The only excuse for my post-lessness is this: Milan, Florence, Pisa, Roma, Paris, Athens, Cairo, Aswan, Etna, Luxor, Dahab, Amsterdam, LA; all the cities that time has fortunately swept me thru during the past month. So, at last, the begining of an update…
Team Sokar&Shai take on Italia and then some.
Several months ago two imaginative little kids dreamed up an incredible 2-year, round-the-world trek. While international gallivanting is still on the back-burner, Team Sokar and Shai started their stroll around the globe with Italia. When we arrived in Milan I was bombarded with miniskirts and lovely blonde-haired bombshells. I had forgotten just how fashionable people can be! We didn’t stay in Milan for the night, just long enough to catch a glimpse of the Duomo (a requisite for every Italian town, I would discovered a few days later) and enjoy the holiday cheer along the streets. It was exciting to upgrade from the one lame, crooked Christmas tree on the corner of Falaki to a whole country decked out in yuleday jubilee. While walking around by the Duomo there were lots of brightly-colored doors adored with mistletoe set up in the streets with beautiful Italian women clutching Polaroid cameras nearby. We inquired and were gaily informed that kissing in front of doors brings good luck for the New Year and insisted they snap a photo of our smooching. Surprisingly I don’t think we suffered culture shock, but it was interesting to go from walking streets where hand-holding is semi-scandalous to streets where french-kissing is endorsed with holiday cheer. Mini-skirts are to Italy what tea is to Egypt: simple but delicious, and essential to any and every occasion. When we boarded our train to Florence (somewhat miraculously since we missed the train we actually had tickets for) we sat next to this odd, odd Italian guy who was fascinated by English “hanging verbs” (or something like that, he meant verbs like “hang out”, “hold on”, “freak out”, “get over”, etc.) and insisted that every place outside Italia overcooked their pasta. Sem managed to sleep thru this dude’s incessant rambling, but I tired to wake him up for the pasta part, a bit that brought me much pride after months of bagging on soggy macaroni in Cairo.
Next stop was Florence and it is hands-down the most beautiful place I have ever been. It was freezing when we arrived and the streets were almost empty. We snagged an older Italian couple - toasted and cheery, probably heading home from a holiday party – to direct us to our hostel and I was happily reminded that no matter what country, no matter what language, men and women will discuss directions in the same fashion and tone. Hilarious. After a falafel sandwich at some over-priced Turkish deli, a breath-taking glimpse of Duomo #2, and a frigid walk down Via Cavour we found ourselves at San Marco an adorable little hostel where the staff has an average age of about 50 and they speak only a few incomprehensible phrases of English. It was simply perfect. We spent the days sleeping-in (since NOTHING was open over Christmas) and then walking from one picturesque place to the next.
Pisa, a day trip, was much smaller than we imagined but charming nevertheless. It’s ironic that Bonanno Pisano’s architectural mistake has raised thousands of Euros in tourism, but watching every tourist dorkily try to take their photos “holding up” the learning tower (us included) was pretty priceless. While eating lunch at a cute café in Pisa we found ourselves seated next to an old, quirky, absolutely adorable Egyptian couple.
The best way to explain Italia is by what we ate, and in retrospect, I think all we did in Roma was eat. San Peitro was our first official stop in Roma and it was an oddly powerful experience for me. Sometimes I think the Middle East takes religion a bit too seriously, but being pushed around and cut-off by other sightseers in line at San Pietro and watching men grab their scantly clad girlfriends’ asses as they “appreciated the architecture” at the seat of the Papacy made me feel a bit more reverent about religion in the Middle East, at least obsession comprises respect. I thought church after cathedral after basilica would get boring but each one we visited had a certain splendor about it that it never became mundane. Our favorite was…
More impressive than the Trevi Fountain was the massive crowd of people who were visiting the Trevi Fountain! I think the best night of the whole trip might have been the surprise of Piazza Navona. We wandered into what was literally a carnival between old Baroque palaces with street performers, game booths, and puppet shows, and wandered out several kilograms of sweets, two titanic spools of cotton candy, and a huge sugar-covered doughnut later, sugar-high and contented with tears of laughter.
Ancient Rome was cool, too, but I couldn’t fathom what it must have been like during the height of the Roman Empire. I still feel that not having seen Gladiator is a small sin on my part. We spent the day wandering around the Forum and then caught the Colosseum and Pantheon while illuminated at night.
I had imagined Paris would be the most romantic, most ideal place to ring in the New Year but I was very, very mislead. Paris was cold, crowded, and costly. Luckily the company was still good and there were a few beautiful things to check out here and there, heh. More pleasant than anything else was simply being able to understand and be understood, since I’d been existing on an island of mediocre ESL and Arabic for the past few months... One highlight was visiting Disneyland Paris! Disneyland Paris has started a slight compulsion to visit alllll the Disneylands in the world, and Tokyo Disney will without a doubt be on the itinerary for the aforementioned round-the-world tour. Dinseyland Paris was …
After a metro ride to a motor coach to the airport in Paris to Bergamo to a motor coach to Milan, we and our bank accounts were ready to bid Europe adieu, except our flight (a friends’ cargo plane with a pretty price tag and completely unreliable departure information) was detained in Lagos due to severe rain (who knew). After a night sleeping on airport chairs and my parents waiting for me in Cairo (Hi Mom… nope, not quite there yet… ) my tear ducts were on the verge of Niagara Falls-style water works….until a 6 hour lay-over in Athens presented itself and Sokar and Shai added one more local to their first European adventure. :p
We arrived at the New Airport approximately an hour before my parents and mine departure at the Old Airport to Aswan. Our flight arrived at the same time a flight from Jeddah arrived, so at customs, the instinct to pass time in line by holding hands or hugging was brought to a swift halt by the ocean of galabiyya and veils (and the more conservative social views that usually come with them). at the baggage claim.
I gave Sem an impromptu introduction to my parents and said good bye before we dashed off into the airport to catch our flight to Aswan...
