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Diva is Flowers McFluffyblossom:
As I know so little about travelling and want to do more of it, I want to gather as much info as I can. For those that care to idulge my curiosities, please list the top three places you visited and why. |
Ah, that would be Rome, Rome, and Rome.
In the first place, Rome's basically an architectural representation of the entire history of Western civilisation. Even just walking down the average street (well, average for Rome) you can see the Roman foundations, the medieval walls of the buildings, and their modern upper stories and roofs. So you have this kind of weird mirage of about 2,500 years of history going on simultaneously, from the ground up.
The Ancient (and modern) Romans are fascinating anyway. In a lot of ways they are very foreign to our sensibilities, with their relentlessly cruel arenas and ruthless expansionism. On the other hand, they all lived in apartment blocks, bitched about taxes, landlords, and who was going to win the chariot races, and pretty much every modern con and swindle was already taking place there. They're also really like us - sometimes, when contemplating the past, it's so hard to get into people's heads, and archaeologically speaking, you kind of despair sometimes. But a city like Rome gives a person hope that people really weren't all that different so long ago.
It's spiritually interesting - it gets you thinking. I did the Catacombs and the Vatican in the same day and the Catacombs, with their hopeless, illogical, persecuted yet egalitarian and persistent ecstatic religion seems miles away from the kind of edifice the Vatican is, filled with the appurtenances of wealth and power. Yet they are on a continuum, if you let loose and see it.
It's full of beautiful buildings, works of art, amazing lightning storms over ruined villas... but it is also the height of modern chic. I've never been anywhere where at rush hour, people didn't hurry about like lunatics but just stood in the street and chatted to one another... and to me. The ice cream is fantastic. The weather is nice. The cops are too busy posing on their Vespas with slicked back hair and designer sunglasses to pursue any actual crime - in fact I got some black market lira at the cop shop after the banks had closed, being directed there by a guy that seemed to spend the whole day just standing around, talking to chicks. The whole thing has this kind of faintly corrupt, sprawling, gracious... I don't know. It's my favourite city.
That said, Jerusalem is also worth checking out. It's beautiful, and powerful, and I've never seen so many extreme reactions in one place. Someone back-ended someone with a car and they were ready to kill one another. The guy running the hostel I was staying at called himself a Level Seven higher power and dressed in blue Jesus robes on his day off. I saw people sing in tongues, cry on Mary's tomb and scrub it with their hair, and talk about how this bus got bombed in front of them and they had to wipe blood and bone off their windshield. Walking through all of these holy sites, every one is contested and somebody thinks you shouldn't be there ( who it is and why depends on many things, including who you look like) and practically everywhere there is somebody trying to touch your arse. There's a hotel called the American Colony where you can order gin and tonic and live it up in Colonial style. The bars were also fun, but catching the buses was to take your life into your own hands.
Jerusalem (esp. the Old City) is like the world's collective nervous breakdown.
And Dan's right - Prague also rocks. There is a 360 degree cityscape visible from St. Charles Bridge which rocks the house, actually. One night we were walking through, and a chick in a fur coat got out of a limo (door held open by a driver) and sang arias on a street corner. The street fell silent, rivetted. And then she got back in the car and the driver drove her away. Cold city. But great cheap bars and all of the absinthe you can drink - for the longest time it was the only place in Europe you could get absinthe. I saw visions. So did one of the tutors accompanying us (he saw a panda in the front seat of a Lada). Cold, though. Full of icy winds, even in Spring. The food wasn't fantastic, but welcome to Europe.
They were all definitely worth a go, and possibly more than one.
