After arriving at the hostel and sleeping with my passport, credit cards, and cash clutched to myself I awoke tired and listless. Instead of concisely and intently pursuing the city in a succinct manner I took to wandering around looking for coffee.
I was stuck with my bag and had all morning to kill.
Wandering into a cafe I asked the bartender for a cup of coffee. "Cafe," I said confidently. Luckily this was one word that translated from Spanish to Italian. Unfortunately, I didn't know where to start with "water." So I just said "water" and pointed to a plastic bottle of water behind the counter.
He said something which I guessed to be "with or without ice?" I said "without ice." Then he whipped out a bottle of vodka. I laughed and said "no! That!"
We all laughed and chatted about it in a smattering of three languages. I learned that it was "aqua." So I should have just tried the Spanish word "agua."
After this I scanned the streets for signs of the cathedral. I decided to spring for a packet of cigarettes. They were about 6 euro. They were good bargaining chips in the days to come.
I wandered the city, lost, for many hours. I had no map and no drive to find where I was going quickly. There was a beautiful art museum that featured ancient paintings and uncommon artists. In that gallery I thought of Walt Whitman's quote "This is common air that bathes the globe.:
The Duomo was beautiful. It cost 12 euro to climb to the top and enter the building. I chose to save the cash because the surrounding countryside wasn't quite as visually stunning as some places I've been.
I sat in the plaza for several hours observing people coming and going. The senegalese salesmen were hard at work peddling bracelets and birdseed to feed the army of pigeons that come to nest on tourists heads at random.
After settling there for a while I headed back to the train station where I waited for 3 hours before having a blast in the car with 3 Italian girls.
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