We'll have to come back to Vienna. For now, let's stay in the present.

Rome.

So I'm a wee bit of a history nerd. Too much D&D as a youth to not know about gladiation, a year of Latin somewhere in middle school, you get the picture. Rome is one of those cities where it's not just "Oh look, another statue of someone I've never heard of as an ignorant American who is no doubt boundlessly important to local history" but where I actually have expectations and almost know my way around in my head, despite never having been here before.

I'm also starting to get Giant Building and Monument Fatigue after 3 weeks of living in the capitals of Europe, but again, I'll make an exception for Rome.


Actually, Rome was kind of a bitch to me for the first day. I started to wonder how many people in the city weren't looking at me as a gullible walking dollar sign. One slice of REALLY GOOD PIZZA and that all started to turn around. I have had a Good Tourist Day.

Oh, screw the text. Bring on the pictures.

The Colosseum. The top of it. Because I like cutting swarming throngs of tourists out of my shots. The thing that was most remarkable about it to me was how, even though it's smaller than several modern football bowls, it still manages to be HUGE. Something about piling up that much stone and aging it for 2,000 years commands respect in a way that modernity just doesn't.


One of many statues on the monument to Emanuelle II, first ruler over the Reunified Italy (after Napolean had sectioned it up). This monument itself (not shown) is fantasy-movie huge. You come around the corner, see it, and yeah. That's a big pile of marble to just throw down in the middle of a city.


Rome also has many fountains. Some of these look like someone left the tap running in the middle of the sidewalk. Others are like this.


Somewhere in the middle is the Fontana del Moro in the Piaza Navona, where four men look as though they're attempting to stop praying to the porcelain goddess by jamming pan pipes in their mouths, and failing. In the center, a standing figure tries to cover his genital insecurities with a vomiting fish. Several disembodied heads around the perimeter of the fountain join in the emetic display.