That's what has caused me to procrastinate for so long about this.
Dot Dot Dot.
I have no idea what to write. So, for the next as long as I can humorously keep this going, I'm going to ramble about whatever I want.
Just hit midnight. GO!
I read somewhere, and I think it can be paraphrased to apply here, that "good cartoonists never make comics about not knowing what to write about." So, obviously, "good bloggers (hate that word) never post about not knowing what to write about." Sometimes, though, that's necessary. If I don't ramble for a while, trying to make it humorous at the same time, then my poor unfortunate friends will have to listen to all these bad jokes and ramblings, rather than reading them at their own discretion. After an intercontinental flight, though, I found my mind surprisingly absent after a massive journey such as that. I couldn't think of what to say. So, that's why I've procrastinated for so long about writing about Italy. That's my story, I'm sticking to it.
Since I'm here anyway, I might as well say
something about Italy. Here's a transcript of what I had to say over MSN to one of my friends:
| 8:42 PM) Ben: | uh, italy..
well, i'd say the best city was venice |
| (8:42 PM) Ben: | except the mozzies |
| (8:42 PM) Ben: | it was so beautiful, and so much fun just running around the joint |
| (8:43 PM) Ben: | there were pidgeons everywhere, and people selling birdseed (so stupid people threw birdseed at other people) |
(8:43 PM)
Ben: | and we went on a gondola!
oh, it was awesome! |
|---|
Enlightening? I sure hope so. Seriously though, there were mosquitoes everywhere in Venice. It was most not cool at the level of bites I received. I got one on my knuckle(!), several on my wrists and hands... Jimmy got one on his eyelid, he couldn't open it properly. Haha! That'll learn you for not shutting the fuck up about Asia's supremacy. Here's a quote:
"Asia shall rule! For the Emperor! Asia's enemies shall burn! Pride for myself and Honour for my future!" ~Jimmy Le, biggest moron in Italy from 26Th November to 11Th December.
Moving on... I got the most awesome coat ever in Florence. It's a 3/4 leather coat, and damn does it look good. Many people have commented on it's Matrix-ness. Running around Venice in it, jump down stairs and running up them, that was probably one of the highlights of the trip. Speaking of clothes, on the back of a bus in Rome I saw this logo:
This is the logo of "A-Style", as if you couldn't guess, which is a reputable clothing manufacturer in Italy. This picture prompted one of the other students on the trip to devise other "styles" for the remaining 25 letters. This resulted in some very funny reactions from Jimmy, who despite being best friends with Matthew Cameron has still managed to keep his mind "free from taint" as he so eloquently put it. I'm not saying it's weird that he knew barely anything about "the other S word" before he got on that plane, but I am saying that the way he reacted to the slightest connotation-filled sentence is über weird. Any questions so far? 18 minutes in, no questions? Good. I'll keep going.
Oh yeah, that coat. It was originally €345, but, and the salesdude started the hagglewar at €250, but Ms Costabile managed to bargain him down to €160.
160 Euro = 269.19 Australian dollars
250 Euro = 420.61 Australian dollars
345 Euro = 580.45 Australian dollars
So, I think I did pretty damn well to get it for less than 1/2 price. Damn frigging straight I did, and that's not to mention just how freaking awesome this jacket looks. Jacket/coat, whatever. My poor old "roadkill" leather jacket was feeling pretty damn let down after I came back to the hotel room wearing this Matrix-esque beauty. That'll learn the jacket for making me spill Gelati on it (it smelt like milk for a while). GELATI! The ice cream in Italy is SO MUCH BETTER than that in Australia. Even better than that fancy "French vanilla", better than ANY ice cream in Australia. It kicks it's ass, A-style. That's just how good this gelati was. It was like... a party in my mouth, and everybody's getting laid, and then wins Tattslotto, buys a massive beach-mansion in Spain, makes a TV-Movie of their lives and lives of the royalties for the rest of their scientifically extended lives. That's just
HOW FREAKING GOOD this gelati was.
Any questions so far? No? Good.
By the way, the best Gelati was in Sorrento, a little sea-side city we visited as a "home base" between visits to Pompei and Mount Vesuvius. That's right, I climbed an active volcano. Can you stick that on a résumé? Sure hope so. Not only did I climb the freaking volcano, I bought an awesome necklace there, made out of ash from the volcano. Plus, I sprinted down.
Milan. Milan was a hole, really. We were in a hotel 10k out of the city, so we had to go on an hour long bus ride to get in there. Our bus driver didn't know his way around, and the teachers still made us "tip" him €2. I guess that's fair, €42 for two and a half weeks. Well, some people did use the toilet, which wasn't plugged in, so maybe it wasn't fair enough. Nevertheless, if I hire the services of a bus driver, I at least expect him to know where the fuck he's going.
Hm. Ok, Milan wasn't a hole. Milan was beautiful, just like everything else in Italy, except the bus driver, there was this massive covered street, no cars, just shops everywhere. I can't remember what it's called, oh yeah.
The Galleria. Proper name: The
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Double arcade, that's a good description.
That's a picture of the outside, with a Triumphal arch on the outside. There's one of those on all four entrances, and in the middle there's a big dome (duomo) with pictures of various influential countries/continents at the time (Britain, America, Africa, India). Plus, they had a McDonald's in there! Now that I think about it, McDonald's was fucking expensive over there. €4.90 for two large chips and a cone. That's €2.10 each for the chips, and €0.70 for the cone. Way too expensive. Damn it tasted good, though.
Rome. Funny that it's the last place I'm talking about, but the first one we visited. Oh well. Our hotel was a hole, but funnily the room in the hotel was the best one we had all trip 0.o It had a TV, and many power points for iPod charging. Since my iPod had the most amount of information on it (1124 songs, compared to 38, 112 and 225 for Jimmy, Adam and Matt, respectively) it was being used by other people a hell of a lot. By the way, if someone has a "stuff" folder in their iPod pictures, don't go into it. Just don't.
We saw a lot of interesting stuff in Italy, and a lot of it was made less than interesting by cruddy tour guides. The guy we had in Rome was perfect, he was funny, engaging, and he made paying attention worthwhile. Every other tour guide after that made us suffer from an acute case of Narcolepsy. I would have preferred the "audio guide" that every joint seemed to offer. Yes, we saw the Sistine chapel. It was kinda crummy, there were a bunch of guys in uniform on a platform telling people to shut up, stop taking pictures, etc. So, I have no pictures of the Sistine chapel. Oh well. We even saw John Paul the second's tomb. There were people everywhere at that one, which happened to be underground in the catacombs.
Hehe, just writing all these events remember how much fun I had, and that's what's important, huh? Even if some crazy old cat-lady at a church told me to stop eating chips, and you'll get smart. For I was eating the second of my two packs of €4 Pringles. She was a sneaky old lady, too, because she told me in Italian, so there was me, nodding like an idiot, assuming it was advice, rather than criticism. Ms Hosseini started laughing, and after the cat-lady shuffled off, she told me what the old lady had said. To top it all off, the cat-lady kissed me before she shuffled off. Gew. Adam later pointed out "you were nodding like an idiot to what she was saying, but you kept eating the Pringles." Thanks Adam. Any questions? I hear "what €4 packs of Pringles?" Well, in the first piazza we came to, I saw a cart that advertised gelati, among other things, so I went over to investigate. Immediately, I saw the Pringles, forgetting any thoughts of gelati. Of course, this was before I'd actually tasted any Italian gelati. I said "how much" to the dude, completely forgetting that I was in Italy, he said "eeeeeeiight." He obviously knew I was a tourist. So, I paid my €8 for the two tubes, realising about 2 minutes later that I got jacked. So, we went across the road to Illy's, which is apparently popular in Italy too, and got Gelati. They actually gave us the gelati, and told us to go round to the cash register and pay. Interestingly, the gelati bar was outside the shop, 10 meters or so away from the entrance. We could take the gelati and run, and they'd never know. Hehe. Oh, after checking Wikipedia, Illy is a famous Italian coffee company. Learn something new every day.
I guess that about wraps it up for this one, if you guys have any questions, or want me to tell any more stories, because there are probably more, yes, definitely, just say so. Trust me, they're worth it. God damn, I'm proud of myself, I wrote solidly for an 57 minutes on this topic, interspersed with searches for those pictures, and a debate about bedtime with mum, but oh well. Now, let's spell-check this fucker, and head to bed. One hour's solid work. I should spend this much time on every post.
Ben
P.S: 1716 words! I rule!
