"when the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that's amore"

my family went to italy last may 17-27. well, ten days on an italian tour? mother of moses, it is tiring. let's enumerate.

we went to the following towns:

viterbo
orvieto
siena
sangimignano
firenze
venice
and of course, roma

am i being pretentious using the real italian names?
hell no!
... well, maybe just a little.
but seriously, i hate it when people mispronounce or misspell names. and that goes for other nouns, too. all words, for that matter.

anyway, moving on. what was it like?

i loved it.
i loved it.
i loved it.
i loved it.

i loved ITALY.

it was mind-blowing. it blew my mind. it was like an orgasm of culture. okay, i could describe it better but well, an orgasm is like the pinnacle of enjoyment, right? that was italy for me.

italy is the one place i wanted to visited that would induce me to promise that as long as i could go to italy, i didn't have to go to any other place outside the philippines for the rest of the 80 years of my life. and since i'm 20 now and that's 100 years in total... well, that's saying a lot because really, how many people live until 100? i'll be lucky if i'm alive at the age of 60.

luckily, i didn't have to make that kind of painful promise and i fully intend to go back next year, backpacking with my best friend of all ages, miki. more on that some other time.

since i haven't found my journal groove yet and i didn't have internet when i went to italy, the succeeding blog entries are about my observations.

so read on, if you're interested.