one month ago today i left viterbo...20 January 2009
04 January 2009
roma
13/12
Our last weekend in Italy :( me and Caitlin head to Rome for one last time (at least for now). We had tickets to the Galleria Borghese, an art gallery on the extensive Villa Borghese grounds with lots of famous works by Caravaggio (one of my favorite artists). Our train was really late getting in and we showed up late for our appointed entrance time, but they luckily still let us in. The rooms in the Galleria were really ornate even though the building itself wasn’t too big. We were too tired to walk through the grounds, so we took a bus through and ended up at the Piazza del Popolo, where we wanted to go into a church, that was unfortunately closed since it was pausa time. Instead of waiting around 3 hours to go in, we just decided to walk down the Corso and then head towards the Piazza Navona to go to the other church we wanted to see, San Luigi dei Francesi. There were Christmas markets in the Piazza Navona and a French bookstore right near the cathedral, which was so completely covered in scaffolding that we missed it the first time we walked by. Inside, though, was amazing, and The Calling of St. Matthew, one of my favorite paintings by Caravaggio, was right on the wall. It was so much bigger and more impressive in person (as with most art). After that we decided to head home, but ended up walking onto the Ponte Umberto to get a good view of the Vatican (we knew it would be since we saw it in a Lavazza advertisement) and noticed the crazy high water level of the Tiber River. Walking further down the river we saw boats crashed into the sides of bridges since they couldn’t fit under them with the water so high. I guess all the rain we had been having made an impact! We walked back in the rain through the Vatican and to the San Pietro train station where a train to Viterbo came momentarily. Then it was back to Viterbo for fancy dinner at the Cucina Cinese!
Our last weekend in Italy :( me and Caitlin head to Rome for one last time (at least for now). We had tickets to the Galleria Borghese, an art gallery on the extensive Villa Borghese grounds with lots of famous works by Caravaggio (one of my favorite artists). Our train was really late getting in and we showed up late for our appointed entrance time, but they luckily still let us in. The rooms in the Galleria were really ornate even though the building itself wasn’t too big. We were too tired to walk through the grounds, so we took a bus through and ended up at the Piazza del Popolo, where we wanted to go into a church, that was unfortunately closed since it was pausa time. Instead of waiting around 3 hours to go in, we just decided to walk down the Corso and then head towards the Piazza Navona to go to the other church we wanted to see, San Luigi dei Francesi. There were Christmas markets in the Piazza Navona and a French bookstore right near the cathedral, which was so completely covered in scaffolding that we missed it the first time we walked by. Inside, though, was amazing, and The Calling of St. Matthew, one of my favorite paintings by Caravaggio, was right on the wall. It was so much bigger and more impressive in person (as with most art). After that we decided to head home, but ended up walking onto the Ponte Umberto to get a good view of the Vatican (we knew it would be since we saw it in a Lavazza advertisement) and noticed the crazy high water level of the Tiber River. Walking further down the river we saw boats crashed into the sides of bridges since they couldn’t fit under them with the water so high. I guess all the rain we had been having made an impact! We walked back in the rain through the Vatican and to the San Pietro train station where a train to Viterbo came momentarily. Then it was back to Viterbo for fancy dinner at the Cucina Cinese!
barcellona
4/12-8/12
It’s our last international trip (excluding the flight home). Sad, but we got a big group of like 15 to go to Barcelona and celebrate Caitlin’s 22nd! Monday was also a holiday in Italy (Immaculate Conception) so we had a whole extra day in Spain. We had an evening flight out of Rome on Thursday to Barcelona and got into the hostel around 11. The other part of our group had taken an earlier flight and was out getting dinner and going to some stock market themed bar called Dow Jones. Caitlin and I decided to go to bed since we knew we’d have an early start, but we really didn’t go to bed all that early since we were trying to plan things. As soon as we go to bed, the rest of the group comes in. Also in our room is an Italian (of course) who studies in England but was studying abroad in Spain. Got all that? The next morning we tried to start out early, got up for breakfast, but ended up leaving later than planned, such is the fate of trying to organize everything in such a large group. So we ended up just breaking up and doing what we do best - walking. We had a general idea of things we wanted to see and had some advice and a marked up map from guy who worked at the hostel. We decided to go see some castle on the top of the hill by the water. Well it was quite a walk just to get to the hill, and then quite the walk up. Our hostel was located on the Passeig de Gracias, a huge street in downtown Barcelona and on the way we got to see both Casa Mila and Casa Batllo, two of Gaudi’s most famous works. Then we stopped at Starbucks! Hey, we needed the caffeine, and it was Caitlin’s birthday after all. We also walked by the university, and through it I guess, it was pretty awesome! Of course we stopped at the random church, little market, and grocery store for the essential bag of Doritos. Luckily we also had some free Vive soy Bars that the hostel was practically shoving down our throats (they were expiring soon) to nourish us, not! Those things were gross, and the only one who could stand them was Peter. To make out uphill journey more eventful, Tracey decided to grab a shovel she found by the side of the road, probably belonging to the workers who were just up the street. She walked right by them, though, and they didn’t care. We finally made it to the top, with awesome views of Barcelona, however the castle was even higher. It seemed easy enough; we’d just have to keep walking up. Well we finally made it to a road, and found a funicular and a teleferic (like a little enclosed car on a cable in the air) and thought that the funicular went up so we paid and went in. Well we got there and found that it actually only went down the mountain, but we had paid to ride, so we rode it down and then back up, leading to some American on it to ask us why we didn’t get off and then having to explain the situation. So we’re back at where we started and we start walking up, not wanting to pay more to take the teleferic. We turn randomly thinking it’s going to be the right direction, but end up in some weird garden that clearly belongs to someone. There’s no way out but to turn around and we had already walked so far, so we climbed up and over the wall and jumped off it, right onto a street (I wonder what the people in the cars thought). Finally we make it up to the castle and walk around that. There are great views there too, and you can go up to the top of the castle (basically you can climb forever in Barcelona). On the way back down we stop at some famous statue where we find, of course, a bus load of Italian tourists (we can’t get away from them)! Also we find a park with super fun (and steep/dangerous for children) slides and swings, and continue down the path to find a Home-Alone-style zip line! So of course we stop and spend some time there, Peter find a cell phone in the dirt and answers calls in Spanish/English (but not Catalan) and somehow manages to tell the owner where we are to have her come and get it. We walk back through little streets decorated for Christmas and get waffles with chocolate even though Peter called us fat for eating them. Back at the hostel we try to find a place for dinner and a place to go out to celebrate Caitlin’s birthday that day. It so late by the time we end up leaving that we just end up going like across the street. All the food was good though, paella, patates braves, sangria! Except for the salad covered in mayonnaise (apparently popular). From there we go back to the hostel for directions to the club. Nothing is ever quick with 15-20 people though and it takes us forever to leave again. Not to mention that somehow we got split up before we made it to the metro and lost half the group. Then we had to go back to the hostel for directions (with our new Canadian friends we met in metro also going to the same place) even after we’d already paid to get in the metro. Finally we find out where to go and set out. We’re going to some big club called Razzmatazz which is like 5 levels and each one is like its own mini-club with different music and everything. After we get out of the metro we follow the hoards of people who are definitely too young to be clubbing or even up that late (clubs in Barcelona don’t even open until 1 am) and had to doge people on the streets selling any and everything “beer, coke, hash, chocolate?”. Once we got into Razzmatazz I had no idea how we ended up finding the rest of the group, because the club was like insane chaos. There were so many people so many different rooms that it was so easy to loose people. Every room was so packed it was practically like a mosh pit and smoking was allowed indoors so it was a hazy nightmare where you almost couldn’t breath. We did end up loosing some people in a jam packed techno room (where people shove you on purpose) but somehow found almost everyone when we decided to leave around 5. that’s when the metro reopened and we took it back to our hostel, arriving around 5:45 and going right to sleep, even though we all smelled like an ashtray and were covered in who knew what (one girl, who wore sandals to the club, was on the metro and her feet were black). A couple of us wanted to go on the Gaudi walking tour offered by the hostel in the morning so we got up 3 hours later, at 8:45 for that 4 hour tour with our cute German tour guide. We got to see a couple of things we had already walked by, and then saw Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral that is always under construction. We ended at Park Guell with the world’s largest park bench (also in one of my favorite movies, L’Auberge Espagnole). So much of Barcelona is influenced by Gaudi and all the architecture is so cool! After the tour we made our way back to the hostel and went to the big department store El Corte Ingles. It was huge! We went into a crazy huge H&M built inside what used to be an old church, as well. Then we went to an Irish pub some of our group had found the day before for dinner. It was cool because everyone there spoke English and we had really good food and cheap drinks. On the last day we metro-ed to the beach and the big market (which ended up being closed) but we ended up walking down cute streets and into some pretty cool cathedrals and then went by the Picasso museum since it was free (luckily, it wouldn’t have been worth the entrance fee). We went back the hostel since we had done everything we had planned on that day and ended up crashing on these huge awesome bean bag chairs in the common room of the hostel watching the only thing on TV in English we could find, some really crappy Dustin Hoffman movie. It was nice to veg though, we were so tired. Then we all went out for dinner by the beach at this really cool crepe place and walked along the beach. We skipped going to the traveling bar because we were getting up at 4 for our flight the next morning. Still we got back to the hostel late and then packed and went to bed around 1. Even though we were on different flights from different airports we all had to leave at the same time and we left around 4:30 to get a bus to the airport to get our flight to Rome. At FCO we had just missed the train to Viterbo and had to wait awhile for the next one. There weren’t many, probably because it was a holiday. Our train also only went to Porta Romana, so we had to walk home from there. Everyone else on the other flight was on the same train, though, and even though we got into Viterbo at 12:45, it felt like it had already been an entire day!
It’s our last international trip (excluding the flight home). Sad, but we got a big group of like 15 to go to Barcelona and celebrate Caitlin’s 22nd! Monday was also a holiday in Italy (Immaculate Conception) so we had a whole extra day in Spain. We had an evening flight out of Rome on Thursday to Barcelona and got into the hostel around 11. The other part of our group had taken an earlier flight and was out getting dinner and going to some stock market themed bar called Dow Jones. Caitlin and I decided to go to bed since we knew we’d have an early start, but we really didn’t go to bed all that early since we were trying to plan things. As soon as we go to bed, the rest of the group comes in. Also in our room is an Italian (of course) who studies in England but was studying abroad in Spain. Got all that? The next morning we tried to start out early, got up for breakfast, but ended up leaving later than planned, such is the fate of trying to organize everything in such a large group. So we ended up just breaking up and doing what we do best - walking. We had a general idea of things we wanted to see and had some advice and a marked up map from guy who worked at the hostel. We decided to go see some castle on the top of the hill by the water. Well it was quite a walk just to get to the hill, and then quite the walk up. Our hostel was located on the Passeig de Gracias, a huge street in downtown Barcelona and on the way we got to see both Casa Mila and Casa Batllo, two of Gaudi’s most famous works. Then we stopped at Starbucks! Hey, we needed the caffeine, and it was Caitlin’s birthday after all. We also walked by the university, and through it I guess, it was pretty awesome! Of course we stopped at the random church, little market, and grocery store for the essential bag of Doritos. Luckily we also had some free Vive soy Bars that the hostel was practically shoving down our throats (they were expiring soon) to nourish us, not! Those things were gross, and the only one who could stand them was Peter. To make out uphill journey more eventful, Tracey decided to grab a shovel she found by the side of the road, probably belonging to the workers who were just up the street. She walked right by them, though, and they didn’t care. We finally made it to the top, with awesome views of Barcelona, however the castle was even higher. It seemed easy enough; we’d just have to keep walking up. Well we finally made it to a road, and found a funicular and a teleferic (like a little enclosed car on a cable in the air) and thought that the funicular went up so we paid and went in. Well we got there and found that it actually only went down the mountain, but we had paid to ride, so we rode it down and then back up, leading to some American on it to ask us why we didn’t get off and then having to explain the situation. So we’re back at where we started and we start walking up, not wanting to pay more to take the teleferic. We turn randomly thinking it’s going to be the right direction, but end up in some weird garden that clearly belongs to someone. There’s no way out but to turn around and we had already walked so far, so we climbed up and over the wall and jumped off it, right onto a street (I wonder what the people in the cars thought). Finally we make it up to the castle and walk around that. There are great views there too, and you can go up to the top of the castle (basically you can climb forever in Barcelona). On the way back down we stop at some famous statue where we find, of course, a bus load of Italian tourists (we can’t get away from them)! Also we find a park with super fun (and steep/dangerous for children) slides and swings, and continue down the path to find a Home-Alone-style zip line! So of course we stop and spend some time there, Peter find a cell phone in the dirt and answers calls in Spanish/English (but not Catalan) and somehow manages to tell the owner where we are to have her come and get it. We walk back through little streets decorated for Christmas and get waffles with chocolate even though Peter called us fat for eating them. Back at the hostel we try to find a place for dinner and a place to go out to celebrate Caitlin’s birthday that day. It so late by the time we end up leaving that we just end up going like across the street. All the food was good though, paella, patates braves, sangria! Except for the salad covered in mayonnaise (apparently popular). From there we go back to the hostel for directions to the club. Nothing is ever quick with 15-20 people though and it takes us forever to leave again. Not to mention that somehow we got split up before we made it to the metro and lost half the group. Then we had to go back to the hostel for directions (with our new Canadian friends we met in metro also going to the same place) even after we’d already paid to get in the metro. Finally we find out where to go and set out. We’re going to some big club called Razzmatazz which is like 5 levels and each one is like its own mini-club with different music and everything. After we get out of the metro we follow the hoards of people who are definitely too young to be clubbing or even up that late (clubs in Barcelona don’t even open until 1 am) and had to doge people on the streets selling any and everything “beer, coke, hash, chocolate?”. Once we got into Razzmatazz I had no idea how we ended up finding the rest of the group, because the club was like insane chaos. There were so many people so many different rooms that it was so easy to loose people. Every room was so packed it was practically like a mosh pit and smoking was allowed indoors so it was a hazy nightmare where you almost couldn’t breath. We did end up loosing some people in a jam packed techno room (where people shove you on purpose) but somehow found almost everyone when we decided to leave around 5. that’s when the metro reopened and we took it back to our hostel, arriving around 5:45 and going right to sleep, even though we all smelled like an ashtray and were covered in who knew what (one girl, who wore sandals to the club, was on the metro and her feet were black). A couple of us wanted to go on the Gaudi walking tour offered by the hostel in the morning so we got up 3 hours later, at 8:45 for that 4 hour tour with our cute German tour guide. We got to see a couple of things we had already walked by, and then saw Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral that is always under construction. We ended at Park Guell with the world’s largest park bench (also in one of my favorite movies, L’Auberge Espagnole). So much of Barcelona is influenced by Gaudi and all the architecture is so cool! After the tour we made our way back to the hostel and went to the big department store El Corte Ingles. It was huge! We went into a crazy huge H&M built inside what used to be an old church, as well. Then we went to an Irish pub some of our group had found the day before for dinner. It was cool because everyone there spoke English and we had really good food and cheap drinks. On the last day we metro-ed to the beach and the big market (which ended up being closed) but we ended up walking down cute streets and into some pretty cool cathedrals and then went by the Picasso museum since it was free (luckily, it wouldn’t have been worth the entrance fee). We went back the hostel since we had done everything we had planned on that day and ended up crashing on these huge awesome bean bag chairs in the common room of the hostel watching the only thing on TV in English we could find, some really crappy Dustin Hoffman movie. It was nice to veg though, we were so tired. Then we all went out for dinner by the beach at this really cool crepe place and walked along the beach. We skipped going to the traveling bar because we were getting up at 4 for our flight the next morning. Still we got back to the hostel late and then packed and went to bed around 1. Even though we were on different flights from different airports we all had to leave at the same time and we left around 4:30 to get a bus to the airport to get our flight to Rome. At FCO we had just missed the train to Viterbo and had to wait awhile for the next one. There weren’t many, probably because it was a holiday. Our train also only went to Porta Romana, so we had to walk home from there. Everyone else on the other flight was on the same train, though, and even though we got into Viterbo at 12:45, it felt like it had already been an entire day!
03 January 2009
germania ed austria
26/11-30/11
This week we got Thursday off for American thanksgiving, since USAC is an American company. This was perfect for our trip to Germany and Austria, right at the beginning of the Christmas markets! We took an overnight train Wednesday night from Florence to Munich, which somehow ended up arriving like an hour and a half late, so that messed up our plans a little to go to Salzburg for the day. Luckily there were a bunch of other trains leaving about every 30 minutes so we checked into the hostel and left our stuff then went back to the train station and got on about an hour train ride to Salzburg! From there we went on the self guided walking tour suggested by our bff Rick Steves and saw: the old town, Mozartsplatz, Residenzplatz, Neue Residenz, Glockenspiel, Alte Residenz, Salzburg Cathedral, Kapitelplatz, St. Peter’s church, Universitaetsplatz, Getreidegasse, Mozart’s birthplace/residence, and Mirabell gardens and palace. Being a huge Sound of Music fan, I convinced everyone to take a short bus ride to Hellbrunn Castle where Lisl and Rolf’s “16 going on 17” gazebo is! Unfortunately it was locked! All I wanted to do was run around the benches like Lisl, but no. The castle and the grounds were cute, though, and they were having Christmas markets there as well as in downtown Salzburg. It was so beautiful there, just really cold! We walked around outside as much as we could, visited the Christmas markets back downtown, ate some brezeln and then decided it was time to head back to Munich. The train was a little late, but they announced it like 50 times and apologized a ton; so different than Trenitalia! So we went to bed in our big 6 person room, otherwise empty besides us, in the number one rated hostel on hostelworld.com (it was really cool). The next day started out with a free 3 hour English walking tour of Munich, that made me realize maybe I want to be a tour guide.. hmm add it too the list. The tour took us by all the things we had wanted to see, including: the Viktualienmarkt, Marienplatz and the Glockenspiel, Residenz, Frauenkirche, National Theater, Maximilianstrasse, Church of St. Peter, Old Town Hall, Hofbrauhaus, New Town Hall, Max-Joseph-Platz, and explained the beer hall putsch. We walked by St. Jakobsplatz, Karlsplatz, and an ice rink, down a shopping street, by Hofgarten and Augustiner before getting to Marienplatz to start our tour, bought some chocolate and pastries (our German diet) and returned to Augustiner that night to have some real German beer, though Carla was the only one brave enough to get a whole liter stein. I preferred the radler, beer with lemonade mixed in. After the tour we ate at a place with a bunch of the tour people (including a guy from my 1st year intermediate German class at McGill in Montréal.. small world, right?!). After the tour we made our way to the Englisher Garten, Munich’s version of Central Park and the biggest park in a city in Europe, and where they apparently surf on the man made stream that runs through it. Even though it wasn’t too late in the day, it was already getting dark and we started to walk back through the center of the city to go shopping at the Christmas markets in and near the Marienplatz! We had tried some Gluhwein and Punsch in Salzburg (both like hot forms of cough syrup) so we knew to stay away from those, but one German woman’s advice to us “when we are cold, we drink” definitely made sense; being outside all day made us feel numb! So we returned to the hostel, where there was an inside garden, basically a huge open room with lots of chairs and free wifi, right next to the bar, and we just hung out there. We decided that we saw pretty much everything we had wanted to in Munich, and that we would have time to go and see the Konigsschlosser the next day, Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, somewhere I have always wanted to go! So we looked up the train schedule and got on an early train to Fuessen, the closest town to the castles, two hours from Munich. We even lucked out and got some super cheap tickets because it was the weekend. So after our beautiful train ride through scenic Bavaria, we took a short bus ride and then went up to tour the castles, Hohenschwangau first, then Neuschwanstein. Fuessen and the town of Schwangau where the castles are actually located are some of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. They are in the mountains, and when we were there, were covered in snow. Everything looked like it was straight out of a postcard. Hohenschwangau is the smaller of the two castles but is where King Ludwig actually spent a lot of his time. He commissioned Neuschwanstein to be built but he died shortly after he moved in. This castle has great views of the even more magnificent Neuschwanstein, located even higher up on a hill. But the inside of Hohenschwangau was ornate and impressive. Next we hiked up the mountain to the next castle. They based the Disney world castle after this one; that is how story book like it is. I loved it. It’s got amazing views of the towns and mountains around it and the inside, even though unfinished, is still really lavish. After that we walked up even higher, to the Marienbrucke, with a great view of Neuschwanstein which was unfortunately being cleaned on that side, ruining our pictures (this is typical of Europe.. everything is constantly being restored!) Even though it as cold and snowy there, our little hike up the mountain kept us warm. So thats the solution for keeping warm! Marienbrucke, by the way, was this tiny little icy bridge suspended way up in the air, a little scary, but totally cool. Tired from our hike up we decided to take a bus down, and had to wait for awhile, but saw the cutest, smartest Italian boy “perform” how well he knew his colors and addition, in both English and Italian! We decided to take an hour to walk around Fuessen before taking a train back to Munich. It was just a cute small town with beautiful architecture and pretty streets filled with Christmas lights (Germany really goes all out – I love it)! Then a train back to Munich and from there we did some last minute Christmas shopping and Christmas market shopping. Then it was back to the hostel to pack, proving that we really had bought too much, when all our bags ended up being heavier or in my case, I just had a whole other one, filled completely with chocolate, gummy bears and other Christmas market goodies. We got to “sleep in” the next day since our train didn’t leave until 9:30 am, that was the latest we got up the whole trip! We got some food and then got on our 13 hour train ride back to Viterbo. This was the most beautiful train ride I have ever been on! First it was through Bavaria (beautiful, I want to go back, especially to see where my aunt is from), then through Austria and Innsbruck, and then through the alps in Austria and on the Italian border. There was a full on blizzard going on in there and it was amazingly beautiful! Our only train problem had to do with our optional train reservation not actually being optional (it made no sense, I can assure you; such are the rules of Italy) and our connection in Bologna being like 45 minutes late. It wasn’t just our train that was late (I probably should have taken a picture of the train board) every train that night was delayed - typical Italy. So basically the trip was great.. until we got to Italy. This lead me to notice and remember some more Italian/American differences: only in Italy: can every train be late, nothing be open, two people meet on the train for the first time and talk the entire ride, not multitask (you’re on the train, that’s enough, clearly you have nothing else to do. Like I don’t know something quiet, like reading?! Maybe for school?), inform them that you can use the informal form and kiss when you leave (this happened across from us), stare (typical), have a personal soundtrack (meaning play your music out your speakers on your mp3 player or cell phone for everyone to hear, yes of course we all want to hear it!), yell into your phone (this is where the “Italians are loud” stereotype comes into play), and say “ciao” 50 times in one sentence and not sound like you’re crazy. We almost missed out connection in Orte to Viterbo, but luckily the train lady called and told the train to wait for us.
This week we got Thursday off for American thanksgiving, since USAC is an American company. This was perfect for our trip to Germany and Austria, right at the beginning of the Christmas markets! We took an overnight train Wednesday night from Florence to Munich, which somehow ended up arriving like an hour and a half late, so that messed up our plans a little to go to Salzburg for the day. Luckily there were a bunch of other trains leaving about every 30 minutes so we checked into the hostel and left our stuff then went back to the train station and got on about an hour train ride to Salzburg! From there we went on the self guided walking tour suggested by our bff Rick Steves and saw: the old town, Mozartsplatz, Residenzplatz, Neue Residenz, Glockenspiel, Alte Residenz, Salzburg Cathedral, Kapitelplatz, St. Peter’s church, Universitaetsplatz, Getreidegasse, Mozart’s birthplace/residence, and Mirabell gardens and palace. Being a huge Sound of Music fan, I convinced everyone to take a short bus ride to Hellbrunn Castle where Lisl and Rolf’s “16 going on 17” gazebo is! Unfortunately it was locked! All I wanted to do was run around the benches like Lisl, but no. The castle and the grounds were cute, though, and they were having Christmas markets there as well as in downtown Salzburg. It was so beautiful there, just really cold! We walked around outside as much as we could, visited the Christmas markets back downtown, ate some brezeln and then decided it was time to head back to Munich. The train was a little late, but they announced it like 50 times and apologized a ton; so different than Trenitalia! So we went to bed in our big 6 person room, otherwise empty besides us, in the number one rated hostel on hostelworld.com (it was really cool). The next day started out with a free 3 hour English walking tour of Munich, that made me realize maybe I want to be a tour guide.. hmm add it too the list. The tour took us by all the things we had wanted to see, including: the Viktualienmarkt, Marienplatz and the Glockenspiel, Residenz, Frauenkirche, National Theater, Maximilianstrasse, Church of St. Peter, Old Town Hall, Hofbrauhaus, New Town Hall, Max-Joseph-Platz, and explained the beer hall putsch. We walked by St. Jakobsplatz, Karlsplatz, and an ice rink, down a shopping street, by Hofgarten and Augustiner before getting to Marienplatz to start our tour, bought some chocolate and pastries (our German diet) and returned to Augustiner that night to have some real German beer, though Carla was the only one brave enough to get a whole liter stein. I preferred the radler, beer with lemonade mixed in. After the tour we ate at a place with a bunch of the tour people (including a guy from my 1st year intermediate German class at McGill in Montréal.. small world, right?!). After the tour we made our way to the Englisher Garten, Munich’s version of Central Park and the biggest park in a city in Europe, and where they apparently surf on the man made stream that runs through it. Even though it wasn’t too late in the day, it was already getting dark and we started to walk back through the center of the city to go shopping at the Christmas markets in and near the Marienplatz! We had tried some Gluhwein and Punsch in Salzburg (both like hot forms of cough syrup) so we knew to stay away from those, but one German woman’s advice to us “when we are cold, we drink” definitely made sense; being outside all day made us feel numb! So we returned to the hostel, where there was an inside garden, basically a huge open room with lots of chairs and free wifi, right next to the bar, and we just hung out there. We decided that we saw pretty much everything we had wanted to in Munich, and that we would have time to go and see the Konigsschlosser the next day, Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, somewhere I have always wanted to go! So we looked up the train schedule and got on an early train to Fuessen, the closest town to the castles, two hours from Munich. We even lucked out and got some super cheap tickets because it was the weekend. So after our beautiful train ride through scenic Bavaria, we took a short bus ride and then went up to tour the castles, Hohenschwangau first, then Neuschwanstein. Fuessen and the town of Schwangau where the castles are actually located are some of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. They are in the mountains, and when we were there, were covered in snow. Everything looked like it was straight out of a postcard. Hohenschwangau is the smaller of the two castles but is where King Ludwig actually spent a lot of his time. He commissioned Neuschwanstein to be built but he died shortly after he moved in. This castle has great views of the even more magnificent Neuschwanstein, located even higher up on a hill. But the inside of Hohenschwangau was ornate and impressive. Next we hiked up the mountain to the next castle. They based the Disney world castle after this one; that is how story book like it is. I loved it. It’s got amazing views of the towns and mountains around it and the inside, even though unfinished, is still really lavish. After that we walked up even higher, to the Marienbrucke, with a great view of Neuschwanstein which was unfortunately being cleaned on that side, ruining our pictures (this is typical of Europe.. everything is constantly being restored!) Even though it as cold and snowy there, our little hike up the mountain kept us warm. So thats the solution for keeping warm! Marienbrucke, by the way, was this tiny little icy bridge suspended way up in the air, a little scary, but totally cool. Tired from our hike up we decided to take a bus down, and had to wait for awhile, but saw the cutest, smartest Italian boy “perform” how well he knew his colors and addition, in both English and Italian! We decided to take an hour to walk around Fuessen before taking a train back to Munich. It was just a cute small town with beautiful architecture and pretty streets filled with Christmas lights (Germany really goes all out – I love it)! Then a train back to Munich and from there we did some last minute Christmas shopping and Christmas market shopping. Then it was back to the hostel to pack, proving that we really had bought too much, when all our bags ended up being heavier or in my case, I just had a whole other one, filled completely with chocolate, gummy bears and other Christmas market goodies. We got to “sleep in” the next day since our train didn’t leave until 9:30 am, that was the latest we got up the whole trip! We got some food and then got on our 13 hour train ride back to Viterbo. This was the most beautiful train ride I have ever been on! First it was through Bavaria (beautiful, I want to go back, especially to see where my aunt is from), then through Austria and Innsbruck, and then through the alps in Austria and on the Italian border. There was a full on blizzard going on in there and it was amazingly beautiful! Our only train problem had to do with our optional train reservation not actually being optional (it made no sense, I can assure you; such are the rules of Italy) and our connection in Bologna being like 45 minutes late. It wasn’t just our train that was late (I probably should have taken a picture of the train board) every train that night was delayed - typical Italy. So basically the trip was great.. until we got to Italy. This lead me to notice and remember some more Italian/American differences: only in Italy: can every train be late, nothing be open, two people meet on the train for the first time and talk the entire ride, not multitask (you’re on the train, that’s enough, clearly you have nothing else to do. Like I don’t know something quiet, like reading?! Maybe for school?), inform them that you can use the informal form and kiss when you leave (this happened across from us), stare (typical), have a personal soundtrack (meaning play your music out your speakers on your mp3 player or cell phone for everyone to hear, yes of course we all want to hear it!), yell into your phone (this is where the “Italians are loud” stereotype comes into play), and say “ciao” 50 times in one sentence and not sound like you’re crazy. We almost missed out connection in Orte to Viterbo, but luckily the train lady called and told the train to wait for us.
una grande festa
22/11
After several weekends of travel in a row, we decided to spend one in Viterbo, mainly to get some sleep and work done! Somehow I don’t think either of these things really happened. After celebrating my birthday in Viterbo this week and meeting up with the friend from the Zurich train ride, he invited us to a party at his place, telling us to bring all our friends. Well most of them were traveling that weekend, or had other plans, and a couple bailed last minute but we had some girls going and one guy with us, but it was Peter so it doesn’t really count. It started out with an American style drinking game which the Italians did not get, and finished with some people needing to leave and a bunch of others leaving to go to a bar at the same time. So that left me and Caitlin to “dance” with the Italians. I say this is quotes because Italians like to dance to American music anywhere from the years 50s-90s, not so much current stuff and usually not Italian stuff. How do you dance to that?! Anyways it was an eventful night, and ended with us going to Try to collect Hailey and Carla and being walked home by two Italian guys, all the way to the dorms! The next morning, or rather afternoon, when we all got up, we spent a lot of time having some story time, always lots of fun.
After several weekends of travel in a row, we decided to spend one in Viterbo, mainly to get some sleep and work done! Somehow I don’t think either of these things really happened. After celebrating my birthday in Viterbo this week and meeting up with the friend from the Zurich train ride, he invited us to a party at his place, telling us to bring all our friends. Well most of them were traveling that weekend, or had other plans, and a couple bailed last minute but we had some girls going and one guy with us, but it was Peter so it doesn’t really count. It started out with an American style drinking game which the Italians did not get, and finished with some people needing to leave and a bunch of others leaving to go to a bar at the same time. So that left me and Caitlin to “dance” with the Italians. I say this is quotes because Italians like to dance to American music anywhere from the years 50s-90s, not so much current stuff and usually not Italian stuff. How do you dance to that?! Anyways it was an eventful night, and ended with us going to Try to collect Hailey and Carla and being walked home by two Italian guys, all the way to the dorms! The next morning, or rather afternoon, when we all got up, we spent a lot of time having some story time, always lots of fun.
parigi
11/13-16
It’s my birthday weekend! And I got to choose wherever we went. Despite the temptations of wanting to go somewhere new, I had to choose Paris as my birthday destination, just because I love it too much not to. Plus I was only there for a couple of days the first time so I could already think of tons of other things to do. I was so excited, had everything ready and we made it to the airport with time to spare on Thursday night. When we got there an Alitalia rep gave us our boarding passes and we realized that they were for a different flight than our original one. She said that our original (later) flight had been cancelled so they bumped us onto the earlier flight, leaving in like 30 minutes, so we would need to run to the gate now. We got through security and rushed to the gate to find a mass of people all crowded around one Air France rep. We couldn’t hear what he was saying but heard other people around us saying that the flight was cancelled. The rep promptly left, leaving tons of people not knowing what was going on, so we followed him to try and get an explanation. He told us that this flight was also cancelled and that we should go get rebooked at the Alitalia service desk. We walked that way, and ran into some friends going to Amsterdam, whose flight was not cancelled, and waited in line to be told that both flights were cancelled due to a strike (of course) but that there would also be a different strike starting the next day, meaning that getting to Paris would practically be impossible that weekend, and definitely wouldn’t be happening that night. I was so upset, especially after I paid extra to switch our tickets to Thursday! All I wanted was to be in Paris at midnight for my 21st birthday. And the reps weren’t so helpful, they only gave us reasons for cancellations after I practically forced it out of them, and told us there was a hotel we could stay in but gave us almost no details. The next couple of hours were spent wandering around the airport (looking for other flights/train options) and sitting outside (with a million other pissed off passengers) waiting for a bus to this hotel. The bus was really late because there had been bad rain all day which had apparently caused lots of accidents in the area. The bus ride, which was supposed to take 15 minutes, took almost an hour, and the bus was packed, with people standing in the aisle because it was supposed to come more often than it did. We got to the hotel close to midnight and had to get up for our new flight in all of 5 hours. So we tried to go to bed. We got up the next morning and had just missed the first bus at 6 am, which we needed to take since our check in closed around 6:30. Even though we had our boarding passes, we had a bag we needed to check. We took the next bus and got to the airport a little late, and they wouldn’t let us check the bag, which had big liquids in it. We asked if we could carry it on and they said fine, so we shoved as many things as we could in little Ziploc bags and rushed through security. Carla didn’t even take her laptop out of her bag and they didn’t even care. The only liquid they made us throw out was a big hair mousse. We got to the gate and onto the plane (which surprisingly enough had a working crew.. a representative the night before said she would be surprised if this flight took off) and we pushed back almost right after we sat down. We made it to Paris, took a train and metro to our hostel, dropped off our stuff and then set out on our jam packed, whirl wind tour of Paris - we managed to cram everything we wanted to see in two full days into one and a half! Since our hostel was in the Latin quarter (on a really cute street) we started off there, and walked around to see the Pantheon, St. Etienne du Mont church, walked through the Jardin du Luxembourg and ended up at Rue Christine! My street! Everything on the street was named Christine something. How cool! After that we crossed the river to Notre Dame, went inside Sainte Chapelle (new for me) with its impressive stained glass windows, walked by the Louvre and the Jardin des Tuilleries on our way to see the Garnier Opera house and the Galleries Lafayette. We climed up to the top just as they were closing it, and despite the cloudy, misty weather and the darkness, we could still see the (currently blue) lit up Eiffel tower in the distance. Then we metro-ed back to the Louvre, which has free entrance on Friday nights for people under 26, and attempted to stay awake in the biggest art museum ever. Everything in the Louvre is amazing but we were so tired that it was not the best time for us to appreciate it. Still we hit up the major works of art, Mona Lisa, Nike of Samothrace etc, and when we left decided to find a cake somewhere and go eat it under the Eiffel tower. The tricky thing about the Eiffel tower is that you can see it from like everywhere in Paris, so sometimes it looks a lot closer than it is. Long story short, we walked forever to get to the Eiffel tower, and it was so late that most groceries (and everything else) were closed. We found some little random one open and bought a little cake thing and continued our walk to the Eiffel tower. We stuck around to see it sparkle and then headed back to our hostel to sleep! The next day we started off by going to Sacre Coeur and then walking to Moulin Rouge. Then we took the metro to the arc de Triomphe and decided to walk up a million stairs to the top, which had great views. Then we walked down the Champs-Elysees and took the metro to the Eiffel Tower to get some day time pictures from a different view point. Then it was off the Musee d’Orsay, which was a great impressionist art museum that I had always wanted to go to. After that we decided that since it was our last night we needed to go see the Eiffel tower light up again, so we went back there. I should probably mention some of the great food we had this trip as well – crepes, baguettes, cheese, butter.. all my favorites! We returned to the hostel ready to go to bed since we had at like 7:30 in the morning. We decided to take the metro right when it opened to the train to Orly airport, but for many reasons combined we were running late and arrived to the airport 2 minutes after the check in closed – and they wouldn’t let us check in. We could not believe our luck! We asked about getting onto another flight to Rome, it would be 50 euro, but there wasn’t one until tomorrow. Well that wouldn’t work since we all had class, so our options became standby on one of the full flights to Rome that day or buy a flight for a different location. Since we would have to buy the ticket all over again anyways, we researched our options on the internet but didn’t find anything from our airport that was better or cheaper. So in the end, we bought a new flight to Pisa, leaving at 2 pm (7 hours in the airport!) for 185 euro and then once we got to Pisa bought a train ticket for 40 euro to Viterbo (which lasted another 5 hours). So we got home at 10:30 pm when we were supposed to be home around noon, but we were just happy to have made it.
It’s my birthday weekend! And I got to choose wherever we went. Despite the temptations of wanting to go somewhere new, I had to choose Paris as my birthday destination, just because I love it too much not to. Plus I was only there for a couple of days the first time so I could already think of tons of other things to do. I was so excited, had everything ready and we made it to the airport with time to spare on Thursday night. When we got there an Alitalia rep gave us our boarding passes and we realized that they were for a different flight than our original one. She said that our original (later) flight had been cancelled so they bumped us onto the earlier flight, leaving in like 30 minutes, so we would need to run to the gate now. We got through security and rushed to the gate to find a mass of people all crowded around one Air France rep. We couldn’t hear what he was saying but heard other people around us saying that the flight was cancelled. The rep promptly left, leaving tons of people not knowing what was going on, so we followed him to try and get an explanation. He told us that this flight was also cancelled and that we should go get rebooked at the Alitalia service desk. We walked that way, and ran into some friends going to Amsterdam, whose flight was not cancelled, and waited in line to be told that both flights were cancelled due to a strike (of course) but that there would also be a different strike starting the next day, meaning that getting to Paris would practically be impossible that weekend, and definitely wouldn’t be happening that night. I was so upset, especially after I paid extra to switch our tickets to Thursday! All I wanted was to be in Paris at midnight for my 21st birthday. And the reps weren’t so helpful, they only gave us reasons for cancellations after I practically forced it out of them, and told us there was a hotel we could stay in but gave us almost no details. The next couple of hours were spent wandering around the airport (looking for other flights/train options) and sitting outside (with a million other pissed off passengers) waiting for a bus to this hotel. The bus was really late because there had been bad rain all day which had apparently caused lots of accidents in the area. The bus ride, which was supposed to take 15 minutes, took almost an hour, and the bus was packed, with people standing in the aisle because it was supposed to come more often than it did. We got to the hotel close to midnight and had to get up for our new flight in all of 5 hours. So we tried to go to bed. We got up the next morning and had just missed the first bus at 6 am, which we needed to take since our check in closed around 6:30. Even though we had our boarding passes, we had a bag we needed to check. We took the next bus and got to the airport a little late, and they wouldn’t let us check the bag, which had big liquids in it. We asked if we could carry it on and they said fine, so we shoved as many things as we could in little Ziploc bags and rushed through security. Carla didn’t even take her laptop out of her bag and they didn’t even care. The only liquid they made us throw out was a big hair mousse. We got to the gate and onto the plane (which surprisingly enough had a working crew.. a representative the night before said she would be surprised if this flight took off) and we pushed back almost right after we sat down. We made it to Paris, took a train and metro to our hostel, dropped off our stuff and then set out on our jam packed, whirl wind tour of Paris - we managed to cram everything we wanted to see in two full days into one and a half! Since our hostel was in the Latin quarter (on a really cute street) we started off there, and walked around to see the Pantheon, St. Etienne du Mont church, walked through the Jardin du Luxembourg and ended up at Rue Christine! My street! Everything on the street was named Christine something. How cool! After that we crossed the river to Notre Dame, went inside Sainte Chapelle (new for me) with its impressive stained glass windows, walked by the Louvre and the Jardin des Tuilleries on our way to see the Garnier Opera house and the Galleries Lafayette. We climed up to the top just as they were closing it, and despite the cloudy, misty weather and the darkness, we could still see the (currently blue) lit up Eiffel tower in the distance. Then we metro-ed back to the Louvre, which has free entrance on Friday nights for people under 26, and attempted to stay awake in the biggest art museum ever. Everything in the Louvre is amazing but we were so tired that it was not the best time for us to appreciate it. Still we hit up the major works of art, Mona Lisa, Nike of Samothrace etc, and when we left decided to find a cake somewhere and go eat it under the Eiffel tower. The tricky thing about the Eiffel tower is that you can see it from like everywhere in Paris, so sometimes it looks a lot closer than it is. Long story short, we walked forever to get to the Eiffel tower, and it was so late that most groceries (and everything else) were closed. We found some little random one open and bought a little cake thing and continued our walk to the Eiffel tower. We stuck around to see it sparkle and then headed back to our hostel to sleep! The next day we started off by going to Sacre Coeur and then walking to Moulin Rouge. Then we took the metro to the arc de Triomphe and decided to walk up a million stairs to the top, which had great views. Then we walked down the Champs-Elysees and took the metro to the Eiffel Tower to get some day time pictures from a different view point. Then it was off the Musee d’Orsay, which was a great impressionist art museum that I had always wanted to go to. After that we decided that since it was our last night we needed to go see the Eiffel tower light up again, so we went back there. I should probably mention some of the great food we had this trip as well – crepes, baguettes, cheese, butter.. all my favorites! We returned to the hostel ready to go to bed since we had at like 7:30 in the morning. We decided to take the metro right when it opened to the train to Orly airport, but for many reasons combined we were running late and arrived to the airport 2 minutes after the check in closed – and they wouldn’t let us check in. We could not believe our luck! We asked about getting onto another flight to Rome, it would be 50 euro, but there wasn’t one until tomorrow. Well that wouldn’t work since we all had class, so our options became standby on one of the full flights to Rome that day or buy a flight for a different location. Since we would have to buy the ticket all over again anyways, we researched our options on the internet but didn’t find anything from our airport that was better or cheaper. So in the end, we bought a new flight to Pisa, leaving at 2 pm (7 hours in the airport!) for 185 euro and then once we got to Pisa bought a train ticket for 40 euro to Viterbo (which lasted another 5 hours). So we got home at 10:30 pm when we were supposed to be home around noon, but we were just happy to have made it.
venezia
7/11-9/11
This weekend we went to Venice, our last big Italy trip. We left Friday night on an overnight train after Caitlin and Carla got back from their cities fieldtrip. Our overnight train said that a reservation was optional, so we decided against having a sleeping compartment and just got on the train and sat in some unreserved seats. Our train was supposed to arrive around 5 am in Venice and we tried to pay attention to the stops as we went. As it got closer to the time we saw that we were just across the water from Venice so we knew we were the next stop. We stayed at this station for awhile but didn’t think anything of it. When we finally get going, we travel for while without stopping. It’s past the time we were supposed to arrive but we thought maybe it was due to the long stop at the last station. Finally we start stopping places, but none of them are where we want to be and we don’t recognize them so we have no idea where we are. We finally decide to just get off at the next stop and at this point it’s like 6:30 in the morning. We get off in a little town called Cervignano del Friuli and look on our map only to find that we are practically in Slovenia. The train’s final destination was Trieste and apparently had another final destination of Udine and split in that station right before Venice. It would have been nice if that was shown on some sign or something somewhere! Then we had to wait at the train station for the next train to Venice. The train we got on was coming from Austria and we got on hoping we wouldn’t need a reservation, but we did. The train lady was nice and let us get off at the next stop and said there was a regional train (no res required) coming right after this one. So then we waited at that stop and got on the regional with an entire population of loud Italian high schoolers. We finally arrived in Venice around 10 am, 5 hours late and then got on the water taxi to our hostel. We dropped of our stuff and went back to the main island in Venice. Venice is so confusing! There aren’t street names and everything is tiny little and windy. Luckily there were signs pointing the way to the main attractions that lead us though the maze that is Venice. We went and saw Piazza San Marco and went inside the basilica which was so cool. The ceilings were painted and you could really see the Byzantine influence in the architectural design – it was so different from the Etruscan everything we were used to seeing. Then we took a scenic vaporetto ride down the Grand Canal back to the train station to get our reservations for the train ride back Sunday night. It was such a cool way to see the city. When we got to the train station we went up to the window the make a reservation and found out that Trenitalia was about to go on strike so our original plan with the overnight train from Venice to Viterbo would not be running. The strike was planned as a 24 hour event starting at 9 pm on Sunday night and going until 9 pm on Monday night. Even though our overnight train left before then, all the trains would stop at 9, meaning we would be stranded somewhere. Our only option if we were set on leaving then was to rely on the few regional trains that were required to run during rush hour for commuters. The rush hour windows were like 2 hours though, so we could basically travel as far as we could for 2 hours and then be stuck there for the rest of the time. I had class Monday morning and had a midterm on Tuesday (actually a presentation that I hadn’t done yet) so decided after much contemplation that I would have to leave Sunday before the strike started, only slightly more than 24 hours after I had arrived. It sucked! Caitlin’s dad and grandpa were in Venice traveling as well so she and Carla decided to skip class and leave Monday night after the strike was over and get back Tuesday morning (right before Carla’s midterm as well). I was mad about having to cut my trip short but decided I would just have to cram a lot in (like usual) and hope that I could return next semester (I’m planning on going to Carnevale). So we went back and met with Caitlin’s relatives at their hotel and then I went and walked around myself while Carla went back to the hostel to take a nap. I got lots of cool stuff (Venetian masks, glass jewelry) from little street vendors near the Ponte Rialto and somehow managed not to get completely lost in the maze. Later we went out to dinner with Caitlin’s dad and grandpa and then took a vaporetto to Venice’s “best gelato shop” located right on the canal. The next day I had to leave around 1 to get to my train so we tried to get up early and squeeze some last minute (for me anyways) sight seeing in. Somehow with others, though, its hard to leave on time, so we got a bit of a late start. So we saw the bridge of sighs, unfortunately covered in scaffolding, which was covered in advertisements, and walked through the little streets for the last time going into random cathedrals and cute shops. Then I went to Caitlin’s dad’s hotel to get my backpack (where Caitlin and Carla ended up staying for their extra night since there was also a public transportation strike in Venice, and since the hostel was on a different island, they didn’t want to be stranded there all day) and took a vaporetto back to the train station, barely making my train. I didn’t have a reservation but I thought I could sit in the same section as I did last time, however those seats are also apparently reserved and I had to get up when the people with the reservations got on the train. After some of the bigger stops, like Bologna, the train was packed and I had to stand up towards the back of the compartment near the door with a bunch of other people (probably all traveling before the strike started). I tried to read my book for school but ended up next to some really creepy Italian guy who started and muttered things under his breath. Luckily a seat opened up and I got to sit the rest of the way.
This weekend we went to Venice, our last big Italy trip. We left Friday night on an overnight train after Caitlin and Carla got back from their cities fieldtrip. Our overnight train said that a reservation was optional, so we decided against having a sleeping compartment and just got on the train and sat in some unreserved seats. Our train was supposed to arrive around 5 am in Venice and we tried to pay attention to the stops as we went. As it got closer to the time we saw that we were just across the water from Venice so we knew we were the next stop. We stayed at this station for awhile but didn’t think anything of it. When we finally get going, we travel for while without stopping. It’s past the time we were supposed to arrive but we thought maybe it was due to the long stop at the last station. Finally we start stopping places, but none of them are where we want to be and we don’t recognize them so we have no idea where we are. We finally decide to just get off at the next stop and at this point it’s like 6:30 in the morning. We get off in a little town called Cervignano del Friuli and look on our map only to find that we are practically in Slovenia. The train’s final destination was Trieste and apparently had another final destination of Udine and split in that station right before Venice. It would have been nice if that was shown on some sign or something somewhere! Then we had to wait at the train station for the next train to Venice. The train we got on was coming from Austria and we got on hoping we wouldn’t need a reservation, but we did. The train lady was nice and let us get off at the next stop and said there was a regional train (no res required) coming right after this one. So then we waited at that stop and got on the regional with an entire population of loud Italian high schoolers. We finally arrived in Venice around 10 am, 5 hours late and then got on the water taxi to our hostel. We dropped of our stuff and went back to the main island in Venice. Venice is so confusing! There aren’t street names and everything is tiny little and windy. Luckily there were signs pointing the way to the main attractions that lead us though the maze that is Venice. We went and saw Piazza San Marco and went inside the basilica which was so cool. The ceilings were painted and you could really see the Byzantine influence in the architectural design – it was so different from the Etruscan everything we were used to seeing. Then we took a scenic vaporetto ride down the Grand Canal back to the train station to get our reservations for the train ride back Sunday night. It was such a cool way to see the city. When we got to the train station we went up to the window the make a reservation and found out that Trenitalia was about to go on strike so our original plan with the overnight train from Venice to Viterbo would not be running. The strike was planned as a 24 hour event starting at 9 pm on Sunday night and going until 9 pm on Monday night. Even though our overnight train left before then, all the trains would stop at 9, meaning we would be stranded somewhere. Our only option if we were set on leaving then was to rely on the few regional trains that were required to run during rush hour for commuters. The rush hour windows were like 2 hours though, so we could basically travel as far as we could for 2 hours and then be stuck there for the rest of the time. I had class Monday morning and had a midterm on Tuesday (actually a presentation that I hadn’t done yet) so decided after much contemplation that I would have to leave Sunday before the strike started, only slightly more than 24 hours after I had arrived. It sucked! Caitlin’s dad and grandpa were in Venice traveling as well so she and Carla decided to skip class and leave Monday night after the strike was over and get back Tuesday morning (right before Carla’s midterm as well). I was mad about having to cut my trip short but decided I would just have to cram a lot in (like usual) and hope that I could return next semester (I’m planning on going to Carnevale). So we went back and met with Caitlin’s relatives at their hotel and then I went and walked around myself while Carla went back to the hostel to take a nap. I got lots of cool stuff (Venetian masks, glass jewelry) from little street vendors near the Ponte Rialto and somehow managed not to get completely lost in the maze. Later we went out to dinner with Caitlin’s dad and grandpa and then took a vaporetto to Venice’s “best gelato shop” located right on the canal. The next day I had to leave around 1 to get to my train so we tried to get up early and squeeze some last minute (for me anyways) sight seeing in. Somehow with others, though, its hard to leave on time, so we got a bit of a late start. So we saw the bridge of sighs, unfortunately covered in scaffolding, which was covered in advertisements, and walked through the little streets for the last time going into random cathedrals and cute shops. Then I went to Caitlin’s dad’s hotel to get my backpack (where Caitlin and Carla ended up staying for their extra night since there was also a public transportation strike in Venice, and since the hostel was on a different island, they didn’t want to be stranded there all day) and took a vaporetto back to the train station, barely making my train. I didn’t have a reservation but I thought I could sit in the same section as I did last time, however those seats are also apparently reserved and I had to get up when the people with the reservations got on the train. After some of the bigger stops, like Bologna, the train was packed and I had to stand up towards the back of the compartment near the door with a bunch of other people (probably all traveling before the strike started). I tried to read my book for school but ended up next to some really creepy Italian guy who started and muttered things under his breath. Luckily a seat opened up and I got to sit the rest of the way.
02 January 2009
november fourth
4/11
It’s Election Day in the US and the whole world is paying attention. I voted absentee and was glad to see that the majority of the USAC students did the same. I didn’t really keep up with any news not having a TV and having limited internet access, so I couldn’t really tell you what was going on in Italy or in America, but this was a big enough deal that people would ask us about it, who we voted for, if we wanted Obama to win or if we liked Bush, things like that. Italians (as did everyone else) wanted Obama to win and would tell you so. It was exciting to watch the election results but annoying because they didn’t start to get results until late into the night for us. When I woke up, though, I saw the tons of headlines on the internet and noticed that Virginia had turned blue, mostly because of Fairfax County; history was made!
It’s Election Day in the US and the whole world is paying attention. I voted absentee and was glad to see that the majority of the USAC students did the same. I didn’t really keep up with any news not having a TV and having limited internet access, so I couldn’t really tell you what was going on in Italy or in America, but this was a big enough deal that people would ask us about it, who we voted for, if we wanted Obama to win or if we liked Bush, things like that. Italians (as did everyone else) wanted Obama to win and would tell you so. It was exciting to watch the election results but annoying because they didn’t start to get results until late into the night for us. When I woke up, though, I saw the tons of headlines on the internet and noticed that Virginia had turned blue, mostly because of Fairfax County; history was made!
milano e svizzera
31/10-2/11
It’s Halloween! And we spent the not-so-celebrated (in Italy) holiday on an overnight train to Zurich! But getting to that point was not easy, the week preceding that weekend was probably the busiest one I had had as of yet. I have written here “craziest week yet” but had to go back to my calendar to remember as to why it was so bad. well let’s see, I started another class that week, my French class taught in Italian, so add that to my 15 credit course load, Tuesday was the final day of our first part of culture, meaning we had a final exam, but also an individual essay and a group essay/project/presentation were all due that day. It was a massive amount of work, and due to the nature of group projects, didn’t work out so well, with some people doing more work than others (inevitable, right?) and lots of last minute work and cramming, the whole day was just kind of a mess. Luckily the class was over after that and we were on to start a more boring part of culture with a professor who seemed to not only hate Americans (typical) but also Italy and Italians (ugh). Thursday I had my Composition 1 final, the most challenging of ala my classes. So the week was pretty jammed packed and in addition we sort of semi-planned a trip to Switzerland and Milan provided that our Eurorail passes came. They did come, Thursday afternoon, and we decided to leave Friday night on an overnight train to Zurich, spend half the day in Zurich, take a train to Lucerne (another town in Switzerland) spend the rest of the day there, then take a train to Milan, stay in Milan the night, spend all of Sunday in Milan, and overnight it back to Viterbo Sunday night, arriving Monday morning, approximately 45 minutes before my 9 am class. All this travel and we only used 2 of our Eurorail travel days! It was a pretty crammed weekend, which became only more crammed when our train was (inevitably) late leaving from our first connection of Attigliano. The trains went Viterbo to Attigliano, Attigliano to Florence, Florence to Zurich. Viterbo to Attigliano was fine, meaning that it was probably delayed around 15 minutes, but in Italy that means it was on time. When we got to Attigliano, we were supposed to have a pretty tight connection, but the train to Florence was announced to be 40 minutes in ritardo (late, or retarded as Carla says). We were kind of nervous at this point, since our hour layover in Florence, which had previously seemed like a lot of time, was now cut much shorter. We also chose to wait on the platform (in the unlikely event that it would not actually be that late) in the cold weather and pouring rain (though we were under a little covering). So we’re sitting on the platform when they make the announcement about it being late and just then two guys come up the stairs and start complaining about how its “quaranta minuti in ritardo” just like we are. So we say something like “yeah it’s along time and we have a connection in Florence”. Then we start talking about how we’re going to Zurich, which of course they find weird/random (Italians don’t travel, and our reason for going “because we can and want to” probably wasn’t good enough). And we don’t want to miss it because there aren’t usually other night trains. Luckily I don’t think much of this because we have a full on conversation in Italian with these two guys (meaning I mainly talked and then translated for Carla into English), who also lived in Viterbo, about how we’re Americans studying abroad and what we study here and at home and where we’re traveling or planning to travel. Coincidently one of the guys is planning on studying abroad in New York sometime so he had an English book to study on the train. As we sit there talking, more announcements are made finally after like 50 minutes, saying that the train is delayed again. I think they said some small number, like 20 more minutes, but those 20 minutes came and went with no other announcement and no train. Finally after what felt like forever, the train came. It was packed. There were people sitting in the aisles, on the floor, in the little corridors between trains, and the train was probably 100 degrees inside and smelled. Worst train ride ever! To make it even worse, the super delayed train stopped at every stop for at least 5 minutes, sometimes for as much as 30 minutes. There was no way we were making this train to Switzerland. In the mean time we were still sitting with our new friends from the train station and they were so nice. One called his friend and had him look up other trains that night on the internet and gave us advice as to what we should do (stay the night or leave on the next train at 3 am). He even offered to let us stay with him if we wanted to stay the night but we also had Caitlin in Florence with her dad and grandpa that night to look for a place for us. In the end, we decided that since most trains were delayed that night that maybe we would luck out and our train to Switzerland would also be delayed. If it wasn’t, well then I guess we’d either be staying at the train station or going into Florence to find a place. But we weren’t too worried about it. So we got of the train, leaving with the guy’s phone number telling us to call if we needed any more help, and went to the board to find that 1, our train from Attigliano had arrived 100 minutes late (a little more than 40), but that our train to Zurich was also 80 minutes late, so we hadn’t missed it! The only problem was that it was so late at night at this point that the train ticket office was closed and we didn’t have a reservation or a way to buy a reservation. When the train came though we just hopped on board, explained the situation, and ended up getting and entire 6 person sleeper car to ourselves (just the two of us), it was great! Then we had a nice long trip to sleep. When we woke up in the morning, I looked out the window and we were in the middle of the Alps! It was so amazing; I almost thought it was a dream. The rest of the ride we laid in our beds with the window curtains open, watching the Alps go by. Like TV but better! The nice train man came an hour before we were supposed to arrive in Zurich and gave us breakfast. When we got to Zurich we put our stuff in lockers in the cool train station and set off to start walking around. We went down the Bahnhofstrasse with all its shopping (starting off with affordable and then going into crazy expensive), went into a Coop (yes they are in Switzerland too!), bought lots of chocolate and a huge brezel, and then made our way to the older section of Zurich with the river flowing through it. There, there are two cathedrals, the Grossmunster and the Fraumunster, one with stained glass by Chagall, that we went into. Being a little museum-ed out and also short on time we spent the rest of our half day walking around the cute little streets of Zurich. Then we went back to the train station and got on a train to Lucerne, a town only like an hour away from Zurich, known for being really beautiful. This train ride was probably one of the best we’ve been on. It was a really nice, modern train, and we sat in a section that had a round booth and a table, like in a restaurant. The train pushed off from the platform at the time it was supposed to (on the dot) and that alone made it the best train trip of the weekend. The train ride was beautiful, down the river that cuts through Zurich, to Lucerne. When we arrived in Lucerne and stepped out of the train station, you can immediately see why people think it’s so beautiful - It’s on a lake with the Alps in the background! It was so cool. So we got there around 3:30 in the afternoon and started down the main street across the river from the train station, one that is full of shops and fondue places. All the store signs said that they would be open until 4, but everything was already closed! And it was like a ghost town. So we just walked through the quaint old streets with the ornately painted building facades, saw the medieval wall that used to protect the city, and walked along the water. As it started to get dark it got even colder, and we headed back to the train station to get on our train to Milan. When we got to Milan we walked to our hostel which was actually a (crappy) hotel that didn’t have half the stuff it advertised (internet etc) and had a shower in the middle of the room. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but luckily it was just for a night. In the morning we packed up our stuff and took it to the luggage storage in the train station, bought our seat reservation for our train that night, and then set off to see the Duomo. The Duomo was really impressive and really ornate. And we went up on the roof (lots of stairs!), which let you see the detail of the sculptures on the building. Then we walked through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, down the supposed affordable shopping streets in Milan, and then after walking forever ended up taking a bus the rest of the way to see one of Milan’s oldest churches (which happened to be only one stop away at that point), the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio. After that we made our way to the cathedral where they have da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”, Santa Maria delle Grazie, which we didn’t get to see because even though we tried to make reservations in advance, it was sold out through December. Still the church was nice. Then we walked to the Castello Sforzesco, which houses tons of museums, and then walked back to see the Duomo at night, and walked through some really expensive shopping streets. Then it was onto our overnight train to Viterbo, with a switch in Orte in the morning. We paid for a 3 euro seat reservation thinking it would mean like a reclining seat that maybe turned into a bed, but it was only a semi-reclining seat in a packed 6 person compartment, so I didn’t really sleep, and had a long day of classes which I had to leave for 30 minutes after I got home. Yay!
It’s Halloween! And we spent the not-so-celebrated (in Italy) holiday on an overnight train to Zurich! But getting to that point was not easy, the week preceding that weekend was probably the busiest one I had had as of yet. I have written here “craziest week yet” but had to go back to my calendar to remember as to why it was so bad. well let’s see, I started another class that week, my French class taught in Italian, so add that to my 15 credit course load, Tuesday was the final day of our first part of culture, meaning we had a final exam, but also an individual essay and a group essay/project/presentation were all due that day. It was a massive amount of work, and due to the nature of group projects, didn’t work out so well, with some people doing more work than others (inevitable, right?) and lots of last minute work and cramming, the whole day was just kind of a mess. Luckily the class was over after that and we were on to start a more boring part of culture with a professor who seemed to not only hate Americans (typical) but also Italy and Italians (ugh). Thursday I had my Composition 1 final, the most challenging of ala my classes. So the week was pretty jammed packed and in addition we sort of semi-planned a trip to Switzerland and Milan provided that our Eurorail passes came. They did come, Thursday afternoon, and we decided to leave Friday night on an overnight train to Zurich, spend half the day in Zurich, take a train to Lucerne (another town in Switzerland) spend the rest of the day there, then take a train to Milan, stay in Milan the night, spend all of Sunday in Milan, and overnight it back to Viterbo Sunday night, arriving Monday morning, approximately 45 minutes before my 9 am class. All this travel and we only used 2 of our Eurorail travel days! It was a pretty crammed weekend, which became only more crammed when our train was (inevitably) late leaving from our first connection of Attigliano. The trains went Viterbo to Attigliano, Attigliano to Florence, Florence to Zurich. Viterbo to Attigliano was fine, meaning that it was probably delayed around 15 minutes, but in Italy that means it was on time. When we got to Attigliano, we were supposed to have a pretty tight connection, but the train to Florence was announced to be 40 minutes in ritardo (late, or retarded as Carla says). We were kind of nervous at this point, since our hour layover in Florence, which had previously seemed like a lot of time, was now cut much shorter. We also chose to wait on the platform (in the unlikely event that it would not actually be that late) in the cold weather and pouring rain (though we were under a little covering). So we’re sitting on the platform when they make the announcement about it being late and just then two guys come up the stairs and start complaining about how its “quaranta minuti in ritardo” just like we are. So we say something like “yeah it’s along time and we have a connection in Florence”. Then we start talking about how we’re going to Zurich, which of course they find weird/random (Italians don’t travel, and our reason for going “because we can and want to” probably wasn’t good enough). And we don’t want to miss it because there aren’t usually other night trains. Luckily I don’t think much of this because we have a full on conversation in Italian with these two guys (meaning I mainly talked and then translated for Carla into English), who also lived in Viterbo, about how we’re Americans studying abroad and what we study here and at home and where we’re traveling or planning to travel. Coincidently one of the guys is planning on studying abroad in New York sometime so he had an English book to study on the train. As we sit there talking, more announcements are made finally after like 50 minutes, saying that the train is delayed again. I think they said some small number, like 20 more minutes, but those 20 minutes came and went with no other announcement and no train. Finally after what felt like forever, the train came. It was packed. There were people sitting in the aisles, on the floor, in the little corridors between trains, and the train was probably 100 degrees inside and smelled. Worst train ride ever! To make it even worse, the super delayed train stopped at every stop for at least 5 minutes, sometimes for as much as 30 minutes. There was no way we were making this train to Switzerland. In the mean time we were still sitting with our new friends from the train station and they were so nice. One called his friend and had him look up other trains that night on the internet and gave us advice as to what we should do (stay the night or leave on the next train at 3 am). He even offered to let us stay with him if we wanted to stay the night but we also had Caitlin in Florence with her dad and grandpa that night to look for a place for us. In the end, we decided that since most trains were delayed that night that maybe we would luck out and our train to Switzerland would also be delayed. If it wasn’t, well then I guess we’d either be staying at the train station or going into Florence to find a place. But we weren’t too worried about it. So we got of the train, leaving with the guy’s phone number telling us to call if we needed any more help, and went to the board to find that 1, our train from Attigliano had arrived 100 minutes late (a little more than 40), but that our train to Zurich was also 80 minutes late, so we hadn’t missed it! The only problem was that it was so late at night at this point that the train ticket office was closed and we didn’t have a reservation or a way to buy a reservation. When the train came though we just hopped on board, explained the situation, and ended up getting and entire 6 person sleeper car to ourselves (just the two of us), it was great! Then we had a nice long trip to sleep. When we woke up in the morning, I looked out the window and we were in the middle of the Alps! It was so amazing; I almost thought it was a dream. The rest of the ride we laid in our beds with the window curtains open, watching the Alps go by. Like TV but better! The nice train man came an hour before we were supposed to arrive in Zurich and gave us breakfast. When we got to Zurich we put our stuff in lockers in the cool train station and set off to start walking around. We went down the Bahnhofstrasse with all its shopping (starting off with affordable and then going into crazy expensive), went into a Coop (yes they are in Switzerland too!), bought lots of chocolate and a huge brezel, and then made our way to the older section of Zurich with the river flowing through it. There, there are two cathedrals, the Grossmunster and the Fraumunster, one with stained glass by Chagall, that we went into. Being a little museum-ed out and also short on time we spent the rest of our half day walking around the cute little streets of Zurich. Then we went back to the train station and got on a train to Lucerne, a town only like an hour away from Zurich, known for being really beautiful. This train ride was probably one of the best we’ve been on. It was a really nice, modern train, and we sat in a section that had a round booth and a table, like in a restaurant. The train pushed off from the platform at the time it was supposed to (on the dot) and that alone made it the best train trip of the weekend. The train ride was beautiful, down the river that cuts through Zurich, to Lucerne. When we arrived in Lucerne and stepped out of the train station, you can immediately see why people think it’s so beautiful - It’s on a lake with the Alps in the background! It was so cool. So we got there around 3:30 in the afternoon and started down the main street across the river from the train station, one that is full of shops and fondue places. All the store signs said that they would be open until 4, but everything was already closed! And it was like a ghost town. So we just walked through the quaint old streets with the ornately painted building facades, saw the medieval wall that used to protect the city, and walked along the water. As it started to get dark it got even colder, and we headed back to the train station to get on our train to Milan. When we got to Milan we walked to our hostel which was actually a (crappy) hotel that didn’t have half the stuff it advertised (internet etc) and had a shower in the middle of the room. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but luckily it was just for a night. In the morning we packed up our stuff and took it to the luggage storage in the train station, bought our seat reservation for our train that night, and then set off to see the Duomo. The Duomo was really impressive and really ornate. And we went up on the roof (lots of stairs!), which let you see the detail of the sculptures on the building. Then we walked through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, down the supposed affordable shopping streets in Milan, and then after walking forever ended up taking a bus the rest of the way to see one of Milan’s oldest churches (which happened to be only one stop away at that point), the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio. After that we made our way to the cathedral where they have da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”, Santa Maria delle Grazie, which we didn’t get to see because even though we tried to make reservations in advance, it was sold out through December. Still the church was nice. Then we walked to the Castello Sforzesco, which houses tons of museums, and then walked back to see the Duomo at night, and walked through some really expensive shopping streets. Then it was onto our overnight train to Viterbo, with a switch in Orte in the morning. We paid for a 3 euro seat reservation thinking it would mean like a reclining seat that maybe turned into a bed, but it was only a semi-reclining seat in a packed 6 person compartment, so I didn’t really sleep, and had a long day of classes which I had to leave for 30 minutes after I got home. Yay!
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