gladiator

yet again, im a few days behind on my blog. we went to go see the coliseum the other day. it sorta reminded me of the alamo. you have this amazing monument to the past that is smack dab in the middle of a metropolitan area. regardless of that fact i think it was probably the most awe inspiring thing we have seen since we have been here. the fact that it was built thousands of years ago, and seated upwards of 50,000 people is just amazing. just like everything else ive seen here it was much bigger than i anticipated. to think that i was at the place where russel crowe filmed gladiator just blew my mind.....

p.s. im getting lazy i dont feel like writing a real long post this morning

domenica,domenica,domenica!!!!!! lazio v bologna!!!!!

well saturday and sunday were pretty lazy days. we spent most of saturday just walking around the city with dan as our ghetto tour guide. we saw the spanish steps, all different kinds of fountains, the pantheon, and a ton of different embassies. we did a little bit of shopping too, but nothing too outrageous. i thought that by this point in the trip that i would be getting sick of italian food. wrong. ive been eating pasta, pizza, fish and ham since i got here and it seems like each place is better than the last. so after tooling around the streets of rome and seeing a few of the sights we got back to the apartment for a little while to unwind before we went out. i cant remember the name of the area we went too but it was packed full of people, bars, and gelataria's. we started by going to a book store that turned into a place that only sold shots after a certain time. they made their shot glasses out of chocolate, filled half with rum, half with a chocolate liqueur, and topped with whip cream. they were rather tasty to say the least. we went to a few more bars and got to have a taste of fairly touristy nightlife in rome. it was a lot of fun to say the least.

sunday we spent doing nothing but being educated about international futbol, or soccer to you yanks. on the way to get tickets for the match we stopped through st. peter's square to see the pope give his weekly address to the people. its sort of like a weekly current

events speech. we got tickets to go to lazio vs bologna match that afternoon. lazio is a team based in rome and bologna is a team based in the city of the same name somewhere else in italy. they played in a league of all italian teams. to say the least it was quite the experience. this was not a particularly important match, but the fans that were there were crazy! they spent the whole time singing songs and chanting. i later found out that almost all of them were expletive laden rants aimed at the owner of lazio. to bad for us the game ended 0-0. we left the match and went to a bar down the street from dan's place to watch barcelona vs real madrid. i think after sunday ashley has a much greater appreciation for the intricacies of futbol.

monday was our first real day of doing touristy stuff in rome. we spent the whole day just seeing the vatican and st. peter's basilica. the vatican museum is a massive place filled with an unimaginable amount of artwork. its more than i could possibly describe right now. the one thing that does stick out is the sistine chapel. it was breathtaking to say the least. to think that one man spent 4 years on his back painting the ceiling of this room that is about 40ft wide and 100 ft long is mind boggling. now i

know that each time ive talked about in church in this blog ive said that it was the most amazing one i have ever seen. st peter's basilica is the most amazing church i have ever seen. it was massive, beautiful, and ornate. it was quite a site to see. tommorow i think we are going to go see the coliseum and a few other sites that are nearby it.

made it to rome

i know i know, its been a few days since ive updated this thing. we've sorta been in internet limbo since dan's internet service wasnt working. first ill sum up the rest of our stay in florence. it was amazing. the end. we went to the academia museum and saw michelangelo's statue of david. it blew me away. everyone has seen a picture of it before, but no picture can possible convey how large this statue really is. it's at least 25ft high and carved out of one solid piece of marble. it was amazing. we spent a little while at the duomo basilica which seemed like the center piece of the town. yet again this church was absolutely amazing. even by todays standards it was an amazingly large and complex structure. i cant imagine what it would have taken to build this building hundreds of years ago. lastly we visited a palace that was on the other side of town. you guessed it...it was amazing. that seems to be a recurring theme to everything around here. if i was a responsible writer i would trying and find another word...meh o well. this palace had one neat exhibit that really stuck out to me. it housed a whole exhibit of art that had been stolen at some point and then recovered and brought back to italy. there were some neat stories of the modern history of each piece. so after we saw everything we wanted to in florence we packed up shop and made our way to rome. i think by the time this trip is over we should have the whole packing up, getting on the train, and going somewhere down pat. so now that we're in rome we've spent most of the weekend just sorta walking around, eating, and soaking everything in. its great to hang out with our ghetto tourguide/historian dan. he also knows where all the best places around to eat, which in my humble opinion is just as important as seeing all of the major sites. we're going to a football game on sunday afternoon. hopefully no european soccer riots will break out while we're there. ill just try and keep my chin down. anyways, thats been sorta the short version of whats been going on so far. now that dan has paid his internet bill hopefully ill be better about updating this thing while we're in rome.

p.s. that picture of ashley is taken from the palace we went to in the gardens overlooking the tuscan countryside :)

well, today was our last day in venice. we spent yesterday seeing the sights and attractions of the town, and today we shopped. now for those of you who know me, it can be quite the chore to get me to go shopping with ashley. since we're in a foreign country i figured i should keep the crying to a minimum. the two most popular things in venice were murano glass and these crazy decorated masks. to be honest there wasnt really much stuff to buy that guys would be interested in. they had a few shops that sold ties and suits, but nothing of too much interest. we did find a store that sold murano glass light fixtures. we saw one that we liked, but the store only had one. the man working there said that he could get the artist that made it to make 2 more so we could have a set of 3. so in a couple of months we are going to have a set of 3 hand made light fixtures to install in our kitchen. after we got done shopping we found a place to grab some pizza and then made our way back to the hotel. i think the biggest annoyance of having our luggage arrive late and in venice was the fact that we had planned to leave our one large suitcase at dan's apartment. on the way out of venice we are lugging around what we came with, plus 2 extra suitcases. to say the least it's pretty interesting trying to roll around a suitcase that is barely skinnier than the alley we have to leave out of. if this is our big problem so far then ill take it, b/c it really hasnt been too bad. we are on the train to florence now. hopefully we can find some more male oriented touristy stuff for sale there. right next to the hotel we are staying at is the museum that holds michelangelo's david, i cant wait to see it. florence is supposed to be very big into leather, so with any luck i can find that leather underwear ive always been looking for.

shady alley

so i mentioned the seemingly shady alley that we had to navigate in order to get to our hotel. here is a video of us on our way back from dinner to the front door of our hotel. the front door was considerably better than the front door. we went to trattoria da bepi for dinner and let me tell you, it was freakin amazing. we had this sea bass that was cooked in a potato sauce, some ravioli with spinach, and some raw seafood for an appetizer. the italians love to make a huge ordeal about dinner. breakfast is little more than coffee and a croissant, lunch is a panini, but dinner is a minimum of four courses with each course worth of being its own meal. i love it. after we got done with dinner we found a place that served some gelato and had that for dessert. i can seriously get used to italian eating habits. after the gelato we made our way to some pub we found on the way home, had a pint, and watched barcelona and inter for a little bit. the people at the bar were way more into it than i could ever be, but it was still fun to watch. anyways, ill catch up with this on the train between venice and florence.

p.s. let me know if you have any problems with the video, if it sucks or doesnt load well, ill just upload stuff to youtube and post a link

hello venice!!!

so ashley and i got our luggage last night after we checked into our hotel. thank god. our hotel is definitely off the beaten path from the rest of venice, but it is very nice and quite. we had to walk down what most would consider some seriously shady alley ways to get to it, then go to a back door, do a secret handshake, and say the password to get there. somehow ashley and i slept wayyyy to late and pretty much killed the entire morning. in retrospect that probably wasnt such a bad thing since we walked all over the place the entire afternoon/evening and were both pretty much wiped out by the end of the day. so we started off by making our way to san marco square. the amount of shops and touristy stuff on the way there was unreal, but most of them seemed to sell some rather interesting stuff. tomorrow we'll probably spend the morning doing a little bit of shopping then spend the afternoon making our way to florence. once we made it to san marco we spent a few minutes just soaking everything in and looking around. it was quite awe-inspiring to think what it took to build these massive buildings on what is basically an island. the first attraction we wanted to see was the san marcos basilica. to say the least, it was the most ornate and beautiful church i have ever seen or could even imagine. the entire ceiling was a gold leafed mosaic. each section of the ceiling was a different depiction of scene's and stories from the bible. everything about this place was so ornate, it really was quite a site to see. unfortunately, they had not so pleasant guards around every corner making sure you didnt take any pictures of the place. i was only able to squeeze in a few :) after we were done seeing the basilica we headed over to the Doge's palace. it was right next door, and from the outside really wasnt much to look at. the inside was a completely different story. a little history lesson first, the "doge" was the head of venice, but he had almost no power. it was an almost less than ceremonious position, except for the fact that you got to hang out in this unbelievably nice palace. every room in this place seemed to have massive oil paintings on the walls and ceiling. i cant imagine how many hours and people were spent to make this palace come together. yet again no picture taking was allowed inside, so not too many pictures to show you guys. last stop on our self made tour of venice was the academia art museum. now im not the biggest art fan, but it did host one very interesting piece. leonardo da vinci's vetruvian man. i dont know why, but whenever i see a famous piece of art i always envision it much larger in my head than it really is. even though it was only about the size of a 8x11 piece of paper it was still really neat to see a sketch from da vinci. we made our way out of the academia and took the water taxi back to our hotel. we're trying to figure out what to do for dinner. tommorow is gonna be spent shopping and traveling, so tommorow should be a much shorter post.

-ps - there will be a much better slide show of the entire trip at the end of this blog, im just too lazy to upload a ton of pictures when i do these blogs :)

-pps- since i cant figure out how to do captions for these pics, the first one is ashley on top of the railto bridge overlooking grande canal. the next one is san marco basilica from the second story where there was a sudden lapse in guard cover. the thrid one is me in the courtyard of the doge's palace. and the last is a shot down the stairs of the railto bridge at night.

boo for luggage, hooray for rome

i guess i wrote my previous blog entry about our travel experience to italy a little bit premature. first of all, we get off the plane in rome, and neither of the bags we checked made it. which included half of ashley's clothes and all of mine. so we wait forever for nothing to come to us, then wait in line to give the british airway people our information. i tell them we are staying with dan until tomorrow then we leave to go to venice. the guy i was talking to assured me that our luggage was on the next flight from london and should be delivered to dan's apartment sometime late tonight/early in the next morning. LIES!! we finally make it to dan's apartment, look around, meet his roomate, his friend from san diego, and check out the sweet view of st. peters from his kitchen. we left a little bit later to go to a small little italian place for dinner, i cant remember the name but it was very good. on the way to the restaurant we walked right through st. peter's square.

it was quite a sight to see at night time with everything lit up. i cant wait to get back to rome and look around there and take some real pictures of the place. after dinner we met up with dan's new roommate brian and had a few beers.

the LIES that british airways told me the previous day had indeed come true. we wake up in the morning with no luggage, sorta hungover, and still very very tired. i get the feeling that traveling for 12 hours, then staying out till 1 in the morning was a poor decision, but oh well. dan leaves for work and gives us our instructions for locking up his place and getting out of rome. well guess what....by noon our luggage was still no where to be found. dan calls the british airways number and finds out that they didnt even attempt to bring it to his apartment, they just put it on the next flight to venice for us to get when we get there. ugh. later in the afternoon ashley and i made our way on the bus to dan's office to give him his phone and keys, then went to the train station and bought our tickets to venice. with any luck we should be there in about 4.5 hours. with even more luck we might have two bags waiting for us at our hotel. we'll see :/

the flight

well let me get this out of the way, spending 9 hours on a trans-atlantic flight is made significantly easier by free alcohol and a couple of tylenol pm. i also found out that the new GI Joe movie was down right terrible. even while cramped on a plane with nothing else to do i still had to turn it off :/ ashley on the other hand didnt seem to sleep quite as well as i did. after getting to london i was quite impressed. terminal 5 is like a shopping mall that happens to have some flights leaving from it, most airports are the opposite. too bad we didnt have any time to waste money. we pretty much had to run to our flight to rome, which was followed by us sitting on the tarmac for an hour b/c of the weather. oh well, so far the travel part of our trip has been rather painless. im writing this on the plane from london to rome, hopefully i can post it once i get to dan's apartment.

the Tondu's go to Italy!!!!

so when my good friend dan lived in san diego ashley and i wanted to make the trip over to the west coast to go see him.  unfortunately, we didnt make it to there before dan packed up shop and continued with his pike/nomadic lifestyle.  now that he lives in Rome ashley and i have made the plans, bought the tickets, and told dan he better be at his apartment when we get there or else bad things would rain down upon him from the heavens.  so in preparation for the trip to rome i have decided to start this blog so that i can upload pictures, share thoughts, and keep all you yankees up to date on whats going on.  im not really sure how accessible the internet is going to be while we are there, but ill do what i can to keep you people as up to date as possible!!