Revelations of Italy

Italy is full of incredibly sexy bald men.
What?!
I know.

Up to the point of my twenty seventh birthday I've found bold men repulsively unattractive. I now find them strangely intriguing.
Its these sudden revelations that is scaring the crap out of me.

Apart from the subtle hoaring I am also ostentatiously regressing. For the first time in my life I've spawned a dread at the back of my head and have gone back to experimenting with body piercing. I even order house wine when I go into a bar. Horrors of horrors.

Other less threatening revelations in Northern Italy

In Venice

• Rialto is not a name for odd cinema but a gracefully aging market port in central Venice that is polluted with orange peels, fish bones, drowning dogs, and children's lost shoes. (other Indiana Jones fans will also recall it as the ferry station he got off when he was greeted by the saucy Austrian doctor in Last Crusade)
  
• Lido is not a name for an art deco cafe in Wellington which Deno and Wendy had their first date but an Island off Venice which charges 208 Euros a pop for a piece of shade as big as your lunch box on a private beach. (well, i do understand that 'networking' in Mafialand is priceless, but 208 euros??...)


• Madame Butterfly is not Puccini's best selling opera or a nickname for his moustache, but a nickname waiters call me when I flap my hands in the air indicating that I don't speak Italian.
  
• Most of you will know that continental Europeans greet and part with three kisses to the cheek. The kiss of death is a fourth kiss which enthusiastic Italians give to complete strangers. This involves one's face being slowly eaten and the right ear being intensely chewed, so it is definitely time to run away as quick as possible if you don't have an expatriation clause in your insurance policy.

In Verona

• That Juliet's heart lies under her right breast not her left (referring to the statue). Contrary to popular belief, not touching it will find you a Romeo, rather than the other way round.

In Florence

• David by Michelangelo has staying power as number one teen idol for American girls in boob tubes. Justin Timberlake eat your heart out.


• Its totally cool to be biking to church on a sunday in an Armani suit on your great grand father's beat up push bike

and here are pictures from Lake Gauda (one hour bus ride from Verona) and Bologna (hip student town near Florence). I am now travelling again with the lovely Helen who's just finished up work in Amsterdam and soon to be joined by Ro before heading to Tuscany. WOO Hee!!