Italy, winding down, and cookies!

I am extremely happy to report that as I am writing this blog I am also running frantically back and forth from the kitchen (runs to kitchen) to swap cookies in the oven and to take batches out and put new ones in. I went on my last shopping trip this afternoon and decided to go crazy and buy stuff to make chocolate chip cookies. My excuse is that I needed to use up the rest of my flour, but really I just wanted cookies. I think I'm going to be having a lot of lasts in these next couple days, it's going to be interesting. Unfortunately for me, my kitchen is not quite "fully equipped" so I'm kind of improvising. I've got a small oven and small trays, so I can only make 9 at a time, and they take about 9 minutes to cook, so I'm basically getting up every 4.5 minutes. It's great! Well worth it though. Here you can see my first 2 batches. I ingeniously rigged up a cooling rack out of wooden skewers and tape, which is working quite nicely.


On the note of the cookies taking about an hour to finish, I think during my time over here I've managed to appreciate slowing down a bit. It takes longer to get places, I walk a lot more, I think I just have a more relaxed life in general. I like it. Of course, that's in a very stark contrast with the times when I'm traveling! On those days, things seem to go in huge blurs sprinkled with the occasional interminably long wait at a (runs to the kitchen) bus stop or airport.

And speaking of travel, Italy was amazing!!! (Sorts through some pictures, runs to the kitchen to get the last batch of cookies.)

To save myself a bit of hassle with formatting, I'm going to provide links to most of the pictures and only embed the most impressive pictures and ones of the things I liked best. As I previously mentioned, my favorite things in Rome were the Colosseum, the Pantheon (which I mistakenly referred to as the Parthenon in my last post, whoops!) and the keyhole, which I hadn't even heard of until very recently.

I saw tons of other stuff while I was there though. On the first day, I met some people during breakfast (Canadian and English) who were making some joke about Americans, so I was forced to chime in and correct them. After schooling them in the ways of the American people, we discovered that we were all heading towards the Vatican and decided to go together. So the gang and I hopped the metro for my one and only sub-Rome journey and went to see the Vatican museum, complete with famous and not-so-famous sculptures and the Sistine Chapel (pictures weren't allowed, so that was the best I could get while being subtle). I lost the gang after a few rooms because we were all walking at different paces and I think at some point we took different turns as well. There was tons more to see in the museum and I spent maybe 2-3 hours there. It was kinda exhausting, and I felt bad for a lot of the art because when you're surrounded by things like that, you kinda start to neglect it or take it for granted. Yeah, sure, here's an amazing ancient roman statue, but there are 5o more in the next room! Kinda makes it hard to fully appreciate each piece. Oh well, at least they have these amazing collections for people to see at all.

After that, I went to see St. Peters Basilica, including the Pieta and a climb up the dome for some awesome views. From here, I just kinda wandered. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to see, but I was also just going off of my tourist map and heading from one landmark to the next. Some of the more important/recognizable things I saw: The Castel Sant' Angelo, which is an old fort converted into a museum-y thing (a little pricey, but pretty cool). The Piazza Navona with its three fountains. TONS of basilicas, some famous, and some just random, but all very impressive. The Trevi Fountain. The Spanish Steps where there are lots of Italian men who try to give you flowers and take your money. Constantine's Arch. The Palatine Hill and the Circus Maximus. Santa Maria in Cosmedin, which is on of the oldest churches in Rome and has the skull of Saint Valentine. The Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, which was one of the most impressive buildings I've ever seen. And Trajan's Column.

Phew, I think that's all the major stuff. The city is absolutely stuffed with piazzas and basilicas though, so I was pretty much seeing amazing stuff where ever I was. But enough lists, on to some pictures and details!

First, the Colosseum is absolutely massive. I spent about 2 hours the second morning just wandering around in it. I got some really good pictures of it too, and a couple videos to try to show the scale.


This is what I saw as I came over a hill and got my first view of it. There's a metro stop right next to it, but I decided after my one trip on the metro that I would rather walk everywhere. The city center really is not that big and I figured I would get a better feeling for the city that way.




The inside of the Colosseum is much less intact, but since the floor is missing you can see right into all the corridors and rooms that they used to hold animals and gladiator and such. Nathan told me that I needed to take a video of myself shouting "are you not entertained!" but I didn't want to get thrown out . . .

Oddly enough, after spending the morning in the Colosseum and heading over to the palatine hill, I heard some one call my name! That was pretty unexpected in Rome, so I turned and was shocked to see the two guys (James and Richard) from the day before! They were just on there way to see the Colosseum themselves and were going to meet up with the girls (Lindzi and Courtney) there. They had also met up with James' friend Gulia (pronounced like Julia) who was a real live native Roman and was going to show them around a bit. We swapped phone numbers so we could do dinner that night, I asked Gulia about any hidden secrets of Rome, and then we split off again to do our own thing.

Later that afternoon after spending about 2 more hours on the palatine hill I went exploring to find the keyhole. Now, this is a lesser known sight in Rome (at least, less known to me), but it's a door with a keyhole that looks directly out onto the dome of St Peter's. Sounded pretty cool and Katie had said it was her favorite thing in Rome, so I figured I had to do it. When I got there, it was surrounded by tourists, but I just waited a bit and it cleared out so I could get some good pictures. It was pretty non-descript from the outside, just this wall with a big wooden door in the middle, but as you get closer, and closer, and closer, and closer, you can finally see through the keyhole an amazing view of Saint Peter's Basilica! (I admit, I had to edit the image a bit with Photoshop to get it to work. The garden was too dark, and the dome was way too bright, so I had to take a bunch of photos at different settings and then merge them together. I think the result looks pretty awesome though.) While this may not have been my absolute favorite thing, Katie was right, it's pretty impressive.

Sadly I didn't get as impressive of photos of the Pantheon. It's too big a space inside to get it to all fit into one picture. I got this nice one of the outside and a few good ones inside, but they just can't begin to convey the power of this place.

And here I am being in awe of the
geometric perfection in this building.

I really liked this picture of the oculus and the circle of light coming through it being distorted on the wall of the dome.











I heard some people reading a guide book and it said that it was an amazing experience to be in the building when it rained since the top was completely open. I really wished it would have rained, but I at least found the original drains in the marble floor so I could imagine what it would have been like.


So that's pretty much it for Rome. On Friday morning I hopped on a train and went to Florence. and at the same time, Katie was flying out of Robin Hood Airport just outside of York where she was visiting a friend of her mom's. She landed in Pisa a took a train to Florence to arrive just an hour after me. I got in at 1:00pm and went to get the keys to the apartment we were staying in, and then went back to meet her at the train station. It's always a little tricky booking places online, but the apartment was amazing! It was really big and right next to the Doumo. Since there wasn't quite as much stuff to see as there was in Rome, we decided to just take it easy and stroll around fairly randomly. There were tons of tourists in the main areas, which served to reinforce my preference for traveling in the off season. I'm really glad that I've done a lot of that so far. Since I was being less touristy now, I also ended up taking a lot fewer pictures. I did get some really nice ones over the city at sunset though.



That big dome is the Duomo, which actually comes from the word for "house," meaning that as a welcoming building of God, everyone can consider it their home.

This is the Ponte Vechio (old bridge) at sunset. It is the only bridge to survive bombing in WWII and is now famous for it's gold shops. I saw some of the gaudiest stuff I've ever seen on this bridge. It's a shame I'm not rich or I would have brought some home.

We also went to the science museum which was really really awesome, especially considering that the entire renaissance pretty much happened in Florence. So many amazing things to see. There were different measuring devices, lots of astrology stuff, a room full of telescopes including Galileo's original two, and then some static electricity machines and a bunch of didactic things to show properties of motion. Another room was full of globes of the earth and the stars, and then there was stuff on medical discoveries and tools. Pretty astounding how people from 300 years ago can make me feel so stupid.

I wasn't supposed to take pictures in the museum, but this thing was way too impressive for me to not to capture it. I'll let you puzzle out what's going on. It's hard to tell in the picture, but I trust in your abilities.

I've also just realized that you haven't seen a picture of Katie yet, so here's my classic self-taken "aw, aren't we cute" photo.

After 2 days in Florence (and 4 servings of Gelati later) we grabbed an early train up to Venice. I sadly am running out of time to finish this post, so I think I'm going to have to leave Venice and general end-of-year thoughts till next time. The reason I'm running out of time is because tomorrow morning at 5:30am Katie and I are grabbing a taxi-train-bus-train-ferry to Belfast for the weekend! It should be fun, but I've still got to get ready and do some study prep. I'm glad I'll manage to get to Ireland before leaving. It would be a shame not too since it's so close.

That's it for now! I've got 3 exams next Wednesday and Thursday, so I probably won't get to blog again till after that, but you can count on another one then.

I love you all and can't wait to see you!