The Evil Petting Zoo

So, I'm back. And what was Italy like? Pretty neat, actually.

We started off our grand vacation with a stopover for the night in Dublin. While U2 was there on tour. Yeah. Not a very peaceful choice. Strangely enough, the cabbie who drove us to the airport the next morning said it was usually worse after a Friday night. This, mind you, while we were driving through rubbish that could choke an ox.

A few hours later, we were in Italy. We'd rented a house in Umbria, only to find out it had a few... quirks. It was hot. Very, very hot. For us to stay cool, we had to open every window in the house and pray for a breeze.

Did I mention that Umbria was also seeing record numbers of moths?

So, we'd go to bed at night, keeping cool the only way we knew how, only to find in the morning that the house had turned into a hostel for all manner of insect life. It was after I was woken up on the third morning at 5:30 AM because I had one unseen mosquito buzzing in each ear that we decided we could no longer live in a wild kingdom for what we were paying, so we went out and bought a fan for each bedroom.

After that, the house seemed much more pleasant. We were regularly visited by all manner of animal life, but the cute kind: a friendly cat we affectionately nicknamed "L'il Fatso", who turned out to belong to the gardeners; a slightly-less-friendly cat we nicknamed "Skitsy"; and Max, a setter who belonged to the Germans next door and took delight in chasing down and barking at a great number of things (including, one night, me, as I was just getting out of the shower).

The towns were neat. Some were cool (Umbrio), others were tolerable (Perugia), others were a bit of a pain (Assisi), and almost all were inclined. You wonder why Italians are so thin after all those starches? Just try walking up the hills of Assisi in the middle of July and see what you look like in a couple of weeks.

The major event of our vacation, however, was the Palio. Every year, Siena throws two horse races, with one horse representing each district of Siena. The race lasts for approximately 90 seconds, during which time there are absolutely no rules. Other horses can be hit with riding whips. Riders can be hit with riding whips. Hell, a horse can place even after its rider has been reduced to a long, greasy smear. Afterwards, all of Siena parties hearty, something that we were forced to miss.

Mind you, for all its brevity, you have to wait a long-ass time to see the Palio. We got to the campo- the central square- at 2:30, and the race didn't start until about 8:45. This, mind you, was after about five occasions where the horses had to start lining up all over again and two false starts, which made the actual occurrence of the Palio somewhat less of a, "Woo!", and more of a, "Oh, thank God."

All in all, it was a fairly good trip. But I'm glad to be home, back in my bed, and in a town that's mostly level and has not been invaded by moths.