Veni Vidi Photografi

Okay, pretty poor play on words but hey, gimme a break, it's late here :-P

Just a quick update to wish everyone a late Happy Easter. I was down in Brighton then Canterbury for the long weekend. Photos can be seen here.

The weekend before that, though, was another kinda trip altogether. Me and Lora spent three awesome days in sunny Rome, "la Ville Eternelle". Great weather, great sights, great food (Saltimbocca Alla Romana rocks), amazing coffee (best Capuccino ever, at the Castel Sant'Angelo. No kidding!). I absolutely loved the place. Over 3 days, we couldn't see it all but we still managed to cram in a few historical sites, including the Sistine Chapel, St-Peter's Basilica, the Pantheon, the Coliseum and many more. Have a look here, here and here!

My favourite bit was Ancient Rome, for sure. I could easily have spent a few more days on Palatine Hill alone, sitting in the middle of these amazing ruins and reflect ing on the palaces that once stood there, and of all the decadence, blood and history they've been witnesses to. Imagine being a teenager living in Rome, you could have the best, most awesome hide-and-seek games in all these holes and tunnels!

"War is declared and battle come down"

FYI, the topic of this post is a line from the song "London Calling", by the Clash. A phone salesman got arrested and questioned because he liked this song. Yeah, fuckin' great.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4879918.stm

As he says himself, "where does it stop? What if I was wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt?". Hey, maybe even quoting the lyric on my blog could get me in trouble, thanks to the Terrorism Act. Fuck 'em.

Where's V when you need him?

Sunday at the Museum

The other day, I was wondering what to do on Sunday and, after seeing some of the promotional posters in the Tube about the current expositions at the British Museum, I thought it was time to put to use the cultural avenues that living in a city like London affords you. Here, most museums are free and open on Sunday so that seemed like a good idea. I asked my girlfriend if she was keen and, indeed, she hadn’t been to the museum herself in a very long time so we set out to spend a few hours cultivating our minds.

After looking at a few websites, it was decided that we would head down to the Natural History Museum. I could make up all sorts of excuses about my scientific ambitions and what not, but let’s face it; all I really had in mind was to see dinosaurs, man! They had iguanodons, a diplodocus (in the lobby), a shitload of ichthyosaurs, and plenty of others, and even more recent things, like a cool section where they had the skulls of all the different ancestors and cousins of the elephant on show, set up in a way to illustrate the differences in height and size.

On the other hand, I was quite miffed at some misleading advertising along the way. There was a huge poster putting forward the T-Rex section of the Museum, portraying it as the climax of the Dinosaur section. After 10 minutes making our way through armies of annoying kids and befuddled parents, on a hopelessly overcrowded suspended walkway, we finally made our way to the T-Rex show, which turned out to be some lame ¾ size animatronic. I was expecting a T-Rex skeleton, man! Not a shitty robot. If they were gonna put up an animatronic, they should have got the life-sized robot that Stan Winston built for Jurassic Park. Now that would have been cool.

Next time, we’ll head down to the British History Museum, near Russell Square. I hear they’ve got some cool collections about ancient civilizations, like China, the Aztecs (I love that stuff), and of course, there’s the Reading Room. Anyway, have a look at some of the photos here.