I prove my point

 

Using the city of Nice, France, I posited the theory that all cities would be more beautiful with canals. My examples with Nice quickly proved the point. But I like proving my point! I can go for hours proving my point. One could argue that the whole of clerkmanifesto is just point proving over and over again!

What was the point again?

Paved streets are ugly. Cars are gruesome. And streets of water make everything better.

Today I make my point with Rome, Italy.

Wait a second! Rome is impossibly beautiful. How can you possibly make Rome more beautiful?!

Easy peasy: Remove all cars, add canals.

(And maybe a few other things)

Pantheon hijinks

I stayed home nursing what I think is probably a repetitive stress injury in my wrist caused by shelving! Though what do I know, I'm no wrist doctor! 

Not that I want to see a wrist doctor unless I have to.

But the important thing is that my wrist affliction doesn't affect my typing.

Mostly today I've iced my wrist, eaten peanuts, and made dozens of fake pictures. I'm pretty obsessed with the pictures. Almost everything I'm making involves crashed alien spaceships, though the locations of their settings vary between my walks near and down to the river, my library of course, and Rome, all of which I feel could be endlessly populated with crashed alien spaceships.

Today, because it's a new venture, I'll share my Rome pictures. These first ones are all from the area clustered around the Pantheon, to me the very epicenter of Rome. My darling wife and I have spent many happy times there. Like so many places it is right now enduring a savage, human caused heat wave. It's a hundred degrees today! But even a few years ago, before anyone had ever even heard of global warning, everyone I'd have ever met who went to Rome in the Summer hated it. Hated it!

 But everyone else who went there in November loves it because it's a fantastic place.

Or, almost everyone.

Certainly the two or three people I've discussed it with.

Fortunately the heat, lions, nuns, and falling alien spaceships have kind of cleared out the area around the Pantheon so I could get some decent shots of the fabulous city for you today.

 

The Great Beauty

 

On New Year's Eve we watched the film The Great Beauty. The Great Beauty is the most beautiful movie ever made.

I'm not here to describe it. I'm not even here to recommend it. I'm just here to talk about one scene.

The main character, Jep, goes to the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. It is late in the evening. There is a giraffe there. A magician tells Jep he is going to make the giraffe disappear. It's an illusion. He can't really make the giraffe disappear.

Jep is meeting his longtime friend there. His friend tells him after all these years he is leaving Rome. Rome is not, it turns out, what he thought Rome would be.

Jep is sad because he has been searching for the great beauty.

He is perhaps becoming increasingly aware that he is in the great beauty.

The giraffe disappears.

Back at work, after five days off, at a large, near urban library I am trying to hold onto this... feeling.

I can't.

But it waits for me at home.

200 Reviews of Rome: The Barberini

One of the curious misadventures of this blog is that I might tell the same story twice, or thrice, or even 50 times. I don't know. I have decided not to fuss with it, feeling that each time I tell the same story it says something new. Let the Doctoral candidates sort it all out in their dissertations a thousand years hence. 

Or, more realistically, let the sweet vast tides of the Universe wash it all away. I have plenty of self-regard here, but incalculable constellations of more beautiful articulations than this have been broken back down into meaningless atoms. But let's keep a chin up. Everything that has ever been beautiful is written down somewhere. And who on earth has time to go through all that?

Which is to say that I am pretty sure I have already written a review of The Barberini in Rome. I know there is this review of the second best painting in The Barberini. And I have also tracked down in my archives this review of the cafe in The Barberini. But as to whether there is a 

Oh.

Ooops.

I found it.

For the original, this.

I didn't mean to find it. But I do have an addendum:

Should you go?

The Barberini is now officially the most forgotten great museum in Rome. While we were there my wife and I wanted to go to it yet again. We looked it up in an up to date guide book in our room, written by Rick Steeves, and we couldn't even find mention of the place. I am pretty sure it is disappearing before our eyes. We went there and it took us hours to track it down even though it's ten minutes from The Spanish Steps. It's slowly being taken over entirely by cats. It was nearly empty. They keep closing more and more of it.

The Barberini is being washed away.

Don't go.

Isn't it enough already all the beautiful things you do know and that will soon be gone? 

200 Reviews of Rome: Bar del Fico

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐


5 Stars!





Bar del Fico, where have you been all our lives!


Okay, well, not all our lives. We've only been to Rome five times over the many years, and I'm not sure Bar del Fico would have been quite what we were looking for the first couple of times we were there. But located as it is in the general heart of our (and most travelers) stomping grounds, just outside of Piazza Navona in the twisty warren of streets a skootch towards the Tiber, it seems both sad and happy that we missed it over our last few trips. Sad because it would have rescued a few wandering nights of not quite being able to settle on where to go, but happy for the obvious reason of finding it and the slightly less obvious reason of giving the sense that in every way Rome has its endless layers, willing to reveal more things to one the longer one pours over those same streets.

Bar del Fico is the perfect sort of evening, drink and a snack, shabby chic (it even says so on the google map!), find a seat in Rome and soak it all in kind of place. We got a nice couple seats in the loungey bar area and had (probably) a Negroni and wine, but I might be wrong because I vaguely remember mint in my drink. We got nuts with it all, as is proper. We ordered some nice cheese and I had a fried pizza aperitif thing that I liked an awful lot. The price was reasonable. Everyone was nice to us. And that's about it, except for the context, which follows:

In thinking I would dash off a review of Bar del Fico, almost a month after going there just one time, I figured I should do some basic research, so I looked up Bar del Fico and got an eyeful of the reviews. It was chaos, just like Rome! To start with Bar del Fico is, as is common in Rome, kind of three or four things at once, consisting of several different rooms. It seems to be a cafe, something converting to a lounge, a cocktail bar, and also partly a more straight up restaurant. The pictures all look like they're from seven different places (though there are a couple of cocktails with fresh mint which supports the theory I had one of those). The reviews also encompass this diversity with people enraptured over the friendliness and wonderful food to the point where they moved into a local hotel and went to Bar del Fico twice a day, all the way to a minority who are still wounded by the staff's cruelty and the possibility they were cheated. I am not here to dispute any of these sorts of takes on the place. Rome can be like this. We have but our singular experience. There is no place with so many stars that you don't take your chances. 

We took ours at Bar del Fico.

It worked out.

Who wins Florence

As much traveled visitors to Rome, the great Baroque city if ever there was one, my wife and I received many hints there of the Renaissance. They seemed increasingly appealing the more we looked. So we thought we'd go to Florence. We thought we'd see a little bit of the footsteps that led to the flourishing of Rome, the best city we've ever seen.

There is a lot of great art in Florence. After all, 600 years ago Europe woke up there; The Renaissance, don't ya know, with all the burning energy of a thousand year sleep. With so much amazing art to see I wondered who, above all, would blow through my soul. So we made the rounds.

Filippo Lippi, of whom we had seen precisely one intensely captivating painting in Rome, all angels, grace, and gold, was every bit as good as the promise of what we had seen in The Doria Pamphilj. Botticelli was like a refinement of that grace, and his paintings, well known to us, and to most people on the planet, were a whole other world of loveliness, one that was never apparent exactly in the reproductions, which were all I'd ever seen of him before. The Da Vincis were fascinating, but no real match for what hangs in the Louvre. Raphael seems to oscillate in a tiny fraction of an inch between sheer genius and mundanity, mostly wonderful, nothing better than what is in the Barberini in Rome, but plenty remarkable. Giambologna was ridiculously good, with statues more baroque than I dared hope or imagine, every one a thrill to see. Donatello was fascinating. Pontormo's Deposition was a painting I've always longed to look at in person. It is a mad and ridiculous painting, an absolute joy that sums up everything anyone might ever need to know about Mannerism in a single work of art, all graceful and nearly purposeless poses, lurid, wonderful Sistine Chapel colors, and skill almost just for the sake of skill. There is our bizarre bridge from the Renaissance to the Baroque.

And of course there's Michelangelo, towering over it all. Influencing everything with his touch and magnificence. 

And yet...

The amazing David is exquisite and almost unbelievably monumental in a way that nevertheless feels a little emotionally flat to me after the excruciatingly moving Pieta. Maybe if they put it outside where it belongs? All the masterpieces of the Medici Chapel are better, but renovations there, and obscuring scaffolding, may have hampered my enjoyment along with his weird version of breasts and a sense that he didn't quite finish his plan for it all the way he wanted to. His early work kind of... sucks, up to Bacchus, which is more proof of talent than an epiphany.

Which, maybe I should have known all along, left us with three Caravaggios, of all things. 

The Sacrifice of Isaac, a story I've always found a touch ridiculous, made me tear up. The Medusa, a demonstration of gloss and perfection like I've never seen before, and sleeping cupid, a painting I'd only barely looked forward to, which is a picture of love sleeping by an artist at the height of his magical powers in full, shuddering expressive force.

Sleeping Cupid. No pretty child. Apparently Caravaggio used a dead child as a model. Yellow light. Flesh. Love lies sleeping. A picture is worth an entire language.

I suppose there are best current artists.

And there are artists of their generation.

And there is the greatest artist of their age.

And then there is the most brilliant artist of an entire era.

And then there's Caravaggio.

The gelato diet

A bit less than a year ago I restructured the way I eat. This was for a variety of household and health reasons, and to make a little more room for my hobbies of cocktails and coffee. One thing about the restructuring meant that I eat less. Sometimes it seems like a lot less. I don't use sweeteners. I don't eat or drink after seven. I have very particular meals and mealtimes, and not that many of them. And I can't complain. All of this has largely done the job. I still have my middle age issues, but I feel pretty much healthier and less inclined towards physical breakdowns, back injuries, colds, and some other miscellaneous ailments, than I had before. Plus I look dashing in my vests.

But when I went to Italy I decided, for my two weeks there, to set all that carefully to the side. As my wife and I tramped all over Florence and Rome I ate and drank whatever, and whenever. I had as much coffee as I could manage. I drank regularly- a bottle of wine, Fernet Branca at night, cocktails on piazzas, afternoon Spritzes like it was a religion. I consumed great quantities of cheeses, finding our first great cheese plate at Pitti e Gola where I had three glasses of sparkling wine and one of something called Orange Wine. I ate plates of raw meat. I had pastry every morning stuffed with creams and chocolate. I bought porcini mushrooms and swordfish and fried them in olive oil. I ate all the potato chips they brought me with my Spritz.

And I had gelato.

I had gelato every day. I had gelato in the morning. I had gelato in the evening. I had gelato in the afternoon. I would get gelato, eat it, and go back to order more gelato. I ate gelato walking along. And I ate gelato sitting down. I ate planned gelato and I ate spur of the moment gelato. I had whipped cream on my gelato and I had gelato plain in a cup. Sometimes I had espresso over my gelato. I ate a lot of gelato.

Outside of one unpleasant night early in the trip which I blame on an injudicious nightcap of Fernet Branca and possibly a questionable panini, my health was excellent in Italy. I felt good. A few weird home ailments ceased to bother me in Italy. I came home well and whole and I might have even lost a pound or two while I was there, or so it was suggested to me.

Now surely one could say that our near constant walking in Italy wiped away all the other sins. Or that for all I ate it turned out we were too busy for me to actually eat all that much. One could argue that the joy of Italy helped me out, the lack of stress, the complete cessation of anything remotely comparable to a sedentary lifestyle.

And those would be good arguments. Very sensible.

But wrong.



It was the gelato.

My favorite gelato

In my endless quest to understand, evaluate, and eat the gelato of Italy I generally avoid ever ordering any flavor of chocolate. One can probably manage to tell the difference between good and bad gelato through the flavor of chocolate, but one is unlikely to be able to discern between the various levels of good gelato with the flavor of chocolate. 

It's too easy. Chocolate tastes like chocolate. It is not a flavor to be delicately coaxed out and balanced in the general recipe of great gelato. It is pretty hard to mess up a chocolate gelato.

So I don't order chocolate.

Except, of course, I did, just once on this trip. 

I ordered chocolate once only, at Fatamorgana, in Rome. The thing was, I wasn't working. I wasn't studying. I wasn't comparing.

 I was just there admiring.

I wasn't searching out the best gelateria. I'd already found it. They were it.

I was eating gelato for pleasure.

So I got their chocolate.

Only, it was the great Fatamorgana, brightest star in the Italian firmament of gelato. So it wasn't chocolate, it was Lapsang Souchong Chocolate.

Of the roughly 45 gelato flavors and varieties I had in Italy over two weeks, it was the single best one.

Chocolate, not too sweet, a nod to the bitter, then the smokey coming through like a stroke of inspired genius, and finally the bare hint of black tea underneath.




I'm sorry, I can't go on anymore. I'm getting a bit... emotional.

Romaphiles

As you most likely know, my wife and I went on a trip to Florence, then Rome. We have been to Rome many, many times, once for a month even, but we have never been to Florence. So there we were. And it was lovely. First staying on the outskirts of the Oltrarno neighborhood we learned how good all the food can be there, how beautiful the countryside is, hedging in, how glorious are the vistas of the fabled city. We saw astonishing art in the Pitti Palace. I got the lay of the land on their extraordinarily high level of gelato.

Then we moved in, deep into the heart of the city, across the street from the Duomo. The thronging life of the place, its soul and essence! More beauty, more art, more food and markets.

This is lovely, isn't it? We said.

Yes, we had to answer. 

We compared. This thing is better here than there. This market is easier to use. I like how there is less traffic and big streets. I like how you can walk to every single thing.

This is lovely, isn't it? We asked again.

Yes, we had to answer.

Could we live here? 

Yes, if we could afford it this would be great, a thrilling place to live. We would live here in a second. Maybe we should live here. It's lovely, isn't it?

Yes, it's lovely, we had to answer.

It is lovely.

We had a lot of fun.

We saw extraordinary things. It was great. We ate delightful things. We shopped in charming shops. We saw miraculous art and architecture. We saw history. What a town this Florence is!

It is lovely, isn't it?

Yes, we had to answer.

Very lovely.

And then we got our train and went to Rome. And we stepped out into Rome. And we said:


"Oh."

200 Reviews of Rome: The Sistene Chapel

Name of Museum: 

The Sistine Chapel (Part of The Vatican Museums, but reviewed here as a specific element just because I'm feeling like it).


Overall rating (not a strict average of the below) out of 100:

85! Yes, I'm aware this rating is insane!


Hours:

9-4 M through Sa. plus other expensive, dedicated visits by arrangement. Closed for awhile after Popes die.
Not bad for Rome, 3 stars.


Quality of building architecture: 

Fine, bland, old, and you are unlikely to be able to see it unless you're in a helicopter because it's positively crammed in with the Vatican buildings. That said, it's in Rome. Everything is pretty in Rome!
3 stars.


Quality of interior design and display:

This gets complicated. It's all pretty bare and barnlike except some dead guys painted stuff over all the walls, and especially on the ceiling, which must have been really hard, and some of these paintings turn out to be the among the most brilliant painting ever created. This is where a conflicted rating for the place comes in. Like, the ceiling paintings are amazing, and yet viewable only in crowds with yelling guards, from a terrible angle, and at too great a distance. The best way to enjoy it I think would be to become a Cardinal and wait for a Pope to die.
4 stars.


General location in the World:

Rome. Rome, Rome, Rome, bella Roma.
5 stars


More specific location in city:

Vatican City is easy to get to. It can be an interesting neighborhood of Rome, though a lot of it is either crowded, requires a wait in line to access, involves tedious airport check like security, and involves running a carnival gauntlet of bric a brac vendors, but I'm being a bit jaded. I mean, another way of looking at the Sistene Ceiling location is that it's in the same area as the Vatican Museums, since it's just a part of it, and that museum holds possibly the single greatest painting I've ever seen, Caravaggio's The Deposition, among not a few other treasures of the human soul. 
3 stars


Cost and entrance fees:

17 Euros. Free to Catholics.
Naw, I'm just messing with you. 17 Euros even to Catholics. So I will continue to be an atheist. Well, a pantheathiest. Well, more of a polypantheatheist. And alas, I don't think there's a discount for that either.
2 stars.


Ease of access:

Complicated, sucky, full of lines and security and vaguely complicated optional reservation systems and scamming bookers. I can't entirely blame them for all of this though. It's a popular... thing! You can have a nice walk there though.
2 stars


Best work:

Vocation of the Apostles by Ghirlandaio. Okay, I'm kidding, but it's not like the other frescoes are bad or something what with Botticelli and the like. And one could make a legit preference for Michelangelo's later Last Judgement on the back wall, which is, at least, easier to see. Still, I don't buy it, in the end it's the Sistene ceiling that's the best, and it's really really good. Really good. Good. Really something. If only I could get a good look. I brought binoculars. It didn't help much. And it turns out you're not allowed to lie on the floor. Sorry. They let me do that in the Barberini!
5 stars.


Signature collection:

Naturally it's the frescoes of Michelangelo, who complained the whole time he was painting them that he's a sculptor! And, weird thing, he is! This ceiling stuff is gorgeous, especially, alas, in pictures, but the sculpture, oh lord, though, sorry, none of that is in here.  You'll have to pop over to the main church for that.
Nevertheless, 5 stars


Revolving collections and shows:

Nope, none that I know of.
5 stars (because it would be silly if they did).


Ambiance:

Noisy, crowded, uncomfortable, disappointing, but not really allowed to be disappointing. Yes you should see it, but if you can resist, I really respect that.
1 star


Staff:

Power mad, overdressed monsters on their best day. Watch out for their angry staffs!
1 star


Cafes:

You're not even allowed to think about food in there. I guess that's okay. It's not a convivial hangout anyway.
3 stars 

Template

If you have read, or at least glanced at, all 2,406 of my previous blog posts, you will understand that I enjoy a good template. If however you missed one, and only caught 2,405 of my previous blog posts, you will probably be wondering "Wait a second, who are you again?"

It's me. Meeee!

And I love a good template.

"Oh, right." You respond. But look who I'm telling how you respond! You know how you respond. You're you!

Wait, you are you, right?

Okay then.

Me? I'm the person who loves a good template. I'm just not very good at using them. Conceptually I'm strongly pro template. But practically I am the most bespoke person you will ever meet.

You haven't met me? Sure you've met me! I'm me, the one who loves a good template. 

But I think I like a good template just so I can break it. 

Recently I wrote a review of The Minnesota Marine Art Museum and it went pretty well, by which I mean the Museum itself saw it and told me all these nice things about it and asked if they could put it on their web page. I enthusiastically wrote back and said "Yes!" And then I never heard from them again.

This might make you a little sad, but that counts as a super successful blog post for me.

It doesn't make you sad?

Well, it makes me a little sad.

Anyway, the point is that it made me think about how it would be nice to write more reviews. No one noticed that my 200 Reviews of Rome series sort of petered out in the forties or fifties, but I remember, and more reviews are still required! Plus my wife and I are going to Florence soon, and so I thought:

Wouldn't it be great if I had a template for museum reviews!

And then I thought:

It sure would!

And then I sat down to write a really good one, and this came out instead.

Ancient giant diamond Bacchus head found in Rome excavation!

Recently in Rome they uncovered an approximately 2,000 year old head of, maybe?, probably?, Dionysus, aka Bacchus. What articles I could find about it were repulsively bad, but, and here's the important point, they were better than nothing. This explains the Internet and all of its remaining ambitions. It also explains the "Newsy" trend of just sort of making stuff up, or, related to that, reporting reporting, or it even explains my country's descent into madness: 

Each step down isn't that far, and it's always better than two steps down.

Today's blog post won't be as good as my post from yesterday, but, oh my god, it will still be better than anything on the blog phoenixroofing164, which, fairly speaking, is still slightly above average for a blog, on the Internet, which, unfortunately, is where you are right now. I apologize. If it weren't for me right now you could be someplace much better, like maybe out investigating some Global Single-ply Roofing. There are some good market research reports on it at phoneixroofing164.

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LATE CORRECTION UPDATE: Just before going to press with this post I checked my last post. This post is actually slightly better than that one! This surprised the hell out of me because this is one of the most seriously digressive and, frankly, strange blog posts I've written in ages, and it clearly has way too many loose ends to ever be tied up. I guess the main thing it has going for it is the above tagline: 

Each step down isn't that far, and it's always better than two steps down. 

I am already within inches of using this as the new subtitle of my blog (replacing I'm a glass half full kind of guy even if it's actually empty). Nevertheless the good news is that by charting the rate of improvement in the quality of clerkmanifesto from yesterday's post to today's, and extrapolating outward, we come up with encouraging results that at this rate, in four months and 11 days, my blog post will be as good as page 72 of Catcher in the Rye.

I loved Catcher in the Rye! 

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Anyway, what can I tell you about this Dionysus Head? They found it while excavating in Rome, which is something they do, like, all the time because excavating is far more rewarding and interesting than say, removing garbage, getting electricity to work properly, or cleaning some shitty looking graffiti off a street so beautiful it could melt your heart. So they excavate and find the head of Bacchus that was shoved into a wall 600 years ago or something because, well, there it is, and, as any home owner knows, rocks are surprisingly expensive.

In the first of 16 identical articles I read there was a picture. The article suggested that the head was huge, and the picture, in a field of rubble, gave no hint of scale, or what the size of the head might really be. Using my powerful reportorial investigative skills I found another picture of the head and it looks to be roughly the size of, well, a head. It's not in great condition, but it's pretty nice and will probably get better when they clean it up more.

Oh, also it's made of diamonds. And if you touch it you are granted three wishes as long as you wish for wine. And chiseled into the back of it you can just make out "Jesus was here".

How to judge a coffee shop

Decades and decades ago, or something like that, my wife and I went to Rome and fell under the spell of coffee shops. Il caffe, as they maybe say in Italy. I'm not sure, mainly because they're speaking in Italian. Nevertheless they have brilliant coffee places in Rome, but they are of a different style than those in America, most of which weren't very good at the time. Fortunately, shortly after our dawning interest we suddenly began to see the first iterations of excellent U.S. cafes in our own twin towns, led at first by Kopplins in St. Paul, and then followed by lesser (albeit some quite good) others. But this is still American Capitalism, and quality is ever the exception. And while coffee shops are everywhere in America, tracking down good ones can still be a challenge.

We mostly stick to our local favorites, but sometimes we wander far afield, and sometimes we stumble upon some coffee shop and wander in, asking "Should we get a drink here?"

Superficially it can be hard to tell. Fortunately, if you know the signifiers to look for, it can be pretty easy to tell. I am here to help.

I mean, if you want help. If you don't want help you should read this anyway because, um, in for a penny, in for a pound. Or, on the other hand: where else are you going to go on the Internet? The Internet, feh. To quote John Lennon:


The dream is over
What can I say?
The dream is over
Yesterday



But don't worry. I'll still weave dreams for you. I am totally the walrus now. And in today's dream I have two complimentary lists for you:

Three things that will tell you a coffee shop is not great

1. Packaged snack food of any kind available for purchase.

Yes, a place with interesting, organic chips is likely to be better than a place selling Doritos, but neither, deep down, can be trusted to make a proper cappuccino.


2. Morani or Torani Syrups

Just, no. This relates to item one, and you can employ the following corollary "The more things made in house the better the drinks will be."


3. A self-help bar with things to doctor your drink with.

This seems like it would be a positive. It isn't. You're paying five dollars for a 40 cent drink! You shouldn't have to assemble it yourself.

And three things that tell you a coffee shop might indeed be great

1. Their milk is organic and comes from out of a glass jug.

This is an easy way to see if they're serious about ingredients.


2. Pretty croissants for sale (or other serious looking pastry)

If you can't see their milk this is your next best indicator. You can have one if you want.


3. Focused baristas

When you watch them make a drink they should look like they're crafting something.




That should be enough to get you going. Now get out there and have yourself an absurdly expensive beverage. They make some nice eight dollar ones at Kopplins, where any syrups are their own, and the wee selection of pastry gleams and crackles.

Florence and Messi

Although my wife and I aren't leaving on our trip to Florence for ten months I have begun to peruse the guide books. And I have been immediately drawn to how many of these guidebooks try to helpfully rank the sights for me, usually working on a three-star system:


Three Stars: Don't miss!

Two Stars: Worth a visit if you can.

One Star: Go if convenient or of particular interest to you.


Now when I say I have been "drawn" to these rating systems, I mostly mean that they attract me towards them only to leave me in frothing rage at their blithe lack of nuance, cookie cutter opinions, and sheer lack of understanding.

Soon, no doubt in this very space, I will tell you how I would rank the cultural sights of cities, and how something like The Doria Pamphilij or San Luigi dei Francesi, both in Rome, could be better bets than The Colosseum or The Vatican Museum.

But not today.

Today I am too irritated at an aspect of all of this, an aspect I will call Local Relativism.

Here, take the best tourism sight in your city. If you live outside of North America you can't play. I'm terribly sorry. If you're in New York we can try, but it might not work. But you all can follow along and feel superior. Has everyone else chosen? Good. 

I chose The Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, wait, no, The Mall of America. The Mississippi River? Oh, oh, Minnehaha Falls!, no, no, go back to the Mall, no, Foshay Tower or the Spoon and Cherry or... 

Scratch that. I have no idea what to choose. I don't know, I couldn't decide. 

But I'm relieved you so confidently chose yours!

Let's say you live in New Orleans and you chose, random example, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. That's your three star sight. Your benchmark. And I vaguely remember it as a fascinating place from a long ago trip, although I may be remembering a different cemetery.

But now let's put that three star sight in Rome.

No longer is it number one on the list. It is, and no offense is meant by this, now the 11,243rd best sight in the city. Which is not bad, really. But do you think all the 11,242 sights above it have three stars?

No, they don't. The fancy review guidebooks will have given maybe eight places in Rome three stars. This leaves 11,235 places, all more highly regarded than St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, having not gotten three stars. 

The reason they only have eight three-star places in Rome is because they are comparing Rome to Rome. It is like taking 84 different people who are all 7 feet 3 inches tall and deciding who is tallest. Then saying only four of them are really really tall.

Four 7'3" tall people are really really tall

Five 7'3" tall people are pretty dang tall

And five 7'3" tall people are kind of really tall 

All of the others are merely listed, albeit acknowledged as "Tall".



At this point, the very point where you might just be beginning to see what I mean, you might also be wondering what has me so upset.

Two things:

I don't like the way the guidebooks keep giving The Medici Chapel, in Florence, one or two stars. We are planning on staying across the street from The Medici Chapel and I am taking it personally! That's our Medici Chapel! Those are Michelangelos in there! If we had one knee of one of those sculptures in my Twin Cities we would be known as The Michelangelo's Knee cities. 

But it's Florence, so, whatever, one star.

But the second issue is even more important, but is, oddly, not travel or city related. 

Messi was recently chosen as the 5th best soccer player of the year. 

In case I haven't found a way to lecture on this to you Messi is inarguably the greatest soccer player who ever lived. But he's been doing it for awhile now and people have gotten a little tired of it. "Eh, he'll have other years." They say. And so they choose The St Louis Cemetery No. 1 as the best soccer player in the world for a year. Because each year of Messi soccer is 7'3" tall or like one of the best sights in Rome or Florence; there are just so many!

People like to talk about things like this as subjective. Maybe that's fine. But the moment you pick favorites, have a contest, or try to helpfully award stars, objective gets to enter into it. And once it does

1. Messi is better than everyone else at soccer. It's weird but actually objectively true. You can still watch this in real time.

2. Rome is a very nice city to visit if you do it properly. I am suspecting the same for Florence but I have lost faith in the guidebooks who tell me so.

3. If you try to compare Michelangelo's knees unfavorably, even slightly so, to anything else in art or a city, you're just going to look silly.

I'll admit I'm a little worked up about this, so it might not make total sense, but you'll have trust me on it. I can't fix it. I'm afraid I've injured my fingers from typing too hard.