It's about time!
Wow, time has really gotten away from me! I have been home for a week and a half, but it feels like much longer, and I haven't posted at all about my trip like I said I would. So sorry! I can't believe how busy I have been. If any of you remember my excitement about seeing Collective Soul, well, it got canceled :( I guess one of the guys was sick, but it will be rescheduled for a later date. Hopefully a date when we can still go. I saw A Fine Frenzy on Tuesday. Awesome!! I am a huge fan. I got to go to a live radio broadcast too, so I got to meet her and have my cd signed and all that cool jazz :) Then the boy won tickets to go see 3 Doors Down next Wednesday. All this in only one week, and it's only a little sampling of the stuff I've been up to. Crazy!!
Anyway, I'm going to detail out my trip for you and post pictures galore. I don't have any of the pics from Lasy's camera yet, so you just get mine for now. Once I have Lasy's (she has some pretty cool ones), I may add some more later. Have fun exploring! (cut to save your friend's page--WARNING: this WILL break your dial up)
3/12: Our first day was filled with nothing but long lines at airport check in counters and security lines. The Boston airport was kind of a joke, but we made all our connections with only minutes to spare.
3/13: After the long 7 hour flight from Boston to Milan, I woke up to look out the window and see the Alps and a sunrise:
We landed in Milan and had yet another fun experience with security and border control/customs. Then a nice 2 hour wait for our last leg of the flight. Poor Lasy didn't really get any sleep on the plane and was like the walking dead. Once we got to our check in point for our apartment we got something to eat and rested up for the 20 minute walk to our apartment. The main building of the hostel has a diner, but it's run by vegetarians. I knew that, but I guess I had forgotten to tell Lasy. When we walked into the diner the owner asked what we'd like and Lasy blurts out, "I don't know, I just want something with meat in it!!" Funniest thing ever! The guy was like, "Um.. we're a vegetarian establishment. We don't have meat." I thought Lasy was either going to die or kill somebody. It was soo funny! Anyway, we hauled our stuff to our apartment once the keys were ready and were faced with the tiniest elevator either of us had ever seen:
The place was pretty nice and we were both super excited to see a clean bathroom and beds!
After Lasy took a nap for a couple of hours we decided to venture out and see the neighborhood. We were staying in Chinatown and were just a couple of blocks from the Termini train station. An Irish couple staying in one of the rooms of the apartment gave us directions for a "20 minute walk" to the Colosseum. We started walking in the direction they gave us and decided to eat. We found a yummy Chinese restaurant and then wandered into this church:
About 45 minutes later (yeah, not so much on the 20 minute thing) we found what we were looking for:
It was so cool to see it all lit up at night. Then we looked across the street and saw that there is a metro stop right there. Haha, we're dumb. We obviously didn't pay attention to the map. So we hopped onto the metro and went back to Termini and back to our apartment for bed!
3/14: We slept in quite late and then decided we would head back to the Colosseum to check it out (we took the metro this time). We decided to pay a little extra money to join a guided tour (which got us past the giant line) that included the Colosseum, Palestine Hill, and the Roman Forum. The Colosseum was pretty cool. I can't imagine what it would have looked like covered in marble (the giant holes are where from metal rods that used to hold up the marble. It's all been removed of course, and the marble now resides at the Vatican):
Palestine Hill was also cool. There's a bunch of left over stuff from palaces and gardens and whatnot.
What's left of the Roman Forum:
Romulus' Palace! The doors and pillars are original. The guide was telling us all this stuff about it, and the legend of Romulus and Remus being raised by the wolf (lupa), and of course my brain goes directly to HP nerd-dom. Anyway, the pillars are made out of this super rare expensive marble. Our guide told us they aren't guarded, but if they were to be stolen Rome would fall. ;)
After all that we had a bit to eat then headed to the Spanish Steps. We didn't climb them, because it was crowded and quite frankly, we were tired and just didn't want to!
After the steps we wanted to go to the Trevi Fountain, but were given the wrong directions by a man from Texas who "had just come from there". He sent us down the wrong road which ended up being a very scenic tour of the high end shopping district. We ended up in some piazza with a bunch of cool fountains:
We searched and searched on the map to figure out where we were and decided to walk out of the piazza to see if we could figure anything out. We eventually found a metro station and realized we had walked 2 stations down the line in the opposite direction. So we got on the metro, went back, and headed off for the Trevi Fountain. Unfortunately I couldn't really get any good pictures of the fountain, but at least I tried :) And we did throw our "pennies" in (they were really .05 cent euro coins. I've never seen a euro penny.. do they even have them?)
This is the night the crazy old guy was shouting "Mi Amore!!" at me and hugged me. Since we were in the general neighborhood, we also made our obligatory stop to the Hard Rock Cafe. I had three different friends ask me to bring them something back from there, so it was a must do. It was hard to find though! After all that we were dead tired and just hopped on a bus to get back to our apartment.
3/15: We got up somewhat early this day and decided to take advantage of our kitchen. We walked down the street a couple of blocks to a produce/meat market (we couldn't find an actual grocery store) and bought some potatoes and eggs for breakfast. Both of us were a little surprised at how orange the egg yolks were. I've never seen them that orange and I was like, "um Lasy, are you sure you got chicken eggs?" Yes, they were chicken eggs, which I later found out probably came from more wild chickens than we get here.
After breakfast we met up with the tour guide from Palestine Hill (she was really nice and gave good info) to go on a tour of the Vatican. It cost more to do it that way, but it was so worth it. We got to bypass all of the lines and we learned more that way. Here's the courtyard of the Vatican Museum and the marble statues outside:
I couldn't take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel, and I didn't take any inside the museums or St. Peters. It was all so beautiful, but seeing all the marble and statues is what made me decide Italy could be summed up by marble and penises.. or as fire_sister was able to put it better, marble penises. ;)
We did a little shopping after the Vatican, but both of us were so tired from all the walking the day before and our feet were killing us, that we just went back to the apartment. We stopped at a little deli and bought stuff to make spaghetti and then stayed in the rest of the evening.
3/16 We slept in (again, hey, it was vacation!!) then decided to take the bus to the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. We got on the wrong bus and went the wrong direction though. So we went back to the main station, figured out the correct bus, and realized it wasn't running. At least we never saw it. We waited for about 45 minutes (it should have come 3 times in that time frame), but we gave up and took a taxi instead. That was nice. The taxi driver dropped us off right in front of the Pantheon. I think this was definitely one of my favorite things. Pictures just don't do it justice. It was so cool:
Then we walked over to Piazza Navona where some guy tried to grab my finger and wrap it with string (I presume to make a bracelet, which he then would have charged me for). I was trying to get away from him, but he kept grabbing my hand and following me. Creep! Anyway, there really wasn't a whole lot to see there.
3/17 We had to pack up and head out of Rome. We took the train to Florence. We took the slow train, because it was cheaper, and it took about 3 hours. Kinda boring, and it was mostly tunnels so there wasn't a whole lot to look at in the way of countryside. So we took goofy pictures instead.
Wearing the D&G nock off sunglasses Lasy got for super cheap from an illegal street vendor:
We didn't really do anything else this day. Just checked into our apartment (which was owned by the cutest little grandma lady) and then had something to eat. It was kinda cold in Florence and we got there fairly late so we didn't want to go wandering around when everything was getting ready to close. (Everything closed so dang early too! But then dinner wasn't served until 7 p.m. or later. So weird)
3/18 We walked around Florence to see what there was. We went into this church, which was really pretty inside. I don't remember the name of it, and cameras weren't allowed inside (which I think is actually a fairly respectful and okay thing).
We spent most of this day walking around and just looking at stuff. We didn't actually go into a lot of places though. I think we kind of wasted a lot of time in Florence. We did go to the Duomo, but didn't go inside. My friend Simeon thinks it looks like it was built from legos. What do you think?
3/19 We spent this day just shopping and buying tons and tons of stuff. Fun! And look what I found!!!
3/20 This day we left Florence and took the train to Venice. We were immediately in love with the scenery. This is just the view from the train station:
Then the view from the boat on our way to our hotel:
After getting checked in to the hotel we took a walk around the neighborhood:
After it got dark, we got lost on our way back to the hotel. Turns out we had walked past our street like 3 times. We had to ask for directions and were kinda embarrassed when he told us we were right around the corner.
3/21 We took the boat-bus (as we called it) to St. Mark's Square. It was pretty cool.
After walking around the square and looking at all the shops there we ventured into some shopping areas and had a lot of fun buying jewelry and other stuff.
I paid to feed the pigeons too! This was super fun for me. Lasy thought I had lost my mind, but she took pics for me :)
More pics taken from the boat:
Lasy got a little sea sick this day, so we didn't do any more boat trips once we got back to our hotel. Luckily there were quite a few restaurants in our area.
3/22 We decided to take the boat to Murano, which is famous for glass blowing. We watched a little demonstration and then walked through all the shops on the island. We had a lot of fun here. We got some pretty cool stuff and saw a light house.
After Murano, we went to get on the boat to go back and ended up on the wrong one. It took us to Burano, another island that's famous for making lace. We didn't walk around though because it was super cold and I wasn't feeling well. We just got in line and waited for the next boat back to come get us.
3/23 This was our last day. We pretty much slept all day to prepare us for our trip home. We didn't really know where to go or what to see. It was Easter Sunday and we didn't know what would be open, if anything, so we just hung out. We had to leave our hotel at 9:30 p.m. and get a shuttle to the airport. Once we got to the airport we had to just sit in the lobby and wait all night. It was so horrible! We got there right after the bar had closed and there were no vending machines or water fountains so we couldn't get anything to drink other than out of the sink in the bathroom. After that night, I was so ready to go home!
That's pretty much a run down of the trip. It was way fun, but I was ready to come home when it was over. I would definitely go again, but I think it would be more fun to go with somebody that knows the area so we would know more of what to do.
Anyway, I'm going to detail out my trip for you and post pictures galore. I don't have any of the pics from Lasy's camera yet, so you just get mine for now. Once I have Lasy's (she has some pretty cool ones), I may add some more later. Have fun exploring! (cut to save your friend's page--WARNING: this WILL break your dial up)
3/12: Our first day was filled with nothing but long lines at airport check in counters and security lines. The Boston airport was kind of a joke, but we made all our connections with only minutes to spare.
3/13: After the long 7 hour flight from Boston to Milan, I woke up to look out the window and see the Alps and a sunrise:
We landed in Milan and had yet another fun experience with security and border control/customs. Then a nice 2 hour wait for our last leg of the flight. Poor Lasy didn't really get any sleep on the plane and was like the walking dead. Once we got to our check in point for our apartment we got something to eat and rested up for the 20 minute walk to our apartment. The main building of the hostel has a diner, but it's run by vegetarians. I knew that, but I guess I had forgotten to tell Lasy. When we walked into the diner the owner asked what we'd like and Lasy blurts out, "I don't know, I just want something with meat in it!!" Funniest thing ever! The guy was like, "Um.. we're a vegetarian establishment. We don't have meat." I thought Lasy was either going to die or kill somebody. It was soo funny! Anyway, we hauled our stuff to our apartment once the keys were ready and were faced with the tiniest elevator either of us had ever seen:
The place was pretty nice and we were both super excited to see a clean bathroom and beds!
After Lasy took a nap for a couple of hours we decided to venture out and see the neighborhood. We were staying in Chinatown and were just a couple of blocks from the Termini train station. An Irish couple staying in one of the rooms of the apartment gave us directions for a "20 minute walk" to the Colosseum. We started walking in the direction they gave us and decided to eat. We found a yummy Chinese restaurant and then wandered into this church:
About 45 minutes later (yeah, not so much on the 20 minute thing) we found what we were looking for:
It was so cool to see it all lit up at night. Then we looked across the street and saw that there is a metro stop right there. Haha, we're dumb. We obviously didn't pay attention to the map. So we hopped onto the metro and went back to Termini and back to our apartment for bed!
3/14: We slept in quite late and then decided we would head back to the Colosseum to check it out (we took the metro this time). We decided to pay a little extra money to join a guided tour (which got us past the giant line) that included the Colosseum, Palestine Hill, and the Roman Forum. The Colosseum was pretty cool. I can't imagine what it would have looked like covered in marble (the giant holes are where from metal rods that used to hold up the marble. It's all been removed of course, and the marble now resides at the Vatican):
Palestine Hill was also cool. There's a bunch of left over stuff from palaces and gardens and whatnot.
What's left of the Roman Forum:
Romulus' Palace! The doors and pillars are original. The guide was telling us all this stuff about it, and the legend of Romulus and Remus being raised by the wolf (lupa), and of course my brain goes directly to HP nerd-dom. Anyway, the pillars are made out of this super rare expensive marble. Our guide told us they aren't guarded, but if they were to be stolen Rome would fall. ;)
After all that we had a bit to eat then headed to the Spanish Steps. We didn't climb them, because it was crowded and quite frankly, we were tired and just didn't want to!
After the steps we wanted to go to the Trevi Fountain, but were given the wrong directions by a man from Texas who "had just come from there". He sent us down the wrong road which ended up being a very scenic tour of the high end shopping district. We ended up in some piazza with a bunch of cool fountains:
We searched and searched on the map to figure out where we were and decided to walk out of the piazza to see if we could figure anything out. We eventually found a metro station and realized we had walked 2 stations down the line in the opposite direction. So we got on the metro, went back, and headed off for the Trevi Fountain. Unfortunately I couldn't really get any good pictures of the fountain, but at least I tried :) And we did throw our "pennies" in (they were really .05 cent euro coins. I've never seen a euro penny.. do they even have them?)
This is the night the crazy old guy was shouting "Mi Amore!!" at me and hugged me. Since we were in the general neighborhood, we also made our obligatory stop to the Hard Rock Cafe. I had three different friends ask me to bring them something back from there, so it was a must do. It was hard to find though! After all that we were dead tired and just hopped on a bus to get back to our apartment.
3/15: We got up somewhat early this day and decided to take advantage of our kitchen. We walked down the street a couple of blocks to a produce/meat market (we couldn't find an actual grocery store) and bought some potatoes and eggs for breakfast. Both of us were a little surprised at how orange the egg yolks were. I've never seen them that orange and I was like, "um Lasy, are you sure you got chicken eggs?" Yes, they were chicken eggs, which I later found out probably came from more wild chickens than we get here.
After breakfast we met up with the tour guide from Palestine Hill (she was really nice and gave good info) to go on a tour of the Vatican. It cost more to do it that way, but it was so worth it. We got to bypass all of the lines and we learned more that way. Here's the courtyard of the Vatican Museum and the marble statues outside:
I couldn't take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel, and I didn't take any inside the museums or St. Peters. It was all so beautiful, but seeing all the marble and statues is what made me decide Italy could be summed up by marble and penises.. or as fire_sister was able to put it better, marble penises. ;)
We did a little shopping after the Vatican, but both of us were so tired from all the walking the day before and our feet were killing us, that we just went back to the apartment. We stopped at a little deli and bought stuff to make spaghetti and then stayed in the rest of the evening.
3/16 We slept in (again, hey, it was vacation!!) then decided to take the bus to the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. We got on the wrong bus and went the wrong direction though. So we went back to the main station, figured out the correct bus, and realized it wasn't running. At least we never saw it. We waited for about 45 minutes (it should have come 3 times in that time frame), but we gave up and took a taxi instead. That was nice. The taxi driver dropped us off right in front of the Pantheon. I think this was definitely one of my favorite things. Pictures just don't do it justice. It was so cool:
Then we walked over to Piazza Navona where some guy tried to grab my finger and wrap it with string (I presume to make a bracelet, which he then would have charged me for). I was trying to get away from him, but he kept grabbing my hand and following me. Creep! Anyway, there really wasn't a whole lot to see there.
3/17 We had to pack up and head out of Rome. We took the train to Florence. We took the slow train, because it was cheaper, and it took about 3 hours. Kinda boring, and it was mostly tunnels so there wasn't a whole lot to look at in the way of countryside. So we took goofy pictures instead.
Wearing the D&G nock off sunglasses Lasy got for super cheap from an illegal street vendor:
We didn't really do anything else this day. Just checked into our apartment (which was owned by the cutest little grandma lady) and then had something to eat. It was kinda cold in Florence and we got there fairly late so we didn't want to go wandering around when everything was getting ready to close. (Everything closed so dang early too! But then dinner wasn't served until 7 p.m. or later. So weird)
3/18 We walked around Florence to see what there was. We went into this church, which was really pretty inside. I don't remember the name of it, and cameras weren't allowed inside (which I think is actually a fairly respectful and okay thing).
We spent most of this day walking around and just looking at stuff. We didn't actually go into a lot of places though. I think we kind of wasted a lot of time in Florence. We did go to the Duomo, but didn't go inside. My friend Simeon thinks it looks like it was built from legos. What do you think?
3/19 We spent this day just shopping and buying tons and tons of stuff. Fun! And look what I found!!!
3/20 This day we left Florence and took the train to Venice. We were immediately in love with the scenery. This is just the view from the train station:
Then the view from the boat on our way to our hotel:
After getting checked in to the hotel we took a walk around the neighborhood:
After it got dark, we got lost on our way back to the hotel. Turns out we had walked past our street like 3 times. We had to ask for directions and were kinda embarrassed when he told us we were right around the corner.
3/21 We took the boat-bus (as we called it) to St. Mark's Square. It was pretty cool.
After walking around the square and looking at all the shops there we ventured into some shopping areas and had a lot of fun buying jewelry and other stuff.
I paid to feed the pigeons too! This was super fun for me. Lasy thought I had lost my mind, but she took pics for me :)
More pics taken from the boat:
Lasy got a little sea sick this day, so we didn't do any more boat trips once we got back to our hotel. Luckily there were quite a few restaurants in our area.
3/22 We decided to take the boat to Murano, which is famous for glass blowing. We watched a little demonstration and then walked through all the shops on the island. We had a lot of fun here. We got some pretty cool stuff and saw a light house.
After Murano, we went to get on the boat to go back and ended up on the wrong one. It took us to Burano, another island that's famous for making lace. We didn't walk around though because it was super cold and I wasn't feeling well. We just got in line and waited for the next boat back to come get us.
3/23 This was our last day. We pretty much slept all day to prepare us for our trip home. We didn't really know where to go or what to see. It was Easter Sunday and we didn't know what would be open, if anything, so we just hung out. We had to leave our hotel at 9:30 p.m. and get a shuttle to the airport. Once we got to the airport we had to just sit in the lobby and wait all night. It was so horrible! We got there right after the bar had closed and there were no vending machines or water fountains so we couldn't get anything to drink other than out of the sink in the bathroom. After that night, I was so ready to go home!
That's pretty much a run down of the trip. It was way fun, but I was ready to come home when it was over. I would definitely go again, but I think it would be more fun to go with somebody that knows the area so we would know more of what to do.