Basilicas, Pantheons, and Duomos

Unjoking amounts of things have been happening in the last couple of days, but I will endeavor to address them all. So picking up where I left off, or rather a lovely 8 hours of sleep later: I woke to the sun once again doing its best to melt me. Under its rays I packed up, ate breakfast, left the campground, and rode the remaining 16 km to Venice (plus or minus a few to account for the signs being on crack). I had a fantastic, unhurried ride across the bridge to the island, and absorbed the open space and light breeze as much as I could while the overcrowded alleys and high prices of Venice drew closer. Then after an estimated 2 km (!) of riding on the bridge, I was in the city. And what a city it is! One can not help but be enchanted by the canals, old-world feel, and bustling alleys of this watery island metropolis.

 My first task was to make sure I could get myself and my bike on a train to Rome the next day, which I did (with the begrudging help of the grumpy old man behind the ticket window) for a whopping 3.5 euros. This bought me a bike pass that was good for 24 hours after validation; my own ticket was covered by my Eurail pass that I had bought online and had delivered to the hostel in Munich. Or I should say tickets, as I would have to take 5 different regional trains to get to Rome as the fast national trains aren't equipped to deal with bikes. But that was still all in the future (past, as I write this now, but future then). I next went to find the hostel that the guidebook recommended, and for which I had über-intelligently not booked in advance. They were, of course, full. But they sent me down the alley to spend the night in the house of a guy named Franco who I had already coincidentally met right outside the hostel as I tried to find a place to leave my bike while I went into the hostel. The spot I had selected was right in the way of him, his contractor, and a large stack of drywall on a dolly. When he saw me putting my bike in the alley that was already barely wide enough for the drywall, his eyes widened in fear and he told me that this was "a very big problem!" and had me lock my bike in front of his house that I would (unknowingly at the time) be staying in that night for the truly ridiculous price of 45 euros. That's Venice for you. After assuring myself that he was legitimate and his house safe, I left my stuff in the room and headed off to explore the city. It is an incredible place, but it wasn't long before the lack of any undeveloped land started to get to me. If you haven't been to Venice, it's hard to grasp how many buildings they've managed to fit on their limited real estate, and after all the open farmland that we had been riding through for the past month, it was a strange transition.

 So I got irrationally excited (and a few stares) as I took a picture of a 10'x10' patch of grass that bravely persevered in the stone jungle that surrounded it.

To make a long day seem short (to you, that is), I did other things, slept that night, then got up early and began my all-day mishmash of train journeys to Rome at 7 am.

The train rides were nice enough. It was a welcome break from biking, and I met some interesting people: a fat Italian priest who had just finished a month-long walking pilgrimage from Seville to Santiago, Spain and an Australian girl who blew my mind by revealing to me that the capital of Australia is not Sydney, as I had thought all my life, but Canberra. I was very embarrassed to have placed myself in the "stupid, insular Americans" group that I have always thought myself separate from, but she soon evened out the tables of ignorance by saying that Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Australia (it's Kosciuszco, and Kilimanjaro is in Africa). While we were competing over who knew least about her country, I mistakenly eavesdropped on a conversation a few rows behind me where someone was saying, "Yeah, I started biking in Oslo and have been riding south..." Now there's a conversation starter gift-wrapped on a silver platter if ever I've heard one. The speaker was a girl from Wisconsin named Meghan, and with her was her lifelong friend Shannon (who had joined Meghan later in her trip in Switzerland). We immediately hit it off and decided to spend the next day exploring Rome together. This was fantastic for me, as Meghan had not only studied abroad in Rome before, but just graduated the University of Oregon with a Bachelor's of Architecture. So the next morning we met in front of St. Peter's Basilica and spent the whole day walking around Rome, with Meghan leading Shannon and I around to all the best sights and educating us all the while about the history and architecture of all of Rome's awesome stuff (and there's a lot to see). Some disappointment over the Vatican Museum being closed, lots of walking, even more stone, and several gelatos later, we parted ways at around 8 pm in the Piazza del Popolo. I was sad to leave them, as it made the day so much more meaningful to have someone to share the experience of seeing all this awesome stuff with, even if we'd only just met. Not to mention they are both great humans who were fun to be around. Happy travels, Meghan and Shannon! Hope to see you again.

I next went to a bar and watched Italy get destroyed by Spain in the UEFA final before heading back to my hostel amid the defeated silence of the Italian streets. I headed out first thing next morning (today) with the intention of catching a train to Florence, but upon getting to the train station, I saw that there was a train to Pisa leaving an hour earlier than the one to Florence. Now Pisa is only about 100 km due west of Florence, and I had been planning on biking out of Florence and through Pisa on the way to the coast, which I would ride along into France. But on an impulse made possible by my Eurail pass and my newly purchased non-route-specific bike pass (same as the one I bought in Venice), I instantly formulated a new plan: take the earlier train to Pisa, see the tower, and then get another train to Florence before the end of the day. This plan hinged on two things: that the tower was only a quick ride away from the station in Pisa, and that there were multiple trains a day from Pisa to Florence. I took the calculated risk that both these things would be the case, and thankfully they were. In fact, the whole thing worked so well that I got into Florence at 4:30 pm, leaving me plenty of time to see the major sights before heading to my hostel.

The ever-present juxtaposition of old and new in Europe was taken to a new level when I emerged from the bustling, modern train station in Florence and the first thing I saw was the imposing 15th-century brick facade of the basilica of Santa Maria Novella (the church from which Florence's main train station gets its name). I explored this and the other main things to see in Florence (except for the museums; thus far this has been a museum-free trip except for the Folk Art Museum in Innsbruck) quickly, making this whole day a model for efficient tourism. Not sure whether that's a good or bad thing. Anyway, Florence is epic. Home to Michelangelo and mega-influential Renaissance families the Medicis and the Uffizis (among many others), the city is packed with art, churches, and other miscellaneous awesomeness. Probably the most striking thing is the Duomo, one of the world's biggest Gothic cathedrals. I went up to the very top of the cupola, which offered amazing views of the city. But one thing about the Duomo bears special attention. Actually, this is a phenomenon quite common in churches all over Europe, but it was taken to such a level in this one that I just have to address it: the art in churches is scary. Like, seriously messed up stuff. Case in point: the fresco on the inside of the Duomo's cupola is a vast scene depicting angels and good people in heaven at the top of the dome, and slowly degrading the farther down the dome you go until the bottom row of figures are the demons and accursed that occupy hell. It's the hell bit, in particular, that I'm saying is messed up. People being eaten in gruesome detail by demons. People being anally raped with flaming sticks. People having limbs torn off. And this is all in a church. I mean, I get that that was the sort of fire and brimstone preaching that was the norm in those days, but seriously. Anyway, I saw as much of Florence as I could before grabbing some dinner and making my way to my hostel. This latter was a bit of a challenge, but it was surmounted. This hostel is crazy; it has stonework and decoration comparable to some of the smaller churches in Rome, but it's still quite cheap. This will be my last hostel stay for at least a week. It's been nice having a cold shower every night and a bed to sleep in for the last 4 nights, but tomorrow it's back to the open road and camping. I plan to ride to the coast following a route that goes just north of Pisa, and then ride along the coast all the way to Marseilles, where I will get a train the rest of the way to Pamplona in time for the end of the Festival of San Fermín and its bulls. At least that's the plan, but none of those things (plans, that is) have held up too well on this trip. We'll see what really happens.