Always Trippin’

I’m sure I conjugated all my verbs perfectly on the quiz I just took an hour ago, but I am RUBBISH at actually speaking Italian. Perche? I just told the guy in the park that it was fifty minutes to one instead of fifteen, and now I feel like an utter idiot. Seriously, how did I even come up with that? I’m too embarrassed to go back out and tell him that I made a mistake, but I’m sure I have just screwed up his life because now he will probably miss a date, or a job interview, and therefore screw up his chances of marrying some beautiful girl or securing a spot in some sort of multi-million dollar firm and probably end up depressive, girl-less, alcoholic and homeless on a bench in said park. Since said park is smack in front of my school, I’m going to have to cringe and hide every time I walk through it in case I stumble across him again. Unfortunately, hiding is a little more difficult when one has blazing streaks of red in one’s hair and a jacket to match.

On Florence:

It’s a surreal feeling, wandering past the tombs of Dante (his fake one in Florence and the real one in Ravenna) and Michelangelo, knowing that these people who made history once walked the same streets that I walk now. And I am here now, but what am I doing, and how long will I last? I run in and out of the Uffizi, the Academia, look at David twice in one day just because I can, for free.

On places I’ve been:

Stepping into Assisi is like stepping into a cotton-candy dream. Pink and white stone everywhere, curving little streets, staircases that twist and wind up around enticing corners – where do they go? Of course the basilica is gorgeous (hopefully you like St. Francis, and frescoes), but the best part is wandering the streets of the town. The streets in January are empty, completely empty – no tourists, no locals, just you. Everything is clean and bright, like fairies lived there once but all flitted away just yesterday. It’s surreal, it could probably provoke an existentialist crisis or conversations about being in Myst or the Matrix, but it’s gorgeous anyway. Climbing up to the fort (Rocca) you see Umbria spread out brilliant and beautiful before you, tossed in the wind and sunshine…and a fence full of chewing gum that is grotesquely aesthetically-pleasing.

Ravenna is full of gorgeous sparkling mosaics from ye olde Byzantine times. I also managed to score a legitimate goose-down jacket for only 15 Euros in some random little store here. We stop by Dante’s final resting place and hear about how he had his remains hidden when Florence wanted to claim him, but apparently his hiders did such a good job that no one could remember where he was. And so Dante lay underground, forgotten for many a year until his accidental unearthing.

Pisa has a leaning tower. It definitely leans. It also has multiple Asian brides and their bridal parties taking photos, black men with brightly-colored umbrellas for sale, tasteful boxers with exaggerated David doodles on them and many people making strange gestures in the air with two hands up (try taking photos of these folks from other angles next time and rejoice in the absurdity of all other tourists and how you’re not like them).