I’m returning, on a jet plane! I know my precise arrival time… Wow, I’m way to young to know that song…

Anyway, I almost didn’t leave today… though not on purpose. At 5 am, the “suggested” (read: mandatory) checkout time I wasn’t back at the hotel yet. I was a bit late in returning. When I got back to the hotel, I was informed, via a hastily written note, that they left without me.

I threw everything within arms reach into my new suitcase and ran for the nearest exit. I’ll spare you the details of me trying to make my way to the airport, and let you rest assured that I made it just in time to board the flight home.

So, anyway, back on the airplane today. Which means more time travel, and I’m just going to go back to sleep for now.

My iPhone is dead, since I no longer have my crank charger. I’ve read through skymall twice now. Sleeping on planes is not confortable. They should make a bed plane where each seat is a bed. Or we should have taken the trip in a C-130, and then we could have all just done whatever we wanted to in the cargo bay. That’s how I want to travel from now on.

Here’s one last photo from my trip. I don’t remember what it’s a photo of. But it made me smile when I took a picture of it. So that’s good right?

Looking forward to being home soon!

Today we went to see Pompeii. The Italian city, not the coach of the Mighty Ducks.

I don’t know why I get those confused so often, but I do.

For all you foodies out there, here’s a photo of my supper. It’s Calamari and there was a tentacle in it, which made me smile. Until I realized I was suppose to eat it. Then it made me cringe. And squirm. And then I realized that the tentacle was also cringing and squirming. At which point I was no longer very hungry.

Instead of devouring the mostly chopped up tentacle creature I decided, perhaps a more humane action would be to help set it free back into the wild.

This was undoubtedly one of my more disastrous ideas because my feet are in no condition for running and Italians do not take kindly to tourists running through the street with bowls of food while crying and yelling “I’ll save you little buddy! Just hang in there!”

*Sigh*

Today was our last day in Italy. From the looks I’m getting from my companions… well…

So, Pompeii was really interesting. They’ve really cleaned the place up, which is neat, although it would have been certainly more impressive if they could have kept the lava flowing and done evacuation drills and realistic re-enactment’s.

Well, as it’s my last night in Italy I figure I should stay out as late as possible and soak in the culture for a few more hours. I can always sleep on the plane.

Ciao!

I have seen more of Rome today than I have seen in my entire life.

One of my favorite parts was seeing the Colosseum, but I was hoping to see a show there. Turns out it’s closed. Has been for years… like, a lot of years. 1609 years… give or take. I inquired if anyone had thought about opening it back up but it seems unlikely at this time.

This is a photo I took the other day. It’s actually a photo of a photo that someone else took of a painting. Considering I’m working without any lenses here, I think it turned out pretty well.

It’s hard to believe a week has gone past. In some ways, it feels like it’s only been five and a half minutes, but it also feels more like a month. I’m starting to miss home a little bit. I mean, not the food at home… (no offense Mom, but these meals are great.) But hotel beds are mediocre and I’ve been without my laptop for a week now… I have all kinds of projects I want to do, now that I’ve seen all this amazing art.

Okay, so it’s technically not illegal to dress up as the Pope when taking a tour of the Vatican, but it’s apparently slightly frowned upon.

Slightly.

Another thing I learned today is that the Sistine Chapel has nice acoustics. And if you are dressed up as the Pope people will stop and look at you if you raise your voice loud enough.

Also, security is really tight in these parts. Jokes about graffiti are taken quite seriously… even when they come from someone dressed up as the Pope.

That said… I’m pretty sure I got to see some back rooms that most people aren’t allowed to go. Whatever that’s worth.

Bad news. Someone took the roll of toilet paper that I was using for a make-shift avant-garde lens and used it… for… err… non-camera related activities…

Which is quite a shame, because I think I have been taking really good photos so far, and we had some really great sights to see today. Like this one:

It looked a lot better in person.

Also, fun story: I’m in ROME! It’s actually pretty easy to get here because all the roads go this way… (Only heard that joke 50 times today.)

We traveled about 180 km today, fortunately not much of that on foot. For all of you using imperial measurements, 180km is approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes… depending on traffic.

I had a little time this afternoon to shop for a new luggage bag. The first one I found was quite nice, but it had a tag that said “made in China” so I had to keep hunting to find one “made in Italy.” It’s much nicer than any of the other “bags” I’ve used on this trip so far…

Supper was a 4-course meal with opera. I’m undecided on the opera part, but I’m completely and utterly sold on the 4-course meal idea.

Took this beautiful photo after another beautiful breakfast. I could get use to eating at a place like this.

Anyway, I’m really getting to know a lot of my fellow classmates and traveling buddies better. We’ve invented all kinds of new fun travel games, like “Restaurant Go Seek”, “Guess the Leave-Time”, and “Aaron gets the bill.” We played all three of these today.

No one told me the checkout time was 10 am, at least, not until 10:02am. At which point I threw all my remaining clothes and possessions into a coat, zipped it up, and tied the sleeves shut. In my haste, I forgot about the neck hole, and I’m pretty sure I lost my iPhone hand crank charger. Also, my iPhone slipped out and fell down a flight of marble stairs. (For the record, the stairs looked fabulous.)

The Brancacci Chapel was absolutely stunning… in so many ways, but Brancacci sounds like it should be a type of pasta.

Later tonight we will be at the San Francesco hotel. At first I thought someone said we would be at the San Francisco Hotel, and I thought maybe we were back in California, which would have been really weird because it was a short trip. And I mean, if Italy was that close to California, why on earth did we take the long route to get there in the first place. We could have been there so much sooner.

Anyway, dinner is another 3-course meal at the hotel.