This is a street within the Necropolis of Ostia, the ancient port of Rome at the mouth of the Tiber. In absence of the ability to make the trip to Pompeii, I visited the ruins of Ostia on 6/27/04 as my final side trip from Rome. I talk about it here.

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As noted by famous authorities the Stone Temple Pilots, there really is a Vatican gift shop on the roof of St. Peter’s Basilica. This is it. I took a side trip to the most important site in Catholicism towards the end of my Rome trip on 6/26/04, as chronicled here. I say side trip, but the home of the Pope is actually just across the Tiber from everywhere I had just been, so it wasn’t all THAT much off to the side.

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This is my second post on the wonders and oddities of Rome and my time there. As previously, there are two blog entries that describe things in more detail here and here The guy on the horse is Marcus Aurelius, a replica of an original Roman statue from the 170s AD. The pedastal and the plaza around it are all designed by Michaelangelo. It’s just about the only thing Roman still left in site up here – most of the buildings are Renaissance or Enlightenment-era work.

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SPQR stands for Senatus Populusque Romanus – The Senate and People of Rome. Once upon a time it was a symbol of the power and authority of Rome. These days, manhole covers. This is it, folks. Rome, the Eternal City. This was my last major stop, and as we’ll discuss shortly, one of my major reasons for coming on this trip in the first place. I was there from 6/24 to 6/29/04, longer than anywhere else except London, and I still only scratched the surface. There are two posts for this part of the trip, The Power and the Glory and Sleep Now in the Fire. Biblical references, Rage Against the Machine references, it’s all the same thing, right?

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As these things go the city of Ravenna, whose Piazza del Popolo we are looking at, is not the most major city in the world. Its central city is fairly small, and it lacks the reknown of the more major Renaissance cities. But looks can be decieving. Ravenna was once the capital of the Roman Empire for its last 75 years, and then it was one of the main cities of Byzantine Italy for 200 years until the Lombards took it over in 751. Remember how I’m big into the Romans and the Byzantines? I think you see where this is headed. After originally planning to only spend a day, I filled up 6/23 and 6/24/04 with sightseeing after my […]

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This is the Grand Canal in Venice as seen from the Ponte di Rialto, one of the four bridges that cross it. This is Venice. Everything has a name. I was in Venice for all of 6/21/04 and for portions of the day on either side of it. I had scheduled myself for two days there and one in Ravenna, but as I describe in some detail in the blog post, Venice and I did not get along particularly well. That said, I think I did the best I could with the time I had.

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This is the Nordiska Museet or Nordic Museum, a building that looks cool but which I did not go into when I was in Stockholm 6/17 to 6/20/04. I was there to visit a friend from my then-current Tonto days, who went by Toast/toasty here on the blog and whose family lived in Stockholm. I chronicle the experience here. I didn’t really need a lot of excuses to check the place out, you know?

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On 6/16/04, as part of the Erik and Stephanie Conquer Europe Tour, we took a train trip down to Paris to spend the day, as discussed in this blog post. I would like to impress upon you at the outset what a monumentally Sisyphean task this was, the idea that we were going to see much of Paris despite death marching our way through it. Nevertheless we gave it our best go, and managed a fair chunk of things in exchange for our leg muscles and supplication before the merciless gods of the unwavering ticket gate. That, for the record, is why you get a picture of me in front of the Louvre but none of anything inside – we […]

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This is part of the Grand Sablon square and Sablon neighborhood in Brussels, as viewed from my hotel room. Just out of frame to the north is a very nice 15th century church. I was there from 6/13 to 6/17/04 to visit Stephanie, who you may recall from the London posts. I chronicle the adventures here.

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This is the London Eye, a giant Ferris wheel with observation cars that give you a great view of the London skyline. This was my very last group excursion with AHA, on 6/9/04, as part of our celebration at having finished our finals.

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That beach rock at Brighton beach is actually somewhat more comfortable than you might imagine. I was there on 6/4/04 as part of my very last AHA excursion outside of London proper, discussed here. Our time in the British isles is rapidly coming to an end.

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These are the restored gardens at Fishbourne Roman Palace, once the largest Roman villa north of the Alps and an absolutely massive sort of affair. I was there as part of a weekly AHA trip on 5/14/04 where we bussed down to Fishbourne and then explored nearby Chichester for the day. I discuss it all in this post.

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This is Carlisle Castle, one of the major features from my trip to Carlisle and along Hadrian’s Wall, 5/6 to 5/8/04. This was the last and longest leg of my Spring Break trip through England, as chronicled here. This is one place I recommend the attached blog post be read – there were Adventures had here.

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In which I discuss my trip to York, where no dogs are allowed on the city walls. This was the middle part of my Spring Break trip around England, and marks both my first multi-day (5/4-5/5/04) journey outside of London as well as the first leg of a longer journey through York, Carlisle, and Hadrian’s Wall that I discuss here.

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Right on about the middle of our time in England was Spring Break, where we got a week off and were heavily encouraged to travel wherever we wanted in Europe. Some people went to Prague, a group went to Pompeii, and various other trips were taken. Personally, I knew I was going to spend a month traveling Europe, so it was time to get a little bit more England in while I was here. I describe the entire trip here and here. I ended up taking day trips to Winchester, Norwich, and Canterbury, with longer ones to York and Carlisle, each of which will get their own posts.

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Why indeed, Oxford gargoyle. Why indeed. We did this as an AHA group trip the week after Stonehenge and Bath. Trooped up to Oxford for the day by bus, checked out the university, wandered around, failed at punting down rivers. Enjoyment was had by most, most of the time. I talk about it in this somewhat mistitled post.

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Our second Friday trip as an AHA group was to Stonehenge and the town of Bath on 4/16/04. This was our first trip outside London proper, and we spent a couple of hours taking a bus 90 odd miles to get out to Stonehenge. I discuss it all here.

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The guy whose statue you see giving the “I don’t know” shrug is the Roman emperor Trajan, and behind him is some of what remains of the Roman city wall around London, which back in the day marked the boundry of the city, but today is just sort of in the middle of everything next to Tower Hill Tube station.

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This is that one statue of that discus thrower as seen on a staircase in the British Museum, of which this post documents the second half of my sojurns there, mostly in the Greek and Roman galleries rather than the ancient Egyptian and Assyrian ones.

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This is going to be a series of two posts on the wonders of the British Museum, which I visited many, many times both for class and on my own initiative while in London between April and June 2004. While my own visits to the museum were pretty meandering, I’m going to break these next two posts up roughly by subject. So expect a lot of Egyptian and Middle Eastern stuff in this post, with more Greek, Roman, and Medieval stuff to follow.

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Being various photographic evidence of my time in London from 3/27/04 to 6/13/04. That’s the Royal Air Force Memorial on the Thames. My very first picture taken for this trip, and more to say about that in a moment.

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Before we kick off the great mass of awesome touristy stuff, I want to take a moment and talk about where I was and what I was doing from 3/27/04 to 6/13/04 while I was in London.

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So the big news is that after the better part of a year of not having much to say, we’re going to do some posts. In fact, for the better part of September, it’s going to be photoblogging all day every day.

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