Here is the
photo album of highlights from our two days in Italy.
We left Bern in the late afternoon on the train to Milan, where we had a half hour to catch our train to Venice. The ride through Switzerland and northern Italy was absolutely gorgeous! There was one part where we went by all these small little towns along this lake, and there was an island in the middle of the lake with a CASTLE on it!!! Then and there we decided we have to go back and just spend a couple weeks going through all these little towns. I think those are the best things to explore =]
Our train ended up having some engine problems at a stop, and thus our train was 35 minutes late getting into Milan... So we missed our original train, but had just enough time to run and catch the next one that was heading out. We got into Venice pretty late at night, but luckily our hostel was literally down the street and around the corner. We were on the mainland part of Venice, not the historical part out on the islands. But it was nice because it was easy to find our hostel, and our Eurail passes let us take the train for free into the historical part.
Anyway, we get to this hostel and this huge, burly man with the widest chest I've ever seen, head shaved and an earring, gruffly greets us and demands our passports. Danea nd I exchanged wide-eyed looks as we handed them over. He scared me. He seemed really rough, asking us various things, until he asked "You don't smoke, do you?" and we responded no, and he said "Good, because if you did, I'd throw you out the window". We blinked a few times as the realization of the joke set in, and suddenly this large Italian man was laughing and joking with us and turned out to be pretty much the coolest, nicest guy you'll ever meet in Italy. He said "If you ever need anything, just ask Uncle John!". Awesome =]
My only complaint about our hostel was that there was no air conditioning, and our fan was broken. Ugh. Venice is HUMID. Don't go during the summer.
The next day we got up early, had breakfast, and got to the train station just in time to catch the train to the island. It was kinda cool going out over the water and seeing all the boats and posts they have to mark "streets".
Most of the time in Venice we spent wandering the back streets, because that's really the cool part. Within the first 20 minutes there, we found the cheapest gelato place and the best little bakery in Venice. It was on a little back street and had SUPER good tiramisu and berry tarts for super super cheap. We didn't find another that compared.
Most the pictures I took were of doorways and windows and narrow alleys. As far as cities go, Venice was my favorite for little backstreets and photo opportunities. Also, there were a lot of mask stores. One of the ones we went into had some absolutely stunning masks. I wasn't allowed to take pictures (without paying more money than I was willing, and the lady was watching me the entire time so I couldn't sneak any), but oh I wish I could have. They were phenomenal. We spent maybe 15 or 20 minutes in that one store just looking at the intricacies of several of the masks. They were beautiful. Some were vibrant colors with delicate wiring or arrays of feathers or they were black and white and gold. You could almost imagine a festival back in the Renaissance where masks like that were actually worn. It was very fun to see (plus the store was air conditioned! We actually stopped into several stores just to get a break from the heat and humidity).
We went to the Piazza di San Marco (the one you see in all the movies, like
The Italian Job), which was filled with THOUSANDS of pigeons. They would flock to anyone who had food and viciously and aggressively battle it out. We're talking talon slashling, feather pecking, and wing flapping. So of course Dane crushed up some potato chips and they swarmed him. We got some fun pictures. A few landed on me, but I beat them off (squealing and doing my little dance). Dane made me keep one on while he took a picture, and I was NOT happy. Filthy flying vermin...
Anyway, the main attraction in Venice is the Basilica di San Marco, which cost 20 euro and was over an hour wait, so we decided it wasn't worth it. We had lunch at a wonderful little restaurant that was way cheaper than all the others. Oh my goodness... The pasta was AMAZING.
AMAZING. There is nothing like real Italian pasta. It's prepared
al dente, meaning it's not cooked as long, so it's a little harder than the way Americans have their pasta. I love it that way. And the sauce was perfect in terms of amount and flavor, and the parmesan was just exquisite. We stopped by the little bakery for desset, wandered around the streets a some more, got more gelato (We had gelato 4 times that day. And why not! It's Italy!), and, since we had seen most of what Venice had to offer, we opted to take a little trip to another nearby city where it wasn't quite so humid. We decided to find a place no more than an hour and a half away, and thus we ended up in Verona.
Verona isn't the most exciting city today. It was back in the Roman days and especially during the Renaissance, but now it's a lot quieter. It is pretty though, and
much less humid than Venice. We saw most of the main sites in the few hours we were there. There was a beautiful bridge over the river that we spent some time on, plus we bonded with the gladiators outside the colosseum there. We also searched in vain for Juliet's tomb, which was on our map, but after 45 minutes of wandering around the entire block and looking at every building and sidestreet and still not finding it, we gave up. She's fictional anyway, so it's not even a real tomb...
We went back to Venice for dinner (after a nice nap on the train. I love trains!). We found this little restaurant, again on a back street, and we were literally the only non-Italians there. It was AWESOME! I'm so glad we ate at a place that local Venetians frequested instead of the tourist places along the Grand Canal. People would come in and the bartender and the guy making the pizza would greet them loudly (classic, stereotypical Italian). We got our own pizzas, which were at least two feet wide. It was wonderful;
super thin crust, tomato sauce, cheese, and mine had huge chunks of peppers and sausage. And I ate it ALL. We were also privileged to watch the EuroCup semi-final game, Spain vs Russia (Spain DOMINATED! ¡Viva España!) during our meal. All in all, a truly enjoyable experience.
As we walked back to the train station, we paused on one of the main, large bridges to overlook the Grand Canal at night. The stars were out, the moon was shining brightly, gondolas carrying with lanterns floated romantically along the canal, the city lights were reflected in the water...
I know, how much more Belle Notte can you get? If only we had had some spaghetti with meatballs to share and an accordian-playing waiter in the background.
Instead, a lady came up to us, carrying a gorgeous red rose. Her first words to us? "I'm not selling anything!". She was refering to the guys around all main European cities who 'give' you a rose, then hound you or the guy you're with until you give them money. We thought it was hilarious she said that. She explained she was leaving the next day and wanted to give away the roses instead of throwing them away. So I got a rose, and no one followed us around. And when we got back to our hotel, Uncle John told me that I was as beautiful as the rose. Teehee ;)
The next morning, we woke up later than we wanted, and had 20 minutes to pack out bags and book it to the train station to catch our train to Rome at 6:04 am. We ended up waiting for it because 1) we ran and 2) we forgot that trains in Italy are ALWAYS late. It was a pretty uneventful train ride. I actually slept.
We pulled into Rome at 10 am and spent the next 3 hours figuring out how we were getting back to Madrid. We waited in line for over an hour to talk to the guy at the international ticket counter. He was THE most UNHELPFUL man IN THE WORLD. Grrr... We told him we needed to be to Madrid by Sunday night and we would like to leave Saturday morning. He typed in a couple things and was like "Nope, can't be done. You need this train and it's full". So I asked him to try some other routes and places and he kept typing in from Milan to Barcelona or other random things like that. And when I asked him to just put in "Rome to Madrid", he ignored me. So he basically told us he couldn't help us, and we left.
We went to the internet cafe across the street, I pulled up the timetables online, typed in Rome to Madrid, and sure enough, there were THREE different options for how to get there, all getting up there Sunday. The guy was on crack. Just soooooo difficult and unwilling.... It still makes me mad. We went back to wait in line, but it was even longer than before. We started discussing it, and decided that because of the tight schedule we had between a couple trains, we didn't want to risk having one train delayed and missing ALL of our other connections, which would make us miss our flight. Also, the reservation fees would add up, and it was 28 straight hours of travel. So we bought plane tickets from EasyJet. This way, we KNEW we'd make it to Madrid on time, and it cost about the same, and it was only 3 hours instead of 28 (though I was hoping to stop in Monaco... Oh well).
That accomplished, we finally went to find our hostel. It. Was. GHETTO. It was the cheapest one we could find with room for us last minute, and it was way close to the train station, so that was nice. But oh my... The walls were brightly painted and covered in writing, I guess to make it look "hip", but it just looked trashy. The guy at the front "desk" (aka a table with a very unorganized binder) was cool though, and gave us an excellent map and recommendations for food and sites. We stowed our luggage and took off! We were starving, so the first thing we did was find somewhere to eat lunch. Again, we found a little backroads restaurant in which we were the only non-Italians and had an amazing meal for a very good price.
Then we saw Rome in about 8 hours. It is possible. We went to the Colosseum first, of course. We didn't even have to wait that long, only about 20 minutes. 11 euros got us into the Colosseum, plus the House of Augustus and the Roman Forum. We spent a good three hours wandering around all those places. It was so awesome to be there! Just think that 2000 years ago, that was the centre of the world. It was where the Roman Empire was based. It's where Paul preached and where so many other amazing things happened. I'm so glad the Catholics didn't pull down a lot of the old "pagan" Roman ruins like the Conquistadors did in the Americas. Instead, they made it Christian without destroying it. It was wonderful to see.
Then we saw as many other things as we could: Fontana di Trevi (the big famous one that you throw a coin into to ensure that you'll come back. It was smaller than I thought), the Spanish steps (
Roman Holiday anyone? The church behind it was covered in scaffolding, so Dane and I stood there and pretended to analyze it like it was modern art), Piazza del Popolo, and other various churches and piazzas, etc etc. We had dinner in another little backstreets restaurant. This time we got lasagna, and oh my goodness. Best lasagna I've ever EVER had. And we had tiramisu for dessert =] Mmmmmmmm!!!! Then we wandered across the river to the Vatican. The courtyard was open, so we technically went into another country ;). We admired the building and the obelisk and everything else for awhile, got some more gelato (which we had several times that day too), then walked back to our hostel, arriving around 12:30 am.
Here's the fun story of the night. So they were going to put us in seperate rooms, but with how ghetto it was combined with needing to get up early the next morning, we requested to be in the same room.
"Well, there's a group of guys in this room, but they seemed pretty cool. We can move one of them", answered the guy at the desk. So they showed us into the room and took the stuff off one of the beds, and left. There were two guys already asleep on the bunk bed in the corner. Dane went and used the bathroom, and as he passed me when he was coming out, he warned "You might want to put some shoes on..."
Indeed, this was the
sickest bathroom I have ever been in. The toilet was so close to the wall, you couldn't sit on it and have your knees in front of you. And it was obviously a bathroom used by mostly males... The smell made my stomach lurch. Supposedly, they closed the hostel every day from noon to four to clean... But what they were cleaning I have no idea. It certainly wasn't this bathroom. I decided to forego using the bathroom, taking a shower, or even brushing my teeth that night (I don't even want to go into what the sink was lined with). Instead, I changed into my PJs and climbed up onto my bunk. I crawled onto it from the end, and when I reached the middle, I swung my legs over the edge. Suddenly, the bed gave away below me. Luckily, there was a metal beam over my head, so I grabbed onto that as my mattress became unsuitable to sit on. I lowered myself to the ground and Dane and I checked to see what had happened. Two of the planks supporting my mattress has simply fallen out. Dane replaced them, then graciously suggested that we switch beds. I was still incredibly cautious climbing onto it, and didn't move much the whole night. There were no further bed collapses.
And it gets better. At 3:44 am, I was awaken by loud, druken talking and the lights suddenly being switched on. Yes, the "cool" group of guys had finally decided to grace the hostel with their presence after what had obviously been a very successful night of drinking, partying, and other forms of rowdiness.
Needless to say, the one was NOT very happy to find that Dane was asleep in his bed. He went off swearing (in Spanish, apperantly they were from Mexico) and getting worked up, while another of the guys tried to calm him down and kept reminding them all to be quiet because there were people asleep (this was all explained to me by Dane the next day, since he could actually understand them). The guy was still going off, and said something along the lines of "This is so f-ing stupid. I don't like this" then he paused and said "But I like her". This is when Dane decided to "wake up" and talk to the guys and explain the situation, which they were cool with. I pretended to be asleep through all of this, though I did pull the covers over my head when I heard them walking closer to me after. According to Dane, they were discussing how cute they thought I was. Awww.... Yeah, I'm SO glad I wasn't in the bed Dane was in. Can you imagine what that guy would have said if he had come back and found a cute girl in his bed? This is also when I again was extremely grateful for the fact that Dane is fluent in Spanish.
Eventually they all went to sleep, and a few hours later Dane and I arose to pack up and get to the airport. I cannot tell you how funny it is to be the only girl in a room of guys all sleeping in their underwear. It was the same in Barcelona. But I digress. We caught a shuttle to the airport from the train station. This French couple had some extra coupons, so we ended up paying wayyy less for the shuttle than we expected. Don't you love good-hearted people like that?. We checked in Dane's bag, then went and sat by our gate. My feet were KILLING me from walking around so much yesterday (my chacos gave me blisters and made my feet bleed. What the crap?), so Dane gave me a foot massage while I dozed (awwww, what a sweetie). In time we finally boarded our flight, Dane running ahead to secure us the emergency aisle (which really didn't have that much extra leg room, but I'll take what I can get). I attempted to sleep, but it was kinda hard and I was cold. Dane didn't sleep either because I was using him as a pillow and I kept moving and adjusting my position. The landing was HORRIBLE. We were bouncing all over the place and I just had to put my head between my knees and pray for a quick touchdown. I was sick and nauseous for maybe two hours after our flight, to the point where I had to sit down for 20 minutes in the train station with a bag in front of me, willing myself to puke and get it over with. I didn't, and I finally felt well enough to walk. We went to a grocery store (a Corte Ingles, which is AMAZING and HUGE and had all sorts of yummy food) and got dinner and after eating I felt ten million times better.
We fed these little birds that were by our bench some of our bread crumbs and they were so interesting. One of them would snatch up the crumbs, and then three others crowded around him, fluttering their wings superfast and chirping with their mouths wide open, and this one bird would feed them. The other three wouldn't let him keep any for himself. It was really weird and unlike anything I've seen before.
We went from Madrid to Alcala to get Dane's left behind luggage, and the family, the Benitos, graciously invited us to stay with them for the two nights we had until we left. They are an AWESOME family, just very generous and kind. And they fed us.
Sunday we went to church (so difficult... I was dead tired from traveling and allergies and the church was
freezing and I didn't understand anything anyone was saying...), then went to Madrid to do some souvenior shopping. I got an apron, oven mitt, and pot holder with the sillouette of the bull against a red background. I figured I'd wear those more than a t-shirt. We looked at some art from some street painters (got a REALLY cool painting of Don Quixote for Dane's mom) and got some of the best churros y chocolate EVER. We both got España jerseys, since that night was the finals of the EuroCup, and Spain was playing in it.
The city was CRAZY. Everyone was decked out in Spain jerseys and flags and honking their horns and doing random cheers, even hours before the game. Spain won the EuroCup back in '64, and has only been in the finals once since, sometime in the 70's or 80's. We went to the Plaza de Colon, a large plaza in the centre of Madrid, where they had two huge screens set up to show the game. There was an estimated 75,000 people there, and I believe it. We were so packed in. We shouldered our way into a spot right in front of the screen and basically didn't move for the entire two hours. Dane was right in front of me with our backpack between us. I had one hand on the zippers and the other held my camera (which took many pictures and videos). It was so crazy. To make a long story short, Spain played an incredible game and beat Germany, 1-0. We cheered and screamed and jumped up and down, then bounced our way to the exit and ran for the train station. We wanted to make it back to Alcala before things got
really crazy. People were still jumping around on the trains, singing and banging the walls and just going crazy with excitement. Back in Alcala, we heard a fun cheer by three exuberant fans, which, translated, was essentially:
A: "The forwards!"
B: "Viva!"
A: "The captian of the team!"
B: "Viva!"
etc, then:
A: "The mother of the goalie!"
B: "Viva!"
We thought that was pretty funny. The Benitos were pretty hyped up too, and we stayed up late celebrating and eating a very late dinner of bread and chorizo and cheese.
The next day, we were up early once again to get to the airport by 9 for our flight at 11. It was useless, because our flight was delayed SEVEN hours. SEVEN! That's almost the entire length of the flight itself. Apperantly there were technical problems with the plane in New York. But we got a free meal out of it! And I took a lovely nap on the benches that did not have arm rests between them.
We finally boarded our flight (waiting another HOUR because they had to unload some baggage of some people that couldn't get on the flight because they didn't have any ID, but their luggage still made it on?). The pilot congratulated the Spainards on their win and everyone cheered, haha.
The flight was alright. All day my nose had been running terribly, which I thought was because of allergies, but after two different allergy pills, I realized it was sinus congestion. I went through so many kleenexes and napkins and paper towels on that flight. It was awful. My ears were so stuffed up and they definitely did NOT pop on our descent. It was one of the more painful experiences of my life. I cried because it hurt so badly. And they didn't pop until the next morning. We landed in NYC around 9 and got shuttled to the Ramada Hotel, where Delta paid for a hotel room and gave us food vouchers.
The food vouchers paid for a continental breakfast. 14 bucks EACH. How ridiculous is that?! But it was all-you-can-eat, and we made sure to take advantage of that ;) We caught a flight to St. Louis, and we had a half hour between our landing and the next plane to Salt Lake. And our flight left a half hour late from NYC. We were kinda panicking because there wasn't another flight to SLC until the next day. But the pilot was really good or something and we got there right on time. So we made it Salt Lake and Dane's dad picked us up. I was very happy to see him. He took us back to their house in Alpine and fed us fresh vegetables and Costco muffins. Dane took me to my Uncle's later that night, and the next day I returned to Provo.
And that's the end of my adventure. It was amazing and I feel like I learned so much about myself and the world. That'll probably be another post--the last post--on this blog.
Again, link to pictures above for Italy and two entries below for the EuroCup final. Enjoy!
Three windows in Venice. This one we went for a very "artsy" look =] We brought out the color and upped the contrast quite a bit. 
A riverside scene in Bern, Switzerland. Hmm... I don't know what we changed in this one.... ;) 
A typical Venetian piazza... With a Hummer falling off the roof. 
We definitely saw Jason Bourne in this random side street in Venice...
Masks in the market in Venice. We blurred the background slightly to bring the focus onto the blue mask in the front. 
We dulled the color of the bricks to bring out the red of the door (which we made a little brighter too) and gave it a "dreamy" look with Scott's favorite filter, the Glaussian Blur
I was in LOVE. And that is the honest-to-goodness color of that water. I really wish we had jumped off the foot bridge into it, like so many of the native people there were doing. (and their dogs). 
We ate lunch there, talked, and just enjoyed the beauty around us. After a couple hours, we wandered around the main city some more. Again, there’s not much to see in the way of buildings, but the views and surrounding countryside are just GORGEOUS. 
