Snore

Hey all,

I have a snorer in the bunk beneath me. By day he is a chubby and amiable middle-aged man from Canberra. By night he is an oaf who snores. Because I am on the same bunk bed as him I can kind of do something about it by wriggling around vigorously and making the whole bed shake till he emerges from his coma enough to roll over. I have only limited success doing this, but even so, the other people in the dorm are practically high-fiving me the next day. This morning his snoring woke me at 6:30 AM (!) through earplugs (!!). I looked up and the guy on the top bunk next to me was sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, an expression of profound and hopeless despair on his face, staring at the monstrosity grunting away in the bunk beneath me. Mental picture: a quivering mass of hairy flesh, with a walrus soundtrack. I made the best of it, got up and had breakfast – shortly joined by the oaf himself – we had a pleasant conversation, as he really is quite nice, at least when he is awake.

Went to St Peter's today – I was not going to take any photos, cause it somehow struck me as kind of vulgar, but in the end I did take a couple, which together hopefully give some sense of the scale of it. The first one is from the floor looking up, and if you look closely at the dark ring at the top you can just see people there. The second is taken looking down from where the people were in the first photo after I climbed up to it. All these places are amazing from the outside, but somehow inside they all feel even bigger. These people do know how to organise space. It takes over 600 steps to get right up to the top of the dome (the ring on the inside is only halfway there), many of them in between the inner and outer domes in this weird curved space that at times was so tight both my shoulders were touching the walls – I could not hang my bag off one shoulder, I had to carry it in front of me in one hand (have attached a photo of this, which kind of came out, but does not really give a sense of it, and it was not in the really claustrophobic bits because there were people behind me and I did not want to hold them all up). But it was well worth it for the view from the top – the photo of that view is taken looking at the castle that I took the shot of St. Peter's from yesterday – the castle is the round shape in the distance by the river and trees.

My legs were a bit jellied by the time I got down so I wandered off for lunch – have a photo of a Montecristo No. 4 doing what they do best in a little alley near the Vatican. After lunch I went to the Vatican Museum, the end point of which is the Sistine Chapel. The museum is huge, and so full of amazing things that you could probably spend at least a week there without getting bored, if it were not for the crowds of people – any more than about four hours of crowds this thick and I would collapse into a homicidal rage – I took a photo to give some idea of the kind of view you get of most of the exhibits. If I do come back to Rome later when it is no longer peak season I will definitely do it again.

The Sistine Chapel was definitely worth the wait, even though I was beginning to doubt it after spending hours shuffling along in packed crowds of tour groups and loud Americans with that peculiar combination of formal politeness (“Yes, Sir”) and blithe arrogance they seem to have. Managed to fight my way to a seat in the chapel itself and spent a half hour or so looking at the Last Judgement – K had phoned me on the way there and told me that the whole painting makes a skull, which it does when you look at it – it is not so obvious to be trite, but is definitely there, and probably why the painting mildly creeps you out in a way you can't quite put your finger on. Could not take any photos in there, but just google “last judgement sistine” and you will find it soon enough.

Also took a photo of a painting called “Trip to the Ecumenical Council” by Fernando Botero, which kind of amused me because of the extremely portly cardinal who looks like he never walks anywhere trundling along through the forest, looking a bit nervous about the whole concept.

And finally, there is a photo of what a Capricciosa pizza looks like in Rome. A few mushrooms sprinkled in one corner, a few olives in another, a slice of Prosciutto (I think) and a boiled egg plopped in the middle (I also had one the other day that had a whole egg cracked on a corner of its own). All their pizza's are like this – they don't really mix toppings at all, apart from everything being on a kind of Margherita base. They all taste absolutely fantastic, although that might have a bit to do with being so hungry – doing tourist stuff all day is hard work, which is probably why all the children you see being dragged around look so miserable – they would rather be eating ice-cream and throwing things at each other.

Tomorrow is an organisation day – supermarket, book ticket to Florence, book hostel Florence before I start with the family for a month at the language school, wash some clothes etc. So probably will not be much to write about tomorrow, unless the hairy black pig steals my clothes. The pig did make an appearance today – I saw it when I got out of the shower, following around one of the hostel cats, wagging its little pig tail, sniffing the cat's bum. Unfortunately I did not have my camera on me this time, so could not capture the moment. But it was exactly like the last photo, except with a cat in front, looking vaguely annoyed, in a bored kind of way. There was something about the pig's persistent eager pursuit of the indifferent cat that reminded me of the way people behave in nightclubs.

Cheers, B.
PS. They have these cute little bats here at night, like butterflies, if butterflies darted about really fast and had fangs and leathery wings.

PPS. I had two people come up and ask me for directions today, in Italian, which was gratifying – at least I don't look too much like a complete tourist.