Date: 27/05/2025 Location: Rome, Italy
Italy insists it’s eternal sunshine, and today, it almost convinced me. The Palatine Hill sprawled like a sun-bleached postcard, every crumbling column a monument to some emperor’s ego. I snapped photos until my phone died — too much history, too little storage. At dinner, the pasta and ribs arrived in portions fit for gladiators. We ate until our stomaches staged a revolt, but it was worth it. Rome’s statues watched with stone eyes, whispering of conquests and betrayals. Locals laughed when we called the city ”epic.” ”Ah, but we Italians?” one said, ”We invented the epic lie.”
Date: 28/05/2025 Location: Vatican
The alarm screamed at 5 AM - an awakening for what promised to be a holy day. Outside the Vatican Museum, the sun was already conducting its inquisition, baking the ground bricks as we shuffled forward in the queue. Inside was a different kind of overwhelm - every surface screaming with color, centuries of devotion splashed across walls and ceilings. The air smelled faintly of sweat and awe. And there, in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s four-year gig glared down from the ceiling. God’s fingertip eternally hovering, that cosmic near-miss between divinity and man. I craned my neck until it ached, wondering if the artist ever got neck cramps, if he ever thought “screw it”, Oh, he did. In the Sistine Chapel’s shadows, Michelangelo hid his crumpled self-portrait in the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew. His sagging visage dangled like a discarded draft, the ultimate Renaissance 打工人 power move: signing God’s commission with his own suffering. ‘You wanted my flesh?’ the painting seemed to whisper. ‘Here it is - bloodless, leathery, and permanently overtime.’”
Walking back, past ruins sandwiched between apartment buildings, I thought about time’s strange democracy - how laundry still needs drying, even when your balcony overlooks eternity.
No photograph prepares you for St. Peter’s. Light speared through the high windows, gilding the martyrs and making skeptics of us all. The basilica is a divine overdose. Gold, marble, more gold — it’s like being swallowed by a chandelier. The heat presses down, a celestial hand saying stay. In the gift shop, I buy paper and stones, because all civilizations eventually regress to scribbling on rocks.
Date: 29/05/2025 Location: Rome, Italy
Pincio at dusk becomes a watercolor in real time: the sky bleeds orange to pink. A stranger’s guitar licks the air, his voice honeyed with lies or truth—who cares? Couples sway as if in a 70s film montage, their laughter tangling with guitar chords. For once, everything feels convincing. Rome has always known how to stage a perfect ending.
