I took .-) on a trip all across Italy from June 20 - 29 of 2000.
I went to Italy this June with an EF tour group with my friend Pat. .-) and I enjoyed the cappucino, Italian tv, and the women. Oh, and the buildings and art and whatever. We went from Milan to Venice to Florence to Assisi to Pompeii to Sorrento and finally to Rome. It was a crazy trip.
After a long flight from New York to Milan, where the night lasted for only 3 hours because you're going against the rotation of the sun, .-) and I were exhausted and could hardly enjoy Milan or Verona. The next day we were rejuvenated, and we visited what would be our favorite city in Italy. Venice.
Here is .-) and myself in an alleyway in Venice.
We took a gondola ride, and ate at what we hoped would be a good Italian restaurant, because it was far from tourist central, San Marco Square. My tortellini had microwave instructions on the side of its cardboard tray. Fuck.
Then .-), myself and Pat managed to cram in a visit to a painting gallery that had a Salvador Dali exhibit going on. I took this picture of .-) on an artist's sculpture of Dali's Venus. The clock signifies the mortality of man, the egg in Venus' stomach symbolizes that man's artwork is immortal, and .-) symbolizes pure Americana.
Next we stayed in Florence for two days. The highlights of our stay there were seeing the David, going inside the Medici castle, visiting a church with Galileo, Rossini and Machiavelli buried in it, and watching an Italian tv show that had a monkey talking on a phone that looked like a hot dog. How fucking funny is that??
After Florence, we went to Assisi for a day. .-), myself and Pat visited what was to be our only true Italian lunch in Italy. We always had to eat supper with the tour group, so that was all fake Italian food. We went out on our own for lunch, but this one restaurant in Assisi was the only place we went to that had *real* Italian food.
I ordered something called "formaggio misti" that turned out to be a plate of cheese, lasange, and a coffee gelato that had real coffee grounds in it! I took a pic of .-) and Pat outside.
Moments after this photo was taken, Pat suffered his greatest embarrassment of the trip when our waiter brought him his Italian/English dictionary that he had left on the table.
The next day it was off to Pompeii, and even though I could've taken a picture of .-) next to one of the many pornographic paintings they had in the city, Pat found a chicken head on the ground outside the ruins, so I took a pic of .-) with that.
Sorrento was nice, but I forgot to get a picture of .-) in the Mediterranean Sea. Damn.
The last stop was Rome, where the dough of the first pizza was flattened. There's so much there to take in. We went inside the Colluseum, and I was about to take a picture of .-) with the new floor they're building there, but I was distracted by none other than Benito Mussolini!!!
He was friendly to us. I have no idea why.
And that's about it. This is .-)'s farthest journey from home yet.
