i want a gondola for christmas

There really should exist some human law that requires every single person to visit Venice at least once in their life. From the moment I stepped foot outside the train station and into this otherworldly city I was completely mesmerized. Venice is absolutely enchanting, and I have yet to see anything at all like it. My experience there was entirely ethereal and everything looked like it was taken from some sort of picture book or dream of heaven. Yes, of course there were other tourists, but even that couldn’t take away from my time there. I have way too many pictures so please know that the following only represent a small portion of everything that I have and do absolutely no justice to Venice’s beauty.

me on the traghetto, aka the water taxi. that's right. WATER TAXI. venice is the shiz.

from the top of the campanilo. this is where i noticed the piece of fuzz in my camera. it sucked. it's on the inside and it won't go away. can someone please send me a new camera? come on, do you really want pictures like this ruined in the future?

eating lunch alongside the canal.

i took this picture because i love the yellow of the building.

unbeknownst to me, jessica took a series of candid shots. i thought they were funny so i posted them. this one pretty much reflects my constant state of awe while in venice.

my maniachal laugh.

i waved and called out to just about everybody from the gondola. it was like i was on the cool ride at disneyland and wanted everyone to know it.

our AWESOME gondolier. he really was fabulous. he sang for us and he even taught me one of his songs.

i took many a picture of him, mostly because my camera is old, decrepit, and dysfunctional. and it has a piece of fuzz in it.

me and my new man. he and his "capitano" thought i looked like manuela arcuri. i'll admit, she's pretty hot, but manuela being compared to me? that lucky bitch definitely got the better end of the deal.

for your amusement

although, i don't think the last two are all that shabby. that's right. i'm getting better fools.

the infamous lion/snake/antelope picture. laugh it up.

these next two i did at the photography museum. i had about 15 minutes for each, and in all honesty, i'm quite impressed with my ability to turn these out under an extreme time crunch and low lighting conditions. i got skillz. they're not finished yet, but i'll probably never get around to it because i'm too lazy.

yes, i know it looks like my shading got a little out of control on this one, but this is a picture of a miner, and he was supposed to be dirty.

a lady wearing some sort of cloak thing. more unfinished than the last, but you get the general idea.

i will never eat chocolate again

When I heard the words “Europe’s largest chocolate festival”, I knew that this was the place for me. So I set a whole day aside to go check out this chocolate extravaganza - you know, just to make sure these guys were truly worthy of this self-proclaimed reputation (mine are the only standards that matter) - and fasted for three days so that I might gorge myself with as much chocolate as humanly possible. I joke only about the former part of that last clause. When I disembarked from the train in Perugia with several of my friends, the city appeared to be in a state of sheer chaos. Cacao, or the prospect of it at least, has a way of driving people mad, and I was no exception to this rule. I quickly tore through the crowds, weaving in and out of less important people, dodging giant bodies that didn’t need the chocolate as much as I did, and throwing little old ladies to the outskirts of the mob. And somehow along the way, Jessica and I managed to get entirely separated from our group of 150 people on the Florence for Fun tour and miss our bus. Nice goin guys. Yet driven entirely by instinct, we quickly hopped on to the next bus we saw and prayed that it might take us towards the chocolate. It was only when I saw the reflection of the bus in a store window that I was able to make out the fact that we were headed in the right direction. And lo and behold, we jumped right off the bus and into the welcoming arms of our four other friends not 15 minutes later. (That whole episode was quite strange, to be honest.) The day began with me downing an entire box of Choco Vitamins. I have a feeling I was supposed to space those out over several days, but I was pumped about getting the Chocofest started and this happened to be my very first “choco” for the day. Alright, I’m gonna stop with all the chocolate puns right now because this is getting old even for me. Trust that they’re still here in spirit. Now I’m just going to tell you now that this festival was not quite what I had expected. There were no chocolate eating contests (I would have dominated), over-the-top chocolate sculptures, or even chocolate wrestling tournaments. The large part of the fair was made up of booths for different companies to hawk their chocolate wares. The eating insane amounts of chocolate part came in with all the free samples. And the other ways in which we were able to work the chocolate system… (I’m doing it again, I apologize.)

Our first stop was this underground network type thing in Perugia. First we visited a chocolate exhibition. Boring. Who wants to shuffle like a bunch of idiots through a little educational tour on chocolate? That’s right – losers. I was there to experience my first heart attack, so Jessica, Erica, and I quickly bailed and found the hot chocolate stand. But as luck would have it, they had just run out, and had to make a new batch. They still had a bunch of the Cioccolato Caldo Pepperoncino – Spicy Hot Chocolate – something which I just wasn’t feeling right then. Something which I’ll probably never feel. So we literally stood around waiting for this freakin hot chocolate juice to get hot for a good half hour. The lady kept telling us “5 more minutes”, and we eventually reached the point where to give up on waiting for the stuff would have been to undermine our entire time standing there thus far. I’m not going into the outcome of this little incident, because all that need be said is that the stuff was completely unworthy. We were far less than pleased. Our next stop was the “Lindt Snap!” stand, the point of this activity being to put on a blind fold and try chocolate in the dark to heighten your other senses to the chocolate experience. They even gave us canes to use in the dark, but the bastards wouldn’t let us keep them afterwards. And unfortunately, they gave us terrible directions; whereas we thought that we were supposed to pick up the different types of chocolate at various points along the hallway and enter a room to conduct the taste test at the end, we were actually supposed to have tasted the chocolate along the way. Unfortunately for those Lindt people, we all stuffed our bags with as much of their delicious chocolate as we could carry. So it was fine.

Next we decided to step into the light of day, where we continued to collect even more free chocolate with our special Eurochocolate cards (one of the perks of the FFF group), see the world’s largest chocolate bar – 11 meters squared – and pretend we were interested clients at each of the booths so that the people working them might give us more free chocolate. We also got free Coke Zero (this Coke promo is everywhere in Italy, by the way), iced tea, and bottles of brandy. Sadly, Erica peaked early in the day and had to cut herself off from the chocolate festivities. Jessica and I, however, forged on. We visited more stands, went through a little chocolate mini-tour, and made some new friends. I bonded with two Perugian boys in the early afternoon by letting them listen to awesome songs on my iPod. The event unfolded after they asked me some question about Guns ‘N Roses, after which I had them listening to some more epic bands. They should have known that they had opened the floodgates with me when it came to music. And I should have known that I too had opened the floodgates by naively befriending two young Italian gentlemen. After considerable efforts, we were finally able to part ways, shortly after which Jessica had to throw in the towel with all this chocolate business. My friends were dropping like flies. The true champ (me) proceeded to guzzle down another cup of hot chocolate - white hot chocolate this time - work the booths for yet more free samples, try some chocolate covered churos, take a spin on the merry-go-round, and join a chocolate choir, because apparently it reached the point where I had to sing for my goods.

I’ll stop narrating and post the pics.

Erica on the train to Perugia right before she passed out.



Jessica, Anna, Paige, and Natalie.



Erica and I pissed off at the hot chocolate stand because it took so damn long.



me and my free stuff.



crowds in perugia. my favorite part of this picture has to be the guy wearing the "playboy" shirt.



the chocolate started getting to our heads.



example of a chocolate booth.



example of another chocolate booth.



the mad hatter.



she took the chocolate pretty hard.



we are god.



ok, now we are really god.



the guy in the background would not stop taking pictures of himself. i tried to get one of him standing up holding the camera low and taking one up at his blue steel face, but i couldn't bust the camera out quick enough. i guess i'm giving him too much in posting him online, but oh well. you had to see what a dick he was.



"dammi, oh bello, il tuo cioccolatino." these are the words i sang in my choir of fellow chocolate lovers.



erica got caught up in a crowd of people jumping for pieces of chocolate. this was after she had gotten hit in the face by an old lady with a bag of oranges.



almost sickeningly beautiful.



the magic of the merry-go-round just never died for me.



this is what the sun looks like when it sets on chocolate.

the leaves are changing their colors

Right now autumn has displaced itself from my home city to my new one. The way the walls of this house give into the gusts of wind, the sunlight streaming in through the windows, and the somewhat archaic character of my room all serve to remind me of different aspects of home. Aspects that seem to converge and trick me into believing that this won’t be the third year in a row that I’ve skipped out on a beautiful fall season in Colorado. I wouldn’t call it homesickness necessarily, as I’m grateful for every second I spend in this gorgeous part of the world, but it’s times such as these that call to mind the ever-present tension in my mind – one between exploring outside the familiar bounds of everything that’s safe and familiar in order to discover all of the splendor that exists elsewhere in this vast world, and that of basking in the intimate beauty of home which is so nostalgically dear to me. This, indeed, is reminiscent of one of my main anxieties in life, one which has been compounded by my stay in this dazzling city. Every time I dwell on something beautiful, touch something ancient, or traverse any single square inch of Florence, I wonder if it’s the last time I’ll ever have that opportunity. This presents in itself a finality which I’m reluctant to accept, and which scares me to no end. Yet I know that unless I’m willing to keep moving forward that I’ll inevitably miss out on so much more. It’s as though the world almost offers too much magnificence for me to ever take in, and yet it is this reality which is wonderful in and of itself. If I could somehow stretch each moment of my life into its own small forever, only then could I compromise my desires to both engross myself in all of the treasures I’ve encountered to date and uncover the new ones.

you've seen one garden, you've seen 'em all

Now I’m not trying to rip on the Boboli Gardens – they’re very beautiful and all – but I felt as though a montage of flower and tree pictures might get a little monotonous after a while. So I have compiled a series of photographs entitled “Posing at the Boboli Gardens,” starring none other than yours truly. I realize my title screams “poser,” but at least I’m being upfront about it. Seriously though, how often is it that you get to look at a bunch of pictures of me amidst the beauty of nature? And I’ll even venture to claim that it is perhaps my lovely self that is all the more aesthetically pleasing than one predictable cross-section of God’s Green Earth. Am I right…am I right? Yes I am. So consider yourselves lucky.