BlogSport

Naples/Caserta

Pompei/Sorrento

Capri

Amalfi Coast/Limoncello tour

Montecassino/Rome

Rome/Alps

Rather than posting huge monologues on what we did/saw/ate, I'll just go with some observations I made. I may add to this post as things occur to me, but for now Random Thoughts, by The Doss:

--everyone in Italy is orange. I was in a typically sun-drenched part of the country, but during winter, in the absence of being able to lay out they fake bake. Or worse, misapply bronzer.

--Italy is full of huge, old stuff. Lots of it. I saw quite a bit, but the finer details are lost in a haze of touring and information saturation. All of it was cool. Most of it was beautiful. Some of it was astonishing.

--gelato is amazing!! Like frozen pudding, but better. How do they do it, and why don't we have more of it here in the States?

--the Italian mullet (apparently making a comeback) consists of letting your hair at the collar get too long, but keeping the top shorter--but with just enough length to arc both sides up into a mini-mohawk. Yeah, don't ask. It looked stupid as hell.

--Charles de Gaulle is one fucked up airport. You take a shuttle from plane-side to the main terminal, then run to your connecting gate, then take another shuttle to the next plane. Whatever happened to boarding from the terminal, through the long snaky tubes? Most inefficient shit I have ever seen.

--I'm sure you've heard this before, but Italian drivers ARE INSANE. They will drive anywhere--road, median, curb, sidewalk. Most of the cars are mini-Cooper-sized OR SMALLER and stopping for pedestrians is an after-thought. If you want to cross the street you must hurl yourself out there and just give it to god (or Buddha or Allah or Brahma) to get you across unscathed. EVERY car has dings, dents, parts missing...and forget about insurance premiums. There is no such thing as "collision". Hard to believe this is the auto-loving land that gave us this, this and this.

--didn't need a trip to tell me this, but I love my country. For so many reasons. Vacations make you feel so lucky in a million ways.

posted by ADD @ 08:42