Italia 2010, Part 1

I spent 23 days in Italy, going to Rome, Venice, Northern Italy, Florence and Siena. I can't be sure how many parts this particular series of blogs will have right now, but I thought I'd at least begin with my first few days in Rome.

I left on August 27, 2010 from Vancouver, and arrived in Rome the next day. I had enough time in my schedule that day to get to the centre of the city, nap for a couple hours and then take the bus to Piazza Navona where my evening walking tour with EnjoyRome would begin at 6:30 pm.

However, I'm getting ahead of myself. A couple notes I should add about the arrival and departure from Fiumucino Airport. There are multiple ways of getting to the historic centre of the city. I should also add that no one really stays in close to the airport except if you're leaving the next day or something, but even then, given my experience (another story), you'd still want to stay in the historic centre. The cheapest and fastest way of getting to the historic centre is by taking the Leonardo Express, a train that links the airport with the train station in the centre of the city. Easy peasy and it costs 14 euros.

Anyways, when I got into Rome the first thing I noticed was the heat. It was around 35-37 degrees celsius. I learned later on that it was actually pretty cool for a day in August. Most of the time it gets up to the 40s! Either way, I still managed to get some nap-time in when I arrived at Hotel Italia. It was a moderately sized single room with a bathroom that included a shower, sink and toilet. It also included breakfast, which is something you always want included when you stay in Italy, trust me.

I thought I might be able to walk to Piazza Navona from where I was in Rome, but it turned out, after asking the hotel staff, that it would have taken me 40 minutes. Time wasn't something I had on my side at that time, so I had to take a bus down Via Nazionale to the large plaza. I met our guide, Valentina, and the two other tourists that would consist of our group by the Fountain of Four Rivers. From Piazza Navona, we went to the Pantheon with its wide open dome, down some side streets to find the Trevi Fountain.

While in Trevi Fountain, we had a fantastic 15 minute pit-stop that included a bathroom break and a gelato stop. Take note - there's a gelateria on the left hand side of the Trevi Fountain that does not charge you to use their bathroom. You don't even have to buy something there. Anyways, as one might expect, the Trevi Fountain was absolutely crowded. At this point, I was feeling pretty darn jet-lagged and just generally tired. So I wasn't really enthused about the crowds. Soon enough, we went down more side streets and found ourselves across from a Roman eye-sore known as the Vittorio Emmanuel II monument. Or, as the Roman's call it: The Dentures, The Wedding Cake or other derogatory terms. They really hate it.

From the eye sore, we went up the steps to Capitol Hil (one of the seven hills of Rome, the Eternal City. From Capitol Hill, we walked around the exterior outskirts of the Forum lit up at night, talked about the fact that while Rome has a subway system, it only has two lines because every time they try digging for another line, they end up amidst an enormous archaeological find. Alas, this is always the issue with Rome since it has so many layers of history.

Finally, from the outskirts of the Forum, we ended up sitting down by the Colosseum, all lit up at night. It was an incredible end to the three hour tour (a three hour tour). Since the two Brazilian women and I had hotels off Via Nazionale we thought we'd be able to just walk up Via Cavour and we'd be able to find a side street that connected to Nazionale. We ended up getting lost for a bit of time, but it was fine. Rome at night is great and most people largely feel safe. It wasn't like the middle of the night, it was around 10 pm. We finally made it to Nazionale and we parted ways.

Then I promptly slept for about 12-13 hours. After getting that amount of sleep, my body felt adjusted enough to exist in Rome on Italian time rather than Pacific Standard.

Keep reading for the next parts in my great Italian vacation. The next part will be about my Vatican Tour that I took on August 31, 2010.!

My Darling Clementine

I've long since had a love of being in transit. There is just something completely romantic about the notion that you and a bunch of people are moving in this one direction together. It's why when I start talking about the best parts of India, I talk about the trips to and from Varanasi (Benares) I took in 2009. The train ride from New Delhi to Varanasi was completely different than the train ride I took from Varanasi to New Delhi. On the way to Varanasi I was in a lower class coach with a bunch of tourists (a couple from Brighton, a pair of women from Frankfurt and a woman from Normandy). On the way back to New Delhi, I shared a first class coach with upper class East Indians with their families or on a business trip. Radically different experiences, but the sheer ability to watch a foreign landscape pass you by while you're talking about Monty Python to a British guy in India or reading some schlocky science fiction novel is an unimaginable privilege.

However, trains are not the only transport I like taking on my way to or during a vacation. I also enjoy buses, sharing taxis, airplanes, and, if you twisted my arm, elephants (even though I still say riding that camel in Australia was awesome). And, me being the romantic and admittedly very single, I also am attached to this idea that I'll somehow meet someone while in transit or on vacation. It makes me think of the scene in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind when Jim Carrey's character meets Clementine for the first time.

It's at a train station, too. He also says something along the lines of 'when I see a girl, I immediately fall in love with her'. That is, at the core, me. While I am incredibly shy and awkward with women, I am strangely myself and completely uninhibited at work. Seriously. I dance in the elevator when no one else is in it. When I see someone I like, there's just this no holds barred emotion related to the experience. Granted, as I get older, I realize with a little bit of realism that they probably have nothing in common with me. But in a way, neither did Joel and Clementine. It was partly the 'in transit' aspect that threw them together. Which is why I identify with Carrey's character more than most other characters in film and television. Sometimes I feel like Charlie Kaufman goes into MY mind to find story material, because honestly, there's a scene between Nicolas Cage and Tilda Swinton when we're hearing Cage's thoughts in a voice over that, word for word, could easily be my own thoughts.

Then there is Paul Giamatti's character in Sideways (who is also in transit, also going on a road trip with his friend). His character in that incredible film is (albeit almost heart-breakingly so) much like myself. There are also aspects of characters that Paul Rudd has played, like in I Love You, Man, that are very similar to me as well. A little charming and more than a little man-child-ish. I have always clung to this not-so-secret hope that I'll find my Clementine when I'm traveling.

In fact, I was really hoping that I'd meet someone in San Diego this year, too. The closest I came was talking to the woman from New Zealand about the trip she had been taking for the past five years to come to San Diego for the Comic-Con. It's not like I'm being totally fantastical. I know it would be hard to actually begin a relationship while in transit because of the clear rules of being in transit. We're all going some place, but the problem is, it's not the place we actually live. But, at the same time, I still want to have a moment where I meet someone on a train or in a plane and have this connection (I'll also admit I haven't seen the Ethan Hawke-Julie Delpy Sunset films because it may just drive me crazy by dashing my romantic notion to the wall).

I guess I'm still pretty darn idealistic and romantically inclined when it comes to these kind of notions. I also stick by them. They are very much a part of who I am as a man and I make no qualms about it. So when I'm on a train to Padua or on a bus to Missiano in September, I will still be looking for my Clementine. I just hope I have enough courage and wherewithal to talk to her if I meet her.

SDCC 2010

Unlike most people I read about on Twitter and such, I don't get invited to parties or what have you during San Diego's Comic-Con. This is largely because I'm just one of those regular guys who doesn't know anyone in the media or what have you. Instead, I like to make my own fun. All the pictures I took this year turned out pretty great, so I've included a number of them in this post.

Items of note excluding the panels and exhibit hall themselves included a fantastic Italian

restaurant where they toss your pasta table service IN A PECORINO CHEESE BOWL.

Let that sink in. I watched the waiter put the pasta in the hollowed out cheese wheel, then scraped off a bit of the cheese, then added the basil, then finally the olive oil. And he tossed the mixture around in the bowl. It was nuts. But it was also delicious. I also had a great pinot noir with it too.

I also did the Machete event where I got served a taco from Danny Trejo. This is the same guy I remember from Dusk til Dawn. It was totally bad ass. And I got free beer

too. That Tecate was so much better than Corona. While I went this year with a good friend, next year I'll be going alone and still looking forward to it.

Even if I don't ever get that much sleep (I think 6 hours was the maximum amount I got during the five days I was in San Diego). Even on my own I really don't think I'd be upset because there is always something to do in San Diego.

Hell, I even went to see Patton Oswalt do a set at the House of Blues on Saturday too. Like I said, I make my own fun. And I am always up for other people's fun too. If you want to meet, have a beer or discuss the day's events (even though I admit the size of Hall H scares the heebiejeebies out of me), I am available.

Last year I was with my brother and his family; this included my brother, his wife and their two children. This year I spent my money on a non SDCC-affiliated hotel that used to be the YMCA. It was nothing to write home about, but it was $99 a night, it had a comfortable bed, a closet and a television. That's all I really needed.

Next time, however, I think I'm going to try my luck through SDCC and get a room at the Bristol or Sofia. They looked awfully funky when I walked past them in the morning.

The panels ran from absolutely fantastic to boring and dreadful. I'm not a huge fan of Seth MacFarlane, so most of his panels were dreadfully boring. On the other hand, Big Bang Theory, True Blood and Chuck had fantastic panels. I'll admit to having somehow amassed a number of photos of Deborah Ann Woll and Blair Brown (from Fringe) during their respective panels.

I even managed to hit the exhibit hall on Thursday for a longer period than I did last year. I seemed to figure out that if I did a run-through of the exhibit hall on one day, I wouldn't have to keep coming back to see what I missed.

Coming back to work this morning wasn't that bad even though I don't think I was running at 100% at the time. Anyways, I hope you like the photos, I'm rather happy with my Canon G10.

Really, the last image says it all: NERD.

Pictures of Better Times in India

So there are actual bright spots in my trip to India: seeing the Lotus Temple, going to the Qutb Minar complex in Delhi, the train ride to and from Varanasi and my time spent with the Thai Monks of the Chinese Buddhist Temple in Sarnath. The picture is yours truly with the Mausoleum of Iltumish in the Qutb Minar complex in the background.

Want to know how to get pictures taken of yourself when you're on your own? Ask people with cameras of their own to take a picture of you using your own camera. Guaranteed they won't run away with your camera.

When there are pictures of me in them, I don't look great. Really, if you think I'm wrong, you should see the picture on my Nexus pass. Oh my god. It's seriously bad, like Sloth from The Goonies bad. However, this picture isn't that bad. The story behind this picture is that there were two old aunties that made the mausoleum their own (food, water, backpacks were every where) and they asked if they could take my picture. They took a few, including one in front of the Tomb of Iltumish.

Here's a picture of the actual minar in 'Qutb Minar'. The minaret is huge. I mean, enormous. It's amazing they were able to build it as high as they did back in 1193. I can't tell you how many photos I took of this minaret. I mean, I took shots of it at every angle you could imagine. I'd add all of them if I could, but this one here is probably one of the better shots I took that included the entire minaret with an idea of the sheer scale of it. And before Alai-uddin died, he was going to build a minaret twice as big. You can still see its beginning stage in another part of the complex.

I'll add just one more picture of the Qutb Minar complex. It's another shot of the minaret, but, if I do say so myself, it's one of my favourite shots of it. I took about ten different angles from that spot alone, and I could never get away from it looking crooked.

I took a lot of pictures while I was in that complex. I was there for three hours or so and I ended up taking over 200 pictures. I didn't included it here, but I even have a few shots of the famous mettalurgical mystery known as the Iron Pillar. In fact, when the Iron Pillar was mentioned during an episode of Fringe, I had to take another look at them. That being said, I still say that this is one of my favourite pictures I took in my three hour journey around the enormous complex. I took


So, those are my favourite photos of one of the better experiences I had while I was in Delhi, India. Like I said, with as much crap that happened while I was in the subcontintent, there were definitely a few bright spots. Being able to explore the entire complex without really worrying about time constraints was relaxing for me. It didn't hurt that there weren't very many people there either.

Living La Dolce Vita, a Blog about Travel

With the Internet, it is so easy for someone to create a journal of their travels and share it with everyone else willing (or bored enough) to read it. I am hoping that it will allow me to post a few entries while I'm on vacation (particularly during my trip to Italy this year). So therein lies my blog's mission statement: to share my love for travel with others.

Last year my vacations consisted of going to San Diego (I went to the Comic-Con for the first time) and India (for the first time). As such, my attentions were divided between the two travel plans (one was in July while the other was in November). This year, my attentions have been divided between the San Diego Comic-Con (for the second time) and Italy (for the first time).

Here's a little background information regarding my trip to Italy: my second cousin sent out an e-mail blast in December explaining that he was getting married in a small town in the Dolomites of Italy (the very north of the country that is close to the Austrian border). Under the impetus of going to the family wedding and seeing the rest of the German side of the family I had yet to meet, I began arranging my first trip to Italy.

Honestly, if they had decided to get married in Switzerland (where the couple is currently living) or Dortmund (where the German side of the family is actually from), I would have gone there. As it happens, my cousin's getting married to an amazing Italian woman so the wedding is being planned in a town just south of Bolzano.

After many discussions with co-workers who had been to Italy and perusing a number of books (most of which are on loan from said co-workers) I managed to come up with a viable itinerary that worked around the September 11 wedding in the north. Unlike last year, however, I am not getting bogged down on the details.

Frankly, I believe my problems with my trip to India stemmed not only from the nightmarish lack of security but also my extremely detailed planning. I planned each day by the hour for each city I was travelling to in India. In retrospect, it was absolutely ridiculous of me to do months ahead of time.

Needless to say, I learned the hard way that I was too much of a control freak. As such, I immediately got bogged down emotionally and mentally when something didn't go the way I wanted it to in India. And by being bogged down, it left me figuratively paralyzed. Of course, the fact that some person tried to break into my room twice in the middle of my first night in New Delhi did not help either.

This time, however, I hope to be looser and take a few tours to connect with other tourists (something I never really did in India). In fact, I've already got tickets for a walking tour of Rome in the early evening, a trip to the Vatican (with the same company), and finally a day tour around Tuscany. Again, I really don't want to plan everything out with the exception of just how long I want to stay in each city (as it happens I'll be going to Rome, Venice, the Dolomites and Florence). It has left me feeling more excited about what will come rather than feeling more regimented like India last year.

India aside, I have a lot of fond memories of travelling. Off the top of my head I can remember loving our family trips to Cholla Bay from Tucson; the family tour of Switzerland and France in the mid-80s; the incredible journey my dad and I took through southern Colorado when we were still living in Denver; and, if I had to pick one more, I'd add the personally defining moment of going to Thailand in the early 90s (when we were still living in Indonesia).

A lot of that fondness boils down to the immersing oneself in the culture and geography of the city. At least, that's the way it is for me. And that's perhaps why, with regard to India, my favourite experience was being on the train to and from Varanasi. I love being in transit while still being able to see the countryside. Like the train trip from Cairns to Kuranda in eastern Australia, seeing the waterfalls and the flora get progressively greener as the train went north to Kuranda.

That being said, I must admit that I travelled a lot more between the ages of 1 to 19 than in my 20s and 30s. It is true that, here I am turning 33 on Sunday and I haven’t travelled as much as I did before hitting 30. I decided last year that my 30s would be different. I have definitely made good on that promise by going to San Diego, India, Ontario and Quebec in the past year. This year it’ll be San Diego and Italy. Next year I am really hoping to either go to Berlin or Scotland. I really haven’t made my mind up about that yet. Just the fact that options for travelling exist in the first place is wonderful.

I’m not a writer by any stretch of the imagination, but I am certainly happy to describe my journeys with whoever wants to read about them so that I may maintain this blog’s mission statement.