Tomatina and Spain

After my last few days in Italy drinking sangria and partying all night I needed a bit of a rest, so I headed to Spain for la Tomatina. Who’d have known that would be a bad idea? Tomatina was one of the top events on my ‘while I’m young and stupid’ bucket list. As far as I could gather it’s a festival that Spain throw so the vegans can get in on all the fiesta fun, since all their other festivals seem to revolve around bull’s being tortured. It’s held every year in Bunol, which is just inland from Valencia. I’d once again chosen to go with a tour group for this festival, as La Tomatina only last an hour, and I figured it best to leave the organising to someone else, lest I miss the carnage. I also chose my particular tour as they had also had access to a wine and water festival which was held nearby the night before Tomatina.

One perk of booking through a tour company was that I was now staying in a hotel room for a couple of nights. To be honest it just felt like a waste, as I was going to be sleeping a bare minimum each of those nights, and luxury for me is now a mattress that isn’t too wet, that I don’t have to share with more than one person. Anything more than that just feels like opulence. I had a room mate for the trip, and I lucked out with a very cool lad from Australia called Ben. Ben has now travelled to every continent bar Antarctica, where he’ll be finishing his current trip.....the lucky bastard. While we shared a similar method of lifestyle which involved work, quit, travel, repeat, we had quite different methods of how we do our travel. Ben is an absolute tour fiend, he’s mad for them. Personally, I can’t stand them, I feel like I’m back in school again, and I don’t tend to do well with guidelines and structure. But Ben was absolutely loving it, and it was actually kind of refreshing to see that even in the Aussie gypsy population there’s still a tonne of diversity.

We technically had a few hours on the first day in Valencia to have a look around, but I spent most of it passed out in my dry, evenly padded, bed with sheets (OPULENCE I SAY!!) recovering from Florence and the 7am flight that morning, and then drinking a few bottles of wine and red bull with Ben. The wine and water festival was awesome, and for me provided a bit of closure. Like any good Spanish festival the wine and water festival had its’ own dose of danger. I’m pretty sure there’s a rule here that means it’s only officially a fiesta if an Australian is guaranteed to get hurt. In the case of the wine and water festival, they obviously submitted to the Spanish festival board their proposal to dish out free wine to anyone who had brought a vessel, from massive tanks on the back of trucks, and then pour water on the drunken revellers from the windows above. Obviously the Spanish festival board weren’t willing to leave Australian casualties to the chancey ills of drunken hypothermia, and so suggested ‘Why don’t you add a bull?’. And so, after being shut out of the stadium at the end of the Running of the Bulls, I finally had my chance to get into an arena while nimble young bulls tried to kill me. I’ve never been so happy!

I actually wasn’t 100% sure I’d get in stadium with the bulls, but by the time I got to the stadium I had had enough wine that I was in ‘the zone’. Not the zone where you’re invincible and really good at pool and can write English essays for University; the zone where you THINK you’re invincible, try to play jump shots in pool, and can write really innapropriate comments on facebook. Luckily the adrenaline that kicked in once I jumped into the arena and the first bull came out took me back to the first zone and I was all good. It was easily one of the most fun experiences of my life. There were 6 bulls in total, released one at a time. There was actually a cage in the middle of the arena, but I didn’t use that. Not because of any type of bravado, just because it was packed full of Aussies who’d had the courage to jump the fence, but nothing past that point. I ended up spending my time in the ring with an awesome Aussie girl and a couple of English lads who’d actually sworn they wouldn’t go in the arena at any price, and then turned up there after the first bull with the most intense look of excited terror I’ve ever seen. The best part of it was we were sitting and partying in the stands with a bunch of locals before we jumped into the ring, who then became our unofficial cheerleading section and gave us thumbs ups every time we almost died.

The beauty of the smaller bulls is that they probably wont kill you if they hit you, but they are far more agile than their older counterparts and so can turn on a dime and really mess some people up who aren’t expecting it. The decreased chance of death also enables the locals to run up and do flips over the charging bulls which is pretty amazing. Another hilarious but crazy thing that people do is lay on the ground in front of the bulls’ entrance to the arena. The theory is that the bulls don’t want to tread on anything it’s not expecting, and usually the bull will leap gracefully over everyone and they all stand, hug, and continue life with functioning internal organs. But this falls apart in a couple of ways. Firstly, after this works the first time, everyone wants a go, and so you have a scenario where the line begins to reach ridiculous lengths, with grinning locals encouraging suddenly nervous looking Aussies to lay down further and further from the gate, all the time assuring them that they’ll be fine. Secondly, not all the bulls jump. Luckily no one was hurt too badly that night. Actually the only major injury of the night happened about 5 metres away from me, when a girl got upended by a bull and got knocked out. Luckily there was a pretty big crew of us to carry her out and a couple of Spaniards with grande cajones to distract the bull for a minute.

I ended up completely knackered  after sprinting around for the better part of two hours, and I’ve got to say a special thanks to my tennis coach Michael for all the footwork exercises he made me do when I was younger, because I’m pretty sure it saved me on a couple of occasions (I actually promised myself to mention that after taking a deft step that made the bull upend a guy a metre away from me and only brush past me). My only regret about the whole experience was that I ended up losing my camera a couple of days later and didn’t get a chance to back up my videos I took while dashing around the ring. The one I’m most gutted about losing was when I was with two other guys about ten metres away from the bull. The bull started snorting steam from its’ nose, and sliding its’ hoof through the dirt, (totally warner bros style) as we sat there doing the same with our feet while getting ready to flee. And then it charged us. The video I shot was the bull threatening us, then an image of it charging at us for a millisecond, followed by the camera flying around in panic like someone had placed it in a hamster wheel and kicked it, followed by a sudden close up of the ground as I tripped over a pothole it, and then a nice close up shot of the guy next to me, about 3 metres away, being gored at by the bull as he lay on the ground after also having fallen. Ah well. As I told my parents, it just means I’ll have to do it again so I can get the footage.

After this, all who had survived the carnage, as well as those in the stands, emptied out into the streets for a massive street parade, and to imbibe in the free wine. The next few hours were pure Spanish fiesta as we danced to marching bands, had water poured onto us, and drank homemade wine from our vessels (which ranged from water bottles to kids’ pottys shaped like dinosaurs). We then all reluctantly piled back on our buses (some time around 4am) and headed back to our hotel, except for some drunken idiots who got on the wrong bus and went to the hostel instead. But after getting a cab from the hostel to the hotel I got a good solid 2 hours of sleep.

The next morning was a tad groggy to say the least, but luckily we had a free buffet breakfast, which meant a few litres of coffee each, and we were ready for Tomatina. We must’ve easily been the most sober/hungover group at the festival that morning as everyone else had gone slightly easier the night before and had gotten nicely drunk by the time we arrived. La Tomatina really is bizarre. The town of Bunol is located right in the middle of a bunch of industrial areas, and the approach to the town centre where the tomatoes are actually thrown isn’t exactly scenic. However once you arrive in the town centre it’s much more like the scenic Spanish villa you would expect. On the day of the festival the entire route leading in is lined with makeshift bars and barbecues, and a few hundred vendors selling swimming goggles. Luckily I avoided the price gouge from these vendors as I had thought ahead and brought a pair of ye olde aviator goggles which I ended up wearing for about 2 minutes before they fogged up and I took them off.

The fight actually starts at midday, but people must pack in pretty early because by the time we got there around 10:30am it was already packed well into the outskirts of town. Moving through the crowd was almost impossible, and once you get close to the town square only the rudest and most selfish can make any headway by pushing through the crowd into perceived space that simply doesn’t exist. But some ingenious people find other methods to move closer to the centre:

Not at all rude, ignore those girls screaming when I kick them in the head...

Once everyone is packed in, there’s not really much to do, so the town of Bunol kindly supplies entertainment in the form of a greased up pole with a ham leg tied to the top of it. This definitely did the job (it’s the simple things in life) and although no one physically grabbed the ham, there were loud cheers for a guy who tried to scale the palm tree next to the pole and jump across (he didn’t luckily as he would’ve definitely died), for any time someone was able to get up high enough to clear off the next layer of grease, and whenever the ripped black guy who looked a bit like Usain Bolt got up the pole. There was actually a few times where the whole crowd was cheering ‘USAIN BOLT, USAIN BOLT’ and while this may sound a bit racist, in our defense: we were very drunk, he was quite a close physical resemblance, and after one particularly good effort he did stand on someone’s shoulders and do the archer pose. And everyone chanting assures me they totally have tonnes of black friends. When the ham was finally shaken down by the guys at the base everyone was naturally pretty excited

But after a long wait, the trucks with tomatoes started making their way through the crowd. I’m not 100% sure how they did this, as before they came you literally couldn’t move more than a centimetre in any direction, but I guess a couple of tonnes of truck driven by a slightly tipsy and vaguely inbred looking Spaniard was necessary motivation to facilitate a solution to that conundrum. Waiting for the truck to arrive was an amazing spectacle. If you’ve ever been by a body of water while watching a storm approach you’ll have some idea what it is like, as you watch as the truck slowly moves through the crowd leaving a wake of tomatoes flying through the sky behind it. Once the trucks did arrive it was carnage. You barely had any room so you just had to make quick dips down to grab a tomato or two, then stand up hurl them at someone, follow through with your arm into the girl standing next to you, apologise quickly then do it all over again. After a minute or two the ground is covered in about half a foot of pasta sauce and you’re just scooping up puree and slurping it onto those around you. And then the next truck comes through and you start it all again! In this next video this was the first truck, and you can see by the time I move in behind it that the ground is already soaked in tomato puree. You’ll also see me grab a tomato off a girl and squash it on her head..... hey, it’s a harsh world when tomato fights break out. I also say ’WOOH’ more than a sorority girl on her 21st birthday, but that’s just the kind of party it was, ok.

The best bits was when the trucks stopped and you had a fresh pile of tomatoes, and if you were lucky you were on one side of the truck in between the cab and the trailer, meaning you had no one in front of you for a few metres, a fresh arsenal of tomatoes, and your newest deeply sworn enemy who must be punished by tomatoes standing on the other side. The fight only  goes for an hour, and on one hand it goes in a flash, but you’re so knackered by the end, and completely out of anything solid to throw, that the last few minutes are mainly people dancing around and chanting ‘ole ole’ and seven nation army. I cannot overstate how drenched in tomato juice everyone is by this stage. I’ve had baths that left me drier than Tomatina. After this, everyone files out very very slowly and tries to find any available water source to clean themselves off. We then threw out most of our clothes we’d just worn and got into some fresh ones for the bus ride home, before having the longest and most thorough showers of our lives (which still didn’t get all the tomato out of our hair and ears).

After Tomatina, I stayed in Valencia for a few days. The hostel I was at was comprised entirely of Aussies who were in town for Tomatina, most of whom were only on short stays in Europe and were keen to keep the big nights rolling. Normally I wouldn’t have minded, but I had come down with tropical death plague after a combination of about 5 or 6 big nights in a row (I may have also headed out to a nightclub until 5am after Tomatina) and having tomatoes thrown at my face that had been on the ground, and mixed in with god knows what (ok, urine...lots of drunk people waiting for a long time in a packed street with no public toilets). Luckily my room was quite sedate and I found a fellow culture vulture from Australia called Stefan, who had also gone quite hard over Tomatina and was keen for some detox.

I spent my time in Valencia sleeping, eating vegetables, and cycling around the city. Valencia isn’t the most spectacular city, but it is definitely one of the most liveable cities I’ve ever been to. It has a park that snakes its’ way through the entire length of the city, which contains football fields, outdoor gym apparatuses, bike paths, running tracks and kids play areas. It’s also rife with plaza’s, beaches, bars, excellent street art, restaurants and a newly developed area on the foreshore where the architect for the Sydney Opera house has obviously made a few more dollars. There’s even an f1 track that you can ride your bike around making engine noises and commentating like Murray Walker. Unfortunately no stories worth telling ever start with a salad and an early night so I haven’t really got anything else to say about a city I could definitely see myself living in. Although the one funny thing that did happen was when Stefan and I happened upon some people setting up for a local fiesta, and decided to come back that night and check it out. Unfortunately when we returned it turned out to be a fair populated mainly by preteens and kids, and so rather than feel like creepy perverts we headed back to the hostel (there were still bars lining the festival, and I bet if we waited around they would’ve released a bull).

From Valencia I caught an overnight bus to Granada, a beautiful town at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains in southern Spain. The overnight bus was interesting for the fact that I managed to get an unbelievably good night sleep after somehow managing to origami myself so that I lay flat across two bus seats, something I’ve still not been able to replicate since, and for the fact that this brilliant slumber was interrupted at 6am when we had to change buses after our bus apparently quite spectacularly blew out a tire (the bang woke everyone bar me).

In Granada  I was meeting my friend Emily, who I met while couchsurfing in Belfast. Serendipitously we had both ended up in Granada at the same time. I was also meeting up with a couple of girls she was traveling with, who were friends of both Emily and my couchsurfing host in Edinburgh (small world). Granada is a very beautiful small city. It’s perched on the side of a hill, and features your standard historical European town features of tightly packed houses intertwined with winding cobble stoned lanes. From pretty much every vantage point you get an amazing view of the Islamic temple Allahambra which hovers on a hill over the city. If you hike up to the cathedral on top of the city wall you get a great view down to the town below, and when you walk back down you pass right through a bunch of caves and shelters where the local gypsy community lives. And to top it off, at the many bars in town you get free tapas with each drink, and on most nights can enjoy your cerveza while watching the local flamenco dancers. I spent most of my time in Granada wandering the streets, and just hanging out with the girls. 

To the left Allahambra, front and centre the UNESCO town, not pictured - the gypsies trying to scam tourists.

We spent one afternoon wandering around Allahambra, which was absolutely beautiful. It was nice to have a break from churches with Jesus everywhere and try a different flavour of religion. Muslim places of worship definitely have a different vibe to their Christian counterparts. While they certainly lose marks for lack of pictures of Jesus, they more than make up for this with intricate tiles coating almost every wall, good use of natural light, and most importantly water features. Most mosques I've visited in my time here have all felt more open and airy, and more welcoming and communal than the typically closed and grand Christian churches, but I think that probably has more to do with the fact that Christianity happened in Europe where money was plentiful but heat non existant, whereas Mosques were predominantly built where it was 45 degrees all day. I think their perogative was designing the building to have a breeze and not going too overboard on the construction before all the potential worshippers die of heat stroke. 

This much hand made detail was in every single wall and ceiling....mustn't have had much else to do in those days I guess.

Not the worst view in town.

Allahambra and its’ view across the city was breathtaking, but it should come as no surprise that my favourite places in the city were a couple of concentrations of street art. Granada is lucky enough to have the very talented El Nino as a resident, who is a world famous street artist. While talented, he is apparently quite lazy, and has decided to mainly only venture as far as his own street to exhibit his pieces. Luckily this has turned his neighbourhood into one big gallery. This is easily one of my favourite places in the entire world: surrounded by art, the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background, all in the midst of a UNESCO world heritage site. 

Love this one.

There’s also a staircase at one of the highest points of the city where the artists have decided to combine a bunch of great pieces, where again you have an amazing combination of a great view and an outdoor gallery. Unfortunately this location has also added in a strong smell of urine to its' features, so it loses a few points there.

From Granada, Emily and I said goodbye to her friends and headed to Seville. We only spent a couple of nights here as I was keen to get to Morocco as soon as possible, and she only had a few days left before she had to return to real life in NYC, so we only really experienced a little of what Seville had to offer. However it seemed to be another beautiful, laid back Spanish city. We spent a bit of time walking around and a lot of time drinking in tapas bars, and we even had a chance to meet up for dinner with Stefan from Valencia for a night of Mexican food and beer. I also checked out the largest wooden structure in the world, which sort of looks like one of those flat pack make your own dinosaur skeleton kits, but on a grander scale.

The first piece came free, that's how they get you.

I said my farewell to Emily and Seville and hit the road for the southern town of Algeciras. I was only in Algeciras as it was one of the towns you could catch a ferry to Morocco from. No one chooses to come to Algeciras. It’s a dirty, semi abandoned, poor imitation of a Spanish town, with all the laid back, tapas eating, festiveness replaced with a bunch of miserable seedy transients who seem eternally trapped in transit, and a cuisine that combines the worst aspects of Moroccan and Spanish food. After finding out that my hotel, and in fact the entire town, had no washing machines, I decided Algeciras had nothing there for me and got the first bus to nearby Gibraltar. I only had one afternoon in Gibraltar, but luckily that's all you need. Gibraltar is a small patch of land which the English must’ve won off Spain in a card game or something, as it’s only about 2km long. But it does have a quite strategically significant location overlooking the straight of Gibraltar, and a beautiful big rock/hill that on a clear day allows you to see both Spain and Morocco. It was a place I sort of felt obligated to visit as I had grown up on Mt Gibraltar in Bowral and I’m easily amused by trivialities.

I’m glad I ended up visiting it though. After being in Spain and Italy for the past month it was actually really nice to experience a bit of good old fashioned British politeness for a change. Every English person in Gibraltar seems keenly aware that they’re an ambassador for their country and so they all have outrageously British accents and are all exceedingly polite and merry. I was only really in Gibraltar for one reason though: to climb the Gib and have some hot chips like I used to in High School. 

Simple amusements for simple minds.

This was done with a minimum of fuss and I was then free to walk around looking at the amazing view and to watch the crazy Macaques (monkeys) terrorise the tourists. These little monkeys were just domesticated enough to allow people near them, but not controlled enough that they didn’t try to steal people’s bags/cameras/babies. They especially liked my bag which must’ve smelt of hot chips still, and I had a couple jump on my shoulders and try to get to the Burger King goodness within. Luckily my face wasn’t clawed off or anything so all in all a very successful day.

'Aww isn't he just ador....OH GOD MY FACE!!'

As you can see the weather was very similar to Bowral's Mt Gibraltar

And with that I returned to my hotel, and ended my second jaunt through Spain. The next day I would head to the first place to really make me a little nervous on this trip, but also one of the places I’d always wanted to visit: Morroco, and so bidding Algeciras goodbye (hopefully forever) I was off to Africa.

More about → Tomatina and Spain

Italy

Well it's been about a month since I last updated this blog, and I am in danger of losing even the small dose of truth I usually try to include in each of these tall tales to completely incoherent rose tinted nostalgia, so I guess it's time for another blog entry!! I'm actually writing this from Rosy's kitchen in the cold but lovely suburb of Hammersmith and as per usual, it's just about to tick over midnight. But despite the fact that I've now traveled to 4 different countries (one of which was on a whole different continent) since my time in Italy, and my mind has been fuzzied by two Spanish and one German festivals, I feel like I can still pretty much exactly recall my time in Italy, or as I like to call it:

THE TIME I UNSEATED BERLUSCONI BY THROWING THE BIGGEST BUNGA BUNGA PARTY ROME HAS EVER SEEN!!!

Unfortunately I couldn't find the photos for that, so I'll just try and draw memories from the pictures I did find on my camera.

As you may recall, I was pretty disappointed by Italy last time I visited. Of all the European countries I was visiting, Italy and Spain were the two I was really looking forward to, and while Spain had held it's side of the crazy sangria soaked festival deal, Italy had kind of sucked. Venice was beautiful but not a bit soulless, and Milan just straight up sucked. Add to this that I was travelling straight from the unspoiled paradise that is Croatia, and Italy wasn't looking too appetising. However Italy ended up being everything I had been promised and more, and while I'm pretty sure I would've come to this opinion without his help, I think my friend Carmelo has to take most of the credit for this.

How I came to actually stay with Carmelo was more dumb luck than good planning. I traveled from Dubrovnik, Croatia to Bari on the east coast of Italy by ferry, and had planned to get to Sicily, but didn't really have any clue how I would physically do this, or where I'd stay when I got there. I also didn't really have any plan for where I was going to travel in Italy other than a vague notion that once I'd gone to Sicily and seen a volcano I'd go north. Luckily for me I had gone to my year 12 formal (that's our version of Prom for my American friends) with one of my friends, Bella, and had been such a bad date that she'd given up on Aussie men and found herself an Italian fella. On a whim I asked her if she had any advice and she let me know that although she was in Australia waiting out a visa, her boyfriend Carmelo was in Sicily and if I wanted I could stay with him while I was in town.

I actually knew Carmelo from when he was back in Australia, although only from brief encounters at a few parties and events, but from the moment I arrived, I felt like we'd been mates for years. Carmelo lives in Catania, a city halfway down the east coast of Sicily. Most people who have been to Italy pull a face when I say that I visited Catania, but I loved it. You get the feeling that Catania could be a beautiful, clean, scenic town if it wanted, but after the townsfolk had all their hard work undone by one too many explosions from the nearby volcano, Mt Etna, they just said 'bugger it' and went to the beach. Catania has wonderful old limestone buildings containing high ceilinged apartments, your standard Italian Piazza's and busy thin streets, and thanks to Sicily hopping in bed with pretty much every empire ever to spring up in Europe, a ridiculous amount of historical buildings in a mish mash of different styles. Most of these amazing buildings are encased in a considerable amount of graffiti (a disturbing percentage of which is neo-nazi), and from the grit/soot of the combination of car fumes and volcanic ash, but there is enough greenery that you never feel choked or like you're in a concrete jungle, and the streets are still narrow so that it feels intimate rather than like a metropolis.

It also features the world's happiest elephant...

...and many places to hurl yourself off lava flows into the water

But what really made me love Catania was just how damn social it was. First of all I was lucky enough to be staying with a man who as far as I can tell is the most well known person on the island who isn't called 'Don' something. You honestly couldn't go more than 10 metres without him chatting to someone. I remember walking down three stories of stairs with Carmelo once while holding the world's largest watermelon, and getting the best bicep workout of my life thanks to him having a person on every floor chat to him about something. But while Carmelo was extraordinary in this sense, the rest of the island wasn't far behind. Sicilians always have something to say, and can chat at length about it, but it's always jovial (unless they're behind the wheel of a car), and naturally highly animated. I was also lucky enough to be able to hang out with Carmelo's awesome friends, especially the trio of Maria Christina, Paola and Salvo, and with his family. At first I thought that Carmelo and his friends and family were putting on a bit of a show for me, as every night there was a different event, or dinnner, or party we were attending, but pretty soon after I realised that this is just how Sicilians are. Of all the places I've travelled I've never seen a place that seems to place so much value on life outside of work (insert your own recession joke here if you must).

If I wrote chronologically about my time in Sicily it would form a small novel, but some of my highlights were:

* ETNA!!!! So I'm definitely a bit of a geology geek, and I'd never actually been to a live volcano, so this was definitely one of the highlights of my entire trip so far. This was actually the original reason Sicily made my itinerary, and it didn't disappoint. After being shuttled to the top by a gondola and the bastard love child of a monster truck and a kombi, I hiked with my tour group to as close to the summit as is possible then all the way back to the base camp. After badgering the tour guide for most of the hike I am now armed with enough random volcano facts to bore any dinner party to death. But at the risk of losing my entire readership it was pretty cool to learn that the ash that falls from the volcano is such a good insulator that if you dig down about 20cm you can find snow, and that 50cm of it is enough to insulate this snow from a lava flow.

See kids, you don't need your Lady Gagas and your Pop Idols when there's science to entertain you!!

Apart from that it was just awesome (not the American version of awesome, the actual one with real awe) being on a part of the earth that is so new and so changing and to see the evidence of just how brutal but magnificent the earth can be. It was also pretty awesome (American version) to run down the side of volcano at full speed, pretty much skiing through the ashen rocks, and lucking out with photo's like this:

The whole day was perfectly capped off when I hitched a lift back to town with four awesome Frenchies I'd been in the tour with.

And here are some more photos of Volcanoes, because this blog is for me, not you.

Lava flow from last year.

The top of a two story building buried by ash fall.

Lava liquor (tasted like dimetapp cough syrup).

* THE FOOD!! Equally deserving of capitalisation and double exclamation points was Sicily's food. If I stayed there any longer than I did I would've had to roll off the island. First there's the coffee. I have never been able to stand coffee. I liked the idea of it, the look, hell even the culture, but until Sicily I just couldn't stand the taste. Sicily, however, has taken my caffeine addiction to a new level, out of the minor league that is tea, and into a 3 double espresso a day life crippling habit. I don't even know how it happened, but it was irresistible, and while I did end up liking coffee more in Napoli, it was Sicily where I first fell in love. Then there's the Granita. Granita isn't something you can describe to people in words, you just have to try it. Technically it's a lighter form of gelato with ice instead cream, but that sounds like a sad thing, whereas Granita is condensed happiness served in a cup. I actually ended up declaring one of my days in Catania as Granita and espresso day, and lived solely on those two food groups (my food pyramid is somewhat warped), and it is without a doubt the happiest day of my life. Then there is arancini, a sort of fried italian sushi with either bechamel or bolognaise sauce, or pistachios surrounded by rice and breadcrumbs and then fried. Or the drink stands where they have soda water on tap and can mix you up a refreshing fruity concoction with a bit of free panache on the side. Then there's the more ghetto side of town where you can sit amongst the smoking, steaming, open air barbecues as they cook up horse in rissole, steak, sausage, or pistacchio infused form for those who fancy eating someone's childhood pet (also works as vengeful form of catharsis for particularly bad breakups if your ex liked horses). And I haven't even gotten on to pizza, pasta, the desserts, the beer, the fresh fruit (figs straight from the tree), the seafood, and the never ending supply if pistacchio nuts..... And on top of it all, as with the rest of Italy, it's always served with a humongous sense of pride and passion.

* The way that Carmelo's family and friends welcomed me was unparalleled, even in a trip where I have been shown amazing hospitality by all my hosts. I was lucky enough to be in town for Italy's mid summer holiday, Ferragosto, where the entire country heads to the beach to camp, eat, drink, and party.

Italians Ferragostoing.

Carmelo and I traveled down to his parents holiday house, where we met up with his parents, his friends Paola and Salvo, and about 400 of his closest family members. His parents' holiday house is near their hometown of Gela. If mentioning Catania made people make faces, hearing that I went to Gela generally made people just start outright guffawing. But while the power station wasn't exactly the most scenic of town centrepieces, Gela will definitely have a fond place in my heart. For two nights I sat stuffing my face with a whole bunch of delicious local delicacies, from pizza to fresh sardines, pasta, biscotti...you get the point. Carmelo's family were amazing and were great fun to be around. While most of them spoke very little English, and I spoke only poor Spanish, we somehow managed to spend most of our time joking and laughing. His dad was especially was hilarious. I've realised that dad jokes don't actually require comprehension of the language, you just have to look for the gentle raising of the eyebrow and the rolling of eyes of their spouse and you pretty much can interpret what they must have said.

I spent most of my non eating time there going to the beach, playing foosball, and laying in a hammock being the worlds most relaxed individual. I have to make a special thanks to Carmelo's mum, who is just one of the most beautiful people I've ever met, and who was kind enough to let me come along with her and Carmelo on their daily errands so I could see a bit more of the island. There was pretty much zero language cross over between the two of us, and we mainly had to communicate through our translator Carmelo, but for someone to put up with a husband and son like hers and still have enough humour to put up with me as well, she has to be a saint.

* The traffic in Sicily was quite an experience. Italy is notorious for diabolical driving, and from my experience Sicily is definitely the wildest. However I've got to say that after a few days it actually all made sense. The two places I've done most of my driving, the US and Australia, probably have the strictest and most over regulated driving rules in the world (apart from maybe the Swiss). Italy is definitely on the other end of the spectrum, at least in Western countries. The first day I was there was a bit terrifying. Carmelo was just pulling out into intersections, blowing through red lights, tapping his horn like a bongo, and as far as I could tell, operating in a system of chaos. But I'll be damned if there isn't method to the Italian driving madness, and to be honest I kind of like it. To borrow an analogy from Bella, the Catanian traffic flows like water. When multiple roads converge, the cars just mix in together and flow onwards. Cars don't wait for signals or for breaks in flow, they just slowly mix together.

For example, take a scenario where you pull up to a busy road from a side street and you want to go across the intersection and continue onwards. In Australia you would wait, possibly minutes, until a break occurs, and the council would most likely place a traffic light (or in my home town of Bowral a round-about) there after the street became a bottleneck, and that's how it would operate. However in Italy if you're waiting for infrastructure or government to make a situation work, you'll be waiting your whole life, so to counter this they go libertarian on the situation, and make their own space. You do this by gently nosing in, until cars in the nearest lane can no longer dodge around the nose of your car into the other lane whilst honking and gesturing wildly. You then nudge out into the second lane and repeat, and slip by and onwards. But it just seems to work, and actually flows quit effortlessly. It also means that Italian drivers are always very alert, which funnily enough makes it extremely good for bike riding. I rode a bike through the city and along one of the main roads to one of their beaches, and I never had a car come within a metre of me. One other advantage is that there's no buttoned down road rage here like in Australia. In Sydney if someone cuts you off, you swear out loud, and then moan to yourself about it the rest of your trip, and maybe if you're lucky, get a chance to flip the guy off. In Italy, any grievance is immediately aired as the two cars park next to each other in the middle of the road with much waving of hands and excessive shrugging of shoulders. This usually continues on for a while after as all the cars stuck behind the two arguing vehicles abuse them for blocking the road, again with much gesturing.

I think my favourite driving experience around Catania was on one of my first days before I got used to the local system, with Carmelo and his sister. The combination of Carmelo and his sister arguing about directions, driving ability, and pretty much anything else a brother and sister could argue about, while both gesturing wildly (meaning no hands on the wheel) as Carmelo sped through the city was quite the adrenaline rush. I've run with the bulls, but I've never seen my life flash before my eyes more than that day.

* I travelled to Agrigento with Carmelo, Maria Christina, Salvo and Paola to Paola's parent's place where once again we ate amazing food all day, lounged by their pool, and went out on the town, including one awesome beach front bar. Agrigento is a particularly beautiful city, and it has a few Roman temples preserved on a few of the town's mountains. Carmelo, Salvo and myself went to be tourists and check out the temples which are found just outside the town on some scenic oceanside mountains. The entrance fee was a tad exorbitant, however Carmelo and myself managed to get around this by deftly sneaking past the security guard at the entrance. Salvo wasn't quite so lucky as he missed our move when the security guard was distracted, however 3 for the price of 1 wasn't too bad.

Tough life.

It looks so much more amazing when your next two days' budget isn't blown.

In case you couldn't tell I fell in love with Sicily. I had actually intended to only travel there for only 2 nights, solely to see Etna, and ended up spending 12 days there. In the end it began to feel like I'd never leave. I had somewhat fallen into the Sicilian way of life, and was a bit too laid back about booking my train to my next stop, Napoli. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem except that all of Italy was holidaying in Sicily at the time, due to their mid summer holiday, and they were all catching the train back at the same time, meaning my next available train wouldn't be for eight days. There were options for me to take a ferry or bus, but this wouldn't have allowed me a proper farewell party with my new friends... and so I took Sicily with me.

There had actually been a bit of a kerfuffle on my last day in Sicily. I had managed the day before to secure a rare ticket on what we thought was an overnight train, however on closer inspection it turned out to be a train leaving 12 hours earlier at the ungodly hour of 11am. This would've been ok except that I discovered this about an hour before it was due to leave. We raced down to the station and managed to get my ticket refunded, but this left me without a way to leave. One of us mentioned that it was Paola's birthday and that we should all go for a road trip to Napoli to get pizza. Somehow this got turned into reality and shortly after Paola, Maria Christina, Salvo and I all jumped into Salvo's car and drove north. Carmelo had been putting off working on a grant proposal that was due shortly after and was under very strict instructions from Bella not to go and to finish this work .....and so his twin brother Marcello, who Bella doesn't know about and who disappeared soon after my visit, came instead.

Photo taken by Marcelo

We spent a couple of nights in Napoli together, and it was great to have a proper extended goodbye with the guys I'd spent the last couple of weeks with. Napoli is famous for its' pizza, and we tried to go to the towns' most famous pizza parlour to celebrate Paola's birthday, but in classic Italian style, the owner had felt like a holiday and buggered off for a few weeks. Luckily that was about the only thing to go wrong, and we had an awesome final 36 hours together before they had to head back south again.

Only after I had broken them by getting them to follow me at my quite frenetic tourist pace around the town.

One particular highlight was when Carmelo and I were walking around one of the towns' churches. I was being my usual hilarious heathen self and taking the odd funny photo:

Then, some guy came up to Carmelo and I and asked if we'd like to hear about the church. He then proceeded to take us on a behind the scenes tour of all the off limits parts, telling us about the famous royalty buried there, lighting up one of the altars for us, and even letting me play ode to joy on the church organ.

We also managed to find one of the most bizarre statues I've ever seen. Apparently they found a headless body of a mother breastfeeding, which they mounted in one of the towns' Piazzas. Some bright spark decided that a headless statue was unsettling and so put a horrified bearded mans' head on it instead, because that's way less unsettling.

No word on whether the horrified look appeared after the head was mounted

Once they left I went into hardcore culture vulture mode. I only had a very short period of time to see Italy in, and thanks to my extended stay in Sicily I now had to cram in Napoli, Rome, Florence, Pisa and Cinque Terre into the space of about 8 days. I started by tirelessly pursuing Napoli's many attractions. Perched at the base of Mt. Versuvius, Naples is a bizarre combination of beauty and beasts. The city itself is really quite stunning. It hasn't got the ye olde quaintness of Florence, or Venice, but aesthetically, the city is my favourite modern city in Italy. It had a perfect blend of very good street art, cleanliness, cobblestoned roads surrounding old terraces, but with all the mod-cons of a 21st century city. Sadly the people who fill the city aren't quite as appealing. You know Jersey Shore?? Yeh, Naples is where their ancestors came from. I don't know what the actual statistics are but the only place with a worse reputation for street crime than Napoli among the people I met, is Barcelona. But luckily I didn't have time to hang out in the city centre late at night waiting to get stabbed, so I was unaffected by the ghetto side of the town.

Instead, I ventured to the nearby ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Both sites were covered and preserved with ash and lava from Mt Versuvius. Herculaneum isn't quite as popular as Pompeii, but does have a far more awesome name. It also has slightly better preserved houses, and a great view of the ocean. Pompeii on the other hand is not as well preserved, but far more extensive. But I'm pretty sure the real reason Pompeii is the internationally known tourist is it has ye olde porn.

It's probably also got something to do with the fact that the town was so suddenly covered, that there were still Political slogans for an upcoming election on the walls, and the bodies of the people were preserved along with the buildings....but mainly the porn.

The Roman version of OBAMA 08

Turns out there IS a bad time for a nap.

I was lucky enough to check out Pompeii close to closing time on a Sunday, and actually got locked in the grounds after hours, and was able to wander around by myself which was very cool, and I can't imagine a better way to experience it. Well at least if you forget the part when a seriously pissed off guard chased me out.

Herculaneum

Ye olde balcony

Pompeii ampitheatre

I also ventured up Mt. Versuvius. While not nearly as beautiful and awe inspiring as the still active Etna, Mt. Versuvius does offer spectacular views of both the surrounding coast, and of the now functionless crater. Plus you've got to respect something that made such a big effort to prevent Jersey Shore from ever happening by killing off their ancestors. It also paid testament to Italian's ability to put a shrine absolutely anywhere.

Our lady of ...volcanoes?

Yay, volcano

On my last day in Napoli I got up early and headed to a couple of places north of the city. One was the sulfur springs, which is a big flat crater where gaseous sulphur comes to the surface and vents into the air. It did afford a few cool photo ops, but it smelt as bad as it sounds, and I am genuinely mystified as to why they have a camp ground on the grounds, and doubly mystified as to why it was full.

Definitely had a gates of hell feel.

I then headed to the town of Baia. The town itself is pretty dull, just a little coastal town, however in the water just off the point of the beach is the old town of Baia, which sunk into the sea after an earthquake. I didn't actually know too much about this spot, and just kinda of walked around asking people. After the local dive store just sort of waved their arms at me and told me 'No' I decided to just buy a pair of goggles and go for a swim where I'd seen some boats earlier and see how I went. On the way out I saw some sandstone blocks and the odd column looking bit of debris, then almost had a heart attack when after swimming about 600m I swam over this:

Luckily it wasn't a mob hit, just some old statues. Apparently there were also some other very well preserved parts of the city that could be seen, like a tiled ballroom floor, but without a guide I didn't really feel like strategically swimming a kilometre wide grid in search of some ancient tiling, so I headed back to shore and filed it under something to do next time.

Yeh, good enough.

From Naples it was off to Rome, where I was couchsurfing with a lovely girl from France called Laetitia, who was in Rome doing her PhD in neural science. Sadly I saw very little of her while I was in Rome as I was busy trying to cram about 3000 years of ruins and monuments into three days, and she was busy trying to get a months worth of passion into three days with her Italian boyfriend who was about to head back home to Palermo (and a months worth of passion between a French and Italian is like three months of English speaking passion). But the little time I did spend with her was great, including one night being a third wheel for a dinner with the aforementioned boyfriend as I watched an Italian and a French woman argue about the correct way to cook spaghetti marinara (it's like 4 arguments between an English speaking couple), and one night where I had a bit of a Julian Assange moment as I forced to sleep on the step of the Mali embassy (the apartment across from her) after being locked out of her apartment until she returned at 3am. The fact that I was staying in an apartment opposite the Mali embassy shows just how much dumb luck I have, and how poorly the Mali government is doing these days. But they did have a very comfy welcome mat, so for that I'm thankful.

Poor bastards couldn't even get the penthouse!

My days in Rome involved marathon amounts of walking (I honestly think I clocked in about 8 hours a day of actual trekking), lots of going 'ooooh, that's old', and some very cool monuments, but to be honest, Rome never really captured my heart. The history and the sheer volume of ruins is definitely awesome, but the city feels like a massive museum. Somewhere you visit but not somewhere you live. However, I appreciate that I was only there for three days, in the middle of tourist season, so maybe the city kicks into life once the students return, and the busloads of Germans head out, but while I was there I couldn't help but feel it was a bit dead. However it was still a very enjoyable three days. The highlights included all the obvious spots like the Colosseum (I was going to get a video of me yelling 'are you not entertained?' but my voice kept getting drowned out by the fifty other people doing the same thing), the pantheon (although when are they going to finish that roof and block up that hole?), and walking around hearing tourists go 'Oh, this is where the albino monk hid out in the Da Vinci code'.

Forum...check

Colosseum...check

Pantheon...check

Photo inside the pantheon with the hole as a halo...check

Fountain di Trevi...check

Goddam flying neon light bastards who ruin every European city skyline with their stupid  one euro toys...check

But one thing that was a feature of Rome for me was it completed my complete and utter boredom with Christian churches. I had already been a bit overdosed on churches from my travels through Europe, because let's be honest; there are only so many ways you can paint the stories from one book. One thing that saddened me a little as I walked around what were arguably very impressive, but very generic churches, was how much of a shame it was that the most common method of funding for artists through the great ages of art was through the church. Some of the greatest artistic talents of all time ended up going around from building to building painting frescos of one dude. It essentially became a ye olde battle of the meme's as different artists slightly tweaked their version of the same story. I just wonder what original concepts, and new directions could've been broached if instead of having to placate Cardinals, artists could've just had free reign to let their imaginations run wild, with art work secular/religious, whatever they wanted. I think this came to me while realising that my favourite parts of the sistine chapel (which is the exception to the 'I'm a bit over churches' rule) were the hidden easter eggs left by Michaelangelo, from God being inside a brain in his picture where he's reaching out to Adam (meaning Michelangelo probably practised cadavar dissections at a time when this was illegal as all hell), to the picture of the cardinal who had insulted Michaelangelo's work standing at the portal to hell, complete with donkey ears. What directions could a man with such wit and adventure for new ideas have gone in if he wasn't just painting about one story? Hell, the most interest the masses have shown in religious artwork in the last few centuries was when Dan Brown pointed out there was a triangle between Jesus and the chick next to him in the fresco of the last supper.

Despite my growing apathy to churches I did quite enjoy my time at the Vatican. I did a tour through the museum, popped into the Sistine Chapel, then ascended the dome on top of the basilica to see some amazing views of Rome. The Vatican museum is huge, and it would be great to see it over a couple of days, but I was with a tour guide who had a schedule to keep, which was probably for the best. I wont bore you with details, but I think my favourite highlight was seeing the evidence of Pope Pius' statue castration. Pope Pius sounds like the most repressed bastard of all time, and he decided that the penises on the naked statues had to go or be covered up, so most of the vatican collection has awkward cloverleafs over the men's genitalia, or just straight up snapped off phallices. Interestingly the scrotums were left...not sure how that one morally played out in his head.

There was also this guy there....but yeh, cover up the penises, that's the first priority.

The sistine chapel was amazing. It's a room about 50 metres by 20 metres and is absolutely jam packed with tourists just gazing skyward in silent awe. If you want to be inspired by the bible but don't have a few weeks to read about who begot who, then this is the place for you. It is a really beautiful and peaceful space, which is only ruined by the Italian guards screaming out 'NO PHOTOS!!!!!!!!!' every 30 seconds. I appreciate that flash photography is a big no no for something like this, but the guards yelling at the top of their voices and generally being overbearing and a tad psycho seems to be disrespecting the status of this room far more than anyone pointing an iPhone to ceiling would. Luckily I have a nice wide angle lens on my camera so could just turn my camera skyward from my waist and get a great photo of one of the worlds' greatest art works....and my stubbly chin.

Crap, I covered Adam with my Adam's apple.

St Peter's Basilica is, I think, pretty much everything that is wrong with religion (now there's a way to start a conversation at a dinner party). Despite being a massive heathen who compares religions to cults and the bible to harry potter,  I actually have no issues with people who believe in the bible and God. I just have a bit of an issue with people forming clubs that seek power and riches in the name of a man who taught us that power and riches are false idols which will get you kicked out of heaven quicker than man love (they always remember the anti gay passages, but never the one about camels and needles). The Basilica itself is magnificent, a beautiful bit of artwork mixed with amazing architecture. But for what it represents it's so unbelievably crass. I'll start with the church itself. The church is actually longer than Michelangelo had originally intended. This was amended after his death and was done so that it would be the BIGGEST BASILICA IN THE WORLD!!!! The only problem with this is that it meant that the beautiful dome which was supposed to be the main feature now can't be seen from the front, as originally intended.

Yeh, but do they NEEEEED to see that??

 I appreciate wanting to make a grand gesture to the man you consider the greatest being of all time, but when you change your plans just to spite that Basilica in England that thinks it's all that, I feel like you've stopped paying homage to your god and have entered a pissing contest. They even have the size of the other major basilicas in the world marked on the floor, because that's classy.

Even worse than that were the pope's tombs. So you are God's number one dude on Earth (or something like that right?) and you need to plan your tomb stone. Your Gods' original human embodiment, Jesus, died on a cross and was buried in hole covered with a rock. I always took this to symbolise that it was his life and his work and teachings that was to commemorate Jesus, and that an extravagant worldly crypt would be redundant as his true glory was to be found in who he was, any physical homage would be inadequate. The popes apparently interpreted this slightly differently, and have instead gone with 'Make my life look like a Bruce Willis movie poster' for their eternal monument. For a bunch of old dudes who sat around telling people not to have sex, they sure are depicted pretty extravagantly.

No, more capes, and more wenches, and make my hat bigger!

Apart from the whole 'Look at me God, I'm your biggest fan, and ever so smart' aspect, I really enjoyed my time in Vatican city. Michelangelo's chiropractor may have not approved quite so much, but the Basilica and the sistine chapel are some pretty amazing legacies for a man to leave behind, and I can only hope that they don't let Cecilia Gimenez anywhere near it.

Sorry, I had to include her somewhere.
http://joannemattera.blogspot.co.uk/2012_08_01_archive.html

View from the top of the dome. 

Jesus saying hey.

Where they park the pope mobile!!!!!

Apart from the obvious sights in Rome I also checked out some lesser known tourist spots. One of which was this door, which was quite quaint but very cool:

This is the view through a doors' keyhole.

Then there was this...

Umm, a pyramid...why?

I visited the suburb of EUR, which was built for a world expo in 1942, which for some reason no one attended. It's a funny little place that has now become a bit of a business district, and has a completely different feel to the rest of Rome, but not in a bad way. And it has this amazing building there, laying completely unoccupied (classic Italy).

I visited the Church of San Clemente which is actually a church built on top of a church built on top of a church. I especially love that the base level is a Mithraic vault, meaning that the Christians both physically and ideologically built their religion on them in this case.

It also contained the tomb of some 1000 year old dude!

For any IT crowd fans out there, I also did a small homage to Douglas Reynholm:

Having to walk around with a long sleeve shirt in 40 degree weather, and then awkwardly asking this lovely lady in broken Italian whether I could get some photos: totally worth it.

I finished my time in Rome having a beer in the San Lorenzo district, and it was the one place I found that had a bit of soul. There was some very cool street art, and a tonne of laid back outdoor bars and piazzas which apparently when Uni is back in session are absolutely packed. But after a whirlwind tour, it was time to move onto my last stop in Italy, Florence.

I had a great time in Florence and its' surrounding areas, and a big part of that was the hostel I was staying in. After quite a bit of time living the life of locals, and just a few sedated nights in a hostel in Napoli, I was quite looking forward to a bit of wild hostel style partying, albeit against the juxtaposition of one of the most beautiful peaceful old cities in the world. I knew I'd selected the correct hostel when I was informed that Friday and Saturday night were free sangria night. I ended up making quite a few friends at the hostel the first night in Florence, but the two who really stood out were my two friends from Tasmania. For those not from Australia, Tasmania is home to the Taswegian population of southern Australia. This population is known for wildly unpredictable behaviour, inbreeding, and for giving the beloved tasmanian devil facial cancer. The Taswegians got so bad that the federal government spent great fortunes to dig a channel between Tasmania and the rest of the country which we call Bass Strait ( we let the Taswegians spell the second word) which while it did separate the deviants from the norms, had the unfortunate side effect of making the new island look like a patch of female pubic hair.

OK, that's all crap (except for the poor tassie devils, although the Tasmanians didn't give them the cancer... New Zealanders did!!). Tasmanians are lovely people, and after checking they only had ten fingers and toes I ended up hanging out with Erin and Jasmine for most of the time I was in Florence. They are one of the best travelling pairs I've ever met. They are two very different girls. Erin is almost six foot and can drink most guys under the table, Jasmine is about four feet if I'm being generous and is gone after two beers. Jasmine begins dancing away the moment she hears a beat, whereas Erin is a bit more reluctant and usually just ends up riverdancing (possibly ironically?). And Erin is a bit more of a wanderer when exploring new cities whereas Erin much prefers to find a park, and pass out in it and absorb the culture by osmosis, or something. But they make it work so well, because after breakfast they'll wander around together until Erin finds something of personal interest or Jasmine finds a tree, and then they just seperate and meet up later, no dramas. It sounds so simple, but one of the most draining things about travelling with someone else is the feeling of obligation to stay with each other while you're in strange lands, meaning you end up being in each other pockets 24/7. And it's worked brilliantly for them as they're still going strong after months of travel, with neither sick of the other yet; a fact doubly amazing considering how annoying Erin is...

Sorry, I'll probably slip into abusing Erin occasionally because she tried to ruin the ending of the third Batman for me, something I tried to avoid by blocking my ears, singing and humming and threatening her, and yet she still came up later that night and told me the ending! This involved me calling her a nasty name relating to a medical condition she has (shunt-head), which resulted in her calling me demon-spawn and the two of us generally abusing each other for the rest of our time together. Luckily it turned out that she actually wasn't as evil as I thought and hadn't actually ruined the ending for me, but she'll always be shunt-head to me.

Shunthead and demonspawn: worst super hero duo ever.

Anyway, back to Florence. I was actually quite excited to see Florence, as my parents had been there a couple of years before and had absolutely loved it, and I can see why. The city is beautiful. From the bridge that was so beautiful it even captured Hitler's heart (he destroyed all the other bridges though, they were ugly)...

Beautiful isn't it? HA! Now you agree with Hitler!

 to the many statue of David replicas (because one is not enough!)

They also have it in green...seriously.

to the beautiful green, red and white cathedral at the heart of the town

This is the clean side, the other side is a tad scungier.

and pretty much any other bit of architecture, or piazza in town. They have public statues everywhere, including one very large exhibition out the front of one of their museums, and this one heralding some guy who must've been pretty awesome to have this as his memorial:

No way some punk ass pope is gunna have a more awesome statue than me.

 My time in Florence was divided between just wandering around the beautiful city and then getting wasted on free sangria and stumbling around the beautiful city. One day walking around nursing a particularly bad sangria hangover I decided to ascend the dome of the cathedral. While it was not at all enjoyable climbing the roughly five thousand steps after neglecting to re-fill my water bottle, the view from the top was quite spectacular, but even more spectacular was the fresco painted on the inside of the dome. It depicted the artists' version of heaven an hell. Naturally heaven was all Jesusy and whatnot and of no particular interest, but what was hilarious was the depiction of hell. Hell was depicted as a very graphic set of torture scenes, which is an interesting choice for an internationally famous public place, but I guess the Florentine parish had decided that the stick would be more effective than the carrot. But the funny part is their choice of torture method, which mainly revolves around anal insertions. There's a man anally impaled on a concrete pillar, a man having what can only be described as a ye olde baseball bat inserted into his bottom, and just a whole bunch of other scenes that would stop any self respecting person from ever sinning against the church....

ever.........


unless of course they were gay...

All I could hear in my head as I walked around the dome was Mr Slave from South Park going 'Ooh, Jethus Christ!' as he walked around admiring this gay bdsm role play scene. My favourite moment from my visit to the cathedral was when I was walking back down from the top. I was stuck behind an English family on holiday, with their three kids, one of which was not enjoying the height at all. The poor little fella had had a massive panic attack at the top and was really struggling to come down. Luckily his dad managed to encourage him to slowly descend the stairs down from the roof and into the dome. However at this point it became really hard for the kid as we were now standing on a metal grate suspended from the side of the dome about 40 metres up. To try and distract the kid, as a second, much more severe panic attack threatened to take hold, the dad suggested while pointing up to the fresco on the dome:
'It's ok mate, just look at the pretty pictures on the dom....DON'T LOOK AT THE PICTURES, DON'T LOOK AT HE PICTURES!!!'

Apart from all the public homosexual devil porn, Florence was a beautiful, and quite romantic city. I actually would recommend it over Venice for a romantic getaway, as it's much less tourist orientated, has far better food, and doesn't smell like a pond. I won't bore you with any more details about the city, as it's the kind of place you just have to visit for yourself. The one thing that I will share though is the bizarre genetic disorder I discovered in my family genome while here. We've suspected for years now that there's a genetic reason why the males in my family are unable to take posed photos without someone pulling a silly face. It's even begun to effect the male dogs in the family:

Oh Cappi, why can't we just have ONE nice photo?

Most people have simply hypothesized that it's because we're goofballs, however I now have documented proof that a combination of the Stinson name, a Y chromosome, and a posed photographic opportunity will always produce the same results:

I've seen this photo about a hundred times and it still makes me laugh every time.

I also discovered that my mother hasn't managed to control her public vandalism problem:

Mother really

After I was done goofing around Florence trying to frame replica photos, I ducked out of town for a day with the Tassie girls to go see Cinque Terre and Pisa. We did this the morning after the second free sangria night, and it was a pretty rough wake up. I was extremely thankful for my new espresso addiction, and after a couple of shots I was good to go again. It also didn't help that for the first time in about a month it was raining. Considering this was a day trip designed entirely around photo ops, this was almost a deal breaker, but we struggled on anyway, and it was well worth it. The sun broke through in spectacular style, and by the time we reached cinque terre it was a beautiful day. Cinque Terre is a group of five towns (cinque-five terre-town) built on the staggering mountains that drop into the Mediterranean on the north west coast of Italy. It will also be where I am living in 40-50 years time if all goes to plan. I won't try and describe it to you, as I'll only show how limited my vocabulary is (and blogger.com keeps coming up with errors when I use the word awesome saying I've reached my quota), so instead here's some pictures:

uno terre

due terre

shunthead ruining everything

Jasmine loving terre quattro

Sadly we only had time for 4 of the 5 terres, as we wanted to see Pisa before it got dark, but unfortunately we didn't quite make it. This didn't stop us from posing next to the tower, and having a pizza in Pisa, before heading back to our hostel, broken and exhausted. Pisa is possibly Italy's least attractive town. It feels like an American chain restaurant knock up of what an Italian town should look like. If you ever want to visit, just go straight for the tower and straight out. However, the tower itself is actually quite beautiful. I actually think it would still be famous had it not been built on a bog (Italian architect schools can't be that good. They build entire cities on land that is only land until the tide comes in, towers on mud, and half of the buildings in Rome were bloody ruins...zing).

The photo after this is of me flat on my back trying to breath.

And that was it for my first Italian odyssey. Italy, after a particularly rough start (it'd be like going to the US and starting in Oklahoma....god I'm crap at travel), had been everything I'd hoped. I can see how people could not completely love Italy. There are aspects of it which can rub you the wrong way. The cities are generally quite gritty places, and it's not an overly clean country, especially compared to somewhere as glistening as Croatia. This is due to a combination of every second person owning a scooter, the fact that the cities are really really old, and that the nation has to pour all of it's budget into maintaining all the crap the Romans built that it has none left to maintain anything modern. So if you're hoping for squeaky clean cities, you're going to leave disappointed. Then there's the locals. At first it can seem the height of sleaziness to watch an Italian guy stop his car, beep his horn at a good looking lady and then leer at her 'Ciao bella'. But after actually meeting some Italians, and seeing them do it first hand, you start to realise it's not a demeaning or sleazy act, it's actually just complimentary and a funny way to start a conversation...an Italian ice breaker if you will. Don't get me wrong, the country is very male dominated, and Berlusconi is far more typical of an elderly Italian man than the locals would care to admit. But I definitely softened on my attitude from when I was in Milan (and it's entirely possible that the people in Milan were just wankers anyway).

But after the experience I had, I struggle to say a bad word about the place. The food, the people, the weather, the amazing landscape, the location smack bang in the middle of the Mediterranean, and it's historical location in the middle of pretty much everything that mattered to the modern and ancient world. There's something about Italy that just works. They'll never be a steady world power, they're far too insane for that, but you still get the sense that despite the country being in a definite lull right now, Italy will be back. It's the kind of country that both rises and falls spectacularly, and I hope that it doesn't get too Germanified in the next lot of austerity measures, because I love how it can produce so many great ages, and movements, but also the fact that they've managed to keep a perspective on life that isn't so work centred like the rest of the western world. I love the fact that shop owners just down tools on a whim because life is simply too beautiful to not be lived on a particular day. Sure it sucks if you need your prescriptions filled, but have a coffee, go to the beach, and you can take your heart meds tomorrow Grandma...that's the Italian way. And for those doubting me about the Italian's having another great age in them, behold:

A cupboard and a draining rack?!?!?!?!

The next great Italian age is near.....

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