Happy birthday to Snookums, who turns 27 today. Man, we’re gettin’ old.

This is the restaurant I’m taking Rodd to tomorrow for his birthday. Shhh! It’s a surprise.

New poll: What’s your dream vacation?

I saw Down With Love on the flight home and I absolutely loved it. Snookums refused as he thought it was going to be some cheesy girly romance (though afterwards I tried to get him to watch it on repeat). It’s really funny and if you have any sort of crush on Ewan McGregor at all, you must go. The single line “Why do you mourn, baby?” even managed to erase what little ill will I had towards the film because of Renee Zellweger’s involvement.

We’re back. Jet lagged. Sunburnt. Frickin’ freezing, Mr. Bigglesworth. (Going from the height of summer to the depths of winter is never as fun as you think it’s going to be.)

Oh yeah, CouchCam’s back too. We hung the sarong up over the window while we were gone so would-be thieves couldn’t peek in and see all our lovely Buffy DVDs waiting to be pilfered. I kinda like it.

More in twelve hours or so when I can think coherently…

Singapore airport is a friggin’ palace. Free Internet, lovely cactus garden, air conditioning… I could live here. Anyway, yeah, we’re on our way home. Twelve hours of flying down, only eight more to go!

Here’s a useful tip for travelling, kids: Book hotels before you go. The Snook and I (in our usual fashion) waited til the last minute to schedule anything on this Italy trip. We’ve been lucky so far and we’ve only had one bad place, but our lack of planning has finally bitten us on our collective ass. We were supposed to go to Naples today and spend three days exploring Herculaneum and Capri, but unfortunately we just could not find a damn hotel room. Hence we’re in Rome for another night and we had to spend half of today calling all over the country looking for a room. We’re finally booked, but it was a pain that we should have avoided. Just think of that in the future…

Arrivederci, Florence… Hello, Rome!
The Snook and I now find ourselves in the Eternal City. Unfortunately I haven’t seen any of the quintessential Rome movies (Roman Holiday, La Dolce Vita), so I’ve been reduced to saying things like “Hey, that’s where the Griswolds got their video camera stolen!” every five minutes.

But my cultural ignorance aside, Rome is a lovely place. On our first day we visited the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps. St. Peter’s was definitely my favorite place, and I think it may be my favorite church ever. It’s full of beautiful paintings and statues and mosaics, but it doesn’t look gaudy and everything is just the right scale and position. I didn’t even mind that the stupid guard made me put a skirt on. (Shorts are evidently not quite holy enough, but I’d brought a skirt for such a case. I wasn’t about to walk around in two layers though, so I have the distinct honor of taking my pants off in the Vatican.) We finished our first day at a Roman steakhouse where the Snook and I both consumed the biggest hunks of cow we’d every seen in our lives. When in Rome, I guess…

Today we hit the Colosseum first thing in the morning to try to beat the crowds. Unfortuately our strategy failed, as the line was still half an hour long. A nice man sold me twenty postcards for a euro though so I stood in line writing them out to everybody I had addresses for (which wasn’t a lot, since I forgot to update iPod with them before I left). If you want one, drop me an e-mail with your address. (Especially Brigita and Tricia, as I had addresses for you but I wasn’t sure if they were correct.) Less than a week to go!

The unforeseen perils of backpacking in Europe…
Me: Hey, Snook, can you grab me one of those towels in the bathroom? I wanna take it along on our day trip in case we get sweaty.
Him: Which ones?
Me: You know… The little hand towels hanging above the bidet.
Him: You mean the ass towels??
Me: Ass towels? No, I mean the little hand towel right above the– Oh my god! They are ass towels! I took one yesterday and wiped my face with it! You didn’t use any of them on your ass, did you?
Him: No! Did you?
Me: No! (pause) Okay then.

Milan, Cinque Terra, Florence…
All in the space of 72 hours. Milan was actually pretty nice and the Snook and I had a great time climbing up on the roof of their huge cathedral. We had been worried about our hotel, which was disturbingly cheap for the area and season. We solved the mystery in the morning when a jackhammer woke us up at 8 am. No worries though; we needed to get up early anyway.

Our bad hotel karma was not over yet. We headed to La Spezia which is on the northwestern coast of Italy, just down from Genoa. The Snook had never been to the Cinque Terra and this seemed like a good base for exploration. The Cinque Terra (“five lands”) are five tiny villages perched high up on cliffs overlooking the sea. They were gorgeous and lovely and fun. Our hotel, however, was not. No air conditioning, no ceiling fan, and it was about eighty degrees in there all night. Finally the Snook decided to accept the inevitable mosquito bites and throw open the window, only to discover that the noise from the street below was so loud we couldn’t sleep. That was definitely the low point of the trip. Everybody needs at least one bad backpacking trip though, right? So we shrugged it off and headed on to Florence, city of my Room With a View fantasies…

Well, the fantasy didn’t last long. I stepped out of the train station ready for my first sight of the ultimate Renaissance city only to see an old dirty homeless man having a wank on a nearby bench. (I’m still shuddering.) We seem to have passed through hell though and our luck has only gotten better. Our room here in Florence is actually supposed to be for four so it’s huge! We’ve got AC too, which is a blessing. We spent our first day today wandering through the Uffizi (big art gallery) looking at Botticellis and Michelangelos. Then we had a tour through the Duomo and walked across the Arno on the Ponte Vecchio. It was so beautiful. Old scary homeless men aside, this could be my favorite place yet. It’s got all the modern conveniences of Milan combined with the cobbled streets and oldy-worldy charm of Venice. I like it very much indeed.

So that’s us so far. I’ve got the worst farmer’s tan of my life and my feet are killing me, but I’m having a great time. The Snook and I have settled into the backpacking routine and are making more of an effort not to irritate each other. (To paraphrase my mother, “nobody can spend five weeks together 24-7 and not want to kill each other”.) Only ten days left!