Oh dear sweet jesus christ in stilettos!

The ominous foreshadowing picture! My teeeeeth! So I managed to keep alive for all this time, contrary to what my one or two readers thought! Barely! Ahem, I went to London with the girls for a Harry Potter pilgrimage. At Kings Cross station, there is a brick wall labeled Platform 9 3/4 with half a trolley sticking out, for us lunatics,...er, fangirls! In our infinite wisdom, we decided to run into the brick wall, like we missed the Hogwarts Express- oh no! Amanda was smart enough to stop...I'm not, alright! Face meets said brick wall, half a front tooth makes it through to Hogwarts, the rest of me no! Not in this picture- this was taken minutes before! So it was the weekend, no dentists answer the phone (heh, I typed dentits first), so I must wait two days before I can go to the Dental Casualty ward at Guy's Hospital (thanks! You rock!). Surprisingly, there was no mayhem, no wailing people holding their bloody mouths, no sad people with broken wands and missing teeth too (we have a special ward for people like you....no, this didn't happen either :( ). Two days of looking like a battered wife! Anyways, the British dentist had only one colour tooth filling, so I have half a yellow British tooth! Alright!

Taken that very night...dress bought at Primark shopping therapy clinic- note the scab above my top lip. I had to take all my food in straw form, or shove it straight to the back teeth! I still can't eat bread! No bagels- that's impossible!

More happines vacation pics, though





That Sunday, while I still looked like a hillbilly/battered wife, we pilgrimaged down to Oxford for more Harry Potter goodness! Christ Church College, Oxford.

Fetish?

Everything in Florence is fabulous, including the porta-potties!

(That's the Museum of the History of Science, not the Museum of the Story of Science. Easy mistake). Of course I walked around it, and the Birth of Venus is fabulously wrapped around all sides. Fantastic! Fabulous!

Hilariously, this also functions as an ad for the Uffizi Gallery, just seconds down the road, which houses the Birth of Venus (it's super amazing up close. I had the gawker's mouth). Here are some pictures of the surrounding area, since I also realized there aren't actually pictures of Florence here (damn! I shall rememdy that!):

Ponte Vecchio(!!!), Arno River, Uffizi Gallery (grey and white building)

More typical Florentine buildings, on the other side of the river

Further down the river- the monestary San Miniato. Don't let the greenery fool you: one has to make an effort to see anything green in Florence. That depressed me for quite awhile.

Now to ruin everyone's fun- behold, the 2 foot GIANT RAT (or Nutria) that lives in Florence's sewers:

First imported to Italy from South America for their fur (!!!), they now eat rice crops and are considered a nuisance species. Idiots throw food for them from the Ponte Vecchio, much like idiots bend down and feed the feathered counterparts, the pigeon. NOOOOOOOooooooOOOOO!

The Severed Heads of Siena

Mi dispiace! I'm sorry! I've been busy doing unfun school things , but I have sacrificed some spare time to record my bumblings! I managed not to do anything stupid in Siena, though, so you'll just have to enjoy the heads! Yes, the medieval city of Siena, Tuscany, has buildings covered in heads, and I can't find out why, but I can make up reasons if you wish.

Wha? You wanted real severed heads, did you? Aww, did you think I would disappoint?

St. Catherine of Siena. Dominican nun. Slept in a 3x9 foot cell, whipped herself with an iron chain three times a day, wore a hair shirt until she replaced it with an iron-spiked girdle. Had many divine revelations, including visions of heaven, hell, and purgatory, wore an invisible ring Jesus placed on her had, tried to reform the church, got stigmata, and now the overly dramatic Catholic Encyclopedia's rendering of her death:

"Her strength was rapidly being consumed; she besought her Divine Bridegroom to let her bear the punishment for all the sins of the world, and to receive the sacrifice of her body for the unity and renovation of the Church; at last it seemed to her that the Bark of Peter was laid upon her shoulders, and that it was crushing her to death with its weight. After a prolonged and mysterious agony of three months, endured by her with supreme exultation and delight, ...she died"

Her thumb is on display too!

Her chain whip is also on display! Most of her body is in Rome, and her left foot is in Venice. The removal of saint's bodies from their tombs, pulling them apart, and distributing them to reliquaries and churches is called "translation".

Lest you think I'm misleading you, all these Tuscan churches are filled with cranky Italian caretakers (cryptkeepers? Yes, they do look like him!) who will explode if they smell a camera. So most of these photos are stolen! Better shots, anyways. I need to get a quiet camera for more sneakery.


The Museo Dell'Opera also has a roomful of relics, and unfortunately, an angry Tuscan guard-man. I absolutely adore this skull; whom it belonged to, we'll never know...

The museo is crammed full of Duccio and his awesomeness, priests' robes, manuscripts, choir books, and ruins! Ruins! I hate that my old school camera decided to run out its batteries, but Siena decided to build a mighty cathedral, to upstage Florence, and failed miserably, because it was too big, couldn't be held up with the weeny supports they built, and the plague was a bother too. Incidentally, I believe we have a plague rat running around our apartment. Only my roommate has seen it, and she calls it a "mouse", but that's just to make us feel better: 50% of Florence was wiped out in the plague! Get ready for round...5?

Here is the cathedral that didn't fail! One of the finest examples of Italian Gothic style! Covered in marble, fresoes, life-sized statues (controversial, back in the 13th century! These marble people will eat us all!)- I felt it needed its own picture. Way better than our own gaudy Duomo in Florence! Nice one, Brunelleschi! (his redeeming dead babies? Coming soon!)

Ooooooooooooooooooooo!

What I really adored, though, was the inside! This time, there are too many tourists for grumpy old Italian men to yell at! Snap away! This one I really did take- note the zebra striped walls, lines of heads, and best of all, the gold stars on the blue sky ceiling...

Then the camera sputtered its last breath. RIP, Duracell batteries! The cathedral also has a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and it's absolutely covered in motorcycle helmets, because these are the people whom she helped. Imagine them paying the fee and staggering over with their concussions. Also on the shrine: diplomas, rings, IV lines?, thank you cards. She also helped Siena win a battle agianst Florence. I smell favouritism!

Now some general pics of the town. Siena is built on a million hills, swoops and curves ominously, and all the buildings can not be on one plane, so it looks jumbly, like a Dr. Seuss town, if he lived in medieval times

This last one I climed up a tower to take, and I would have got more if my camera weren't on life support. Beyond the town are the rolling green hills of Tuscany, just like in the movies. I'll get some pics of those tomorrow. Ciao!

Steve vs. Michelangelo's David

David wins! Steve does have an unearthly glow about him though...

A french lady growled at me for taking this pic, and Steve's brand new aunt-type person (he loves her ovaries) was ready to throw down! Go illicit picture taking! Woot! Then there is the requisite gushing about this statue, which I will save you from, but which will burst forth one day...go see it or you have lived a cold, empty life...

boring grammar post- I was wrong!

Shortums, for right now. Now that I know slightly more about possessive adjectives, "Mia prima sugo di pasta" is now "Le mio primo sugo di pasta". Sorry for any mind bending this might have caused. Also, I'm goddamned sick of eating pasta. Look below for fun corpses!

The Leaning Tower Didn't Fall On Me Today! Also: corpses

Steve just had to take a stupid tourist picture of himself holding up the tower- I believe it's a requirement, and the Consorzio Turistico Area Pisana will hunt you down and throw you off that very tower you have disgraced...

...so I was forced into the tourist pics! Molested too, as you can see ;)

I'm supposed to be leaning against the tower to hold it up...



















...instead, it backfired! I've already complained about being a perma-zombie, but now it's true! I am actually undead! Though I can't prove it, as it looks like I am far away and can easily run to safety!




















As you can see, Pisa comes with it's own all-seeing DUOMO! It is very charming and laid back, though, and oval, and blue, which might just make it the Anti-Duomo...


There is a long gothic cemetery behind the first Duomo (not the Anti-Duomo, but it is a really fun bapistry) called the Camposanto; it's long, made of marble, and has many wonderfully elaborate tombs, like this really hot one which I'm going to get made for me...



Ignore the hipster guy- we can't get rid of the hipsters, but maybe we can shun them to an island somewhere...


The cemetery also contains the wonderful fresco the Triumph of Death; all my pistures look like a faded wreck, but even you un-morbid types should look at it! Death is this crazy flying green women, middle-rightish, there are three coffins bottom left corner (skeleton, fresh bloated corpse, lovely regular corpse), there are soul tug-of-wars between demons and angels, there are torches...oh, I promised you some real corpses...right-o! I shall provide...




St. Bartholomew's Mummified Hand
Quick and morbid art history lesson! Christian relics-an object, especially a piece of the body or a personal item of someone of religious significance, carefully preserved with an air of veneration as a tangible memorial. This is a first-class relic because it's the body part of a martyr. Xians used to follow the pilgrimage trail back in the middle ages, visiting martyr body parts and buying souveniers, much like we today follow the Disneyland trail, or I made a Beatles pilgrimage a while back (so much crap I own!). Ye olde ancient fanny packs!








St. Bartholomew was one of the twelve apostles, and he was flayed alive and crucified upside down. I couldn't actually find why he was martyred, though. This Body Worlds corpse was flayed too!











It is totally OK for us to find this bronze door funny, as the art history professor does too! It was made by Bonnannus for the Cathedral, and it depicts the Massacre of the Innocents quite sillily indeed: there are two babies with their heads lopped off, a mother going NOOOOooooOOOo trying to protect the last one, that guy in the middle is doing his job quite casually, and King Herod is pointing at him. Well done!


We now head over to the quite flamboyant town of Lucca, Tuscany. This place has elicited much swooning among everyone in the world, which just overhyped the place for me. I didn't adore it, but it's pretty wonderful. The centre of town was a Roman ampitheatre, so the rest of the town follows, and it's really circle-y. Now a corpse:
















St. Zita vs. Michael Jackson in a chamber. I've been long condemned to hell anyways. St. Zita has a lovely story where she stole bread from her rich boss to give to the poor, he asked her to empty her apron, and nothing but flowers came out! More importantly, she has not decomposed and is still wearing her skin, unlike poor St. Bartholomew. The locals make a St. Zita cake made out of vegetables, and it tastes like pumpkin pie loaded with cardamon and pine nuts. As Rachel Ray would say, deelish!

The Museo Della Cattedrale also has a relic, this time St. Sebastian's vertebrae! Unfortunately, they had a strict NO FOTOGRAFIA rule, and a crochety old Tuscan man (apparently, there are no shortage of those) enforcing it. So, click on "visita virtuale", click on "piano ammezzato", click on "Sala III", and scroll down. Voila! Also lovely are the John the Baptist heads, right on the "piano terra" page!

And to get all that corpsey taste out of your mouth, here are some terrible pictures of Lucca. The first one is the centre of town, all ampitheatrey. Love the random-sized buildings! The rest of the town looked like a Fellini film, and I didn't manage to capture that at all. Also, Puccini was from here.

My First Pasta Sauce- Mia Prima Sugo di Pasta!!!

Such a sexy picture! Note the wooden spoon- I am now your Italian mama *thwack!* Why don'ta you write your mamma anymore?

Hallelujah! Oh, not really- this blog is to watch me bumble! There was molto cheating on this too- Italians buy a delicious box of odori first. Wha? Che cosa? Tis a bag o' carrots/celery/parsley/and little purple onions, named of course for their strong odours (no garlic! Italians who aren't stocked up with garlic are shot in the piazza!). It is usually (I'm told) tossed in for free when you buy stuff at the market, if they like you enough. Apparently the market people hate me. I'm sure I have that effect on many (*note- market lady threw in a free orange today! Triumph! Markets are off my archnemesis list!). Moving on, I also used a big jar of Bertolli tomato sauce (yes, it's actually Italian- I just assumed it was a scam), some ill-gotten roommate basil, and this fabulous oregano olive oil (condimento aromatizzato all'origano) I bought at the market using my awesome pointing skills!

Note that the stove is gas, and is sometimes way too efficient, though the rest of the time it goes at a leisurely pace- a very Italian way of doing things. Well done, stove!

A family and servants have horrible ghostly visions, but it was just carbon monoxide poisoning! Apparently, it's a common cause of haunted houses. Booooo!

Soooo- sauce verdict?

FAIL! Only my fabulous hair saves this picture! Also, the gigantic thumb. I'm slightly perplexed; everything ever is yummier in Italy- I bet if you chopped up and ate an Italian person, they would taste divine! This time I will not admit incompetence- my pasta sauce at home is faboo *humble*. I blame the Bertolli sauce. My magic pasta sauce hands could not fix that crap in a jar. Such a happy note to leave you on. Of course, I'm trooping on and eating it anyways...because I'm probably at risk for whatever disease ye sailors of olde had (mind out of the gutter, you!).