I Don't Know, But I Would Be Scared

for any young student, especially female, who decided to go to Italy to study in the light of what happened to Amanda Knox. It's tragic, because Italy has so much to offer in terms of culture. But as the Knox case demonstrates, the legal system is very, very, very corrupt, worse than in the United States even.

More commentary about Knox that I agree with is here.

The case is a total outrage. I hope Congress does something about this horrendous miscarriage of justice and get her out of that country. The same would apply to her former boyfriend, who also had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Last Pictures for Tonight.

By the time we were returning from Florence Sunday night, my nephew was completely wiped out.





I liked this picture of a flower from a bush nearby the apartment where we were staying.

More.

More pictures of Pompeii.

More.

The Pantheon, which is something else, let me tell you. The dome inside is unreal.

Here are a few pictures from Pompeii. The statue in the foreground from Mt. Vesuvius is a replica; the original is in the archaelogical museum in Naples. We didn't have enough time to visit it.

More.

The Spanish Steps.





The Fontana di Trivi. It's big, and I wasn't able to get all of it in a single shot.




Another shot of the fountain.





My sister attempts to toss a coin into the fountain without tossing herself along with it.

Still More.

I don't think I have to say where I took these pictures.

More Pictures.

Above is the grave of Julius Caesar. People still lay flowers on the site, especially during the Ides of March.


These pictures are from the Palatine:

Here are a few of my pictures from Italy earlier this month. St. Peter's Basilica at Vatican City.

This is a statue from inside the basilica sculpted by somebody I have never heard of in my life:







My nephew and his wife decided to stick their hands in the Mouth of Truth.

It

will soon be time to hit the road again. I just woke up a little bit ago, and we are going to soon be taking the train to Florence. We won't be back until sometime tomorrow night.

It's About

the end of another day. We went over to downtown Rome to take in the souvenir shops; climb a bit on the Spanish Steps; go to the John Keats Museum, where the poet lived out his last months before croaking of t.b. in 1821 at the tender age of 25; head over to the Fontana di Trevi I believe it is, where visitors can throw coins over their shoulders in hopes that means they will return to Rome provided they have the money, which they won't if they toss it all in the fountain; and finally we saw the Pantheon, which is one hell of a work of architecture.

We also ate at a Chinese restaurant before hiking over to the Pantheon, but my nephew and his wife decided to have an argument over what to do. She wanted to go shopping, while he wanted to go over to the Pantheon. They decided to go their separate ways and do what they wanted to do, but what was funny was both of them met up back at the train station. The three of us assumed his wife would go on a separate train, but we all ended up returning to the apartment together.

Speaking of Pompeii the other day, it was very sad to see several dogs that had apparently been abandoned and rely on tourist handouts. It's disgraceful people can have so little regard for them. I was tempted to take them home with me.

There is this I found about the dogs, which live inside Pompeii, which in turn is part of Vesuvius National Park:

Nero was inspired by one of the many dogs that ingratiate themselves with the tourists of Pompeii. The notes at the end of the book explain that the many stray dogs in Pompeii are protected because they are believed to be descended from the dogs who escaped the eruption of Vesuvius around 2000 years ago.

There appear to be a few stray dogs hanging around Rome near where I am staying as well.

I

just returned by train from Naples. It is 9:30 p.m. here, so I am about ready to hit the sack.

We saw Mount Vesuvius and toured Pompeii yesterday, which is really something to see. We spent the night at a four-star hotel, and we just messed around Naples dodging the traffic and enduring the rotten driving of the taxi drivers.

There was garbage in the streets, but it didn't stink as much as expected.

I will probably post more about the trip in the coming days, if I am still alive.

Today

we are supposed to go to garbage-laden Naples and visit Pompeii, and I think I will have internet access at the hotel we are staying. But just in case I don't, I will be returning tomorrow sometime.

It's still difficult to get used to the time change.

At

least Naples cares about its garbage problem.

Here in Rome, especially outside of the tourist areas of Vatican City and the ancient ruins around the Colosseum, people don't give a shit if there is garbage or graffiti all over the place.

And if the garbage doesn't kill you, it's likely the drivers will, although my nephew, who has traveled many places around the world, says Saigon and Thailand have worse drivers than those in Rome.

I had a good time today going to the Colosseum and the surrounding areas despite losing 70 Euros when I dropped them on the ground. That kind of pissed me off.

We are supposed to go to Naples and Pompeii tomorrow, so I may not be able to blog for a day or two.

While

whatever news is going on in the U.S., it's about time for me to go to bed here. I will say that the Vatican is something to see. Literally thousands of people were there today taking in St. Peter's Basilca and the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museum complex.

We didn't see Pope Benedict, though; he must be hiding out after the latest controversy.

We spent several hours there, literally all day, and we still did not get to see everything there was to see. We did see the Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, which has all of those frescoes Michelangelo did in something like four years, but people cannot take pictures of. Let me tell you, the pictures do not do the places justice.

Tomorrow we are going to see the Coloseum in Rome before heading off to Florence on Thursday.