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Matty Rain In Italia

Italian tour guides are the best. Super direct in their use of very basic English.

"This emperor started thinking he was a God so we killed him"

"This other emperor, we didn't kill him but we invited him to suicide. He decided it was the best course of action. We didn't kill him."
 
The light at top right is coming from the pope's apartment (for real). I wonder what he watches on Netflix. You can see it on the 2nd pic too, top right as well. When we showed up the three windows on the right were lit up, he/they turned two off.

I'm not a pope peeping tom, you're a pope peeping tom.

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I am not a believer. I'm one of them cultural Catholics who went through the motions (first communion, confirmation, then I got married in church) but to me all of this is just stories in a book.

The neat part about this trip is feeling like you're living inside that book. There's a pretty deep sense of connection to the Roman Empire. I wasn"t expecting that.

#iamroman
 
The neat thing about Pompeii was being able to touch and step on basically everything. There's too much stuff to protect I suppose.

It all feels super alive. This fast food vendor booth was remarkable. One of the terracotta pots had a manufacturer stamp on it. Most of the stuff there is 100% original- some of it was just repositioned/reconstructed but with the original bits, unless indicated otherwise.

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Great thread!

While you’re there you should probably be aware that this Thursday is a GRANDE day for Italian football: if they don’t beat Northern Ireland in their World Cup Qualification playoff game they will not be in the 2026 World Cup.

It would be the THIRD *gasp* consecutive World Cup that Italia misses.
 
Not that much coffee yet. Lots of gelato and pizza. I fokkin love (dark) chocolate gelato. We had really good pizza close to our room, on a random street between the Pantheon and the Vatican. Wife had the best one, gorgonzola, but my diavolo was also quite good.

We got complimentary coffee and croissant from a nearby cafe, was unremarkable.

I haven't had a proper espresso yet, I should remedy that.