Buona sera!

Bedtime at last. It has been a long, long day. It seems we've finally hit our wall. No, no...that's a bit of an understatement...

Ahem. We're all but dead. But we keep moving...and luckily, tomorrow's travels will take us to Ireland, that emerald-green corner of the English (with emphasis on the English) speaking world. Oh, to speak English and actually be understood. 'Tis a beautiful thing.

But...rather than talk about today (or tomorrow, for that matter), we'd be better off starting somewhere 'round Friday, right? Right! Okay. Here we go...

Friday. First off, we dropped in on Michelangelo's David at the Accademia. He's a piece of work, that David; Katie and I were both thoroughly impressed to think that something like that (that being David) could come from a formless gormless hunk of marble. The exhibit, which juxtaposed some of Michelangelo's earlier, unfinished works with photographs taken by New Yorker Robert Mapplethorpe (the guy who did Patti Smith's stuff), did a good job of bridging the gap b/w the temporally remote aesthetic ideals of Renaissance men and our more modern idea of art. In a nutshell, it was neato, and if you haven't seen it, you should. There. Done geeking out.

But speaking of geeking out, that is precisely what I did (and I do it well) after Katie and I viewed some photography by our friend Kendall Hook (which was on display in a Florentine restaurant...cool, huh?) and grabbed lunch at a delicious little panini place called the Oil Shoppe. Katie was wise enough to return to the room and nurse her aching self. I, however, pressed on to the Palazzio Strozzi to visit an exhibit entitled "Galileo: Visions of the Universe from Antiquity to the Telescope." 'Nuff said. Yes, they did have one of Galileo's fingers...and from what I can tell, he did not trim his nails. Not once.

Later that evening, after watching the sun set on Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo, Katie and I ate a very good meal at a place called Acqua al Due. Should you ever go, get the steak cooked in the weird blueberry-based sauce. To die for.

And that was it for sweet, little Florence...from there, it was on to big, bad, sketchy Rome. Oh, yeah.

On Saturday morning, we took the train to Roma Termini and went from there to our hostel, the aptly named Alice in Wonderland (yes, it's a weird name). Actually, we never got a chance to find out whether or not the place was, in fact, aptly named...when we got there, we were informed by the propietor (to our wonderment) that a pipe had busted in one of the walls of our room and that the whole joint was six feet deep in the drink. And so, after accompanying him on a cab ride through the bristling Roman 'burbs (literally bristling...there are antennas everywhere), we arrived thoroughly confused at our current place of residence, Ganymedes's Palace. That's right...palace.

And it certainly is nothing if not palatial, with a squeaky-clean yet cozy white interior highly reminiscent of my Grandma Jo's apartment and the scent of silk and pure Kashmiri bath salt hanging in the air. The place is run by Alex and Tom (a.k.a. Alessandro and Tomas), two scruffy yet sweet sophisticats who give a breakfast on the terrace every morning and who look (and act) as though they've taken more than a few cues from The Birdcage (Tom, at least, is the spitting image of Hank Azaria's character; he even does the cleaning...barefoot).

So, firmly suspecting this our latest digs to be a popular Roman getaway for gay couples (and a good one, at that), we boarded the rattling bus and hit the town. And as soon as we hopped off at Piazza Venezia (Tomb of the Unknown Soldier), a graybeard dressed as a Roman centurion grabbed Katie by the hair and thrust a plastic sword at her jugular. Rather than beat him off, I took a picture; and as my reward, I got the same treatment (except two of them grabbed my hair...it kinda hurt). But what hurt the most was when these ruffians charged us five euro...each...for the photos. Et tu, Roman street entertainers.

Yes, the eternal city is oh-so sketchy. We've come to find what a 'Roman Holiday' really means...it means to visit the city in late July, only to find that all the Romans are on holiday, i.e. gone. Gone to parts unknown for a multitude of reasons (the economy, the heat, the Germanic tribesmen...nobody really knows), many of the merchants and shop-owners and restauranters have closed their doors for a coupla weekends, leaving us to munch on pizza covered in sprouts and tuna pasta (y'know...the stuff from under the heating lamps). Oh, and the pope did not make his scheduled appearance at the Vatican on Sunday; rather, he was off in the mountains somewhere, taking some air or skiing or who knows what. Needless to say, we were a tad bit bummed...but nearly so bummed as the Irish couple who stood waiting beneath his balcony for a solid thirty minutes before finally losing hope.

However, despite these minor annoyances, Rome is still Rome. We toured the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill, and the old Roman Forum...we visited the Vatican, both St. Peter's Basilica and the fantastic museums (this, admittedly, took us a couple of tries...we did the Basilica on Sunday, only to find the museums closed...doh). And today, we did the rest of the biggies: Trevi Fountain (the water looked inviting, but we resisted the urge to take a dip, fearing the karate moves of the Valentino-dudded caribinieri), Trajan's Column (it's really quite tall), the Pantheon (loved it), the real Piazza Navona (no, not my apartment building in Austin...yeah, it's called Piazza Navona...so lame), and the Spanish Steps (for the life of me, I can't tell why they're so famous). We even saw Pinocchio. He was sitting all alone on a bench, looking quiet hot and unhappy...much like most every other tourist in Rome.

Tonight, we attempted to conclude our sojourn in Rome in the wacky medieval neignborhood of Trastevre, with a meal at this super shady restaurant called Two Fat Guys (more like a private residence, really...as far as I know, it's not even registered with the city). We read about it in a NY Times article and even found the place (a kitchen, a few plastic tables, a string of paper lanterns...not especially conspicuous), only to get turned away at the door by a pot-bellied, twinkly-eyed man with bristling mustachios. Ouch. However, our spirits were again lifted when we managed to stumble upon another, similarly thoroughly local spot, where the beaming wait-staff/proprietors spoke not a lick of English yet served us heaping plates of noodles and pot roast with gusto and where we received a lesson in how to really eat pasta (the Italian way) from a coupla grandparents sitting directly to our left.

Thus, we ended our time in Italia with full hearts and full -- perhaps fuller -- bellies. Rome, though wack, will be missed.

And tomorrow...Ireland!

Bye for now.

All the best,

S. & K.