The Book of Sifty

Venice to London 4:39AM

Crap. That last entry was six days ago.

Well after the last entry I did a tour of the Vatican, saw the Sistene chapel and St Peters. Sistene chapel was pretty cool. I knew that it had been cleaned and restored in the 90s, but didn't realize that Nippon, a Japanese corporation, had paid for it. They did this in exchange for the exclusive photographic rights for at least ten years. Which explains why I was blown away by the incredible colours Michael Angelo used, since all the photos I'd seen previously would have been prior to its cleaning, when it was all very dark with all the layers of varnish and things that had been put over it to preserve it.

Next day it was off to Siena, cool medieval town in the Tuscany countryside, then Florence, a day trip out a cool village in the Tuscan hills and some more renaissance art at the Uffuzi gallery.

Yesterday Marcus slept in, and I bailed with this American dude, Ty, to Venice. Very cool, got totally lost in the windy maze of back streets and alleys there. But the place was crawling with tourists, and people trying to sell fake designer handbags and other crap to the tourists, which after the inital buzz of seeing Venice in person, kind of wore thin pretty quick. Still it only took a couple of blocks of walking away from the tourists to find deserted back streets and narrow little canals running between beautiful buildings. Met up with Marcus at the airport and had a couple of cold beers waiting for the plane, which was a mere hour and a half late. Got back into the flat at 4am, after a coach ride and night bus mission across London.

So there's a super quick summary. More later maybe as I remember cool incidents. Was quite blown by how many American people there were, they seemed to out number every body else 10 to 1.