20040919

one crazy night... welcome to notte bianca in rome!

alright... so last night rome hosted an insane concoction of festivities called 'la notte biaca' or 'white night'... basically i've never seen so many people packed into a city in my life... and i'd like to add the little background info necessary to understand the scope of this comment fully: i've lived in large cities my whole life and have experienced the rediculousness of, say, the fourth of july at the mall in d.c. - yeah, notte bianca makes d.c. look like a tea party! i did get to see cirque du soleil and it was wonderful... it was just a sneek peak, but they're coming here for a full show on the 27th of october... and i'm about to buy tickets for it as soon as i finish this post. anyway... so i almost got squished, several times... as did everyone who was in rome last night... here's a mental picture for all of you kiddies who've been to rome before: so, we're walking down vittorio emanuele II [one of the busiest streets in rome...] and it is litterally a sea of people - no gaps, no relief from the undulation of hundreds of thousands of tiny heads bobbing up and down as people attempt to push and shove their way down the street... via del corso was the exact same way... it was actually kind of amusing, because i was out with a group that included the jolly green giant [aka. jason jackson...] who is a meager 6'4" ... basically a full foot taller than every other person in rome... it was wonderful, because if anyone ever got separated from the group [and trust me, it happened like twice a minute for about two hours], we all just made our ways back to jason, because all of us could see him sticking out above the crowd... tee hee.

after cirque du soleil, we decided that trying to make it down to the forum was impossible [i wanted to photograph the forum at night, but decided that having like 3 million people in the way was probably just going to get overly frustrating...], we made our way to a bar called 'saxofon cafe'... a really expensive, but neat, jazz bar right off of piazza della rotunda... i had a couple of beers and soaked up the relief of being out of the crowds [i honestly think that that bar was the
only space in rome that wasn't just bursting at the seams with people... it was so very nice...

after that, i just walked back home... got distracted in piazza farnese by a wonderfully loud and highly entertaining capuera demonstration complete with drums and a rowdy crew of fighting dancers... it was possitively decadent!

now, i'm going to wrap this baby up, head to the forum, and sketch for about four hours... or until i get kicked out of the forum... much love to you all and i'll post again tomorrow...ttfn!

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