Detroit Or The Coliseum?

It's hard to tell. The Lions played here and the place is a wreck.


Yes, I know. It's a cheap shot, but I loved the gag so much I had to share.

:-)

Flying back today. Will have full Interweb Tube access from the Catican tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who stopped by and especially those that left comments.

Vernazza, Italy

Tiny Cars, No Airbags

European auto safety - not going so well, actually.

Banzai!

Glorious Art From Tuscany

Riccardo Marzi, complementi di arredo in vetroresina e materiali naturali made in Italy

We stopped in a small shop here in Radda and stumbled across Riccardo's work. We bought a few pieces.

My favorite kind of memento from a trip - art.

St. Francis Was A Rock Star In His Day

... at least that's what I got from a visit to Assisi. He met Popes, had lots of followers, developed the Stigmata and so forth. In spite of this, he remained true to his ideals of humility and giving. Way cool.

Why They Drive Tiny Cars In Europe

... because when you live in a medieval town, you share roads made for horses with pedestrians, outdoor cafes, kiosks and what-have-you. The taxi drivers have small to medium sized cars and they're at a disadvantage, particularly when it comes to parking. It has nothing to do with being "green" or saving money, it has everything to do with simple utility.

Here's a typical street scene from Florence.

Castellina Red

... taken at a winery in Tuscany. Enjoy!

Not Frankie

... but Dean. Dino to be exact. Sheesh! Do I have to spell it out for you?

The Italians Aren't Apologetic

Their favorite Roman Emporers are the ones that kicked the most butt and they're proud of the huge monuments in their cities, almost all of which can be traced back to property looted from people they conquered. It's comparable to Americans celebrating the 7th Cavalry from the Old West.

The good guys.
Just what they make of President Obama's World Apology Tour is anyone's guess. If they liked it, then they better start talking reparations to the Gauls, Franks, Egyptians, Israelis ...

Yes, I know, Rome was sacked and looted any number of times, but those massive monuments, built with slave labor, remain.

Italy Updates

... may be a bit more sporadic. We only have WiFi in the hotel lobby of our new place. (We've moved on to a little village in Tuscany.) The place is supposed to have delicious wines and the countryside is very similar to the mountains right outside San Diego.

Ciao!

Wine Tasting In Tuscany

Wow. The Chianti is awesome.

Driving In Siena

We left Rome today, where we didn't have a car, and drove up to Tuscany. There, we stopped in Siena to do laundry. Ay-yi-yi! It was crazy. Finding anything here without GPS is almost impossible. Narrow, medieval, one-way streets where the signs are just on one wall of one corner so as you drive by, with crazed Italians right on your bumper, honking if you slow down, you have almost no chance to read the street name and even if you do, the map is incomplete so the odds that the street name is there is very small.

We finally found the laundromat, did our laundry and in the process of me trying to bring the car down from where we parked it in a church parking lot to the laundry map, I got directed right out of town by the one-way street signs. I then had to circle back and attack the city once again and made a mad, circuitous route through streets made for horses and pedestrians to get back to the laundromat to retrieve my wife and our laundry. When I get a chance, I'm going to grab the google map of Siena where I drove and trace the route. It was nuts.

If you ever want to know why the Italians haven't re-conquered the world, it's because they're still trying to get home from work or the store.

Driving here is like a giant game of MarioKart where everyone is Mario.

Kitteh Obelisk

The Romans stole treasures from all over the world as they conquered it. One of the most surprising to us were the Egyptian Obelisks. There's a bunch of them throughout the city and it makes one wonder how they transported the things without breaking them in two (or three or four or ...). The one shown here has two important features.

1. I can't remember where we saw it.


2. The heiroglyhics tell you how to worship your cat.

Kitteh likes birds and fish and mice and little balls dropped so they bounce around. I think the thing at the very bottom is a sofa for her to sleep on.

Manuel

At our hotel here in Rome, there's a guy working here who reminds us of Manuel from Fawlty Towers.

A Quick Thought About The Churches In Rome

We're just bout to zip off for noms, but I wanted to share this before it flew out of my head on a cloud of bubbles from my Moretti beer.

As we've visited the churches here in Rome and seen one wonderfully gorgeous integrated art piece after another - each church being a combined, interwoven, glorious piece of art with layers upon layers of beauty and meaning - I've felt that 400 or 600 or however many years ago, the artists and workers were making it just for me. The love and care that went into each piece in each church was meant to last for a long time, perhaps in the hope that it would reach the year 2011.

And it did.

Which means they made it for me.

It is a supremely humbling experience as I look at this gorgeous artwork created by people who used tools far more primitive than what is available to me and lived in a time far more dangerous and uncertain than mine. It makes me ask, as Cursillo made me ask, what have I done? What have I contributed that comes within miles of what these people did?

I think people get the wrong idea about Catholics. There's all this talk about guilt and fear and the like. That's not it at all, at least it isn't for me. For me, it's a feeling that I've been invited, courted, begged to be a member of this team, a team that's loaded with talent and skill. I get to be a part of it just because I want to be one. The question that I ask myself and one that increasingly drives what I do is this - what am I going to contribute to this team? How will I help make it better?

It's a beautiful thought and one that makes me want to be better, to be as good as I can be at everything I do. I fail, of course, sometimes the intensity falls away and the Newcastle game is on and the cat wants tuna now. Such is life. But in between those times when life's demands force me to do what I must, in those quiet moments, I think of the wonderful people I met at Cursillo and the spectacular work created just for me by men from centuries ago and I want to try harder.

I love it.

The Holy Spirit Behind The Main Altar At St. Peter's

Click. It's worth it.

Sublime.

I Think The Builders Would Have Been Happy

... to see how people were thoroughly enjoying their work hundreds of years later.


People standing, gaping and photographing. This scene can be observed in almost any of the great churches in Rome.

The Trevi Fountain

Worth a click.

Italian Patriotism

Includes large, beautiful posters of pregnant women wearing the flag.


The Italian flag is everywhere as are caps emblazoned Italia and all manner of other patriotic emblems. It's natural and accepted and wonderful.

So Old, So Young

At the Coliseum in Rome, looking up. Click on the first image to see where the little plant in the second one is.