Italia

Friday, January 8, 2010 | |



Venice, Italy (totally diggin' the star filters)

As most of you know, I went on a backpacking trip to Italy in December..pretty much carryin nothin' but a compass, my PJs, and my friggin Canon 5D Mk II. I also wrote a complete blog of my trip on my blackberry during the horrid nights I'd stay up listening to the sound of snoring.

I'm going to update 1 a day. The pictures that I upload are probably not going to correspond with the blog entry of that day. I'm working on putting together all the images that I took (27 gigs. yes.) and creating a website which is browse=-able by all as soon as I can!

DAY 1 - TRAVELING

We arrived here (ROME) at 8:30 pm due to a whole bunch of travel delays. It was
pretty infuriating. We sat on the plane last night from 10 pm til
about 1 am.. then they kicked us off because there were some plane engine problems. I was pretty worried since our connecting flight was in Madrid, Spain and we only had a 4 hour layover time...and it was already like 3 hours later..we ended up sitting in the terminal for about another hour, then they finally fixed it up, and allowed us back onto the plane, and we took off, after a 4-5 hour delay.

I already assumed that we had missed our flight so that was that. So the plane took off, and seriously, just my luck... the people sitting behind us were noisy and extremely rude. Everyone on the plane spoke Spanish. The stewardesses didn't even speak english!

So, the people sitting behind me.. Ha they are going to be a story. Directly behind me was this old, fat, rude spanish man who was loud and extremely obnoxious.. He got into a huge fight with a stewardess because of the delays. His daughter was also extremely horrific.. So much that Min and I decided to nickname her "man-bear-pig"...because that is what she reminded us of. (It's from a south park episode..if you don't know) Well anyway, they were both nasty. He kept coughing throughout the ride and woke me up more than once with his annoying cough... like, there were times were I was peacefully asleep, and all of a sudden I hear A HUGE "WOOOOF", and I get freaked out, and then I wake up. And what is worse, once he had already woken me up.. the snoring didn't allow me to go back to sleep!! Also, their entire family was on this plane, and they didn't shut up for the entire 8 hour flight. It was pretty horrible.

We got to Madrid and the most interesting thing occurred. Apparently, even when you're transferring flights, you have to freaking CHECK OUT, then RE-CHECK back into the airport. Silly right? Well, we got there late, and missed our flight, so we had to be re-routed to another flight. We ended up getting to Rome only about 3 hours late.

So, fast forward, we finally arrived in Roma, and made our way over to our hostel. Now this was my first time ever being in a hostel so I was preeetty nervous. I entered the room and there was 8 beds and all of them were occupied..except for two.

Anyway I gathered up my stuff and went to take a shower. I realized that every lock in Europe is those old school lock and keys lock and so I clicked it shut and I went to shower. The showers was pretty nasty.. the water wasn't really that hot and it annoyed me that the water didn't drain fast enough so it ended up overflowing.. and I dont like my feet to be soaked in water while I'm showering!

After I finished showering I went and got into bed.. the entire plane trip exhausted me. I was really tired and wanted to just pass out. The next day would be verry busy.. I had tons of places lined up to see.. and I knew it. So here I am, trying to sleep.. in the room was me min and some other dude... I ended up falling asleep but waking back up because the others from our room came back at like 4 am and woke me up... And one of the guys snored like a freaking hog.. and I couldn't sleep through it... so I ended up not really getting much sleep at all.

DAY 2 - ROME

The next morning I woke up and got ready at around 8 AM. Went downstairs to get breakfast- most hostels in Europe will provide breakfast - but it's usually some cheap stuff. This hostel had chocolate rice krispies, milk and bread and jam. After eating, Min and I walked back over to the Roma Termini and took the subway over to Vatican City/Museum. There, we saw the most beautiful sculptures.. And views from the old Vatican. It was good that I bought ticks online because that cut down the wait time from the huge lines. What sucked was that it was a pretty nasty and rainy day... But we spent most of the morning in the museum (when it was raining the most). It was an awesome museum, the artwork inside was everything I learned about in Art History- it was so ridiculous to see it in REAL LIFE, and in it's full glory! I even saw the Sistine Chapel (I took pictures- even though they said we weren't allowed to!! hee hee!) But it was beautiful, everything in there was beautiful.

When we finished, we were starving, so we went over to the first ristorante we saw outside of the Vatican. It sucked. We only ate there because we were pretty desperate for something to eat, our feet were tired, and we just wanted to SIT... so we ate at some super touristy place. Our meal cost us 11 euros (1 euro right now is equivalent to about 1.5 dollars) so...

Yeah...and it wasn't even that good. I had tortellini and a cup of Cappuccino.. Min had lasagna. I never really knew much about the differences in coffee prefer ability. In Europe, everyone love their espressos... It's almost impossible to find a normal American cup of coffee. Hahah and I love how they serve them in little cups.. but oh man, how I missed having a normal cup of coffee..

Anyway, after we finished eating we walked over to st peter's basilica
(the tomb of St Peter). It was grand. I cant even really begin to describe how marvelous it was. It's a church, that gives you a slice of heaven. I loved it. I took a TON of pictures. Min and I even found a confessional booth!! I've always wanted to sit in one of those. I realized that they aren't very comfortable.. haha. Leaving the church, we found a post office and sent out postcards :)

Then as we were heading back to our hostel it was beginning to rain.. and when we got to the metro.. we found out that there was a Metro strike going on!! There were HUGE lines just to get INTO the station and it filled up the streets. The trains weren't working because of a strike. Great start to our vacation, huh? Then it began to rain harder.. and so we wanted to find some shelter inside a coffee shop. Also, I wanted to find a pair of shoes that were a little more waterproof instead of my crappy cloth TOMs shoes ... haha.

We finally found a nice little cafe and sat there for a little while. When we were ready and well rested we decided to go back to rome termini.. And ohhh my goshhhh it was sooo crowded. We had to wait 3 trains to pass until were able to finally STEP onto a train. And, wow, that was how it felt like to be a sardine. Sigh.
For dinner, we found a small little pizzeria near our hostel. The pizza was fresh made by the chef. And so, I didnt know what to choose on the menu, because it was all in Italian, so I asked the chef to recommend me his favorite. I was like, OK I'll take it! When it came out, I was horrified to see MUSHROOMS AND OLIVES!! My two least favorite foods in the world. I ate it, cuz he was staring at me and I didn't want to be rude. dang..

After we ate, we decided that we didn't want to go back to the hostel and deal with our roommates so we decided to go back to St Peters Square to see how it was lit up at night. The fountains and square was awesome!

1 comments:

Christina said...

sounds exciting! gotta get a travel partner so i can travel more =)