Das Boot

Blah Blah Blah the Phillies won the world series. It's a pretty safe estimate that I've been in or around the city of Philadelphia for about 98% of my life...well in that 2% that I've been gone they decide to man up and win a championship. I'd appreciate of the rubbing-it-in-my-face is kept to a minimum, thank you very much.

In other news, I spent the past 10 days touring around Italy. We hit up 4 different cities, so I'll do a brief rundown of those. My rundown will be minus The Rock and Christopher Walken, unfortunately.

Our first stop was Venice for 3 days. We arrived at 130am, and I must say, Venice is quite possibly the hardest city to navigate, especially at night. For one thing, there are no roads with cars. Its only canals with boats and creepy alleyways. "Where we're going, we don't need roads" applies tremendously. We eventually found our way to the hostel where we settled in for the night and prepped for an adventure. Essentially, Venice is one giant tourist trap. Everything is overpriced, there are 4 basic types of shops, and 3 basic types of places to get food. The 4 shops consisted of glass items, masks, leather bags and jackets, and random Italian nick knacks. The 3 places to eat were little cafes that served various pizzas, paninis, and calzones, sit-down restaurants that served the usual italian fare of pastas, and gelato vendors. Needless to say, I ate gelato an average of twice a day throughout the trip, which, along with gorging on solely pasta and pizza for the rest of my meals, led to a bit of weight gain. I expected that going in, so no harm done. Overall, I am not a huge fan of venice. There is absolutely no night life, the food is so-so if best, and everything is overpriced. I'll give it a grade of C-. Don't get me wrong, it was very beautiful to be on the water at all times, but Venice is not a place I would want to spend more than two days in. Oh, and we had a little run-in with the Venitian police. We were sitting outside of the train station when 3 of them came up and asked for our passports. None of us had them on us, of course, so we ended up sitting there for like 3 hours until they could be retrieved and we could be let go. At least I can say that I've been looked up in Interpol now haha.

The next portion of the trip consisted of Bologna. It was much more of a standard Italian city...not many people spoke english, the food was fantastic, and it was more laid back. Again, there was pretty much no nightlife, which was very disappointing, but the food definitely made up for it. Not only was it cheap, it was the tastiest. Works for me. We were forced to stay in a fancy hotel for one of the nights rather than the usual fare of hostels. It probably cost about the same as all of the hostels combined, but we bought a bunch of cheap wine and threw a bit of a hotel party. Speaking of which, Italy is fantastic for wine. I drank it pretty much ever day with meals, and they even have 1 euro boxes of wine. 1 euro! Ridiculous. Needless to say, wine was drunk, cheese was eaten, and we didn't watch the end of the world series (it was the night of the 3 innings to clinch). The painful part is that we were supposed to be able to get it via satellite but it was thunderstorming out so no dice on that. We got the play-by-play from the sister of one of the kids I was with, so I at least got to semi-live that awesome moment. Bologna grade: B

Next up was a brief one-day visit in Florance. It definitely would have been nice to stay there longer, but you gotta do what you gotta do. The hostel was really cool there, complete with full cafeteria and bar. There was barely any nightlife in the whole city, once again, which is a disappointment. As far as I can tell, Italy does not like to go out past 11pm. One of the big things about Florance was the art and museums. Both Da Vinci and Michaelangelo lived and worked there during their life, so a lot of their works were prominently featured. The biggest attraction was Michaelangelo's "David" sculpture, which definitely lived up to its hype. Other than that, the art all kind of blended together...it all looked very similar, had similar subjects, and was just pretty much boring after seeing 5 or so museums of it. As uncultured as it makes me sound, its the truth. It did run into Splinter and April O'Neil, however. Always a good time. I asked for Krang, but he was nowhere to be found. Grade: B+

Rome was our final city, where we spent a solid 3 days. It is definitely a city that lives up to the hype; absolutely try to get there if you can, kids. The first night that we got in was Halloween, so we all threw together whatever costumes we could come up with and went out. I ended up being a rock star, complete with eye make-up and bandanna, only to gain a witches hat and rock that at the bar we went to. We first met up with friends of one of the kids I'm with, which was cool. We tried to go to this club but it started down pouring as soon as we got of the subway. After running from tree to tree to try to avoid the rain we decided to scrap the idea and instead head to an irish bar. The subway stop that we had to get off to go to the bar is right next to the Colosseum, which was definitely one of the most surreal moments of my life. Stepping out of a subway station and seeing a 2000 year old structure lit up in the night that housed gladiator battles is just absolutely ridiculous. Living wise, we booked a 5 person room to sleep 7 people for the entirety of the stay. It made things much cheaper, as well as the sleeping arrangements very interesting. The first two nights all 4 girls slept in the same king size bed, with the 3 guys getting their own twin beds. The last night ended a little differently, however. We all got a little drunk and 2 of the girls ended up passing out on twin beds. So that left me to sleep between 2 girls on the king size bed (sorry mom and dad, it just had to be said), which definitely wasn't a bad idea haha. They were fine with it an coined it the Branwich the next say, so all is well in the world. Needless to say, Rome was a good time. Drank lots of wine, saw lots of really old shit, and just lived it up. Grade: A

I got by in Italy by speaking a combination of Italian, Spanish and English. It all worked out in the end.

Alrighty its 3:20am right now and I'm sitting here typing in a toga. It was Rachel's bday tonight so we celebrated with Togas. I can't say that i've done this before, but it was definitely a good time. Very free and enjoyable. I leave for Amsterdam tomorrow, so next time you hear from me will be after a little taste of the Dutch. Ciao.