From way over on the other side of the country, my family sent me a cake! It came in a big box packed with styrofoam and dry ice, like a transplant organ. I don’t want to think about what that must’ve cost. And I don’t want to make up a story about how I couldn’t possibly eat the whole thing myself, because we all know that would be a lie.

Plus I got the Criterion versions of my three favorite Akira Kurosawa movies, and a book of imaginary creatures, and one of those creepy e-cards with a talking cat. And, since I’m in the habit of treating every day like it’s my birthday, I got myself the new Ghostbusters game last week. (I’ve only played a little bit; so far my favorite thing is the character design).

And it’s not even over yet! Tonight I get to go to a semi-fancy restaurant in SF that I’ve heard about but have never actually gone to. And then a bar on the bay with a creepy wax Arabian. So far, this is already up there with they year we got a Matterhorn at Farrell’s on Memorial Drive, and the year I got to take a bunch of friends to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. Apparently, the trick is to let other people plan it for me.

And I’m either getting more mature, less vain, or more lazy, but the march of years isn’t taking the same psychological toll on me as it has in the past. Sure, I finally have to come to terms with the fact that my beard isn’t “graying,” it’s almost completely white, but on the bright side: I’m in a position where nobody really minds if I look like a derelict. So if I haven’t beaten the aging process, at least it’s a draw.

Since I’ve moved out here, I’ve met four other people with the same birthday (one on the same year in the same state, which makes me wonder what was going on in Georgia in October 1970 (apart from the obvious)), so wish all them a happy one as well.

Man, I’m glad this is the last I have to write about my trip to Italy. It was hard enough being there, and then I didn’t have to put captions on pictures or come up with puns for post titles. And what do you do with Florence? “Uffizi Does It?” “Medici Balls?” “Major Duomo?” All terrible.

So the city may have a dull name (apparently “Florence” is closer to the original Latin than “Firenze” is, so the English name is more accurate, at least according to the tour guide) but it makes up for it on charm and looks. They know they’ve got the best Cathedral, and they’re kind of smug about it: instead of putting it away from all the cool stuff and building a wall around it, they’ve got it sprawled out all over the square, visible from everywhere in town, rubbing it in everybody’s face.

It’s halfway between Rome and Venice by train and in spirit: it’s more manageable and navigable than Rome, and a good bit less touristy than Venice. And like Siena, it’s got a theme going on: everything’s either David- or Medici-related. I can comprehend this place, you think. You can really understand how kids on their “life experience” European junket after college would feel like staying.

Coolest thing about the city: the Piazza della Signoria. It’s not all that pretty, to be honest, but the place is just lousy with statues. Instead of roping everything off in a crowded museum, you can get up and walk around the pieces and see them from every angle. Even climb up and break off an arm, or chop off a toe if you feel like it.

It’s a great city, just about everybody’s been there at least once, and those who haven’t been yet should make plans to go. Here’s my helpful travel tips:

• Spend three days. I spent two in Florence and two in Siena, and wish I’d spent an extra in Florence just to wander around.
• Take a tour. I took the ArtViva “Florence in One Day” tour (spread out over two days) and would recommend it very highly. The tour groups are very small, mine were friendly, and it was nice having people to chat with a few hours. (And since they’re just day tours, if you don’t like your group, you only have to put up with them for an hour or two). The guides are native English speakers and were all entertaining and knew their stuff.
• The tour guides also gave great restaurant recommendations. Both places I tried were the best restaurants I went to on the whole vacation. (Good food, but great, friendly service).
• Even if you don’t take a tour, do what the ArtViva guides do: keep it simple. Instead of trying to hit every major site in the city or every work of art in the galleries, they picked a few of their favorites and gave detail on those, describing the connections between them. I’d been trying to make sure I saw everything I could in Rome and Siena, and being exhaustive was exhausting.
• Make sure you go downstairs in the Uffizi gallery, to see Caravaggio’s Medusa. It’s rad. Also, much harder to miss is Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo, also rad: I’d seen plenty of pictures, but it’s much more impressive in person.
• Be aware that prosciutto isn’t necessarily the same thing as prosciutto di Parma. I had to put up with several unremarkable ham sandwiches until I managed to find any of the good stuff.
• There’s obviously a ton of hype around Michelangelo’s David; it’s a symbol of the city, and it’s the one thing that many tourists are there to see. What’s unique about the statue is that it actually lives up to the hype: your first sight of it at the end of the hall is pretty amazing.
• The best views of the city are from Piazzale Michelangelo, across the river at the top of about a thousand steps. I took about a billion pictures, as is every tourist’s responsibility.

The last of my pictures are up on flickr, including miscellaneous shots from around the city, shots of the Cathedral interior and exterior, and views of the city from Piazzale Michelangelo.

I’m pretty sure the reason I didn’t like Venice is the same reason I wasn’t that impressed with Paris a few years ago: I’m not the target audience. There are cities that I’ve gone to by myself, as a single guy, and had a great time. Dublin, for instance. Tokyo or Manhattan, if “talking to other people” isn’t your goal. Orlando, if you dig roller coasters. But Venice is for couples and super-spies.

I got the worst possible first impression of the city. The biggest rainstorm I encountered the entire two weeks of my vacation started right as my train was pulling into Venice, so I got to stand in line for vaporetto tickets for about 45 minutes getting soaked. The delay put me into some kind of rush hour, and I was taking one of the non-tourist-dedicated lines, so I got to pile into the bottom of the boat with my luggage while the locals sat and glared at me, visibly inconvenienced by my existence. I had to keep asking someone to wipe the fog off the windows so I could see what stop we were approaching, and the reaction was as if I’d asked a stranger for a kidney.

After the rain stopped, though… the city was still kind of a drag. You’re constantly reminded of the area’s rich and storied history going back centuries, but it’s completely incongruous with everything you see. It simply comes across as a theme park, and a dirty, unfriendly, and inconvenient one at that. I didn’t get any particularly great views, because everything in the city was covered in scaffolding or advertising (presumably to pay for future scaffolding). The food was overpriced — the rule seemed to be “take the already expensive prices in Rome and then add 4 euros across the board” — and everything I had was the worst I’d had in Italy. And on account of my bad timing, many of the museums were closed.

Your transportation options are limited to “waterbus” and “walking,” and the city seems laid out specifically to discourage walking. Apparently it’s widely known that the city is hard to navigate — one of the most commonly-sold tourist shirts has signs pointing to St. Mark’s Square in opposite directions, much like the shirts with a picture of a giant cockroach or mosquito reading “actual size” that you find in Texas & Florida — but they underestimate just how much of a pain it is to get around. There were places in Rome and Florence that were within easy walking distance where the maps and tour guides advised me to take a bus; routes in Venice that were described in the books as “a pleasant and easy stroll” ended up being short-form Trails of Tears.

Still, I wanted to make a go of it, and just wander around, treat it as a historical place, and get as many good photos as I could. And that’s where the other problem started: I kept getting accosted, literally once an hour unless I was indoors, by dudes trying to sell me flowers. The first time it happened, another tourist couple spotted the incident and started laughing, and I laughed along and did my “get a load of that guy!” look and went on thinking it was a charming little anecdote. But it just wouldn’t stop, even though I was clearly there by myself and by the looks of me, was more than likely single back home as well. (I’d been out of the country for almost 2 weeks by that point, walking non-stop and still believing I had to eat 2 courses at every meal, so I was sweaty, fat, and beardy. I sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to date me).

Finally, I decided I’d had enough. An older guy came up to me while I was listening to the bands at St. Mark’s Square and offered to sell me a rose. Instead of just saying the usual “No, grazie,” I did the universal gesture for “Seriously?” with an added, exaggerated look around me to show that I wasn’t there with anyone. Then:

Me: NO, GRAZIE. SOLO MIO.

Him: You don’t have wife?

Me: Nope. By myself.

Him: Girlfriend?

Me: Uh-uh.

Him: Nephew?

Me: [thinking] What?!? [out loud] Uh… no.

Him: Still… is nice rose? [gesturing around the square] It’s beautiful place, you enjoy it. Everybody like rose.

Me: Marry me!

I didn’t say the last part out loud, but the guy had definitely charmed his way through my defenses. But by the time I’d pulled out my wallet, he was already offering a rose to a nearby couple, and I ran back to the hotel room and cried myself to sleep.

I also got stopped by a woman with dark circles under her eyes carrying a clipboard asking, “Ontidrug? Ontidrug?” After a couple of repetition I realized she was saying “Anti-drug” and asking me to sign a petition to support a halfway house. She instantly identified me as American and asked where in the US I was from. I said “San Francisco,” she said, “Oh, games.” I was surprised that it had become common knowledge in Europe that so much of the American videogame industry was centered in the Bay Area, and I was about to offer that much of it had moved to Southern California and Seattle and Austin, but she said, “No, no. I think of Las Vegas.”

While I was filling out the petition and getting out my ten euro obligatory donation, she explained how she was a former heroin addict who’d been helped by the hopefully legitimate organization I was ostensibly supporting. She then asked who I was with, and I’d been so used to the question by that point, I just said “Just me. Solo mio.” She replied, “Oh, you came to Venezia alone.” There was a brief pause, and then she said with visible and audible disbelief and pity: “Why?”

I’ve been asking myself the same question the last two days, I thought, and said, “I just wanted to see it.” I’m glad I saw it, and I’m glad I never have to go back.

My pictures from Venice are up on flickr. And technically, it was the last place I visited on my vacation, but I’m saving Florence for last because I didn’t want to end on such a whiny, negative note.

[And just so's I'm not spreading misinformation over the internet: Be aware that "solo mio" isn't correct Italian for "I'm alone." It means "only mine," if even that. My point was that most Italians' English is better than my Italian.]

When I was planning to go to Italy (I did mention that I went to Italy, right?) I got about a dozen recommendations that I visit Siena, a city in Tuscany southeastsouthwest of Florence. I’m grateful for the recommendations, because it was my favorite part of the entire trip.

I’d had an unrealistically idyllic preconception about the city before I left; I’d pictured some tiny village in the countryside surrounding a small fort-like town square. It’s not like that, although I’m sure there’s plenty of that atmosphere just a short distance away. Instead, it’s a fairly big city with some amazing architecture and a bustling tourist economy. It feels like a perfectly preserved medieval city: walking through the narrow, hilly streets surrounded by tall buildings, it’s easy to imagine yourself living in Italy in the late 13th century.

I realize I got a skewed perception of everywhere I went, since I kept myself to tourist-centric areas, but Siena seemed to be driven by day-trippers. I woke up one morning — it was unavoidable, since you’re assaulted by various bell towers going off at 7:30 AM — and walked through the city and around the city walls. You could see people just starting to get the business of their daily lives squared away before the tour buses started arriving around 10. From that time to dusk, there are waves of people crowding the shops around the Duomo (Cathedral) and Piazza del Campo (town square), shopping, wandering around, making noise and eating ice cream. Around dusk, everything starts to shut down except for the town square, and the city goes back to normal until the next day’s rush of tourism.

The Duomo is amazing — not nearly as large or ostentatious as Florence’s, but covered with astounding detail on every inch of its surface. The same symbols are repeated everywhere — the colors black and white, the coat of arms for the city and its districts, and two babies suckling on a she-wolf — all tying into the city’s history and mythology and making it feel like a place with a very strong identity. I’ve forgotten the details on why black and white are the city’s colors, and I can’t find them online: it has something to do with smoke.

The statues of the she-wolf are from Siena’s origin story. I was wondering why the city would be full of images of Rome’s founding, but apparently this is a spin-off involving Remus’s sons after he was driven north out of Rome and somehow had to be raised by a different wolf. For whatever reason, the Sienese version took hold a lot more strongly than the Roman version.

The horse race around the town square, the Palio, is in August, but there was still plenty of Palio-related material to see. The local channels were running a documentary series interviewing locals with their own stories about the race. And posters, banners, and symbols from the different districts were everywhere. Although the Piazza del Campo is a large (and beautiful) area, I can’t imagine a horse race taking place there; it must be an amazing but manic experience.

Another unexpected highlight of Siena: it was the best gelato I had the whole time. I normally think that coffee-flavored ice cream is one of the most blatant creations of Satan put forth to humans, but I had a serving of Tiramisu-flavored gelato that was like getting an open-mouth kiss from God.

If anyone’s considering a trip (and it comes highly recommended), I’d have two pieces of advice:

1. Don’t make it a day trip, but stay the night. The city at dusk is beautiful, and wandering around early in the morning gives a much better impression than seeing it in the midst of crowds. I stayed two nights, which was in retrospect overdoing it. One’s enough.
2. Avoid the restaurants around the Piazza del Campo. They were extremely overpriced and the service was just short of being openly hostile.

So It didn’t turn out to be the peaceful getaway to the Tuscan countryside that I’d expected — the city’s much too interesting for that — but it was still relaxing and a great contrast to Rome and Florence. I’m told there’s any number of bed & breakfasts and small hotels around the area if you want the typical experience of Tuscany, but staying inside the city walls turned out to be perfect for me.

My pictures from the city, mostly the cathedral and town square, are up on Flickr.