If I had to capture our trip to Italy in one picture, it would be ... ah, yeah.
One of the best things about going and getting yourself all married is the customary vacation that follows. For ours, we took a long-postponed trip to Italy. We spent most of our time in Florence, with a couple days in Rome and a day trip to Siena thrown in.
Ty had already spent a good amount of time in all three cities, but it was my first time in Italy, so we did a lot of the stuff you do during your maiden visit to a foreign land. We also drank a lot and ate a lot and got to see some of our friends living in Europe.
I will not bore y’all with a day-by-day itinerary like I did my poor mother, but here are some of my observations from the trip:
- Rome was way cooler than I thought it would be. That probably sounds bad, but whatever. I was expecting something more like the “oh, this is New York City but foreign” let-down I felt when I went to Paris last summer, but Rome was stubbornly tied to its historical and cultural roots. There you are, walking through this vibrant contemporary city, when you come upon ruins from an ancient temple sticking up in the middle of a piazza like an antiquated cowlick. Turns out I like antiquated cowlicks.
- Gelato in the U.S. is not gelato.
- Pizza in the U.S. is not pizza.
- Out of all the big Renaissance masters with ninja turtles named after them, Michelangelo is still the only one I’m hot on.
- I’m also pretty hot for old Italian cathedrals, and no pictures could ever, ever do them justice. Out of the ones we visited, the Duomo di Siena was by far my favorite. The photos are neat enough, but they fail to capture the “holy fuck” feeling that comes over you when you walk in there. The black and white marble columns, the mosaic floors, the illuminated manuscript room with the absolutely awe-inspiring, Moorish-influenced ceiling of golds and reds, blacks and the deepest blues… this cathedral isn’t playing around. And I’m not even religious.
- The Chianti Classico region would be a very nice place to retire. Or relocate to tomorrow. Either/or.
Photos, for those of you who can stand more of those.
