A Very Merry Unbirthday!

As some of you may know, my 20th birthday was at the beginning of December.  And as all of you should know, I'm a huge fan of Disney.  I mean huge.   There are few Disney movies I can't quote, few songs I can't sing by heart, few princesses whose outfits I don't know.  And, being the mature, grown-up adult that I now am, I couldn't help but indulge myself for my birthday.  To celebrate entering my 20s, I took myself into a world of children's fantasy for a day.  I went to Disneyland.

Normally, my birthday is in the summer months.  It signals the first heatwave of summer, and is usually spent in my bathers splashing around in our lake.  This year I'm having December in the cold, and my birthday followed the first snow of the season.  Saturday therefore dawned cold and frosty.  Properly rugged up in my jeans, coat, gloves and scarf, I hopped on the red RER C for the first time to take the trip out to Val-de-Marne - Chessy, Paris' Disney Central.

I was getting thoroughly excited as I walked from the RER station along with the crowds through to the main entrance of Disneyland.  Smart move asking about student discounts - saved myself five euro and the ticket was valid for Walt Disney Studios Park as well.  Didn't care.  All I was interested in was Disneyland.

Main Street, USA.  The first Land in the park.  I've been to Disneyland before, mind you.  Tokyo Disneyland, 2008, aged 15. That was different.  Tokyo was newer, more geared towards the rides and big commercialised stuff.  Disneyland Paris is more geared towards original Disney - the fairytales, Song of the South, that sorta stuff.  I walked into Main Street USA and felt like I was at home.  Fairy lights, snow everywhere - and not all of it was fake, either.  Slippery white stuff.  Weird.

The first thing I saw was Lancelot's Carousel.  I love carousels.  I jumped in line.  See, in Tokyo, Kara and I decided to go on all the little-kiddy rides, cause they're so much fun.  There was an added bonus - the lines were no more than 10 minutes long, cause everyone else was riding Buzz Lightyear and stuff over in TomorrowLand.  We went on so many different rides because we never had to wait.  Unfortunately my birthday this year fell on a Saturday, which, while it meant I was free to go to Disneyland, also meant everyone else was too.  I was the lone over-10 in the Lancelot queue unaccompanied by an under-10, and we were all queuing for 40 minutes for a two-minute ride.  Well.  I was in for an interesting day.

I just went with the flow as best I could.  Almost everything I wanted to see and do was in FantasyLand, which has all the traditional Disney from the movies - you know, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, the girly ones, I guess.  I did the Mad Hatter's Tea Cups, It's A Small World, Sleeping Beauty's Castle (in passing), found my way by accident into The Fairy Tale Lands, traversed either by boat or by Casey Jr., the Dumbo Circus Train, and as evening approached I boarded the Disneyland Railway for a freezing cold sightseeing tour all around Disneyland.

I took a break after that and had a really bad burger and fries at Toad Hall, the British restaurant in Fantasyland that played Gilbert and Sullivan - the whole 'He is an En-glish-man, OH! He i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-s an Englishmannnn!' was both comforting and annoying (especially since the food wasn't anywhere near as good as the music).  I then proceeded over to AdventureLand next door.  There was a compulsory excursion involved.  Swiss Family Robinson is actually nothing to do with Disney, but since there's a Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse in every Disneyland I've been to and I love the book, I feel the need to explore. As expected, I spent the excursion clinging to the stairs trying to overcome vertigo and criticising the lack of adherence to the book - too many rooms, they didn't lug a piano up the tree, how did they forget one of the four sons??

And while I was there, I proceeded to get lost in the pirates caves below the treehouse, find Davy Jones' Locker and end up ogling the (completely nautically inaccurate) sailing ship of Captain Hook.  And on my way out of AdventureLand via Aladdin's Magical Passage I thought - why not?  Let's go explore the Haunted Mansion!  Keep in mind I am TOTALLY not good with horror here, guys.

The queue at Phantom Manor was actually moving pretty quickly, so the 30 or 40 minutes it took to get to the Manor doors passed almost before I noticed.  The ride was kinda similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas at Tokyo Japan, just themed around a Wild West Haunted Manor rather than a Tim Burton movie.  I didn't even freak out too much.  And as we exited the house I heard another scream from the FrontierLand island and I though...why not?  Let's have a go on your first ever rollercoaster!

Big Thunder Mountain, even at 8 o'clock at night, is hugely popular and has a huge queue.  I stood in it for about 40 minutes or so as I got closer and closer to the front of the line and figured out how this thing works.  See, Big Thunder Mountain Rollercoaster operates on the island in the middle of the lake in FrontierLand, but you board on the mainland.  This then entails that you must somehow get from the mainland to the high-mountain island in the lake.  The rollercoaster therefore starts with a death-defying drop into the tunnel under the lake to the island, and ends in the same fashion on the way back.  There was a lot of screaming involved.  I may have been responsible for some of it.  It may have been a lot of wicked fun...totally wanna do that again!

By this time the cold was beginning to creep from my toes and fingers up into my arms and legs, and I'd seen about everything I wanted to see (plus footsie was feeling a little tired) so I decided to bail at last, making my way out to Sleeping Beauty's Castle in the centre of Disneyland.  Everyone was standing around, clearly waiting for something exciting to happen, so I paused to pack up my bag and see if anyone knew what we were waiting for and when it would happen.  No-one did, and I could live without the Sound and Light Parade at closing, so I turned to leave. 

You know in the movies when the exciting thing happens as soon as the heroine turns her back?  Well, I dunno what happened since I sure as hell ain't no heroine, but something definitely happened when I turned my back - dunno what, since my back was turned - but the castle was coming to life.  Lights, water jets, you name it, the whole she-bang, culminating in a set of sparkly white roofs on all the castle's numerous turrets.  With Sleeping Beauty now sleeping pretty, I stopped in Main Street for some birthday fairy floss (I may have been in America but I refuse to call it cotton candy) and visited the bookstore for a little souvenir work.

On my way home I rescued some confused tourists from the torture of the ticket machines, only to discover they were Australians, which gave me some company on the way home. They rode to Chatelet with me before heading to their apartment in Saint-Germain and I headed home to a nice warm apartment and a cup of tea before bed. On balance, definitely a good birthday.

Shameless Disneyland selfies

Lancelot's carousel

It's A Small World

India - It's A Small World

The Little Mermaid's ship and castle in the Fairytale Lands

The courtyard in Belle's poor provincial town in France

Belle and her sheep

The city of Oz

Casey Jr., the Dumbo Circus Train.  I drove!

The castle.  Who knows which princess lives here

Sleeping Beauty's castle by night

The sound and light show

Pink...yes, pink....

Sparkly turret roofs

Disneyland and I share a birthday!

And my present - she hasn't got a name yet!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I love December.  The end of another school year, and my birthday too, of course, but it's the 25th of December that I really love.  Christmas is my favourite time of year.  I love the atmosphere - Christmas tree hunting, 10 boxes of decos for me and Kiri to hang on the tree, Dad climbing around on the roof putting up the glowing reindeer, planning out an elaborate menu that Mum will never ever approve, late Christmas shopping nights in the main street, carols night at the church, Bucko and Champs playing on repeat in the lounge room - and I love sharing it with my family too.  I'm home for the holidays and I spend the whole month in preparation and anticipation for that one day of the year.  In fact, I probably like the month leading up more than the day itself!

So this year I find myself wondering what I'm going to do for Christmas.  Noel in Paris is slowly but surely kicking off, but for the first time I'm not in the middle of the spirit of the season.  I have no family in Europe at all, and all my friends are flying home for the holidays.  There are no decos in my apartment.  No room (or money) for a tree.  The Bucko and Champs CDs are in Mum's stereo back home.  Apart from McPedro (and Spiderplant and Dumbledore), I have no-one to share any of it with anyway, and I'm too sober for McPedro to talk back in any case (if you don't get the reference, read some more Girls With Slingshots).  The other night my friend Aida took me to the Christmas market on the Champs-Elysees.  It was huge, and wonderful, and the carols over the loudspeaker were in English, but it also made me realise that this will be a different Christmas to all those I've known before.

I've considered going away for a trip somewhere like any other uni holiday, but travel is really expensiv eat Christmas, obviously, and even if I end up in a tiny deserted hostel in the most obscure town in a forgotten Baltic nation, people will still be celebrating Christmas.  There will still be carols and decos and Christmas trees and it will still be just me and Lassie sticking out of my backpack, on our own.  I've also considered staying in Paris and trying to find some kind of event for exchange kids, a church group that does Christmas lunch for students or something like that, but, honestly, it wouldn't make me feel any better.  I wouldn't know any of these people, they wouldn't mean anything to me, and say what you will about sharing the Christmas spirit and fellow mankind and whatnot, Christmas to me is about being with people I love, my family and friends, and a traditional lunch and carols with strangers isn't going to make up for that.  The best idea I've had so far has been to buy some Christmas presents for one of the Christmas appeals - you know, like the Kmart Wishing Tree or something.

So, what will I do for Christmas?  I still don't know.  I have friends coming to Paris in late December and early January who want to see me, so maybe I'll just go away for a few days over New Year's so I can catch up with friends in Paris.  In the meantime I'll try and put aside the niggling heartsickness that the mention of Christmas brings on and try and enjoy the experiences of fairy lights and Christmas-themed Disneyland.

The Paris Christmas market

Lights display on the Champs-Elysees

Me with Aida...you know, I've forgotten all the others

Surrounded by Christmas lights on the Champs-Elysees

Following the path of enlightenment (Italy, Part V)

Oh c’mon, guys, how could I not make an Angels and Demons reference? Everywhere I looked in Rome I found another scene from the book, another factual tidbit from the story. It’s Dan Brown fan heaven, though I admit that I felt like a huge cliché walking around, mentally referencing everything against what I’ve learned from Robert Langdon.

So I arrived in Rome on Monday around midday.  Made my way to the hostel, a conveniently short walk from the train station, and dumped my backpack there to go exploring for the day.  While checking in the reception guy convinced me to go on a guided walking tour of the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica.  Oh, why not.  I'm in Rome, I kind of wanted to go there anyway, and it saved me figuring it out for myself.

Leaving my bag, I headed back to Roma Termini train station to take the metro over towards Vatican City, The Vatican.  Fun fact about Rome: unlike most other major European cities, Rome's metro system is tiny, just two lines.  Why?  Because modern Rome is built on top of the ruins of several older cities of Rome, and no serious metro system can be built without destroying that.  I made it to the right station, stopped in a pizza place for a quick lunch and then headed to the meeting point for the tour.  After half an hour or so the nine of us - seven young women, one older guy and Daniella, our guide - left the country of Italy and headed into the state of The Vatican.

Big fat travel tip for The Vatican: everyone wants to go to St. Peter's Basilica.  Don't.  The queue will keep you amused for hours.  Instead, go to the Vatican Museums. After five minutes in the queue, you'll get a combined ticket for both the Museums and the Basilica that lets you walk straight from one into the other, which is what we did.  The Museums are overwhelming.  Imagine the Louvre crammed into a space one-third the size.  Every single place you look there's a statue or an artefact - beautiful, but diminished by the prolificity.

What I really enjoyed was the Basilica.  We laughed at the silly tourists lining up all the way across St. Peter's Square for tickets as we walked out of the museum and into the Basilica.  It was amazing.  I was surprised.  I'm not the biggest fan of the top dogs of the Catholic Church, so I figured a lot of the hype about The Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica and so on was just hyperbolic and the ramblings of ignorant tourists.  Well, maybe I'm a little too skeptical now.

 The Basilica is amazing.  It's huge beyond belief - it's the biggest church in the world, and after my travels, especially through Italy, I thought I'd seen some damn big churches and religious buildings.  Even after all that, St. Peter's Basilica took my breath away.  The size of it really is incomprehensible - and there's even a series of marks on the floor of the centre aisle from the main doors marking the length of the nave of other major churches around the world - but the decoration is also astounding.  The amount of effort and material that goes into decorating a building of that size is beyond belief, and it looks lovely.  

I got particularly excited by two things - the first was seeing the tomb of King Kristina, one of my heroes.  Yes, King Kristina.  Born on December 8th, 1626, exactly 366 years before me, she was raised as the crown prince and heir of Sweden following the death of her father, and was formally crowned as its sovereign king at the age of 24.  Though female, Kristina insisted on being addressed and crowned as the king because in Sweden the queen was the powerless puppet wife of the king, and it was her husband who held all the power.  Essentially, she was one sassy woman with a funky name and the same birthday as me.  Though I knew she abdicated the throne after a few years to convert to Catholicism (Sweden was a strongly Protestant country) I didn't know that she was buried in the Vatican.  That was pretty cool.

The other thing was part of the architecture.  Along the top of the wall of the Basilica runs a mosaic strip two metres high bearing an inscription in Latin, I can't remember what.  There's another inscription running around the base of  the huge, vaulted dome above the central nave of the Basilica, too, which says something like 'You are Peter, you are the rock and to you I will give the keys to the kingdom of Heaven'.  In Latin.  See, my name comes from Latin.  Actually, it comes from the Latin word for heaven.  So the part where it says 'keys to the kingdom of Heaven' (which is actually rendered 'of the heavens', by the way), reads 'CLAVES REGNI CAELORUM'.  Quick Latin lesson - 'caelum' is the singular nominative form of the word for heaven, that is, the singular subject.  'Caeli' is the singular genitive, i.e. possessive ('of heaven') and 'caelorum' is the plural genitive ('of the heavens'), but they're all just conjugations, forms, of the same word.  So my name is written in two-metre-high letters on the walls of St.  Peter's Basilica.  Me, the girl who could never have the personalised mug or t-shirt or ruler with her name on it like you see in shops because my name is never one of the options.  Me.  On the walls of St. Peter's Basilica.  Nice.
 
We walked outside and watched the Swiss Guards for a while (think the Italian version of the Secret Service out of the 1600s and you have some idea) and then finished the tour in St. Peter's Square just before sunset.  I then amused myself greatly by standing on the edge of St. Peter's Square and jumping from one foot to the other and thereby jumping the border between Italy and the Vatican.  In Italy, now I'm in The Vatican!  Back in Italy, now in the Vatican again!  It was the first time I've visited another country and known where the border was, so I took advantage.

I sat down for a hot chocolate and then walked down to Castel Sant'Angelo, again, a Dan Brown reference.  It was dark by this point, so I wandered for 20 minutes in the mosquito-ed cold and then decided that I'd 'seen' the castle and I should go and have dinner and go home.  I found a little cafe in a random street, ate a margherita pizza followed by an espresso coffee (true Italian and French espresso - yuck!  I don't know how they can drink the stuff!) and then began the walk back to the metro to take a train home to the hostel.

Day 2 and Day Last in Rome - basically a bombarding of my poor senses.  I accomplished exactly two/three things with the whole day - il Colosseo e il Foro Romano e il Palatino.  Translated, that's the Colosseum which is just down the road from the complex that houses the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill.  The Forum is a big, ongoing Roman dig complex that's massive and easy to get lost in and hard to see all of at once.  Palatine Hill is a giant hill with some still-intact tall structures that you can walk up - the stairs are still there.  Both are thoroughly worth seeing, and rather than waste time and words I'll simply post some photos below.  (Also, another travel tip: to avoid the queues at the Colosseum, buy the combined ticket at the entrance to the Forum or Palatine Hill and you can literally walk straight through the barriers at the Colosseum afterwards).  My foot got the hugest workout between the two complexes and my brain became overwhelmed by about 4pm and I decided to bail, go back to the hostel and get stuck into the homework that was due the afternoon that I returned to France.  I did my best to focus on homework, taking a break only to go upstairs and eat the free pasta dinner that was provided.  Then I repacked my bag, set my alarm for 4am and crashed out around 10pm.

I was actually up at 4, was clothed, cleaned and checked out by 4.30am.  I made it to the station, hopped on the next shuttle to Ciampino airport and made it into the boarding queue for my flight just in time.  No weight problems this time, despite my concerns, either because I was wearing all my clothes under my coat or because all my heavy textbooks were in the handbag discretely slung over my arm.  A short, two-hour flight and I was back in Paris (well, Beauvais).  Shuttle to city, walk to metro, take metro to Le Bourget, bingo baby, I've been to Italy!

Mind you, I had class that same afternoon, and my first assignment was due in...

Random architecture in Vatican City

Room of Animals

A ceiling.  With painting

The seal of...goodness-only-remembers which Pope

St. Peter's Square from outside the Basilica

Fuzzy photos inside the Basilica

King Kristina's tomb

My name.  In the Vatican.

The Swiss guards (and they were pretty cute, too)

Sunset over St. Peter's Basilica

Il Colosseo

Some local wildlife...

Il Foro Romano

A Roman stadium

Views of Rome from Palatine Hill

That's St. Peter's over to the left

Failed attempts at being arty

Inside the Colosseum

Bored, footsore experimental Colosseum photograph

The Colosseum from the upper levels

Clouds and Colosseums

Bane, Ronan...Firenze (Italy, Part IV)

Yes, a Harry Potter reference!  Come on, has no-one else made the connection between J.K. Rowling's centaur and the Italian name of Florence?

My last two days in Florence were filled with...well, more of the same, really.  On Saturday morning I finally made it to San Spirito - lovely, by the way - and was just sitting down to the best cappuccino I've had in forever (travel tip - if you pay more than 1.50 for a cappuccino in Italy, you're getting thoroughly ripped off) when my phone rang.  Mariana was in town and she and Andrea wanted to swing by and pick me up.  Mariana said Andrea had somewhere he wanted to take us, and she murmured something about 'place' and 'Michaelangelo'.  I got excited.  I'd heard good things about Piazza Michaelangiolo, but it's hard to get to without a car.

So I guzzled my wonderful cheap coffee and hobbled up to the station to meet them.  The Piazza was wonderful.  It's on a hill about Florence, so you get the most amazing views of the town - and, of course, another recreation of Michaelangelo's David, which is located in the Galleria dell'Academia in Firenze and which I chose not to see cause it costs a bit to get in.  Another travel note for Italy - unlike France, everything costs, and it adds up very quickly.  Anyway, amazing amazing views from the Piazza Michaelangiolo and from the two churches on the hill just above it.  We headed so Andrea could have 'the most amazing kebab in Florence' and Mariana and I could have what had to be the worst chips.  We then grabbed a coffee in Piazza della Repubblica, before the others headed back to Prato for a bit and I visited the Chiesa della Santa Trinita down by the river for a while.  Yes, I'm aware I have a bit of a thing with churches.  No, I'm not concerned by it.  Santa Trinita was lovely, too, though a little bit eerie after dark.  The eerie was kind of fun, though, in an odd sort of way.

Later that evening I met up with Mariana and Andrea again for an aperitivo, which is from what I can tell like a cheap students' thing, where you get a basic drink and free reign over a basic sort of buffet.  Needless to say Andrea got two drinks that night, because the 'simple, plain' spritzer he recommended for me was, as expected, gross.  I headed home early because the buses don't run late, I'm a killjoy and I had homework - pick your reasons.  Sunday began with the much-anticipated trip to the Battistero, which was nice, some last-minute shopping at the market and the Piazza della Repubblica, and the exploration of an upscale chocolate shop.  Has anyone here ever seen sugared violets?  Yes, I mean actual flowers that have been dipped in sugar to turn them into sweets.  I'd heard of them, but...well, this place had sugared violets and sugared roses.  The shop clerk was a little confused when I just wanted one of each 'to try' instead of buying them by the kilo like normal people (the first time I mentioned trying one, she handed me a violet to eat straight up), so they threw them in for free with the chocolates I bought!  They're an odd delicacy - it was like having a violet field in my mouth, but the concept of tasting flowers in your mouth rather than your nasal cavity was actually quite pleasant and didn't freak me out like I expected.

My final adventure was an accident, like always.  I was looking for one final church to visit so I could feel less guilty about bailing early because I was tired and cold and had homework when I found myself in a line for what had looked like a church from the outside but which didn't seem to be on the inside.  It cost me 6 euro to get inside the Cappella di Medicee, and as I wandered the crypt I wasn't sure it was worth it.  Then I found the stairs and ascended into the chapel itself.

The Medici family, in their time, were the royal family of Florence and thus Italy, and in a way much of Europe too. They were powerful, produced a Pope or two along their way and were uber-rich beyond our understanding of the word.  So when they decided to build their own private chapel to bury and honour their ancestors, they were thorough.  And holy schmackeroly, were they!  Every surface inlaid with stone mosaics, and not just any stones, semiprecious ones!  Huge ceilings, large tombs and statues for all the big names of the family, the works.  And the most amazing part?  It was TASTEFUL.  No opulence, no overt, grandiose displays of pomposity such as are usually seen when rich people let their money loose.  It was very well done and truly beautiful, making it both awe-inspiring and breath-taking (my breath was so taken that I had to sit down - though...that might have been the foot).

I left Florence early the next morning, taking a train from Firenze Santa Maria Novella at a quarter past nine.  It was an interesting stay I'd had.  Youth hostels always make for new experiences, though the way I ended up in the Frano-Japanese dorm was interesting.  The only other girl who was in there during my stay, albeit for one night, and who wasn't French or Japanese was a Canadian girl studying in Lyon, France, for a year, Louise. Apart from Laure there was also Carole to keep me amused, another older French girl who I chose to stop talking to because she didn't know when to stop... (in my thoughts: 'Carole, it's half past eight in the morning and I'm standing in the corridor in my pajamas and bed hair holding a towel.  Though I'm sure the girls on the second floor are all enjoying the pre-breakfast amusement, can you please figure out a little quicker that you need to run out of things to say so I can please how my shower now?')  You get the best stories from staying in youth hostels.  I'll try and post the final Italy instalment in the next few days - the homework situation has been getting demanding!

With Andrea and Mariana above the city of Florence

Firenze from the Piazza Michaelangiolo

From the steps of Santo Miniato del Monte

Florence

Introducing the Florence Historical Drummers and Flag Tossing Marching Corps Band! 
(Yeah, I made that title up, but they were cool)

The roof of the Battistero

Caelli Lilian in Florence (Italy, Part III)

Florence is a lovely city.  Like everywhere else in Europe, it's full of history, culture and beautiful buildings, but it does have one big flaw.  Florence is essentially one big tourist trap.  What was once a centre of light and culture and art has now become so full of foreign visitors wanting a piece of light and culture and art, mostly for the exclusivity, that the whole city is about catering to the stereotyped desires of the tourists to the point that 'Florence' has become almost impossible to find.

That's not to say, however, that it is impossible.  You just have to be willing to try; the 'discerning tourist', as Laure and I put it yesterday.  Laure was the Franco-Austrian-English-speaking Sorbonne alum, with whom I wandered Florence yesterday and visited several 'key' tourist sites.  Today, free from her (slightly pernicious) influence, travelled alone and did what I love to do most in new cities - wander aimless and let the adventures find me.

I visited Il Duomo, the traiditional main domed church of Firenze; Santa Maria Novella, another big church; the Palazzo Vecchio, a palace-turned-museum; the famous Ponte Vecchio, the bridge-street that crosses the river; St. Mark's English Church; Dante's church; and so many smaller random places that won't even get a mention.  I have a few places on the cards for tomorrow, based on where I couldn't or didn't go today.  I've done a bit of shopping for a few things I wanted and posted a few postcards.

In my wanderings today I found a market in one of the piazzas - an actual market, not just a collection of street vendors, that reminded me a little of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.  It was fun to look, even though I knew the prices were inflated tourist ones.  Behind the market I found the bronze boar that Alessandra had told me about and touched its nose.  I also took a coin and pushed it into the boar's mini-waterspout mouth, since that seemed to be the thing to do, and then removed my hand and watched the coin slip from the boar's mouth and into the money-filled grate below the boar's mouth.  Apparently that's a good sign.

I was on my way to the Chiesa dello Santo Spirito today, the Church of the Holy Spirit, since it looked really interesting, when I stumbled upon something else, one of the 'hidden gems' that I always look for in a city.  Apparently this church was English - as in, British.  The open door of St. Mark's bore an invitation to enter, so I did.  The interior decoration was fascinting, the oddest melding of cultures and religions that I've seen anywhere, very strange.  I realised after a while there was a service happening in the corner for a congregation of two, so I stood and watched most of it and quietly and unobtrusively as I could.  When it was finished the priest quickly walked out from behind the altar and through a door that obviously led to the church office or dressingroom, and I was a little surprised at his abruptness.  A minute later, though, just as I was turning away, he reappeared, stripped of his ceremonial mass robes and garbed in a plain white one, and approached me.  "Hello.  Do you speak English?"  He told me some interesting stories about the church, asked about why I was in Europe and Florence with my Australian accent (nb. first time anyone has correctly recognised my accent, since my ESL friends don't have the experience to recognise accents and even to many native speakers, especially Americans, my accent is so nondescript as to e unplaceable) and invited me to come to the main mass on Sunday.  If I can get there on time I might actually do it, since attending Sunday Mass at an English church in Florence would be an interesting experience to add to the list.

The youth hostel is not bad, though the hike from the road and the long bus trip into town are sort of downers, and the experience is interesting, though the French girls are getting a bit wearing - they're all very opinionated and love the sound of their own voices (they make me look - and act! - very quiet by comparison), so I've stopped initiating conversations with them.  I did meet a cool South African guy yesterday over breakfast, and there have been some nice Canadians around too.  It's all part of the adventure.

Il Duomo

Laure and I were admiring the...artisanry

Lucky-nosed boar

One of my random-wandering streets

Views of Florence from Ponte Vecchio

These are woven - yes, woven - out of grass reeds by the owner of the legs you see in the photo

A typical (yummy) Italian lunch near San Spirito

Views of Ponte Vecchio (from Ponte Trinita)

Santa Maria Novella Church