The internet has apparently picked today to fall apart.

I can’t login to Basecamp, GoDesign’s project management software. This is somewhat annoying because it means I can’t log the hours I’ve been working this weekend.

Also, pictures from Flickr are starting to disappear randomly. About 15% of my photos in the Venice entry have been replaced by the image on the right. Hopefully this is just a maintenance thing. Good thing I keep a copy on my computer, though.

Really makes you think about how dependent you are on other people’s server space. It’s discomforting.

Still more worthy of note: my post on Pompeii has now been enhanced with photographic evidence, although some of that is disappearing as well.

In the interests of full disclosure, I will note that I am hoping to get paid for this blog post.

PayPerPost is a new service where bloggers can get paid for writing articles on certain topics. TechCrunch has denounced this service as doing irreparable damage to the reputation of the blogosphere. And just to be hypocritical, they’ve offered $100 to anyone else who wants to give their opinion.

So I’m going to take them up on that offer.

I foresee several blogs quickly decaying into advertising sites, blatantly supporting certain products, “selling their soul” as TechCrunch puts it. However, I think most of the blogs that make use of this service will manage to do it without hurting their reputation. Even if disclosure of payment isn’t required, I think many bloggers will disclose anyway. This seems to me like a better deal than, say, putting up Google Ads, because those are just annoying.

However, my position is skewed: I keep my blog for fun, and I don’t try to make money from it.

I signed up for PayPerPost, and I’m going to try it out to see what happens. But, I’m going to lay some ground rules:

• I will always make a note at the bottom of a sponsored post.
• All sponsored posts will go into the PayPerPost category.
• And I will never give a product a good review if it doesn’t deserve it.
• Edit: One more rule that I just thought of: only one sponsored post per day. Period. I may have to switch posts if the money gets better somewhere else, but at any given point, one post per day.

It looked like many of the blogging “opportunities” didn’t require a good review anyway.

More of Italy coming soon…or maybe I’ll just update my old posts with photos.

Edit: I was slightly mistaken. TechCrunch did not sponsor this post. Ted Murphy, the owner of PayPerPost, put the opportunity up to try and raise the stakes, asking if it was so easy to pass up $100 for 100 words. Please disregard what I said about hypocrisy.

This post sponsored by http://www.payperpost.com.

Hehe. Remind me to never again make promises on when I’ll blog.

So, Venice. Venice is very cool, but it doesn’t take very long to see. Most of the guidebooks will tell you that more than 2 days in Venice is really pushing it. We were going to have about 24 hours (10:00 PM to 10:00 PM the next day), but we decided we wanted one more day.

First, I’ll include some photos of Venice at night, taken during our vaporetto ride the night we arrived.

We spent the morning and a decent part of the afternoon at Piazza San Marco. First stop was a museum at the far end of the Piazza—the Correr Museum. There was some nifty drawings, as well as some popup artwork that Dad said looked like it was only saved because it was done by the Doge’s son. Also present was some nifty glasswork, mostly chandeliers. For those of you unfamiliar with Venice, there’s a nearby island known as Murano which is famous for its glasswork. But more on Murano later.

Next we went and saw Saint Mark’s Cathedral (Editor’s Note: Because I can always remember the Italian word for “square” and can never remember the Italian word for “church,” San Marco always refers to the Piazza and St. Mark’s to the church. If that didn’t make sense to you, deal with it). While it couldn’t touch Saint Peter’s in scale or grandeur (or maintenence), it was interesting to see how the architectural and decorative style differed—I thought I could see some Eastern Orthodox influences.

Next was the Doge’s Palace, which was lots of gold and annoying because you couldn’t take pictures. The pictures show a lot more than I could explain. A few things worthy of note: the person holding up the world is not Atlas, as you might expect, but is in fact Hercules. Also, the view out in the 2nd to last photo was taken from inside the Bridge of Sighs. This bridge connects the Doge’s Palace to the prison. Legend has it that condemned prisoners would look out and sigh at the beauty of Venice before being hauled off to their death. We stumbled across the bridge again as we were wandering, and the last photo is the bridge from the outside. There is also a Bridge of Sighs at Oxford, but it’s believed to be modelled more after the Rialto Bridge than the Bridge of Sighs.

The Rialto Bridge, for the record, is the one bridge that crosses Venice’s Grand Canal. We didn’t cross it because there wasn’t really much on the other side. And we were kind of done with stairs.

And the classic symbol of Venice, the gondola, shown both with and without a gondolier. No, we didn’t ride in one, because it costs something like €60-€90 per hour.

The rest of our stay in Venice was really kind of painful, because we were very tired of sightseeing at this point. We headed to see Murano in hope of finding some shops still doing glassblowing. When we got there (it’s about an hour’s vaporetto ride), it was about 4:30, so most of the shops were closing down. All of the tourists were sort of herded off in one direction. At the end of a long path, we found ourselves at a small foundry and shop.

Obviously a tourist thing, we went into a room with two people: a glass blower and someone that explained what was going on. The glassblower made two things: a vase and a horse. You can see the process in the photos, at least for the horse. Unfortunately, no flashes allowed, so contrast was low. That’s why it’s all speckled. As the glassblower worked, the other guy rattled off explanations in about 5 different languages, meaning that by the time all was said and done, he had said about 4 sentences in any given language. After the demonstration we were dumped into the gift shop, where I took that last photo. I turned to Dad and asked, “So, you think they do these demonstrations often?”

Murano is famous for its glass work, and Venice sells it at every other shop in town. Seriously—Glass Shops : Venice :: Churches : Nashville. And I’ve always had a strange fascination with miniatures, so I took lots of photos of different things (Hint: zoom in on the South Park characters). All of the photos above were from glass shops on “mainland” Venice (i.e. not Murano - those come in the next paragraph).

Most of the tourist-accessible portion of Murano was made up of shops, most of which had closed by the time we got out of our little demonstration, so we decided to go back the next day a little earlier. All of these photos are from the shops of Murano.

A pretty decent number of shops had furnaces behind them, but they were mostly closed off. We did manage to sneak our way into one or two, but it seemed that those were only opened momentarily, as the suits showed people around who were there to buy something. They didn’t kick us out, though, so we stuck around and listened while they explained the secrets of glassblowing.

For example, the best way to polish hot glass is with paper. I’m assuming the paper is wet, because some of the glass pieces were put on a wooden paddle for like a final firing, and the paddle would catch fire.

Also, there was a clock tower in the Piazza San Marco with a very strange looking 24-hour clock. On the top was a bell with two iron men who struck the bell on the hour. Well, close to the hour—the clock was 5 or 10 minutes slow.

There are two train stations serving Venice: Venezia Santa Lucia, which is actually on the island, and Venezia Mestre, which is on the Italian mainland. From Venice we took an overnight train to Vienna (that’s where our plane home left from), which left from Mestre. However, we were done touristing about 3 or 4 hours before our train was due to leave, so we headed for Mestre, where we sat and read until it was time to go. In the restraunt at Mestre were ads for these great sandwiches. Check out the names, and the subtitle things for that matter. You’ll have to zoom in on the Flickr page, but I don’t think you’ll need to have them translated.

We’ll just have to see about that last part.

Nota bene: I’m still editing photos. Actually, I haven’t really started, because editing almost 300 photos is a daunting task.

Anyway, Florence isn’t going to take long. By our last day in Florence, I was at the point where I was starting to get tired of the whole traveling thing. Also, Florence takes less time to see than you think it does.

The only real activity we had left to do was the Academia, where David is housed. We had an appointment at 4:00. So we slept in, took our time getting out, had breakfast at the same great cafe we found the first day we were there (€1 each for cappuccino and croissant—the trick is not sitting down; they charge you extra).

Next, we shopped. We started by tracking down a book binding shop that we had found the day before—it was on the Via Nazionale, like I thought—right on the border of the tourist-y area. Got a few leather-bound notebooks. I figured they were a good substitute for the Moleskine’s that I couldn’t find. Next, we hit the San Lorenzo Market.

This place was a giant street market, the sort of scale that you’d expect from a street fair. I just spent about 10 minutes trying to find it on Google Earth so I could actually measure the distance, but it apparently doesn’t know what San Lorenzo is. And I have no sense of dimension, so it would really be a bad idea for me to guess. But trust me: this place was big.

We stalled for as long as possible by buying lots of different things, then eventually headed over to the Academia.

That museum exists solely to see David. Seriously—there’s almost nothing else of interest there. There are some unfinished statues by Michelangelo, which are really no more than very rough carvings. You can tell it’s human, but not much else. There was a musical instrument exhibit on display that I think was temporary. It was kind of cool though.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures at the Academia either, which was disappointing. Florence apparently wants to milk those postcard profits for all they’re worth.

And that’s about it for that day.

The next day, before traveling to Venice, we went to Pisa, because we figured it would be a good one day excursion. The problem? We went on a Sunday, so everything was closed. There were hardly even any taxis. We couldn’t find any. And the “Campo dei Miracoli” (or “Field of Miracles”, home of the Leaning Tower, the Pisan Duomo, and all that good stuff) is a 40 minute walk from the train station. So we got there and took a look at the tower. Then we decided we had done enough stairs over the course of this trip, so we didn’t climb the tower. We took a few photos, bought a few souvenirs, got some gelato (to reward ourselves for the walk—you shouldn’t lose weight on vacation, after all), and walked back to the train station, where we discovered we couldn’t get a train to Venice until 9:00.

So we got food. And waited. And waited. And finally we caught an uneventful train to Venice.

Once we got to Venice, we took a vaporetto, a sort of water bus system, to our hotel.

Venice is very stunning when you first get there. I mean, there’s water where there should be roads. I snapped several pictures of Venice at night as we made our way along the Grand Canal. None of them came out to my liking, but in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll put them up anyway.

And now, we’re down to 3 more days of vacation plus one quizbowl tournament. I, however, am tired, particularly of writing. I shall try to finish this tomorrow.

Physicist Stephen Hawking and his daughter are to write a science book for children which will be “a bit like Harry Potter”, but without the magic.

Courtesy of the BBC. ‘Nuff said.

Anyway, I have a real entry in the works—I swear. Very few important things have happened since I got home, so my travels are still rather fresh. You will, as usual, get a one- to two-thousand report on everything that’s happened since my last post and now.

I call this Part I because I’m assuming there will be a Part II.

So far, I think that Florence is a lot more fun than Rome. It’s much easier to get around the city at the very least.

So, yesterday morning we got on a train for Florence. Without realizing it, we had gotten a ticket for a Eurostar train, a significantly nicer, faster, non-stop ride that also included a drink service (which I thought was wonderful, because I’ve been really thirsty on almost the whole trip).

Oh! Speaking of drinks, I have a quick aside. I have no pity anymore for people who drink coffee at Starbucks and complain about the cost (including me). We’ve actually paid €4 for a cappuccino, and €2.50 for a half liter of water.

Back to the train. We got to Florence rather uneventfully and, after picking up a map of the city, made our way to our hotel, which is actually a B&B.

Here’s the weird thing about Florence: there are red and blue (or black) street numbers, red marking businesses and blue marking residences. Both are assigned sequentially, but are not connected at all. Since we figured we were looking for a hotel, we were looking for red numbers, but the B&B was in an apartment-type building, so it turned out to be a blue number. We only realized this after we walked twice the length of the street our hotel is on.

So we check in, and realize that we have an absurdly long 4 days in Florence, so we decide to try and shift our schedule back some. I call the Accademia (where Michelangelo’s David is) to try and get a new reservation. That’s easy—it’s never booked up too far in advance. Then I ask to cancel our old reservation, and find out it was for April 28. Not good. So I check the reervation for the Uffizi…April 29. Also not good. Unfortunately, they don’t let very many people into the Uffizi, so it was booked through June 2. Even more not good.

So, we decide our only real option is to go and try to get in. Fortunately, we do. However, the Uffizi wasn’t anything spectacular. There were lots of pieces of art, but not many individually famous pieces, except the Birth of Venus and a couple of others. The audioguide was expensive and seemed to focus on pieces that didn’t seem very interesting—and ignore other ones that looked more so.

We went thorough and then went to a recommended restaurant from our guidebook which wasn’t so great and only had an Italian menu. We had a very light meal and decided we didn’t want to fight the menu, so we left and went to another restaurant, where we each had a pasta dish. Back to the hotel and to bed.

This morning we planned what I expected to be a full day of sighseeing. First, the Duomo, the dome on which the dome at St. Peter’s was based. Unlike the dome at St. Peter’s, there is no elevator to get you started—you have to climb all 463 steps on your own. And the steps are a bit harsher—long spiral staircases, no railings…you have to use the same staircase going down as you did going up for a while, and just hope you don’t run into anyone.

The view at the top was pretty nice. We enjoyed it and then headed down.

Next was the Duomo Art Studio, a workshop a few blocks away where they apparently repaired ancient artwork. It was closed, so that was a quick stop.

Next we walked to the Bargello, yet another gallery less famous than the Uffizi and the Accademia, but it had a few interesting things. There was a bronze statue of Mercury that I recognized from somewhere, but I don’t remember the sculptor. More significantly, Donatello’s David was here. Unfortunately, there were no photos allowed at either the Uffizi or the Bargello. It kind of sucked. I’m assuming that the City of Florence (who owns both galleries) makes a tidy profit from the rights to any photos of the statues taken.

We finished the Bargello, and it was only about 10:00, so we moved on to the next item, the Science Museum. Here we got to walk through a lot of rooms with a bunch of nifty old instruments…as well as Galileo’s right middle finger.

After we finished the museum, it was about lunch time, so we found a sandwich place. Then we went to what is apparently a famous gelato place, Vivoli’s. I had a mix of hazelnut and chocolate with coffee. Very, very tasty.

At this point, we had actually finished everything I had lined up for today, so we went to the Leonardo Museum, an overpriced display of working da Vinci inventions. Didn’t spend to long there, either, so we spent about 2 hours wandering through the city and shopping at the numerous street vendors.

By the way, this is apparently the place to get anything made of silk or leather, particularly ties or wallets. So I picked up a new wallet, since mine was looking kind of beat up.

Also, I’ve been trying to find Moleskine notebooks. Since they’re supposedly made in Milan, I figured I’d be able to find some here, but I haven’t so far. Instead, I’ve found several companies that bind books with leather and paper made here.

In any case, I have a minute and 35 seconds left at this internet cafe, so I need to get going. Ciao.

Did you know: the outfit for the carabinieri, the Italian military police force, was co-designed by Armani?

I’m actually writing this post at a computer while we do laundry. So…the past three days…

On Monday, we decided to do the “Caesar shuffle,” i.e., the Forum Romanum, the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill, that sort of thing.

We actually started at the Forum and took the official tour offered by the Archeological Society of Rome. Our tour guide claimed to be an archeologist, but I would recommend against the official tours. She was hard both to hear and to understand.

Like before, I’m going to describe the photos that will be put up here when I get home (well, possibly a little bit later—I have a lot of photos to edit).

The problem with the Forums is that there’s not a lot left. You’ll see 3 or 4 columns from a temple that has otherwise been torn down or plundered by Christians.

First, we saw the Basilica of Constantine. It was a big building, and apparently a smaller third of it was left. At the Capitoline Museum we saw what was left of the giant statue of Constantine that was there, but that comes later.

Next, the Temple of Romulus. But not Romulus as in the founder of Rome; this one was apparently the son of Marcus Aurelius. The son died young, and so the father deified him to help cope with his grief. The columns are made of some red marble, which is extremely valuable.

Then, a giant temple to some person; don’t remember who. It was apparently reused as a church later.

Other cool buildings included a temple to Saturn, of which about 7 columns are left, and the Arches of Septimius Severus and Titus. The Arch of Titus itself isn’t original; it was remade within the last 100 years. The friezes, though, were original, and just stuck back in.

Also, right in front of the Temple of Saturn was the Rostra. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was—it didn’t look as I imagined it, but that’s what our guide pointed at. Also, the Curia, which I believe was also repurposed as a church.

Near the Colosseum was the Arch of Constantine—really big arch. My photo of the arch was actually taken from the second floor of the Colosseum.

And then there’s the Colosseum. It’s big. And missing a lot of the original marble. Apparently this was not, as I had expected, from Christian salvaging but from an earthquake. For your visual enjoyment, I have a series of photos that I can hopefully stitch together into a panorama or two.

Tuesday was Vatican day, which I actually enjoyed a lot more because everything was still there. Also, not as sunny.

We got off the Metro (subway) intending to do the Vatican Museum first. Stupid non-believer that I am, I didn’t really see what would be so great about a giant church (a.k.a. Saint Peter’s Basilica). This is where I show you the photos of the lines to get into the museum, which were about 12 people wide and probably stretching halfway around the world’s smallest country—all the way around 3 different sides of the wall.

So, we decided to head for the Basilica. When we were about to get in line to go through the metal detectors, some guy was standing around offering a free English tour of the church. He was an ex-pat, turned out to be Canadian, so he spoke good English, and he seemed like a nice enough guy, so we joined him. We figured there had to be a catch, but we also figured that a tour by an expat with a catch was better than a tour by a local without one.

The guy gave a great tour, though, pointing out all kinds of nifty stuff with perspective (two statues might have looked like they were the same height, but one was actually 6 feet taller than the other). Also, flash photography is allowed in the Basilica because everything that looks like oil on canvas isn’t—it’s glass mosaic. Everybody ooh and ahh together now.

Near the entrance is La Pieta, a sculpture by Michelangelo of Mary holding the dead body of Christ. After someone took a hammer to Mary’s nose in 1972, it’s now behind 2-inch thick glass, and you can’t get anywhere near it, so I had to really work the camera for all it was worth to get a good photo. I can’t really tell if I did or not, but I think so.

The columns on the giant structure (technically called the Baldachin) are modeled after that of the Basilica of Constantine (different one that used to stand where St. Peter’s is now), and the entire thing could fit in the little hole in the top of the dome with room to spare on all sides.

There is a giant statue of Paul and Peter on either side of the church entrance, and Paul looks strangely like Zeus (see the picture). Across the top are Jesus, the apostles (minus Judas), and John the Baptist, and bunches of saints and martyrs are positioned around the square.

So here was the catch to the guy’s tour: he was selling a tour of the Vatican Museum later on. But he was really good, so we decided it was worth it. After a quick lunch, we met up with him at a bar, and then headed to the museum.

By the way, the line that was insanely long earlier? It now only stretched about halfway around one side. We stood in line for maybe 10 minutes and then went through.

Waiting for us right after the metal detectors was a statue of Laocoon and his sons being strangled by snakes. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the original statue—it was a plaster cast, as the original was being restored. Oh well. It’s still a cool statue.

Next? A statue of Artemis from the Pope’s private collection of everything stolen from the Forum (and other places). There were at least 100 marble statues from antiquity on display.

The next room was the Hall of Tapestries which contained, you guessed it, a bunch of tapestries. Not many of them were very interesting, and they were mostly faded, so I moved on.

Next was the Hall of Maps, where some cartographer had gone and drawn up giant maps of each of Italy’s provinces. These were done 400 years ago, but were apparently found to be 98% accurate. The photos here are really for the ceiling. Our guide commented that you never have to ask if something’s gold—it always is.

We then saw a couple of rather uninteresting frescos, and finally ended up in the Raphael rooms, where we were shown one of my favorite paintings: the School of Athens.

Finally, we saw the Sistine Chapel, where you weren’t allowed to take photos, so I have none. I personally was of the opinion that the paintings might be nice, but they were really far away, so kind of hard to enjoy.

One interesting thing I’ve found about museums in Rome is that they’re not nearly as protective of their artwork. Many of the galleries let in sunlight, have open windows, aren’t climate controlled…our tour guide says that he’s had curators from England who were literally in tears by the end because of how much damage the elements were doing to the artwork.

The other funny thing was that our guide was apparently not a registered tour guide—in Italy you have to be. Of course, we were in the Vatican, which is not Italy. That doesn’t mean he didn’t catch a lot of flak from other tour guides, who apparently didn’t like him too much. They apparently insulted his character in Italian, and so he flung it right back. I thought it was kind of amusing, personally.

Next we went up to the top of the dome. First they drop you off at the base of the dome, where you can walk around on the inside. I did the best I could to get photos of the whole thing which I’m going to try to digitally tape together, although there was a giant grate in the way. After you soak in your fill of that, you go out and start the 320-step climb up to the top. And boy is it a climb—as you get higher, the staircase first starts leaning to the side (in parallel with the dome), then you have to take a very narrow spiral staircase (no railing) to get to the very top. The observation deck is at the bottom of the small hole in the top of the dome.

And boy was there a view. Not surprising, really—by law, no building in Rome can be taller than the dome, but nothing even came close. I have another panorama of Rome, a photo of St. Peter’s Square, some nice shots into the Pope’s private gardens, and some nifty floral arrangements.

Today we played catch-up, hitting all the sites we had missed earlier, since we leave for Florence tomorrow.

First, we had lunch at the Piazza Navona. The Tre Scalini is apparently well known for their Tartufo, a chocolate gelato covered in chocolate chips with chocolate sauce and whipped cream on top. Very, very tasty. For the main course, Dad had a gnocchi dish and I had a fetuccine alfredo, both of which were good.

Then, I took a photo of the Fountain of the Four Rivers by Bernini. For reference, the closest river god is the Nile—its head is covers because at the time of the sculpting the headwaters apparently had yet to be discovered. On the left is the Ganges and on the right is the Rio de la Plata (apparently they hadn’t discovered the Amazon yet).

Next we walked to the Pantheon. It’s big and it’s apparently perfectly sized to hold a sphere the diameter of the dome. The dome, by the way, was the model for the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, but out of respect, Michelangelo made his 13 centimeters smaller. The Pantheon was converted to a Catholic church (wasn’t everything?) and is still being used as such today. Also, Victor Emanuele II and Raphel were both buried here.

Next was the Fontana di Trevi. It’s basically a big fountain. There were also lots of people trying to force knick-knacks onto the tourists.

Then we walked up to the Spanish Steps. They were rather uninteresting, though, so we just headed back to the hotel.

Note: I didn’t have time to finish this post earlier, so I’m doing it now, May 26, in Florence. My memory may be weaker as a result. I’m also going to go ahead and finish up our stay in Rome, but I’m preserving the original composition date.

After doing laundry and getting kicked off the computers, we dropped off our stuff at the hotel and headed off to a restaurant that Dad found. It really wasn’t too great, but Dad’s tirmasu was.

The restaurant was near the Spanish Steps, so we took the subway. However, we went to go back and the subway station had closed. We figured that was OK—we’d just walk to the next station. So we did, and it was closed too. But at that point, we were just two stops away from the train station, and we needed to get tickets for the train to Florence. A stop on the Roman subway, by the way, is about a 10 or 15 minute walk—walking two wasn’t unreasonable at all. So we walked to Termini and got our train tickets. At that point, our hotel was one stop away from Termini, so we went ahead and walked the rest of the way.

Editor’s note: I’m going to start on a Florence entry now, but I don’t know when I’ll finish it.

Did you know: the Italian word for crossword is cruciverba, literally cross-word? I saw this on the back of the magazine of a guy in the same train compartment as us.

Right now, I’m on a train from Naples to Rome. Lacking a laptop to keep me entertained, I’m writing (as in with pencil and paper) a blog entry, which I’m hoping to actually type in the next 24 hours. But enough about the present.

We spent last night in a smaller town outside Naples called Sorrento, because it was supposed to be a little nicer. Didn’t do much—a quick walk around the piazza and some gelato before going to bed.

This morning, we woke up and had breakfast at a small pastry shop, and I got to see Dad murder the Italian language (”due cappuccino, por favor”). Then we took the Circumvesuviana, a regional commuter train, to Pompeii.

We left our suitcases at the train station, then decided we didn’t want to carry our backpacks, so we left those at the excavation site. If you ever go, the latter is free. Then we picked up one of the electronic guides. If you ever go, try to get in on a guided tour—we had trouble sometimes telling what the recording was talking about.

Here is a very brief description of what we saw, to be highlighted by photos when I get home.

After going through the grand entrance, we checked out the basilica, a courthouse and business area. I also got a nice shot of the top of a Corinthian column. They liked taking those and putting them on the ground.

Next was the forum. Apparently large white columns once ran around the whole thing. This isn’t too surprising, because there were columns around just about everything. At the end of the forum was a temple to Jupiter.

Next we wandered until we came to a row of houses. You could see the atrium and the remains of an impluvium (life people, correct me if that’s not the hole in the ground), and there were also lots of mosaics in the floor.

As we walked along the road, we caught a glimpse through the ruins of a large mural, remarkable well preserved. The camera didn’t cut through the protective plastic very well, unfortunately.

Next was a small town square and, more importantly, two amphitheaters. In the first photo that will eventually show up here, there is a large athletic field on the right and the larger amphitheater on the left. The entrance was grandiose, but blocked off—you had to take some stairs on the side and enter from the ground level. The photo from the stage is actually the smaller of the two amphitheaters.

There were several tunnels going down below ground, which we assumed were cellars. This, however, just looked like a Roman hobbit hole.

A random mural from a random shop goes here—I picked out Hermes on the left, but I didn’t really try to interpret any of the others. Also, some machine that looked like a waterwheel, which was sitting on another field near…

..the really big amphitheater. Bigger than the others, it had large arches around it.

One of the few places where we were able to pick out the individual areas described by the audio guide was the baths. This is a photo of the changing room, whose exact Latin name I can’t quite remember. You could see the frigidarium (cold room) and tempidarium (warm room) from in here.

Dad was artistically inspired to take a photo of one of the roads. I will have to take the time to edit it, so you better take the time to enjoy it.

I got a photo of a random column, because you just can’t go see ancient Roman ruins without taking photos of columns.

Next, my personal favorite, the Casa del Poeta Tragico, so named for a painting now on display in Naples. It is famous, however, for a very well known mosaic at the entrance. This mosaic has a picture of a chained up dog and reads “Cave canem,” or “Beware of the dog.” This house was also interesting because you could walk through a lot of it. There was a small temple like structure which I believe would have been for the penates, and two large murals in the living room. The first was of Ariadne after Theseus forgot her on Naxos. The second, according to the audio guide, was of a bunch of Cupids, whatever that was supposed to mean.

On the west side of the forum was a large collection of archeological artifacts. About a fourth of them are in this photo.

Next, I took a photo from the office of weights and measures. I took it purely for the Latin, because I wanted to have a sample to look at later, as I couldn’t make any sense of it while I was there.

Almost done, I promise. In the temple of Apollo, there was a nifty looking sundial. This temple was the oldest place of worship in Pompeii. It is also near the tourist entrance, but we missed it on the way in.

Finally, I snapped a panorama type shot on the way out.

Ooh! One more thing. Just now we passed the ruins of an aqueduct on the train. Its photo will eventually go here. Do any of my Roman geography buffs know of an aqueduct that would be running north into Rome? In any case, this means that we’re almost in Rome, so I better wrap things up. Until next time…

Editor’s note: This was typed on an Italian keyboard, which has a really, really screwy layout. Typos are the fault of the keyboard, not of me.

Travelling to Europe is really a pain. Thanks to my week of living the easy life, I’ve calibrated my internal clock perfectly incorrectly for the 7 hour time change, so I wasn’t ready to sleep on our Trans-Atlantic flight until we were about to land.

There’s also the amount of time it takes to get here. We left Nashville at 3:50 PM and will be arriving in Naples at 9:55 PM one day later. That’s 30 hours with the time zone change, and still 23 without. Of course, we’re using accumulated American miles, so the connections and layovers suck, but that’s still a lot of time in an airplane.

And American sure doesn’t do much to make it any better. I think that was the least legroom of any flight I’ve taken. And I have a theory about the food. I think that somebody out there has become very wealthy for making food as tasteless as possible.

In any case, I’m writing this from London’s Gatwick airport, right as we’re beginning the second half of our 8 hour layover. The first thing we did was find a computer so I could do the Da Vinci Code Quest Final Challenge Thing. It was mostly predictable—harder versions of the same puzzles. With Dad’s help, we finished in about an hour and ten minutes, which surely won’t be enough to win, but I never was really expecting to anyway.

After that we had lunch at a restaraunt in the airport. I figured that, since I wouldn’t be in London long, I might as well do the British thing and have fish and chips, so I did.

I noticed a few odd things about London. First, people actually walk on the left side of. Obviously, I knew they drive on the left, but I never really made the connection to walking.

Also, like any international airport, the place is littered with duty free shops selling beer, wine, cigarettes, and so forth. But what caught my eye were the cigarettes. Unlike American packaging which tries to hide their poisonous nature (i.e. the surgeon-general’s warning), here it is emblazoned on all sides with messages like “Smoking kills,” “Smoking causes fatal lung cancer,” and “Smoking is highly addictive, don’t start.” I have photos, which I will post when I get home.

The last thing is security. Compared to the US, security here is lax. We had to go out of the secure zone to get to the lounge,e and when we went back through, they didn’t check our IDs, just the boarding passes. And the metal detector is set low enough that nobody had to take off their shoes.

Later addendum: they did eventually check our IDs at the gate.

So, in a few hours I’ll be heading off for Italy.

I suppose I should talk about graduating first, though.

The truth of the matter is that I didn’t perceive graduation as anything unusually special. Hell, we didn’t even get our diplomas at the ceremony—apparently under Tennessee state law you have to sign for them, so we pick them up afterwards.

Not only that, but the transition from high school student to graduate has been rather slow. I stopped going to school about a week and a half ago, and school has been winding down for a lot longer than that.

In any case, the ceremony was well done, and all speeches were very nice.

But now, like I said, I’m heading for Italy.

I have a notebook, a camera, and lots of paper, so I’m planning to have a few blog entries written up by the time I get back. If I’m really lucky, I’ll manage to convince Dad at the last minute to let me take my laptop with me, but I’m not counting on that one.

Assume that I”ll be completely out of touch with the world until June 1, and won’t be able to check my e-mail until June 5.