Monday, June 25, 2007

Caio Italia!

Hello Ireland.
I'm back in dublin where it's easy to pay for things and find my way around, yet the food just isnt as good and the people are not as attractive (no offense ireland!). Of course the trip was good. I have to say it was very different from other trips i've taken.

I spent the first three days on my own, it was a bit lonely, but allowed some quality thinking time. Rimini is suppose to be one of the liveliest cities on the Adriatic coast. But because i was there on a wednesday through thursday not much was going on. I spent a lot of time on the beach, but got so burnt that i couldn't really go back. So then i thoroughly walked around the quiet city which took only about a half an hour. The majority of the remaining two days i passed time reading and drinking corona's in the garden at the hostel. Friday nite i headed out with two swedish girls (super nice girls), but headed in early because i had to catch my train early the next morning.

The Tiberius Bridge in Rimini, began under the Emperor Augustus in 14 and was completed under Tiberius in 21.

Saturday morning I headed to Faenza. I found the hotel that sarah was staying at really easy but she has left a note at the front desk to let them sleep a bit, so i grabbed a coffee and read more of my book. It was so great to see sarah, I haven't seen her since January and I haven't spent quality time with her in a very long time. The wedding was at three so we got ready and headed to the church. It was a smallish wedding at the very small, oldest church in Faenza. Now, all i know of italian catholic weddings is that the entire thing is read from a booklet and there's a lot of standing up, sitting down, kneeling and singing. After the wedding we headed to the reception at a vineyard a little outside the city. The food was amazing and the wine even better (as expected). After the reception finished, we headed back into town and joined the towns people in the pre-palio, (a jousting tournament between the town's five districts) festivities.


Sunday we walked around the town a bit and then headed over to the stadium with everyone else in town to watch the Palio. It was pretty fun, but at time more fun to watch each district yell and shout at the other districts and in some cases throw water balloons. After the match was over we headed out for a bit to eat and then sarah and i stayed out assuming there'd be some sort of victory party. We ended up crashing the winner's party but it was quite boring so we went and sat in the piazza for a while. Around 1:30am, the piazza was dead, but just as we were about to give up on any further festivities and head home, we heard drums and along trots the winning district with their pennants flying high. We sat around for an hour or so more and watched them celebrate.

Piazza del Popolo

This morning I had to get up early and head home. The travel home went very smoothly, I only wish I didn't have to do so much sitting around at airports I could have had some more quality visiting time. I need to get working on that teleportation devise.

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