back to the internet cafe...

Continuing from the visit to Tarquinia and Tuscania: 

The two churches were crazy insane. The oldest things I've ever seen. The chunks of painted plaster still clinging to the walls are few and far apart but you can tell the entire insides were covered in frescoes back in the day. The best part is that nothing matches. People have painted over what was already there, making an interesting mash-up of 7^th and 17^th century art. The capitals and columns have been mixed and matched from other sites, or created by various artists all individually in charge of one (they really weren't very good at teamwork, these guys). Contributing to the asymetry of the places are these notions of “the good side” and “the bad side” (which is, obviously, on the left): on one side pretty animals, and ghosts and ghouls on the other; or a painting of salvation and one of damnation ot balance it all out. One side of the wall has dark arches whereas the right has bright marble... These churches are among the weirdest things I've ever seen.

Speaking of weird things: I spent Saturday in one of the most ancient “Haunted Houses”! It's a statued park created in 1552 by the super rich count Orsini, who had a little bit too much time on his hands, and a weird sense of the romantic. Here, the story sort of splits into two theories: either he wanted people to fall in love in hte garden, or he wanted to scare the shit out of them. I think it may be a mix of both: you lose your lover in a forest, you come across enormous scary figures like giants, elephants, crooked houses, dragons, and gorgons, and you're scared to death. Ideally, you find your lover at the end of the day and he comforts you in his arms, fortifying the love between the two of you. I think it was supposed to be a test of bravery and courage. Seriously, can you imagine in 1567, walking around in the forest, and coming across the hugest sculpture of a dolphin with pointy teeth? I took a picture of me being eaten by that thing. It's awesome.

I went ot the theaters that night and saw the fourth of the Pirates of the Caribbean series. This time, though, it was in 3D, and let's not forget to mention, also in ITALIAN! I got to practice this wonderful language, even though a friend pointed out that the only time I was really going to use this language was nowhere but Italy...not extremely useful. I'd be better off learning some sort of Chinese... Anyway. The movie was really interesting. Yes, they recycled plotline, character personalities, soundtrack, and everything else you can think of (except for Captain Jack's new wig), BUT, I really really, as usual, enjoyed every little teeny tiny visual detail in the moving images, and I liked that there was a better pirate than Jack, and that person also happened to be a woman :) Of course, she was mostly there as eye candy, but I really got some heart-skipping moments where she was majorly awesome as a character, and the perfect alter-ego to Jack. Oh, and I love the Spanish. Maybe I'll stop by Spain on the way back home?

Tuesday, we visited Sienna. It was marvelous. The churches are more recent than the ones I saw in Tuscania, but no less interesting. Sienna is separated into 17 “contrade”, or regions (des quartiers), all named after animals (giraffe, owl, caterpillar (so fearsome, that one), dragon and unicorn (they don't seem to think these are mythical creatures), snail, etc) and every year, twice a year, for thousands of years now, they've picked one person from each contrade to race around the main piazza 3 times on the day of the palio. The competition is fierce: they say if a baby will be born outside of his7her family's contrade, they will bring earth from that region to say that the baby was born in it. Heaven forbid people from different contrade fall in love and get married. Maybe this is where the idea for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet came from? Anyway. Went shopping, couldn't stop, boutght some clothes, jewellery, got yelled at by a store clerk... twice (once for going into the wrong changing room (who knew there were two different ones?) and once again for stepping on the bench that blocked the entrance to that closed changing room (I had to step back out of the changing room at some point, no?))... it was awesome. On the way back, we stopped by Le Terme, some very extremely old sulfuric natural bathes that were warm enough to melt your socks off. We got our feet in for a bit, walked around some remaining ruins, met a cat, and went back home to have supper. Some day I'm going to have to talk about the food here...

WORD OF THE DAY: Andiamo!

This means: “Let's go!” Something we say everytime we go somewhere. Tomorrow, we happen to be going to Florence: “Andiamo a Firenze!!!”

PS: the Gelato Festival started in Florence yesterday, and it's going on all weekend long... I'm going to have to buy out the seats next to me on the plane...