Avignon

Another week of school vacation has taken me to a town called Avignon, the capital of Provence. You may know it by the large amount of Pope badassery that took place there about 700 years ago, and by badassery I mean just a bunch of lame political religious drama-o-rama.

Here is my retelling of what went down in during the Great Schism of the West, not be confused with the Great East-West Schism of 1054.

The scene opens with the death of Pope Gregory XI in 1378. The Romans, being the self-centered egotistical people they are, demanded the election of a Roman pope, despite the lack of any Roman Papal candidates. So they cardinals were like, Napoli is kinda like Rome, let's just elect this Pope Urban VI guy and slowly back away from the scene and just ignore the fact that he's a raging lunatic. So not even a year goes by until the cardinals realized that they just couldn't take this Pope Urban VI guy anymore and decide to just elect another pope, Pope Clement VII, who decided to make Avignon the Papal seat. And thus, this is how we get two popes and a papal seat in a pear tree.

Menton Citrus Fruit Festival

So while the rest of everywhere else is celebrating carnavale, the town of Menton likes to take a slightly less sparkly approach and celebrate citrus fruits. This past Sunday I sucked in my stomach and got on a packed train with some a few thousand lovely individuals around the median age of 70 and made my way there to see the parade and gardens of interesting, but beautiful, floats and statues made entirely lemons, oranges, and a couple grapefruit tossed in just to throw you off.

All in all, I did find a lemonade stand, and I DID get some lemonade. It was good, but a bit on the sour side.

Misc. Pictures

Carnaval de Nice

 La Reine du Sport a.k.a what appears in my nightmares

 Oceanographic Museum in Monaco

Nemos 

Blub Blub

That's a real live octopus that got loose. 

A Whale that got loose too. Havoc was wreaked upon this museum.

 Villefranche sur Mer

Roma

     Let me just start this post by posing a questions: where the hell does Nice get off charging up to 15 euro for a bowl of carbonara; it costs like 5 euro at any given restaurant in Rome. There is no reason that there should be, what, a 200% price increase! Yeah, okay Nice, you're on the French Riviera, but can you really justify those prices in comparison to Rome, aka the former center or the WORLD, and it's not like you can really claim it costs a lot to import. I will refuse to eat any pasta dish in Nice for this day forward, unless of course, I am hungry, and I am craving pasta, and it is just more convenient to stay in France, but i'm sure there will be guilt.
 
    Anyhow, I spent the last week in Rome. If you were unable to reach me for a few day, Sean, I mean you, this is why. I will say it is probably best to visit the city after an inch of snow fall submerges the city into chaos; it makes the lines for all the sites so much shorter. So if anyone is planning on visiting Rome, I highly suggest going after some kind of natural disaster has caused disarray to disperse throughout the whole region.

   But here are my pictures. Sit tight it's a long ride.

The Pantheon and the Piazza della Rotonda

The Vittorale

                                                                      

The Spanish Steps and the John Keats Museum

John Keats died here.

This is where John Keats sat.

John Keats' death bed from another angle.

 The Trevi Fountain

The Vatican and St. Peter's Cathedral

God is watching you.

Energy Ball
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYI820W4uvg

Patron Saint of the Baguette

Castle St. Angelo

Circus Maximus

The Colosseum

More Spanish Steps and Villa Borghese 

Palantine and the Forum

The House of the Vestals

Piazza Navona

 The Vatican Museum

Socrates

Homer

Euripides

Ajax contemplating suicide.

Birth of Adam. Risked my life to take this picture.