Tootfinder

Absolutely nobody asked, but I decided to post a quickie personal "review" of each of the towns I was in during my self-guided art/history tour of #Italy25. Mostly as a note to my future self about where I'd like to return. (1/~12) ↵

Marcus v. Marcus: in the Campidoglio on Capitoline Hill vs in the Brown campus on College Hill. #Italy25

I downloaded a bunch of podcasts before leaving Italy. An unexpected consequence is that I'm still getting hit with ads in Italian. AmEx and Shopify come really hard at you! #Italy25

Baffles me that Italy has adopted the US(?) notion of Outlet Malls with free buses to and fro, all to go sit in a place that is…basically what city center looks like. In the US, only malls look like this. So that they can imitate an…Italian city! #Italy25

In Bolzano I stayed next door to a Santner; in my next town, Florence, was near a Vettori. It felt like being in New Zealand, but also tells you what a great cricketing nation Italy could have been. #Italy25

The Alps bade me a lovely goodbye as I departed the Northern Italian plains and valleys, reversing the course of centuries of invaders. #Italy25

Imagine a movie theater where *every single seat* is named for a different director. Cinema Modernissimo, Bologna. #Italy25

Boggles my mind that I can, on a whim, take a day trip to see my favorite building in the world at a great price with several fast trains *per hour*. (Why on a whim? Because I never even considered it, based on the map.) Italian rail is quite something. #Italy25

Live view of me at the Giro d'Italia. #Italy25

Me, a person very knowledgeable in history and literature, walking around Rome, realizing it's not at all like the flatter cities I've been in all month, and suddenly thinking literally this: "Boy, this place is hilly!" Gee, I wonder if there are any if so, how many. #Italy25

Just another day at the office. #Italy25

1/ It's really hard to miss a particular demographic in Italy. Almost every cycle-based food delivery driver, outdoor market fruit/veg/cheap trinket seller, etc., is clearly from South Asia, down to the language and music. It's really stark. #Italy25 ↵

Giotto's famous painting of (I)NVIDIA, showing a large money bag while GenAI trains on its own output and heats up the world. #Italy25

One of the fun things about going to watch a bike race is that you see all these rail-thin cyclists, and *then* you see the actual racers, and that's how you realize the difference between 5% body fat and 2% body fat. (-: #Giro2025 #Italy25

I think a lot of the "tourist" vs "traveller" is just snobbishness, but one useful distinction is that a tourist is someone who wears a t-shirt they bought at one tourism destination at another tourism destination (neither of which is, of course, their home). #Italy25

CYCLING FANS: I learned in the most round-about way that Florence has a museum I would have gone to any of the past three days when it was open, if I'd known it exited! The "Museo del ciclismo Gino Bartali". (Do I even need to translate?) #Italy25

Was chatting with an Italian woman who told me how in NYC Little Italy noone was Italian, nobody spoke Italian, and the dishes weren't authentic. I explained "Little Italy" just means "the place where poor immigrants work". She said, "Ah, the ones Trump wants to deport!" #Italy25

RFK (Sr) said of Athens, "greatness does not require size [and] size does not necessarily bring greatness". Ditto Florence. I walked between the two poles of power—Palazzo Vecchio and Palazzo Medici—and it was < 900 steps (and that includes dodging meandering tourists). #Italy25