How wonderful you lived in Siena after high school and before university! I studied art before I went there and I still get excited fawning over the great works I studied years back. On one trip I literally ran through the Capodimonte museum 30 minutes before they closed in search of an Artemesia Gentilischi. I ran through the entire palazzo like a mad woman searching for this piece. Come to think of it, I did that at the Spado in Rome and also a coule places in Florence in search of her works. Half the time I have visited they have been in restoration but I have managed to see most of her public paintings in Italy, England and France.

I love to sit and people watch and buy strawberries at the open market and eat artichokes and penne alla arabiatta and drink tea at Babington's and drink a lot of espresso and caffe machiatos and watch more people and take too many photographs in Italy. I like to get lost in the alley ways and piazzas and back roads too.

Napoli was fabulous and rotten all at once! There's a marvelous waterfront area perfect for a sunny day stroll with cafes and gorgeous views of Vesuvio. There is a very grand old enormous castle with a moat in the center of Naples which makes the sweeping views of the hillsides and ocean simply breathtaking. The food is earthy, the baba dessert and the coffee the best in Italy and the people are gritty and cool and full of life for Italians. It's probably the coolest place I've ever been for a city where EVERYONE tells me to not wear my watch outside of my hotel and to beware of pickpockets and PEOPLE WHO MIGHT SHOOT/STAB ME FOR MY JEWELRY OR MONEY!!! Yes, I was CONSTANTLY told that, every five minutes by every Neopolitan in such a natural, friendly way it was absurdly surreal! One gets a feeling of true gypsy life in the streets. All the Neopolitans and Romans wear a drab uniform of very very faded monochromatic blues, browns, tans, oranges, reds, and greens. They accessorize carefully and their ensembles are impeccably kept and yet... are so drab and ... slowly drained of color and oomph. I didn't realize they had things like shoe repairs on every corner, and repair shops for everything. Not like us with our just buy a new one mentality. I did find their uniform to be a bit Socialist or Communist looking after awhile. I felt as if any bright colors I might wear (even a simply new bright black) was making me a target of some sort.

Anyway I never felt nervous in Naples. It's a dirty city, but a fun city, corrupt, spicy, interesting, a good central location for trips to Vesuvio, Capri, Pompeii, Sorrento, the Amalfi Coast... The Museo Archeologico and Museo Capodimonte are important and truly great museums to visit. The cafes are cool to hang out and there are good, funky restaurants and delicious pizza and vegetable and sea food dishes. I like to people watch in the churches and just walking around the Naples streets. Those are the best bits. The trash situation there is awful but in the historic city center you don't notice it...outside the city's heart is another matter. I tend to like the Neopolitan more than most Italians for they are warmer and friendlier than the North yet I have also had a few run ins with people there too... so it depends I suppose. The coolest italians I have met were from Turin, they were almost more french than Italian, but I have never visited Turino. In Rome they are cool but indifferent for the most part, in Florence way more relaxed and also a bit indifferent. In Milano they were busybusybusy and downright moody but very hip and in Venice they were downright tetchy but what a wild decaying city! My little "insights" about people aside I realize they are generalizations and I love Italy and I love the people there... I just tend to gloss over the negatives most of the time with people so it's a bit amusing to me now to make these blanket statements about regions!!! Oh, I have to write I bloody loved everyone on Capri when I stayed there for a couple weeks in 2006. That was an amazing place!!! And everyone there was so nice, relaxed, sophisticated, professional and very chic (and I'm referring to the locals, not the uber elite rich staying there)!

champagne

I'm still in denial about Liv's breakup with Evan Dando cause they were my favorite celebrity couple ever so this whole Langdon divorce thing does not phase me.

Jan74

I went to Siena after I finished high school and before university. I took the most incredible course on Renaissance art history, and it blew my mind to read about these fantastic works of art in the morning and then be able to wander over and take a lookie at them after lunch. Crazy, huh?

I love staying in one place for a while. I think maybe it's because I'm lazy and I find rushing around to visit all the must-see sights in three days to be enormously fatiguing. I love to just relax into a place, to wander the back streets, to sit and have a coffee and watch and listen and watch and listen. And eat. I love to eat. Italy is great for that.

I love Rome, too. It's one of the few big cities I've ever visited that I'd actually consider living in for a while. It's nuts, but there's something addictive about it, isn't there?

I am dying to go to Naples. As soon as I save up the coins, I'm off. Any recommendations? I'd love to hear what you did.

ASmallTurnip

Oh it must have been wonderful living in Sienna! It's gorgeous! I have spent the most time in Rome, the eternal city, having just returned last month from a couple weeks in Naples and Rome. I am still in love with Italy, especially Rome, but the euro was such a killer and my husband and myself both got sick on our trip so we the chaos and pollution and expense of the city just burned us out by the end of the trip!! I just came back from 5 days in New Orleans for the Jazz Fest and I got sick again so my whole taking holidays to relax in 2008 doesn't seem to be working too well.

It must have been wonderful to live there for a year so you could get a local's perspective of daily life there! What brought you there?

champagne

iAlreadyHateYou

WorkerBee2000

mydogatemyhomework

no_name

Plus, I could happily eat my body weight in gelato.

ASmallTurnip

I mean, divorce is shitty, shitty, shitty. But it can also be an incredibly positive choice, right? It's often a sign that you value your life enough to radically change it. It's an insistence that your future doesn't have to be like your past. Isn't it?

I dunno. Language is so inadequate. I'm so sorry, my sweet Liv. And congratulations!

ASmallTurnip

I believe Ms Tyler was with her husband for quite some time (for a young couple). They weren't a flash in the pan, they were very low profile. That's unfortunate for them but hopefully the tabloid press will not stalk them.

On another note... I still get heavy feelings of nostalgia whenever I watch Liv's Stealing Beauty. Am I alone in this? It's one of the reasons I've been to italy 6 times in 10 years... I had to go somewhere so passionate and historic!

champagne

She can bite me. I can't stand her or her father.

Owlygirl

smopenna

MysweetuntouchedMiranda

And Ashlee Simpson stooping low to get a little fame doesn't suprise me, or really disappoint me. I expect her (and her sister) to be as tacky as possible in their ongoing quest to be Famous.

lisas

Sit down, Ashlee! What she said was dumb, what's even worse is that she saw fit to recount the story on television. Considering all the rumors about her own habits, she doesn't really have room to talk.

BeAgrestic

AGreenEyeDevil

Good girl.

Gretchen

recidivicious

VegasDarling

what the hell are all these couples (celebrity and otherwise) thinking, having babies and then promptly getting divorced. unbelievably selfish.

HistoricUpstart

Sorry about the Liv thing. I respect the way she's always kinda flown under the radar.

Kittenish

rocknrollunicorn

KittenFluff

Re: Ashlee. Um, I never cared about her much, but that statement makes me dislike her. And I don't even care about Spears. But the girl obviously has mental problems. What a fucked up thing to say.

Archetype

mydogatemyhomework

This statement was brought to you by my simmering jealousy.

Smackdown

And Ashlee should STFU

h_a_l

brendastarlet

mydogatemyhomework

WaltzingMatilda

gold_gato

Hamsterpants

wednesdaywolf

hortense

Hamsterpants

crazybitch

TheUptightMidwesterner

*narf*

battleaxonista

myrtlebeachbum