The Emmys

Woke up yesterday to the warm, suprising sound of "Charles, wanna come to the Emmys?" Turned out Andrew's TV class got invited to go, and everyone got to bring one guest, and I was Andrew's guest. Ahh, the perks of rooming with Andrew. Anyways, it was SO $#@&ing AWESOME! After jumping through a few hoops with the ultra tight security (who mistakingly thought we worked for Al Qaeda), we crossed through a wall of bushes and entered The Red Carpet. If I hadn't been so overwhelmed by the "wtf am I doing here?" vibe, I'd've pretended to be a celebrity and waved to the crowd. Our seats inside where some of the suckiest in the house (2nd-to-top row) but who cares, it was the Emmys, me was in heaven... though no one I wanted to win won (cept The Office at the end). On the way out we passed within 3 feet of Steve Colbert; that was most divine. Tracy Morgan, JJ Abrams, Dennis Leary, Black Guy from ER, and random peeps whose faces I knew but names I didn't were also sited. Twas a night of glory, to be sure. Tancks McNally! :-D WEE!

Shimmy leaves for Israel today, bwuh bye Shwimmy :-(

Eurotrip: Whatever Day It Is Part 2

As I was saying, we got to the Cinque Terre (5 tinsy villages in the Italian riviera, which is an older, cuter version of Southern CA) the next morning a few hours behind schedule, which forced us to skip the epic 6 hour hike along the cliffs between the towns (which is the main thing to do there), but still got to poke around the actual villages and such. It was a bit more touristy then I expected (everything I read said it was one of those hidden gem places), but still quite lovely. Swimming in the meditteranean (teehee :-) was also a welcome change from stuffy sweltering city stuff. From here, we went to Florence (again with a train screw up), yay...

Now I'm tired, more tomorrow (hopefully) Incase not, here's the quick version of what tis be in the next post:

• Florence: Not much into the renaissance stuff, but enjoyable. Expensive as hell, $5 for a bottle of Pepsi.
• Lucerne: Swiss heaven. If Rivendell existed in real life and not just in Tolkienland, it would be this place. A lake that was crystal clear straight down to the bottom despite being in the center of a big city, a fountain in the middle of it, white medieval castles straight of out storybook perched on the hills above, swans swimming in the river... ahh bliss.
• Gimmelwald: Got to see the setting of the 007 film On her Majesty's Secret Service in person. Nuff said there. Facebook pic coming soon.
• Bern: There was nothing to do here, but it looked really cool.
• Brugge: Belgian version of Venice, but without the expensiveness. Thumbs up, more details coming soon.
• Brussels: Got to stay in a 5 star Marriot with gorumet breakfast buffet included for $18 a night. Long story. Most glorious. Oh, and waffles and chocolate. Lots and lots of waffles and chocolate. it's 1am now, gotta go, sorry.

To be continued...

Eurotrip: Whatever Day It Is

I'm so far behind in this, drat. So much for travel journalness, but don't worry Trusty McNally, you will get the full account in person, yay.

Rome: Absolutely incredible, easily the highlight so far (Amsterdam migth surpass it, but we'll see.) One cool bt to kinda show why: we were walking down this random unspectacular narrow cobblestone street, turned the corner, and plop! There's the Colosseum at the end of the next road. The %$#@ing colosseum, where Russel Crowe kicked Commodus's arse! Like, the actual thing! It was actually a bit smaller than it looks in the pictures, but still... THE COLOSSEUM! (or however its spelled) I had a similar "I'm actually here! What the hell am I doing here?" fluffy-numbness in front of the Eiffel Tower & in the Swiss Alps too, but it was definately at its strongest in Rome. Oh, and gelato! Oooh you must have gelato. Gelato is my new best friend, and will become Sky's best friend when he goes to Florence. It's basically this unbelievably rich (and cheap; $3 for 3 gigantic scoops on the greatest waffle cone you've ever known) creamy soft fruity gourmet Italian ice cream that has to be the greatest dessert mankind has ever invented. More on that when I come back and can gloat about it in person. On top of the whole capital-of-western-civilization-thing that already made Rome magical was the whole world cup fnal thing. Out of pure luck, we happened to be in Rome for the finals, and got to watch the whole game on this big screen set up in the ruins of the Circus Maximus (where Ben-Hur did his chariot race in the days of old) along with 500,000 nutty Italian soccer hooligans. Italy won (old news yesh), and within seconds the entire city errupted into complete chaos, with a million people crownding the streets in an area maybe 4 blocks big... even the cops where partying, I've never seen anything like that before (and prolly never will again.) Imagine USC after beating Notre Dame or UCLA, but instead of just a college campus, it's an entire capital city acting like that. Craziness I tell you, craziness. Though weaving Mika's wheelchair (cause of the foot thing) out of that crowd was no fun at all. Ahhhh the glory of Rome.

Amalfi: Our train getting here ran 3 hours late (the Italian train system thingy was horrible, no concept of the word "schedule"), so we basically only had time to eat dinner here and then had to hightail it out. Looked really pretty, wish I coulda seen it during the day though. From here we took an overnight train (which also ran absurdly late) to the Cinque Terre, now i have to pee, gonna post this jsut incase someone hijacks the internet while i'm indisposed.