48 hours

We're back in Rome planning the last few hours of our trip. Travis took off for London earlier today so now I am just with the two girls; because you know that's how I roll anyway.

We spent the last couple of days in Florence and Naples, two in the former and one in the latter. Florence retains a lot of its medieval/Renaissance flavor, as far as I can tell at least, that makes it seem rather small and intimate. We explored the Uffizi, the Duomo, and saw the statue of David. The statue is supposed to depict David after killing Goliath and I would say that the whole statue is probably as big as Goliath was reputed to be. It was much more impressive than I could have imagined.

Our Florence hostel was yet another place we stayed that must have been a mental institution, a la "The Shining", before someone decided that they could turn the building into a profitable hostel. I'm going to start avoiding places with tall ceilings and symmetrical layouts on every floor after this trip.

We breezed into Naples yesterday just to go to the ruins of Pompeii. Nearby Mt. Vesuvius erupted in CE 79, causing the village to be destroyed, abandoned, and subsequently preserved in layers of volcanic ash for us happy tourists to peruse. One building, you'll be happy to discover, has been renovated into a Ye Olde Pompeii Taberna. Getting covered in lava, though, would be a terrible way to go. Several bodies are preserved in plaster casts to the extent that you can see teeth on one ancient Roman.

We made it back to Rome this morning on probably the most punctual train we've ridden on in Italy. Everyone at home jokes about Filipino time, Indian time, or whatever-ancestry-you-may-be time to mock someone for being late. In Italy, there is a tangible idea of Italian Time. It is an absolute joke that they even have train schedules as every train runs at least 5 to 10 minutes late and arrives at some hour that the conductor determines after he finishes his panini.

This leads into our rising bitterness with Italy: we've had the most frustration and irritation with Italy and Italians than any other country we've visited. When you get off a metro train here, people waiting to get on the train surge forward and basically prevent you from getting off of the train. People consistently walk in front of you on the street, not noticing or caring that you're also walking there. As of now, I have resisted yelling, "Hey, I'm walkin' here!" in a thick Italian-American accent but with Vatican City on the horizon tomorrow, I may not hold out.

The rudest thing these damn people do is cut in front of you in line. Americans and Italians just have to have different value systems when it comes to this. For instance, you know when there is a busy exit in traffic off a freeway and cars begin to line up (Garnet exit off of 5 for instance), there is always at least one car that will swerve in front of the line and cut everyone who has been waiting. Italians do this in every line possible. If you see or hear a story about an American tourist arrested for strangling an old Italian lady, it was probably me.

Tomorrow, we hit the Vatican and go back to London and then back to the US on Sunday.