The worlds longest overdue post

Scusa, scusa, scusa! As I said before my internet connection has been MIA for the past couple of weeks which explains my lack of posting. Since my edit I have been to six different cities, three different countries and then back to where it all began. Florence, Rome, the Vatican City, Barcelona, Madrid and then home sweet home back to London – so much to catch up on !
So fasten those seat belts and hold onto reading hats as I am about to do an intense load of backlog blogging

arrivederci Italia !

I actually wrote this from on my flight from Rome to Barcelona but seeing as there internet connection on planes (pfftt who knew) and I wasn’t able to post in Spain because I have been too busy eating tapas and drinking litres upon litres of sangria, I will do the mass Italy update now and leave you with the prospect of beaches and paella for tomorrows Spain recount.

Leonardo, Raphael, Botticelli – oh my !

When I think of Florence, I think of a vibrant city brimming with culture, history, churches and naked men. Relax, that’s sculptures of naked men. 

Just like the majority of Italy, Florence is a very old city with a strong and proud connection to it’s past. All the streets were cobbled stones and the buildings carved ornately in artistic designs. However, what I liked about Florence was it’s vitality and energy. There is so much to see and do – Florence is absolutely full of historical monuments/buildings/places and of course art is just about bursting at the seams in this beautiful city.

My first day in Florence as spent wandering the streets taking in the sights. Every time you turn a corner you are sure to walk past a piazza, a palazzo and an art gallery (all often in the same spot!). This meant I stopped frequently and found many little treasures along the way – I went to an exhibition called “ Italian Art in the 1920’s beyond Facism” , saw Leonardo Di Vinci’s tomb, the palace of the Stozzi (one of Italy’s most important familys in the 1500’s) and the outdoor sculpture garden.

I also saw the famed Duomo of Florence which I the fourth biggest church in the world. It is made entirely of marble and the intricacy and detail in the design is breath taking. Looking at thousands of  perfectly sculptured marble flowers on the roof with amazing marble figures of saints lining the windows and massive solid pillars lining the walk way is just breath taking. To think all this work on this grand monument was done by hand hundreds of year ago is really quite humbling and makes me feel very, very small haha

Florence is full of magnificent buildings with very decorative exteriors and interiors.  However, back in the 1500’s whilst many churches around Europe were being constructed in a bigger and more elaborate décor as a way of showing thanks to God and people giving religion their all – the buildings of Florence weren’t made with so much grandeur for this reason. In fact, the beautiful facades and effort that went into everything that stands in Florence today is basically due to rivalry between 5 of the prominent rich families in Italy at the time who were constantly trying to out do eachother by building bigger palaces and funding the development of more churches, basically so they could say we run the shit in this town.

David Says Hello

The next day, I visited the “most famous Art Gallery’s in the World” according to the Italians- Museo d’Accedemia (aka David’s house) and Museo di Uffizzi (the one with lots of paintings of Jesus and naked Venus in the half shell). I really loved both these museums for different reasons. 

 The former was full of lots of colourful and interesting renaissance style paintings and of course had the 20ft sculpture of a big naked man. 

At first I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about this damn sculpture, I mean it was just another dude wearing no pants posing funny- but when I actually got to see the real thing it was such a marvel to see how smooth and precisely the marble had been carved with everything from the sinewyveins on his forearms to the tense and defined shape of the calf muscles. 

By the way, seeing as David is meant to be ‘proportionally perfect’ if he was real, he’s butt would be insured for ten times the amount of JLOs. 

After spending a few hours people watching in the piazza and downing my fourth consecutive gelati for the week (you know what they say, a gelati a day is the Italian way !) I went to the Museo di Uffizzi. This gallery is supposed to be so  superb that lines can sometimes reach up to five hours if you don’t have prebooked tickets (which come on, let’s be realistic- that would take forward thinking and planning, both which I don’t do). Luckily for me, whilst I had been sneakily listening in on  information from an English speaking tour group in the Museo d’Accedemia I was able to buy tickets for a private tour of the gallery.

I loved this gallery so much, I just wish I could have stayed there all day. The paintings essentially fell into five categories, Jesus, Madonna and Child, Jesus on the cross, people worshipping Jesus and Paganism. The last one being my favourite. However, it was the stories behind the paintings and the artist and the real life scenarios from history which led to these paintings which got me hooked. From the artist who was commissioned to paint the client with Jesus but then the client died, so the artist painted himself in instead – to the artist who only knew how to draw babies realistically if he used a model… a dead model. 

My favourite painting in the museum was (of course!) Venus in the half shell. Botticelli had been ordered by the Pope at the time to paint more “catholic friendly” art which is when he painted his very Pagan-y masterpiece. The pope flipped his lid and ordered the painting and all other things in the realm of “non-catholic” to be burnt in what is now known as the “fire of the vanities”. Luckily, the Medici family (read – basically the Beckhams of Italy at the time) hell loved the painting and decided to save it by hiding it in one of their many castles. It was 70 years before the beautiful painting saw the light of day again. 

I spent my last night in Florence walking along Ponte Pietra which is the famous bridge turned corridor for the lazy royals turned exclusive shopping strip. All the jewellery was so beautiful and the gold seemed to glisten even more in the setting sunlight. Seeing as I am a backpacker, I couldn’t afford any of the divine jewellery on display so I settled with window shopping and a gelati for dinner before sadly saying good bye to my favourite city of them all.

Roman Holiday

I arrive in Rome on Wednesday afternoon and my first destination was the Trevi Fountain. I don’t care how much history or how many years it has been there, I wanted to see the Trevi Fountain because Lizzie McGuire threw a coin in and the next thing she knew she was off romancing with Italian boys and singing songs at the Colloseum. 

Haha I’m only joking (okay half joking), but the Trevi Fountain was beautiful. It was like the happiest place on earth (watch out Disneyland). Everyone was throwing coins in and making wishes, taking photos of the iconic fountain which is meant to make dreams come true. 

The “official way” to make a Trevi Fountian wish is to throw three coins over your left shoulder with your right hand. The first coin is so that you come back to Italy, the second is so you come back to Italy and fall in love and the third being you come to Italy, fall in love and get married. Now seeing as my aspirations for Italy were somewhere more along the lines of the previously outlined Lizzie McGuire scenario and I only had two coins, I just kind of wished for general happiness and all that jazz. Oh and maybe a few new friends on facebook, while we’re at it. 

On my second day in Rome I tagged along to one of the Busabout Group Tours (note, I said Busabout not Topdeck puh-lease) and was shown the “real, murderous, incestuous and just plain weird” history of Rome. My tour guide was like the coolest person I’ve ever met and gave us the blood, guts and all version of Roman history- sparing no details when it came to apserb things which had been done nor sugar coating events where the Romans had passed down “their version” of the story for so many years that it was now considered gospel. 

I learnt so much on the tour and saw even more. I’ll post a couple of photos of a few of the places I saw as well my favourite facts that I learnt along the way. Just so you know, I like weird things.

This is the Rock of Truth (yes, the one featured in Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn !) which got it’s name because it  is situated outside a church/court and back in the day if the defendant was thought to be lying they would be brought out and told to stick their hand in the rock; if they were lying the stone would bite off their hand. Being the church and being Italian, what really happened was that if the court didn’t like what you had to say a little man sat on the other side of the stone and would cut off your hand when it entered so that the crowd would believe the now handless defendant was guilty. 

This cat is a citizen of Italy. Mussolini being the genius that he is decided to demonstrate his enormous amount of compassion to the people of the country by rounding up all the cats in Italy, counting them and then declaring them official citizens. That’s right, these cats have the legal ability to vote.. if only they had the physical ability.

This is Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon situated beneath a painting of the Virgin Mary. He died of sphyllus. Oh the irony.

The “Wedding Cake” (I forgot it’s actual name) wins the title of the biggest monument in the world. It has no official use except to pay homage to Emmanuel, a very important man in Roman history. Best part about this though, is see that big green horse right in the middle? Mussolini and his pals had a dinner party inside it. 

I finished the night with a tour of the best piazza’s and fountains in Rome. With the dolphins spurting water and the little pools twinkling like fairy lights, it truly was magical. Oh and let’s forget the dozens of statues of bearded, naked men riding dragons and what not.

When in Rome

The third day in Rome was spent doing the mass touristy thing (pfft let’s be honest, everything in Rome is mass touristy) and hit the pavement to tick off a couple of the famous landmarks off our list. First stop was the Colloseum, or Colloseo, as they say it in Italian. 

I lovvveeddddd the Colloseum. I don’t know what it was about it. Maybe it was the fact that something that was nearly 2000 year old was still standing and we were able to walk around and explore all the different levels and rooms or maybe it was the fact that I knew that lions and elephants and had once had a mean duel there, pokemon style. Who knows.

Regardless, the Colloseum was epic.

Next on the list was the Roman Forum. The Roman Forum is an area of land that displays what’s left of what used to be the central information point of the city in 50AD- it was basically like the CBD of Ancient Rome. Walking through the remains of the Roman Forum, there’s really not much to see except piles of old stone and the occasional brick structure with windows and a door, you really have to use your imagination to envisage that butchers, houses and toga stores all once stood here. Which is exactly what we did. For the majority of our time in the Roman Forum, Lauren and I played Ancient Architectures and redesigned what we thought the Roman Forum wold have looked like 2000 years ago. Of course, we didn’t scrimp on the availability of brothels. 

 

Haha no seriously, brothels used to be so common place and in demand back then there used to be a special area of the Colloseum for prostitutes for spectators to ‘utilize’ when perhaps the prisoner they were betting on didn’t get their head bitten off by a grizzly bear and they lost all their Euro (okay, I don’t know what they used to bet with back then, probably sheep or pebbles, but let’s just go with Euro for arguments sake)

Seeing as Lauren was leaving the following day and apparently everyone who comes to Italy has to go to the Vatican City, we decided we would try get into the Basillica of St Peter. Seeing as it was a Friday night and most normal teenagers are out drinking and making sleazy passes at each other in clubs, the line for the Church was non existent and we were able to walk straight through and entered “the most important building in the Catholic world”.

 The inside of the Church was magnificent, I actually think I could feel tears coming to my eyes when I walked inside. It was like a dream. Gold, marble, jewels, statues, alters, mosaics, portraits. There was just so much beauty to look at, I could do nothing but walk around in awe. We were lucky enough to be there as evening mass was about to begin, so we decided to join and I felt like I was dying. In a good way. Listening to the voices of the choir as their voices resonated around the church, it was like an acoustic fanatics dream -they sounded just like angels.  Seeing as the service was given in Italian, I couldn’t really understand what was happening, but it was still beautiful and a great experience. I even got to go up to the alter at the end and be blessed by the Head Priest. I’m pretty sure he was blessing me, either that or he was condemning my soul to a thousand firey deaths because God found out I have been using the metro without paying.

On Saturday I spent 7 hours in the Vatican City Museums, and I didn’t even see all of it. Seriously, it was like a labyrinth of art and important, ancient artefacts. There is really something for every art lover’s taste here and I had a lovely time casually wandering the 7 miles worth of art that filled the corridors. The one thing I didn’t like about the Vatican Museums though was the tourist groups. Without sounding hypocritical (because duh, I am a tourist after all) I really, really, really just wanted to get one of those massive street sweepers and move them all out of the way when they were milling around taking photos of things like the floor just because the tour guide told them this was the Pope’s favourite tile in the entire building. 

I spent a good hour inside the Sistenth Chapel. I just sat there and let everything soak in who am I kidding, I was tired and needed to rest my feet. It was amazing to think that this was the first fresco that Michaelangelo had ever painted, it was incredible.

My last day in Rome was a Sunday, which means everything is closed (backwards much?!) I had a very relaxed day. I spent the morning at a street market where I haggled my way into a few bargains and spent one last time walking through the higgidly pigidly streets that are iconic to Italy. The evening was spent in the most perfect way to end my Roman adventure, by scoring the last seat at the ballet of Rome and Juliet (front row might I add!) and then having a delicious gelati in the moonlight.

Surprising myself, I’m actually quite sad to be leaving Italy. Whilst the language barrier made communication impossibly difficult and the ever changing names of street signs meant I got lost more time than I can count, I actually had a fantastic time in the homeland of pasta. Italy challenged me and I loved it. I was able to prove to myself that I am actually capable of more than I imagine and whilst I tend to get myself stuck in situations that may cause you to question my IQ (putting a 50 euro note in the vending machine and getting 48.50 worth of change in 50 cent pieces, forgetting the name of the B&B then having to ring every single doorbell in the apartment complex till someone opens the door and taking about 5 days to realise that the big M ‘s on signs and maps everywhere are is for the Metro and not Mc Donalds.. just to name a few) I feel like I learnt a lot and I will definitely be back in Italia again (because for heavens sake, I can not die without eating the amazing gelati again)