Pizza Pisa, you'll lean over 3.99 degrees for our Pisa Pies.

I was going to take the picture of me propping up the tower.  Really I was, but there were two good spots to take it from and about 30 people standing around with their hands in the air.  Ah well.  I preferred this angle anyways, with the leaning tower peeking over the shoulder of the cathedral.  I was certainly not expecting how beautiful the tower was in person.  Our whole lives the world outside of Italy has been shown and taught that Italian marble is truly fine and distinguished, but here and now it's nearly tripped over.  My hostel in Rome was quite modest in construction and aesthetic, and even it had a marble staircase.  The charm isn't lost on me yet, although the occasional statue in bronze catches my eye as a result of the variety.

After all that I've seen and places I've been, I feel like I could turn in a thesis and receive an honorary art history degree.  The Vatican Museums were a who's who of Renaissance artists, but it was their small contemporary art section that I enjoyed the most.  The subject matter is almost all Christian iconography, but the more modern pieces really caught me by surprise, particularly a Dali, an Orozco, and a Van Gogh.  The modern section is near the very end of the Vatican Museums tour path, with the Sistine Chapel as the last stop, so most visitors are on overload and fast forward by the time they reach them.  The Sistine Chapel was nice, but everyone has already seen the principle images in greater detail than looking up at a dimly lit ceiling 30' overhead.  I will probably remember the experience more for the bare shoulder police, pointing menacingly at the harlot tourist women with too thin of shoulder straps on their dresses and occasionally shushing everyone.

 

If I make the effort I tend to find wonderful other guests at the hostels.  Sometimes though, they just fall into my lap.  Mary in the middle mistook me for Jonathan, but I was happy to substitute.  She had come to the hostel on his recommendation but that rascal had split in the meantime.  Tosha on the other hand, was sleeping in the bed next to mine and we had spoke several times, but on the day this photo was taken Mary and I ran into him in the middle of Rome.  We had the time of our lives together.