Pope Shits in Woods

Hungover and stupid, I headed off to the Emanuelle Duhe (sp?) mega-building with the whole crew. The bus was absolutely jammed with people and it was the first time I felt like a pickpocket really could have done some work. We were ass to elbow with everyone else in the aisle, and each bus-stop brought a mini-riot as people fought their way off and on the thing. We finally got to the Piazza Venezia and headed up to the museum. There was a bit of confusion there, our lack of language really, as the signs said to "enter at the bookstore" but at the bookstore they wouldn't let us enter because we didn't have tickets. Well, they let Baxter in without a ticket, but don't worrry, they got even with him later. The nice lady walked us around the corner the where the tickets were available and we purchased four of them.

Sort of.

I say sort of because we had plenty of money, but the ticket booth had no change. This seems pretty common here. Every second store I purchase something in more or less demands exact change (until such time as they obviously will not be getting it, and then, with some ill will, out comes the change-box). So we are all digging in our pockets for change (I should not that there are no Euro bills below the 5 Euro denomination, just 2 Euro and 1 Euro coins) and we assemble our 32 Euros. Well, except Yvonne tries to sneak a 2 Won coin from our Korea trip into the payment and the man isn't having any of that. We ended up putting together a collection of Euro-dimes and hitting the number exactly. This got us into a small plaza with about 20 pieces from an enormous statue of some dead dude?

It seemed like a bit of a ripoff until we notice a small and unmarked door which led to a staircase. This staircase led us to all kinds of cool things. I went completely wild with the camera as we hopped from place to place over the first two hours of the day. This is why it was of immoderate concern to me when I noticed, as we were almost ready to leave the museum, that I had neglected to put a CF card in my camera and, despite a mightily calloused shutter-finger had no pictureSo, I had to run back down three floors, across the museum and out, and then wait to get my killer perch on the side of the observation deck from which I shot the following lovely panorma, which as usual has a bigger version here.

The first time we returned from the panorama deck (or whatever it is called) we nearly had an international incident as a guard asked us for out tickets. Baxter couldn't find his and despite the fact he was obviously with us, the woman was not about to budge. Bax and the woman chattered at each other in mutually incomprehensible languages until the ticket mysteriously re-appeared and Bax didn't have to go all World War III on Italy.

That picture over there on the right is of the spooky gravestonatorium which featured music from a bad horror movie, inexplicable renderings of contstellations on the ceiling, and a bunch of headstones. People didn't seem to linger very long in this tunnel and I was able to get pictures with almost no one in the frame even during the busiest time for the museum.

The last thing I had to do with respect to pictures was run POSSLQ across the courtyard to make sure we got a picture of her next to the only foot in Italy larger than hers. When we ate at the Chinese restaurant the other day there was a funny moment. Apparently all female customers get free sandals (I have no idea why) and the nice woman was gobsmacked when she asked POSSLQ what size shoes she had on. "Size 40!?! Size 40!?!" we got our 2nd and 3rd words of English out of her.

As we walked on down the Via Corso I was also gobsmacked (obviously today's Reader's Digest Word of the Day) to see a display in an athletic store window which featured a Golden State Warriors jersey. Obviously only a nation of losers like the Italians can identify with us.

Anyway, as a Warriors fan I was happy to see anything having to do with the Warriors and I shed one brief tear for the season we could have had.

10 years ago.

Also along the way we passed a street musician who just looked too much like an old blues-dude to pass up.

So, to avoid paying him anything for his photo -- the street people here are pretty relentless, I just strapped on the old long lens and moved far, far away.

And screwed an old man out of a lousy buck.

I suck!

The universe, of course, hopped in and punished me and the POSSLQ as, for no reason we could really discern, every bus heading towards our flat was filled and over-filled. And we were way down by the Plaza Venezia where the busses should have been empty. We were puzzled.

We finally caught a bus that sort of went to our flat and managed to cram our way on it. It took forever and once we got up to the bottom of the road that leads to St. Peters we decided to hoof it the rest of the way.

As we walked towards the left side of St. Peters it got more and more crowded. Enormous tours of people headed towards the Vatican and there were large groups of what obviously weren't commercial tours, but were clearly groups of some sort, charismatics, Papists, the odd dog. By the time we got to Bernini's columns (which included some heavy slogging), we were halted by Carabinieri who told us that we would have to go back to where we had got off the bus, and walk from there (through a big old sweaty car-tunnel) to our flat. So we retraced our steps, now fighting against the tide of uncontracepted latins, and finally made it to the flat.

It seems the Pope had decided to shit in the woods.. or whatever else Popes do to attract attention.. and 89 million Catholics were mobbing the Vatican.

As we snuck back our on our roundabout I stuck my camera in the air and snapped this picture of Catholics attacking.

It was enough, as anything is, to drive me into the arms of the Steve McQueen bar, and the POSSLQ and I spent the remainder of the evening reading various books and sipping on beers (me) and cokes (her).Just another day...

Oh yeah.. the picture of the Catholics...