All Roads...

Good times in barcelona passed into the early morning and few short hours of sleep found us at the airport. Asleep the whole flight, I awoke in Rome and the cab dropped us off in the center of the ancient city. I would love to regale any readers of this blog with the details of this trip and how it made me feel but words can't express the power of this empire even thousands of years after its fall. However, I will try. The old streets twist and turn endlessly and in addition to the towering buildings, each and every one as historic as the next, you feel as a mouse in a maze. We started our adventure with espresso and despite the small quantity, it was just enough fuel to propel us along the main street to the Vatican. Boiling in the sun, the pope gave us his Angelus and the sheer number of people gathered to hear his words is a spiritual event in and of itself. A million years isn't enough for reflection on the vatican churches but we only had one day and had to make the most of it. We zipped down a few side streets and found the ultimate dive pasta joint where we refueled and got ready to charge through rome. And such is exactly what we did. We had gelato at piazza navona, lay on the floor of the pantheon staring up through its perplexing hole, we made our wishes at the trevvi, and sprinted the stairs of the Spanish steps in such a way as to put rocky to shame.  Next came the long haul to the collosseum and we saw the center of the world. Standing in the shadow of the collosseum with ancient ruins on both sides of you, i felt infinitely small yet infinitely capable. The achievements of collective human endeavor are absolutely astounding. It's so great that an individual life seems worthless. With no time to waste we hustled to campo de fiori for dinner. The walk back to the hostal passed in a blur as rome was becoming illuminated and more alive. The whole town was a work of art, every building and every brick had a story to tell.
Left the hostal at the crack of dawn and slept a few hours in the station before boarding the train to Florence. Though we would love to have enjoyed the italian countryside, the body once again demanded rest. In florence we went straight to caffe donini for an italian breakfast then straight to trattoria mario for an Italian lunch. This small eatery is home to the best pasta I have ever had. Just as I felt small in rome, the pasta made me feel like there was a part of me yet to experience the best that the world has to offer. I made the joke that the reason for such great Italian opera is because you take one bite of good italian cooking and you start singing to the heavens. We moved on.
We went and took a spanish siesta at our hostels and met at the duomo a few hours later. Another shot of espresso and we were off to our next gastronomic experience, this one even better than the previous. We stopped quickly on the world famous Ponte vecchio bridge and felt as if we were part of history. Dinner at Casa linga was incredible. After dinner we hiked to Piazza Michaelangelo and saw all of florence amidst all the kissing couples, that view and this night shall forever be burned in my head; my day under the Tuscan sun. We meandered back to our hostels stopping everywhere along the way to point, gawk, and dance on the street with other travellers. The night passed quickly and before I knew it, I found myself sitting in the Santa Maria train station, waiting to go to Venice. I have become confident that there is nothing better you can do than take a new road every day no matter where it takes you.