleep during the flight. I did watch three movies though. When In Rome, Date Night, and something else that for the life of me I can’t remember. I’m sure it was really good though. By the way, the fountain in the movie When In Rome, it’s not a real fountain. You can’t find it in Rome, so don’t go looking for it, that would be a total waste of time.

Upon arrival we went through customs. The italian customs process is much less strenuous than the UK customs process. The UK will have you fill out a form and ask you a few questions, the Italians, they look at you and stamp your passport. Which is fine by me, because it’s a lot faster. Since there were three of us, I decided to rent a short term apartment for our stay. I was a little nervous about this, because I like the connivence and security of a hotel, but this apartment got good reviews on Flipkey.com and it was about the price of one hotel room. It all worked out well and the apartment people were nice enough to arrange a private driver for us from the airport for €50. Below is a picture of our apartment’s living room. There were also two bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and a terrace that you had to take this tiny spiral staircase to get to.

All in all our apartment was pretty nice, but you did have to go up these steps to get to it. Not only that, before these steps there are three more flights of steps and these two weird metal gates that had to be unlocked to get in or out. The locks were strange too, I don’t know how, but they functioned differently from american locks, and it stressed me out every time I had to deal with them.

After settling into our apartment, we headed out to see Rome and get oriented. Below is a picture of Piazza del Popolo This piazza was pretty close to our apartment and we ate lunch at a ristorante here. I had some type of risotto. It was good. After walking around for a bit, we realized that it was just too hot and we were too tired to keep going, so we heading back to the apartment for a short nap until it cooled off a little.

Later in the evening, we headed out again. Our first stop, the Spanish Steps as seen in the picture below. Lots of people here. See those guys with flowers, they are really annoying. If you are female, they insist that you take a flower (because you’re beautiful of course), then if you take one and nobody pays for it after a few seconds, they take it back. I believe these are mostly illegal immigrants. Every once in a while the police show up and they go running, but they come back just a few minutes later. It’s like this weird game they and the police play that nobody ever wins. Fortunately we didn’t have to deal with this kind of activity too much in Rome, I thought it was a lot worse in Paris last year.

This is the Fontana della Barcaccia that sits at the base of the Spanish steps. Supposedly the water streaming into the fountain is drinkable, and I did see people drink it. I was not that brave however.

After the Spanish Steps we walked to the Fontana di Trevi. Pictures don’t do this fountain justice. It’s beautiful, and huge, and I wanted to swim in it. This area was also packed with people trying to see the fountain. There is a video of this fountain on my Flickr page, you should check it out.

Next we headed towards the Pantheon and ate dinner somewhere along the way. The Pantheon was closed, but it still looks pretty impressive on the outside.

This is the piazza in front of the Pantheon. I think this might be my favorite place in Rome. See that ristorante on the right with the yellow table cloths and brown wicker chairs? That was our favorite restaurant in Rome. We ate there twice. The guide books will tell you to avoid the restaurants on the main piazzas, because they tend to be tourist traps, and they are probably right, but tourist trap or not, I loved this restaurant. The waitress was super friendly, there is a great view of the piazza and the people, with the Pantheon in the background. Music was always playing from somewhere, and the food was great. On a nice night, it’s just amazing. If you ever want to go sometime, I’ll buy dinner.

This is Piazza Navona. Somehow I thought this would be a bigger deal, because it looks like a big deal on the map. It was cool, but there were a lot of other piazzas I liked better. Like that one in front of the Pantheon I just talked about.

After a lot of walking, we got gelato at the famous Giolitti. It was very good. I had chocolate and carmel with whipped cream. Their chocolate chip (called stracciatella) is also very popular. A quick side note, at the bars and gelato places in Italy, you pay first at the cashier, who gives you a receipt, then you take the receipt to the bar where you order your food. So don’t just go up to the bar and order food, you’ll look like a silly tourist, but they’ll still be nice to you. Also, bar doesn’t mean bar, bar means counter service like restaurant where you can get coffee, pastries, sandwiches, etc…

That’s it, day 1 is over. Tomorrow we tour the Vatican, hopefully we’ll be over our jet lag by then. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.