Sri Lanka: Adam's Peak

No one knows whose idea it was. We can all agree that 5.30 am found us on top of Adam's Peak, craning our necks in the cold, just before dawn, struggling to see the sun rise through the clouds. 

We had been climbing since 2 am -- pulling ourselves up steep stairs, past little old ladies climbing barefoot, past giant teddy bears for sale (to locals, we think), climbing up and up and up until we reached Adam's Peak's needle-like top, where the climbing began in earnest, and where we felt as if we were perched precarious on the world's edge.

The world's edge happened to be a little cloudy. And a little cold. Poor Nick was especially cold.

So despite our dutiful climb up for sunrise, we have to say that the views on the way down were far more exciting than our glimpse of dawn at the top.

To top it off, there were monkeys! 

We watched for a while...

...but we couldn't stay to chat. A well-deserved breakfast was waiting. 

Our Rome Syllabus

We are getting ready for Christmas in Rome...and are planning our pre-travel reading, watching, and dining seriously. As all good courses begin, we begin ours with a syllabus.  

A Florence syllabus might be a bit ambitious (we have jobs and stuff), but we do want to read 

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture. 

Selected reading:
Non-Fiction
Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ambitious, but one of us definitely should have read it)
Goethe's Italian Journey (1786-1788). Massively popular account that popularized travel writing along with it.
Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad (1869). Since we want to know what Mark Twain has to say about everything, we'd better look into what he thinks about Italy. And travel. And everything.
Henry James' Italian Hours (1909). It's dubious, but it is said that Henry James actually warms up a bit in his travel descriptions. We'll believe it when we read it. 
DH Lawrence's Etruscan Places (1932). Lawrence visits Etruscan tombs and gets generally very excited.

Fiction

Edith Wharton's "Roman Fever" 

EM Forster's A Room with a View
Robert Graves' I Claudius.
         And fun to take along for the ride: A Literary Companion to Rome, by John Verriano.

Selected viewing
Obviously, Roman Holiday over and over and over. And Three Coins in the Fountain.
Felini's La Dolce Vita 
and

Rossellini's Open City

Listening

The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan (aired between 2007 and 2012, won several awards)

Eating/cooking

Marcella Hazan and Elizabeth David non-stop! (As soon as we have a functional kitchen.)