Day 4 - When In Rome...

Today we woke up early at 6:45, partly due to one of our roommates being really loud and also we had to get up to get in line for the Vatican mueseum. We had a short walk to the metro which took us just a few blocks away from the Vatican. On the way we stopped at a local shop to grab a quick breakfast and then get in line. At first we accidentally went to at peters square and were in line for the basilica. The square was incredible, we quickly realized our mistake and made our way around the Vatican walls to get in line for the Vatican mueseum and Sistine chapel. While head in towards the line we were hounded by tour guides telling us we were going the wrong place and to join their tour. It was really annoying and luckily I had read about them beforehand and we ignored all their offers. We got in line around 8:20 and had to wait until 9:00 when the mueseum opened. As usual pat and Sarah were running late and ended up arriving right before 9 and cut everyone to get in line with us. 

In line for the Vatican 

Once inside we bought our tickets and got an audio tour guide to walk through the museum. The mueseum itself was HUGE! It was loaded with statues, paintings, tapestries, and everything else in between. The highlight of course was the Sistine chapel which is one of michaelangelos famous works. Huge frescos on the ceilings and walls depicting different important religious stories. 

After the mueseum we made our way back to Saint Peters square to see the basilica. The basilica itself was enormous! We walked around and admired all the different paintings and sculptures. Although we didn't know it, we had made it to the basilica just in time. They were closing the basilica early because the pope was giving a mass later that day. 

St. Peter's square

After the Vatican we made our way across the city stopping at many different landmarks. First we stopped at a restaurant to refuel. I had the rigatoni pasta which was really good. Next we made our way to a nearby castle which was really interesting. 

We also stopped at piazza nova which used to be an old colleseum that now contains four large water fountains. 

Our next stop was the pantheon and it's basilica. The pantheon was absolutely massive!

Inside the pantheon 

Next we made our way to the tomb of the unknown soldier. This was another massive monument. We climbed up to the top and had great views of the city and the colleseum.

Tomb of the unknown solider

The colleseum was our next stop! The line was super short. We also signed up for the English tour which was only 5 euros extra. The tour itself however was not the best. Our guide spoke English but it was not very clear, but the amazing view of the colleseum more than made up for her lack of guide skills. 

After the colleseum we stopped at the nearby roman forum and palatine hill. These were right next to the colleseum and were basically the ruins of the city. It was really interesting to see how the ruins looked without being rebuilt/restored much. 

At this point we were exhausted and our feet hurt from all the walking so we stopped at a close restaurant. I ate spaghetti carbonara which was pretty good. After dinner we hopped on the metro back to our hostel and rested the rest of the night and booked some more things for the final days our trip.

Day 2 - Venetian islands (Murano and Burano) and Florence

Today we woke up around 8:30 showered, ate breakfast, and made our way out to the vaparetto (taxi boat) station to meet up with Sarah and Pat at 9 am. We caught the next boat headed towards the Island of Murano. The boat ride took about an hour because of all the stops we had to make. Once on the island we went to two different glass blowing shops where they actually showed you how they made glass vases and a glass horse. It was really cool to see the process and how malleable the glass becomes when it is heated up, it's almost like the glass is play dough. 

Outside our hostel in Venice

On the vaparetto

Glass horse

Murano island (Venice in the background)

After an hour on the island we headed by boat to our next stop, the island of Burano. This island is much smaller than Venice and is known for all of the colorful houses it has. Both of the island have canals similar to Venice. After walking around for a bit we made our way back the dock to catch a vaparetto back to Venice. 

Burano colorful houses

Once we arrived at Venice we walked back towards the train station after stopping for a quick bite to eat from one of the street vendors. We boarded the train to Florence around 2pm for about a 2 hour ride. We ended up having different seats on our ticket but since the train wasn't too crowded we were all still able to next to each other. The ride was smooth except for the bottle of a mixed Mimosa drink spilling and making a mess!

Before the spill!

Once in Florence we made our way to our hostel to drop off our bags and then go explore the city. The duomo, a big domed church in the center of the City was closed early because it was a Sunday so we ended up going to the nearby castle. The castle was really interesting, we climbed up to the top of the tower for a great view of the city. 

The duomo (dome church)

In the castle tower

View from the tower

Next we stopped at the local gelato shop for a tasty snack. I had strawberry and it was delicious! We made our way across the river towards piazza Michaelangelo passing by the famous Uffuzi mueseum which was also closed early. The piazza Michaelangelo is on a hill just outside the city offering a picturesque view of the city as the sun set behind the mountains. 

More Gelato!

After the sunset we found our way to a nearby restaurant. The food there was so-so (I had a meat pasta), but we also got to see a free "show". There was a window open in the apartment the restaurant was next to and there was a naked couple...completely visible to everyone eating at the restaurant! This made for a much more interesting meal to say the least! After dinner we went back to the hostel to book some more train tickets and go bed. 

Day 3 - Florence Pisa Rome

Today we woke up at 9am with the plan to climb to the top of the duomo. This turned out to be much more difficult than we thought. We literally ran around the whole church looking for the ticket office with no luck, we must've asked at least 9 people where the tickets were until we finally got an answer. It turns out the tickets were a block away in a little office hidden between restaurants and stores, it was not intuitive at all. We first started on the ground level of the church and then went into the basement to see all of the catacombs. The Inside of the church was huge and looking up at the paintings on dome was incredible.

After seeing the church we went to the exit to get to the top of the dome, thankfully the line was short so there wasn't much of a wait. Of course this turned out to be too good to be true, when we got to the gate they told us that we couldn't enter with our backpacks and would have to leave. We hurried back to our hostel to drop off the backpacks and then ran back to the dome (it was only a block away). The trip to drop the bags off couldn't have been more than a minute but when we get back to the dome entrance the line was much longer and worse it wasn't moving! We waited at least 20 minutes before they finally started letting people up and at this point we were getting very tight on time. To get to the top of the dome you had to take a narrow staircase all the way up and passing people was impossible high made the trip to the top very slow. Although it was slow the views on the way up of the inside of the dome and the views of the City from the top of the dome made it completely worth it! 

The only problem was it was almost time to get our train. We ended up having to push pasty people on the way down and sprint back to our hostel, grab the bags, and jog all the way to the train station in order to catch the train with just 3 minutes to spare!

The train ride to Pisa was smooth and took about 1 hour. It was a nice to be able to relax for a bit. Wen we arrived in Pisa we had to walk about a mile to get to the leaning tower. The tower was so incredible in person, I can't believe it hasn't fallen over yet! Of course we had to take the obligatory holding the tower up pics along with some other creative poses. 

After hanging around the tower for about an hour we went to a nearby restaurant to get some lunch. I had a penne pasta and Rachel had a grilled calamari. My food was good, but Rachel's was even more so. 

After eating we made our way back to the train station ( this time walking). The train from Pisa to Rome took about 4 hours and had some really good views of the coast and countryside.

When we arrived in Rome we made our way to the hostel which was really close to the train station. After showering and changing we decided to take the metro to trevi fountain. To our dismay the entire fountain was being restored, there was no water in it at all! We were really disheartened. We ended up eating at a nearby restaurant that was really delicious! Rachel and I split a pizza and a bottle of the house wine. After dinner we ended up walking back to our hostel which was only about a mile and a half away. 

Day 1 - En Route to Venice

Well I'm back again with another adventure to blog about. I've been trying to make a habit of writing one blog a day during my trips, mostly for myself so that I can look back and remember everything that happened. For the most part I type everything on my phone so you might see some typos. Anyway, thanks for reading and enjoy!

Today Rachel and I left Savannah for our 9 day trip to the beautiful country of Italia. In the morning we dropped Chauncey off at our neighbors, who were kind enough to watch him for us the whole time we're gone. After dropping him off we headed to the airport and got on our flight. We had a about 4 hour layover in JFK before getting on our 7 hour flight to Milan. The flight to Milan itself was pretty smooth I watched 3 movies and they served 2 meals (dinner and breakfast). The flight was overnight and of course I couldn't get any sleep on the plane Which left me exhausted when we finally landed. 

We landed in Milan around 8:30 local time (2:30 Savannah time). We were able get off of the plane and through customs really quickly. The reason we chose to fly into Milan was because it was almost $500 cheaper than flying into any of the other cities, but since our first stop was Venice we had to get from the airport to the train station. This turned out to be a mush more difficult trip than expected! First, we were supposed to take a train from the airport to Milano centrale (the main train depot), however, the person in the train ticket booth told us to get on a different train that went to Milano Cadorna. We had less than 5 minutes to get on the train before it departed so we didn't have time to figure out it was the wrong train. Thankfully it didn't take us too far out of the way and we were able to take the metro from Cadorna to Milano centrale which was a couple miles north. More hassle ensued at the metro station when none of our credit or debit cards worked to buy tickets! We ended up having to walk all the way out of the metro and find an ATM to withdraw cash (which we didn't have time to do in the airport) and then go back and get our tickets. Thankfully everything worked out and we got to the main train depot just in time to buy our tickets to Venice (which was also more difficult than it should have been) and run to catch the 10:30am train with only a few minutes to spare!

Made it on the train!

The ride to Venice was much smoother and gave us a chance to relax a bit. The ride took a little over 2 hours. Once we got out of the station we navigated our way to our hostel. The city is built like a maze! Luckily I was able to use my phones GPS otherwise I don't think there's any way we would've found our hotel through all the nameless winding alleys of the island. On the way we crossed over the ponte di Rialto bridge which unfortunately was covered in scaffolding due to restoration efforts. Once we made it to the hostel we showered and changed and went out to meet our friends Patryk and Sarah (who arrived the night before) for lunch. We ended up going to a random restaurant in one of the the alleys. Of course since this was our first meal in Italy I had to try the pizza! It was a lot different than in used to, the crust was thin and the don't use a lot of sauce but it was delicious!

Grand canal in Venice

After dinner we went to explore the piazza San Marco, which is basically the main big square in Venice. There we went to the top of the bell tower and got to see some awesome views of the city. Afterwards we walked the streets of Venice, had some gelato, and taking a gondola ride through the many canals of Venice. The ride lasted about 30 minutes and our tour guide pointed out the Marco Polo house, the fishermans market, ponte di Rialto bridge, and a few other landmarks I can't remember. 

Piazza San Marco square

View from the top of the tower

Gondola ride

Gelato!

After the ride we went to Pat and Sarah's hostel which had a rooftop area to hang out. We also booked our train tickets to Florence online for tomorrow. 

Hostel rooftop 

After hanging out for an hour or so we went to grab a quick bite to eat. Rachel and I weren't very hungry after our late lunch so thought we would split dinner. Apparently this is very offensive to some chefs and we were kicked out of the first restaurant we went to! We ended up at another place across the alley which didn't mind us splitting a meal. We had some pasta which was good and then made our way back to the hostel. Finally we were able to get some sleep after being awake for over 30 hours!