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We arrived back in Edinburgh safe and sound yesterday afternoon. We had a great couple of weeks seeing the sites and hanging out with Ashley’s parents. I dropped off 10 (yes, 10!) rolls of film to be printed yesterday. I won’t post them all, don’t worry.

Here are some highlights from the trip.

Rome is a great city. The Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s were cool, and kinda strange at the same time. My favourite painting at the Vatican Museum is Rafael’s School of Athens. I like the architecture of St. Peter’s, but I can’t get over the fact that it was built with money raised from the sale of indulgences. We went to all the other standard Rome sites; I think my favourite was the Trevi Fountain. I have a new appreciation for the Baroque style and Bernini. The food was amazing, I’d go back just to eat. We also saw this really cool statue in Rome:

After 3 days in Rome we got on the cruise ship and were pampered for the next week. The Cinque Terre was incredibly cool, and I want to go back. I got a new pair of sunglasses in Corsica. We went to Napolean’s house on Elba (not a bad place to be exiled, I must say). We rubbed elbows with some really rich folks in Portofino and St. Tropez (where we also experienced my mad moped skills).

Monte Carlo deserves a paragraph of its own. What a strangely intriguing place. I have more questions than answers. For example: Why is this place so rich? What’s the difference between a country and a principality? Why is it ruled by a prince instead of a king? I think these are legitimate questions. I read an entire book on Monaco and have no answers. I’ll have to spend some time with Google.
Anyway, we went to Casino Royale and didn’t lose too much money. This place was completely unlike a Vegas casino. It’s small (probably only 15 tables at the most) and filled with people who can actually afford to lose all the money that they are betting. Playing roulette required a knowledge of French that surpassed my ability (which is non-existent) and the two blackjack tables had minimums of 25 and 200 Euros, so we didn’t play. Just to get the full James Bond experience we had martinis, but they were so expensive that we had to share 2 between the 4 of us. All in all, Monaco/Monte Carlo is an interesting place that I probably wouldn’t feel the need to revisit were it no so strangely mysterious.

We got of the ship in Nice in the pouring rain. Our day of trying to see some sights was made difficult not only b/c of the rain, but also b/c nothing’s open on Sunday. I have no idea why nothing is open on Sunday, it’s not like everyone’s at church–it’s France!. Weird.

After a couple hours of flights and a sprint through the airport in London we made it home yesterday afternoon, but our bags didn’t join us until this morning. I’ve read all the spam I received while away and Ash has started the laundry. Carolyn is staying with us for about a week, which will be fun.

That’s about it. For now it’s back to the land of dodgy weather and poor customer service. I’ll have a few more highlight pictures up in a few days.

This entry was posted by Bryce on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005 at 1:01 pm. This entry was tagged with travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.