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Dec. 30th, 2010 10:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gementGahhhh, so I don't leave the end of the trip entirely unposted, here's random babble version. It is random and babbly.
No, I did not find Hedgie again, but as far as we can tell he voluntarily ran off on a very nice resort island with a castle. It's called Ischia.
I did a second day of Pompeii while everyone else went to Sorrento. It was good. I left my mental impression of Hedgie there, in case he needed leaving.
We had a couple of free days, in which I fruitlessly inquired with the ferry staff after my hedgehog, saw an epic street protest, did a bit more shopping, and ate good pizza.
The last night in Naples, we went to Tosca in our suits and everything was fantastic. (Yes, there should be a picture post and I have every resolution to make that happen.) It turns out I really like opera with lots of murders in. Surprise! I'm going to start watching the Seattle Opera schedule for more murder-laden opportunities to wear my suit.
I wrote out over a dozen postcards on the train back to Rome, because I'd been slacking on correspondence. I ended up mailing 21 cards in one day. Then we waited at the train station for an hour with no taxis because of a mile-long protest rally going right past us. Inspiring! Lots of Care Bears around the government buildings when we went walking that afternoon. I picked up a large tree nut that was shaped like Hedgie to act like a Hedgie standin at J's request. (Hedgie was his hedgehog.)
We got up in the wee hours the last day and took an uneventful trip to the airport. Mesmerized by foreign packaging, I compulsively grabbed a bunch of random sweets for near and dear and coworkers, then realized why my coworkers always inexplicably came back from far off lands with sweets.
The 5-hour layover in Heathrow was FANTASTIC. For one thing, we had an encore of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spaced saying, "Allons'y!" to get us moving in one direction, and us going, "Shh, people actually knows what that means here." More importantly, though, I could speak the language and didn't feel like an entitled foreign asshole in the shops. I spent a fortune accordingly, some of it arjache's because she had hit me in the superorbital with her cane that morning and promised to buy me all the hippopotamuses to make up for it. This includes some incredibly tacky Dr. Who swag, four ties, and three sets of cuff links.
On the long-haul plane back to the US, we switched on BBC World News to car fires. Sixty police officers injured in Rome. Um.
Two days later, Heathrow was snowed in.
Dodged. That. Bullet.
More reaction posts later. I love Pompeii and may make a special trip back for just that and a couple of the other Big Sights, but I don't think I'll try deep tourism in a non-Anglophone* country again. It's too stressful. I either feel helplessly dependent or obnoxiously entitled; both are exhausting.
On the balance, I'm glad I went. At the very least, I learned that I can have approximately as much fun anywhere as anywhere else, and I understand how Roman roads are shaped now. I have had a big and tiring adventure, which was the point. And I dropped off Hedgie in Ischia, which it would have been a bit difficult for him to arrange without my help.
* Countries like the Netherlands where there's better than 50% fluent English saturation would be OK. It's a matter of how much my cluelessness inconveniences people.
No, I did not find Hedgie again, but as far as we can tell he voluntarily ran off on a very nice resort island with a castle. It's called Ischia.
I did a second day of Pompeii while everyone else went to Sorrento. It was good. I left my mental impression of Hedgie there, in case he needed leaving.
We had a couple of free days, in which I fruitlessly inquired with the ferry staff after my hedgehog, saw an epic street protest, did a bit more shopping, and ate good pizza.
The last night in Naples, we went to Tosca in our suits and everything was fantastic. (Yes, there should be a picture post and I have every resolution to make that happen.) It turns out I really like opera with lots of murders in. Surprise! I'm going to start watching the Seattle Opera schedule for more murder-laden opportunities to wear my suit.
I wrote out over a dozen postcards on the train back to Rome, because I'd been slacking on correspondence. I ended up mailing 21 cards in one day. Then we waited at the train station for an hour with no taxis because of a mile-long protest rally going right past us. Inspiring! Lots of Care Bears around the government buildings when we went walking that afternoon. I picked up a large tree nut that was shaped like Hedgie to act like a Hedgie standin at J's request. (Hedgie was his hedgehog.)
We got up in the wee hours the last day and took an uneventful trip to the airport. Mesmerized by foreign packaging, I compulsively grabbed a bunch of random sweets for near and dear and coworkers, then realized why my coworkers always inexplicably came back from far off lands with sweets.
The 5-hour layover in Heathrow was FANTASTIC. For one thing, we had an encore of
spaced saying, "Allons'y!" to get us moving in one direction, and us going, "Shh, people actually knows what that means here." More importantly, though, I could speak the language and didn't feel like an entitled foreign asshole in the shops. I spent a fortune accordingly, some of it arjache's because she had hit me in the superorbital with her cane that morning and promised to buy me all the hippopotamuses to make up for it. This includes some incredibly tacky Dr. Who swag, four ties, and three sets of cuff links.On the long-haul plane back to the US, we switched on BBC World News to car fires. Sixty police officers injured in Rome. Um.
Two days later, Heathrow was snowed in.
Dodged. That. Bullet.
More reaction posts later. I love Pompeii and may make a special trip back for just that and a couple of the other Big Sights, but I don't think I'll try deep tourism in a non-Anglophone* country again. It's too stressful. I either feel helplessly dependent or obnoxiously entitled; both are exhausting.
On the balance, I'm glad I went. At the very least, I learned that I can have approximately as much fun anywhere as anywhere else, and I understand how Roman roads are shaped now. I have had a big and tiring adventure, which was the point. And I dropped off Hedgie in Ischia, which it would have been a bit difficult for him to arrange without my help.
* Countries like the Netherlands where there's better than 50% fluent English saturation would be OK. It's a matter of how much my cluelessness inconveniences people.
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-30 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-30 07:27 pm (UTC)Glad the trip was an overall positive!
no subject
Date: 2010-12-31 06:20 am (UTC)