Venice, Florence and Rome sloooow blogger

Finally, i am getting around to another blog entry. I am in Rome right now, but need to cover Venice, and Florence with this entry as well.

I want to start with Rome though. All of my life I have always heard, and always known that Rome was a vast and complex empire with an incredible capital city. That said, this "knowledge", was just something everyone knows, and that I had never really taken time to consider what that means. I am now in Rome, surrounded by ruins (as my friend Erwin says, the whole city is a museum), and I have seen remnants of the empire in other parts of Europe as well. It is really sinking in just how vast and powerful Rome was, and even more, what an incredible city it must have been in it's prime. I have spent time standing in vast stretches of ruins (just walk around the corner and you find more) imagining what a wonder it must have been to see ancient Rome for the first time for any visitor. Impressive stuff.

Okay, working chronologically backward, I saw the Vatican the other day, the Cistine chapel, and the museum which was full of all sorts of unexpected things. I anticipated a huge collection of Christian art and history, I did not expect a huge collection of Egyptian religious artifacts, and other stuff that predated Christianity. What a wild collection. I can only guess how the church acquired so much stuff, but presumably it was captured as the lands were conquered in the name of Christiandom.

Before Rome I was in Florence. It was nice, and I made the trip out to Pisa. The best part though was staying at the Plus Florence hostel (you must book online to get a good rate). For 10 euro a night we stayed in a brand new, clean, everything works hostel with a sauna and a swimming pool. I made very good use of both, and me and my companions Brian and Iku stayed for 5 nights. It was luxurious by hostel standards.

Prior to that was a short trip to Venice where it rained most of our stay, and we slept at the not very good HI hostel there. Not recommended, find somewhere else to sleep.

I will stay in Rome for a couple more nights, then I need to move on. I think it will be to Brindisi and a boat to Greece, but i am toying with the idea of hitting the far south of Italy (Sicily) first. I probably will just head to Greece, but I need to find out if the strikes are still going on.

Anyone?

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