Rome

I can't believe I am finally on my last blog, and I thought this day would never come. Well, perhaps if I travel again I will start another one..my life is much too boring to hear anything about it right now.

So Rome. What can I say. Of course I expected great things, but wow, Rome is amazing!! There is just so much there, buildings, culture, sooooooo much history and so good of food.

Lets start with the food, my favourite part. Well not my favourite but anyways. Venice as we learned not only from our guidebook but also experience was quite a let down for food. Perhaps we were bad at picking good restaurants at this point and it is impossible to get away from tourists, but most of our meals were not so great. Florence was a pleasant change, the food was quite good but at the same time, not so much variety. Rome on the other hand amazing food, lots of different original things. mm. We soon got in the habit of having pizza for breakfast, gelato for lunch and pasta for dinner. We're healthy, I know. The take away pizza is cool though, they fold it over so there is crust on the top and bottom and no mess! We also had dessert a few times with dinner and that may be my favourite part, tiramisu. I like it in Canada and it must be 100 times better in Italy. Rather than a cake with cream filling it is cake in cream and is just so tasty. I was sad to part with it. Also the gelato was so good. Now that I am back all icecream is a disappointment, it makes me wonder why I enjoyed eating it in the first place. We found, oddly enough, that the gelato was best in Venice although all the other food was the worst there. Perhaps we just never accidentally ate at bad places since all the places in Venice seemed very similar. In Rome you had to be very careful not to go to the places that have just bought their's from the store rather than making it. It was also very cool, in Venice they did the conventional scoop, but in Florence and Rome they used a spatula to pack it into the cup, very different but cool! Of course, being in the birthplace of cappuccinos, we stopped for them frequently. Also very tasty and artfully done. Here's some yummy pics..


You know, just breakfast in front of the Pantheon. Fresh squeezed orange juice..hmm..perhaps that is why Tropicana doesn't seem that special anymore?


mmm..gelato..


and my favourite, tiramisu!

Alright, time for the buildings. You can probably guess all the popular landmarks we visited. One thing you don't predict, however, is how many things aren't on the map or aren't famous. We were so amazed when we first got there how we would cross a ruin or amazing palace and it wouldn't be on our map. We then realized after visiting all the things on the map how much more amazing they were and that it just wasn't possible to include all these other things. I think one of the main things we liked about Rome was how old the ruins were. All of the places we had already visited were boasting about buildings being from perhaps 1000AD but here we were seeing ones from 70BC. It is so crazy when you see that they were able to build such things so long ago and it makes you wonder if we really have advanced in our building technique, perhaps not having to use hundreds of slaves is a good point.



in the Pantheon


one of the ruins too small to be labeled, now a cat sanctuary






perhaps our favourite museum..it was this one guy's way of making a statement, there were about 15 of these set outside..very funny!

onto Vatican City..











some ruins..







a last glimpse..


a last chance to drink alcohol in a park..


Well, I hope that last edition was enjoyable. Thanks to all those people that actually made it all the way through the semester and through my European travels, sorry I wasn't update the whole time but I finally finished!! Well hopefully talk to you soon and keep in touch!!!

Florence

Bonjourno,

Our next location was the home of the Renaissance, Florence. Here there is an awful lot of history which mean quite a few museums. I'll let you know which ones we did go to.

We decided to hit a museum right when we got there, it contained the paintings of people such as Michaelangelo, Raphael and Donatello. Really, I am not listing off the ninja turtles, they are all actually from Florence, well I think, don't google that. There was even a painting that had been unfinished by Leonardo that they had put in. We learned, however, they weren't so fond of him as he had left Florence at a young age.

The next museum we hit had pretty much one piece of art that everyone looked at, David. Our Lonely Planet told us to skip it but we decided, why not check it out. It was pretty amazing, it is much larger than I expected, about 20 feet plus he is on a pedestal. The details are pretty amazing, I'm not sure if anyone still reading this will enjoy this fact, but you could see the veins in his arms and hands, he looked very manly. ;) Also I didn't realize before but he made the statue showing David after he had killed Goliath. Before this sculpture most pieces of art showed David as being triumphant and strong. This statue, however, shows him very young and innocent as if these are the qualities that had let him win this war.

The town in general had a lot of cement and not a lot of parks. There were many beautiful countrysides surrounding, but you had to get high or to the edge of town to see this. Another main attraction is the main bridge. It houses all the jewelers and since they need room for the shop you can see them sticking out past the bridge.





We were very excited to see people actually did this in real life; we tried to jump into the picture but no luck.




There were a cool churches around town. In one part of town they had a very original green and white, striped appearance. There were several lines to wait in to see the churches and we apparently waited in the one to go to the top of the dome, we realized this after we just kept getting more and more stairs. This was right before we were going to go up to this fort on a hill at the edge of the city to see the view. I guess more than one view is always good.





While in Florence we also had to take a day trip to the countryside since we wanted the full Tuscan experience. We ended up taking a bike tour where we stopped a winery, a restaurant and just got an amazing experience of being in these cute towns. We actually got to go in a vineyard which was very exciting after the place in France not letting us into it. We also got to taste the wine and have a very delightful lunch that was very authentic.








Ciao, hope you enjoyed!

Venice

From Barcelona, we next headed to Venice. Since this would be a little on the long side of a train ride and we really wanted to try out RyanAir, we decided to take a plane. In the long run I don't think it was that great of a deal with all the extra charges and getting to the airports which were neither in Barcelona or Venice. I suppose if it was a long trip it may be worth it.

Onto the city of Venice. First getting there it didn't seem so great at first. We took the crowded waterbus and the grand canal didn't seem so grand at first. I was surprised how many motorboats there was, although I guess it is much more efficient to use. Other than that, once we docked we realized the town had really stood still. It seemed old-fashioned but not in a corny way a lot of other cities tried to look, in an actual, I am back a hundred years ago and that's cool, kind of way. It really is amazing that there are no cars at all. Everyone either gets around by walking or by a boat. The other crazy thing is the number of tourists to locals. You have to look for locals. Not to foreshadow, but we were quite excited in Florence hearing all the Italian where apparently everyone speaks English since there are so many tourists and then even more excited in Rome where most people actually spoke Italian. Anyways. Once we docked, we started to see the real beauty of Venice, the cute little canals and alley ways.







The main square there is just amazing. We accidentally found it on the first night. Just to let you know, Venice is just crazy with the streets. You don't try to find things, you just wander around and while being lost, you come across all these amazing things. We found we were always lost since all the street names were the same name; this happened most often when we were trying to find our hotel right before the hotels curfew. Luckily we made it in time every night. When we were trying to get back, we would see a statue of a guy and think we were on the right track but apparently there are a lot of statue of guys. Anyways, back to the main square. It has this amazing church which apparently looks like an icecream cake, I agree. It also has this ugly tower which apparently fell down but they missed it so much they had to rebuild it. Lots of other buildings as well that are beautiful and old make the square look old but magnificent. There are bands playing at the restaurants trying to out do each other, very cool. We even paid 11 euros for a cappuccino just to sit at one and enjoy the atmosphere. Around the corner you can see the grand canal which is just amazing at night with all the lights and the boats. The gondola's have these cute lights on them. This part of canal is very cool since there are palaces all around.








Onto the gondola subject. Of course I wanted to go on one since that is all you ever hear about Venice is the gondolas. On our travels we heard, however, that they were 100euros for an hour. Crazy! When we got there I saw them and understood the price, they are pretty amazing. Gina and I were very torn whether or not we should take one. Would we ever return to Venice with a significant other to have this romantic experience? Well seeing as we were rather negative about the whole significant other subject in general we thought, why not take one (a gondola I mean). How many other romantic things have we done together and apparently Venice is sinking, who knows how long it will be there. Anyways. To shorten the story we ended up finding a walking tour (we were big fans of these after Berlin), that included a 40 minute gondola ride, all for 40 euros. We thought that was pretty good and it's kind of nice to share the gondola to get to meet people. It was definitely worth it, I don't know how to describe it, maybe as cool? By cool I mean neat. Just a different experience in general and nice to get to travel down the small canals and hear a local talk about it.


Venice was very nice and exciting as expected. Definitely not a place to miss just because it's over touristy or just for couples! Oh, but don't take the waterbus, not like a cheap gondola ride, crowded!!