Italy 08: Day 1, part 2

A wonderful day wandering the city. After my shower and change of clothes, I left our hotel:

and wandered around town for a while. First, I headed towards The Pantheon,


which is stunning with its open occulus and magical light. I made a couple of field recordings there, but soon left for other sites, including The Trevi Fountain:


and Piazza Navona:


It's all real purty. After an afternoon of wandering the city, I started to get a little punchy, and I couldn't help channeling my inner Eddie Izzard for the first photos from a larger set I like to call 'Ciao':


Hey look! In Italy, they know how to spell my name right!


Once the rest of the clan got here, I met up with them for more traipsing. First, I found Eli:


And then, we found Jaymi:


Jaymi's lighter was, apparently, 85% childproof...


...or maybe 85% of children's heads are the same size as padlocks. I'm not sure.

Eli, Jaymi and I wandered around Piazza Navona for a while, peeking in the shops and looking for a place to get some pizza. Once we met up with Benny & Cambria,


we were all met, and we tried to eat some pizza. Initially, we failed. The place Eli wanted to take us to was closed, so we had a beer while we waited for them to open. After they opened, they told us that they were closed for a private party. Undaunted, we found another place that was just as good, if not better. We ordered a number of pizzas, but the one that was the most amazing was called the Pizza Stregata (Bewitched Pizza):


In case you're looking, that's peppers, salami, sausage, cheese, eggplant, mushrooms, olives, zuchinni, and yes, one egg, over hard. Mmmm. After dinner, we went for gelato and headed back to Trevi to see it at night. Cambria & Benny took off, and when we got back to the hotel, Jaymi and I stayed up for a nightcap. In addition to my great photos, I also made some good (I think) field recordings!

Tomorrow we meet at the train station at 9.30 to travel to Arezzo! Hopefully the network there will be better than it is here - it's very spotty. It took me a long time to get these photos uploaded and blogged (and that is why I didn't rotate the two photos that are sideways...) (EDIT: it's 5.30am here in Italy on Friday morning. I woke up about an hour ago and can't get back to sleep. Instead of laying awake in bed, I re-oriented those photos.).

Italy 08: Day 1

After a fairly uneventful traveling experience, I am in Rome, safe and sound. The flight from LAX to JFK went well, almost. We landed over an hour before we were scheduled to, thanks to a great tail wind, but wouldn't you know that once we were at JFK, we had to sit on the tarmac for an hour and a half before we could get to our gate. We ended up being 20 minutes late arriving. Lame.

I found Benny (one of our clowns) at JFK, snoozing. He had taken an earlier flight from LA, and was trying to catch some missed Z's from the night before. The flight from JFK to Rome was less than half full. Benny ended up having a set right behind me (window seats, natch), and though he had a woman sitting next to him, I had both seats to myself. We settled in for the long flight over the ocean. The movie they were showing was FOOL'S GOLD, so I fortunately had no reason to try to stay awake. I ate my dinner, had my cocktail, took my Dramamine, and slept for a good 5 hours. When I looked behind me, Benny had abandoned his seat partner for a row of three empty seats in the middle of the plane. He was all stretched out.

We landed ten minutes late, and I left Benny at the passport check. The rest of our group was coming in on a later flight, and he was going to wait for them. I had already booked my ground transportation, so I continued through security. My bags were the 5th and 7th bags out of the carousel (I suppose that's the perk for my late arrival to JFK), so I was able to get out of the airport to meet my driver.

My driver was a little old woman who spoke no English. I speak only enough Italian to make an effort at being understood. We chatted a bit about President Bush (who is apparently in Rome today), and she pointed out various historical buildings as she shuttled me to the hotel. Here are the traffic lessons & reminders, as I learned from watching this woman drive:

* Stop signs are optional.
* If another driver is moving significantly slower than traffic, you can honk at them.
* If another driver is moving significantly faster than traffic, you raise your hand to them and mutter about how crazy they are.
* Cars that accelerate win over cars that don't accelerate.

When we got to the hotel, I was surprised that I had to pay her. I made the arrangements for the shuttle through the hotel, and had assumed that the shuttle charge would show up on my hotel bill. Fortunately, I had changed $100 (into 55 Euros) before I left. The shuttle was exactly 55 Euros. And of course, this being Italy, there was no receipt for a cash transaction.

Now, I'm in the hotel for the day & night. I'm going to post this, clean up, get some more cash, and then have a wander around town. Eli & Jaymi should get here in the next two hours. More soon!

Italy 08: Day 0

It's 11pm here right now. In less than 6 hours, I have to rise and shine to catch a plane to NYC, and then to Rome. I'll be in Rome for about 24 hours, then in Arezzo for a theatre festival. I'll blog with photos once a day, when I can... Bon Voyage!