when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore (so much amore that this is the biggest blog in history)

sometimes reality lives up to ideals. i've said it before.it doesn't happen that often, so when it does occur, we must pay life the reverence it deserves. my passionate love for italia has something to do with seeing places that make me salivate (even when viewing photos or discussing renaissance art with my students), drinking more wine than i have ever consumed in a three-week period, spending christmas in the queen of christian countries with ron and robyn, paying homage to gelato, espresso, pizza and tiramisu in their respective birth places, playing the role of a fabulous, fashion-conscience smoking italian (despite D.A.R.E., cigarette smoking is still a hint of sexxy to me), brushing my teeth with tap water (a constant joy when available) and drinking from the fresh springs on the streets of rome... there's too many causes to try to relate my love for italy to a set of specific factors, kind of like the complexity of trying to decipher exact causes of typhoid in india.

roma:

the pre-christmas shopping craze hit rome like a load of bricks. on sunday we braved the spanish steps area (the trendiest of trendy, where louis vuitton and prada rub shoulders and nothing is less than 300 euro) and the toy show in the nearby plaza. it is of course impossible to explain the splendor and enormity of st. peter's basilica and the colleseum, the sistine chapel (which i illegally took a photo of), the school of athens!!!, my favorite mural, the pieta my favorite piece of art, eating mcdonalds overlooking the pantheon and listening to street performers, strolling through the galleria borghese (the most remarkable museum space i have ever seen), the huge park in rome, watching pizzas spinning through the air, eating in streetside cafes...

firenze:

i loved florence, and not just because it is home to perche no! the finest gelateria in el mundo. there was something about the river, the winding lanes, the lofted hotel room that i would happily live in for the rest of my days, the boutiques and christmas spirit. i spent a night wandering the streets alone, amongst the chrismas shoppers, imagining the days when florence was a cultural capital and trading center of the renaissance with the medicis strolling the streets and the artists milling around the streets. there is something about walking the streets solo, intention and awareness heightened, the anonymity and self-reliance of navigating a foreign city with minimal fluency alone. somehow, these moments are the moments that make me feel the most alive. the most in touch with being a human, the most aware that i am magnificently alone in the world, with all the accompanying wonder and fear. it's moments and evenings like these that clarify why i love traveling. in short (which will be espoused upon later), travel is my religion, the time i feel most in touch with humanity, the height of my faith in others and the most aware of the beauty around me.

venice:
there is a part of magnolia where the quiz kid is watching frogs fall from the sky like raindrops and he comments, “this is something that happens.” i am convinced that if more children knew that water taxis existed, the population of venice would quadruple. on new year’s eve my dad and i went to a concert in san marco plaza and then the three humms watched the best-fireworks-we-have-ever-seen-including-all-of-the-big-pine-lake-shows-combined over the grand canal with an Italian family who insisted we share their champagne (as the americans only had beer). an incredible fish market with gigantic fish (only to be rivaled by that in goa), winding, romantic lanes circumnavigating the canal system, accordion players and gondola drivers, the peggy guggenheim museum of modern art (a welcome change from the renaissance period), the best tiramisu ever, a jazz scene… what more? the first night sans robyn and ron i went to barocca jazz and, needless to say, went home minus one bra. if you leave a bra, you receive a tank top “i left my bra at barocca jazz” (how could i turn that down?) see the one hanging on the bellini (a delicious Italian drink) sign? that’s mine. what can i say, must be quite a catch to get the prime spot…

milan, bergamo and lake como

when does the highlights reel end, you may ask? never. seeing elizabeth speaking italian and showing me around her hometown was enough to send me right over the edge of infatuation with italy. we caught up like it had been not months but moments since we last met, drinking coffee, navigating the streets, taking in the culinary delights, getting piercings, going on a hottt date in lake como—complete with italian shoe shopping, carousel and ferris wheel riding and a meal in a restaurant-so-trendy-that-though-we-are-trendy-women-we-stuck-out-and-garnered-stares-all-around.
being with elizabeth can be summarized in one antecdote, each time we found ourselves in public, we had to mute our boisterous laughter so that tears would pour down our mute faces because we were drawing so much attention from our excitement of togetherness.

there is nothing cuter in the world than small children speaking italian (and french)—it sounds like they’re singing. for this reason, italian and french children have begun approaching the cuteness factor of asian babies in my eyes. those epicanthic folds still get me, though. what can i say? an ethrocentric betty, i suppose.

other highlights had little to do with the setting. movie-watching wine-drinking chips-eating nights in the hotel room, taking in the best of the humm family christmas selection, dancing to music videos each morning on mtv, reverting to the spoiled only child role of comfort... and, of course, christmas with family for the first time in three years... making a place i love in theory a home in reality via experience and family.

ash and isaac, this blog is dedicated to you. you asked for more, and here it is. also, if you don't write a comment, i will cut you the next time i see you. seriously.