Enjoy!
Day 42 Pictures - Rome September 7
Day 43 Pictures - Rome September 8
Day 44 Pictures - Rome September 9
Day 45 Pictures - Rome September 10
Day 46 Pictures - Rome September 11
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Day 46
Tuesday September 11
7:45am - woke up to my phone alarm
8:30amish - had breakfast and went to the metro
9:00am - took it a couple stops to Piramide, then took essentially the Commuter Rail to Ostia Antica. Took about 40 minutes all told. Then a bit of a walk to the ruins. Ostia Antica, now 4km from the water, used to be right on the beach. A whole town that they uncovered. Costs 6.50 to get in but I used my RomaPass. Excellent. So this place is pretty neat. So you get to walk all through it, the necropolis, baths, temples, capitol, huge theater, even an ancient ancient synagogue. Cool! So unlike some of the other ruins because it's a whole town, you can try to imagine all these things. Even some of the mosaic floors are still there and you can just walk through it all, down the streets, into the theatre, etc. Spent a good couple hours wandering around. Met Alice, who was born in the US but grew up in Taiwan and is now studying in Wales, she's also traveling alone, we wandered around together and ate lunch in the place's cafeteria, which was a tad overpriced, but it was there lol. I bought a cheesy but cool book where you have a picture of the ruins and then an overlay of what they think it looked like. And I also bought the guide to the Ostia Antica ruins so I could read more about it and see the details later as it was hot and I am a bit "ruined-out" at this point ;) It was still really cool though and such an easy trip from the center of Rome. Well worth half a day and I didn't even come close to seeing everything that was there.
1:00pmish - caught the train then the metro back to Rome, stayed on the metro til the train station and switched to the A line to go out to the Vatican museums. I figure, people say, Tuesdays and afternoons are best. So maybe I'd be able to get right in or without too long a wait. That was the only way I was going to bother to go in, that's for sure LOL
2:15pm - made it to the Vatican entrance…and… walked right in. Wowie. Too easy LOL. Costs 13 euros and no credit cards. There goes the extra Euros I had LOL!! Anyway, lots of statues, which were cool because they were so old and well-preserved, unlike the stuff in the ruins themselves. But the main sight that everyone wants to see is the Sistine Chapel of course. So they make you wind through most of the rest of the museum, which isn't bad, even for art "haters" like myself, you get to walk through a bunch of rooms Raphael painted, lots of cool statues, etc. I just want to say once and for all: TOUR GROUPS ARE THE BANE OF MY TRAVELING EXISTENCE. Seriously, museums should open either earlier or later and force all the tour groups to go in during those times so that those of us who actually want to see stuff and move through the museum at our own pace can do that the rest of the time. And with these "whisper boxes" where the guide talks into a little microphone and the people on the tour all have little earpieces, they just wander aimlessly and PAY NO ATTENTION TO ANYTHING AROUND THEM AS IF THEY OWN THE MUSEUM GRRRRR.
But finally you get to the chapel. For some reason I thought it was round and that you just had to walk around it in a circle. But it's not, it's a normal chapel-shaped thing and you can go all through it. It wasn't nearly as busy as I had thought it would be and I even managed to get a place to sit down and really look around. They had 2 guards AND a loudspeaker say that no pictures were allowed. Why would people be so obvious to attempt with a flash. In fact, even though pictures were allowed in the rest of the museum, NO FLASH. People are just such IDIOTS. Anyway, I snuck a few pictures just sitting there. No flash. I was very well-behaved the whole trip, so I don't feel so badly ;)
3:45pm - left the museum and bought a really nice guide about the museums and the vatican as a whole. Came back to the hotel and went into the supermarket right there and got a couple things to take on the plane to eat tomorrow. Came back to the hotel and dropped all the stuff off and asked about this transportation strike I heard about for tomorrow. In Italy, when there is a strike, they announce it freaking in advance LOL. So tomorrow all the buses and metro stuff is not running between 8:30-12:30. Of course, right when I need to get to the airport. So they confirmed this and I'll just take a cab. Again there go the extra euros as it will be probably 10 euros instead of the 1 euro that a bus ride costs LOL. Ah well. Hahaha. So they will reserve a cab for me here at the hotel, which is nice because cabs will be hard to get during a public transport strike! At least the trains to the airport are serviced by a different company so they will run. And the lady at my hotel told me I could get my ticket for that from the travel agency up the street with no extra fee. So I did that, 11 euros. That's as much as the one in London, geez. Plus it only runs once every half hour! In pretty much every other city they just run them all the time. Oh well. What can ya do. I'm gonna go to the airport super early anyway so I should be fine but still. Craziness.
5:00pm - went to the internet café for about 45min. Tried to look up the info about the strike, but of course it's all in Italian. And the google translation was unintelligible (shocker).
6:00pm - came back to the hotel for a few before going out to dinner.
6:30pmish - hiked up to Via Nazionale and picked up a bus that went right near Piazza Navona, bus #70 if I recall.
7:10pm - went through the piazza and found Da Francesco's again - this time didn't get lost. It was open, hooray!!! Got a table outside this time on this cute little teeny piazza del Fico. I was right in between two Americans - a couple from Madison WI and a mother and daughter from, of all places, Fall River, MA. LOL! Their accents were terrible LOL Anyway, but they were really nice. They were on a group tour and this was a free time for them because they didn't want to see the opera. Everything they said just reaffirmed why I didn't want to take a tour. They didn't even know how to get back to their hotel or even what street it was on! I gave them my bus map because I wasn't going to need it anymore. They were in awe of the fact I researched and did it all myself but I explained to them it was really not that hard and that with hopping on and off buses and subways all day I really felt like a local hopping all across town and that I never had to worry because I could figure out a way back. I got the feeling that if they ever came back, they'd do it themselves lol. Anyway I had another incredible pizza margherita and a little thing of white wine and a plate of olives from their antipasti bar. Total was 13 euros plus a little tip. So cheap and sooooo good. So after we were done they wanted to show me this gelato place - it ended up being right near the pantheon and right near the place I went to the other night that had 100 flavors or something and was sooooo good - this place was good but not as good as that one, but still, good enough LOL. Then I showed them how to read the stops at the bus station and all that stuff lol
9:15pm - got off the bus 64 at piazza venezia and made it to the hotel. And now I have to pack :'( :'( :'(
So, this is the last real blog entry. Thanks for reading, those who did! I'll post some wrapups and stuff, for those few who care LOL
7:45am - woke up to my phone alarm
8:30amish - had breakfast and went to the metro
9:00am - took it a couple stops to Piramide, then took essentially the Commuter Rail to Ostia Antica. Took about 40 minutes all told. Then a bit of a walk to the ruins. Ostia Antica, now 4km from the water, used to be right on the beach. A whole town that they uncovered. Costs 6.50 to get in but I used my RomaPass. Excellent. So this place is pretty neat. So you get to walk all through it, the necropolis, baths, temples, capitol, huge theater, even an ancient ancient synagogue. Cool! So unlike some of the other ruins because it's a whole town, you can try to imagine all these things. Even some of the mosaic floors are still there and you can just walk through it all, down the streets, into the theatre, etc. Spent a good couple hours wandering around. Met Alice, who was born in the US but grew up in Taiwan and is now studying in Wales, she's also traveling alone, we wandered around together and ate lunch in the place's cafeteria, which was a tad overpriced, but it was there lol. I bought a cheesy but cool book where you have a picture of the ruins and then an overlay of what they think it looked like. And I also bought the guide to the Ostia Antica ruins so I could read more about it and see the details later as it was hot and I am a bit "ruined-out" at this point ;) It was still really cool though and such an easy trip from the center of Rome. Well worth half a day and I didn't even come close to seeing everything that was there.
1:00pmish - caught the train then the metro back to Rome, stayed on the metro til the train station and switched to the A line to go out to the Vatican museums. I figure, people say, Tuesdays and afternoons are best. So maybe I'd be able to get right in or without too long a wait. That was the only way I was going to bother to go in, that's for sure LOL
2:15pm - made it to the Vatican entrance…and… walked right in. Wowie. Too easy LOL. Costs 13 euros and no credit cards. There goes the extra Euros I had LOL!! Anyway, lots of statues, which were cool because they were so old and well-preserved, unlike the stuff in the ruins themselves. But the main sight that everyone wants to see is the Sistine Chapel of course. So they make you wind through most of the rest of the museum, which isn't bad, even for art "haters" like myself, you get to walk through a bunch of rooms Raphael painted, lots of cool statues, etc. I just want to say once and for all: TOUR GROUPS ARE THE BANE OF MY TRAVELING EXISTENCE. Seriously, museums should open either earlier or later and force all the tour groups to go in during those times so that those of us who actually want to see stuff and move through the museum at our own pace can do that the rest of the time. And with these "whisper boxes" where the guide talks into a little microphone and the people on the tour all have little earpieces, they just wander aimlessly and PAY NO ATTENTION TO ANYTHING AROUND THEM AS IF THEY OWN THE MUSEUM GRRRRR.
But finally you get to the chapel. For some reason I thought it was round and that you just had to walk around it in a circle. But it's not, it's a normal chapel-shaped thing and you can go all through it. It wasn't nearly as busy as I had thought it would be and I even managed to get a place to sit down and really look around. They had 2 guards AND a loudspeaker say that no pictures were allowed. Why would people be so obvious to attempt with a flash. In fact, even though pictures were allowed in the rest of the museum, NO FLASH. People are just such IDIOTS. Anyway, I snuck a few pictures just sitting there. No flash. I was very well-behaved the whole trip, so I don't feel so badly ;)
3:45pm - left the museum and bought a really nice guide about the museums and the vatican as a whole. Came back to the hotel and went into the supermarket right there and got a couple things to take on the plane to eat tomorrow. Came back to the hotel and dropped all the stuff off and asked about this transportation strike I heard about for tomorrow. In Italy, when there is a strike, they announce it freaking in advance LOL. So tomorrow all the buses and metro stuff is not running between 8:30-12:30. Of course, right when I need to get to the airport. So they confirmed this and I'll just take a cab. Again there go the extra euros as it will be probably 10 euros instead of the 1 euro that a bus ride costs LOL. Ah well. Hahaha. So they will reserve a cab for me here at the hotel, which is nice because cabs will be hard to get during a public transport strike! At least the trains to the airport are serviced by a different company so they will run. And the lady at my hotel told me I could get my ticket for that from the travel agency up the street with no extra fee. So I did that, 11 euros. That's as much as the one in London, geez. Plus it only runs once every half hour! In pretty much every other city they just run them all the time. Oh well. What can ya do. I'm gonna go to the airport super early anyway so I should be fine but still. Craziness.
5:00pm - went to the internet café for about 45min. Tried to look up the info about the strike, but of course it's all in Italian. And the google translation was unintelligible (shocker).
6:00pm - came back to the hotel for a few before going out to dinner.
6:30pmish - hiked up to Via Nazionale and picked up a bus that went right near Piazza Navona, bus #70 if I recall.
7:10pm - went through the piazza and found Da Francesco's again - this time didn't get lost. It was open, hooray!!! Got a table outside this time on this cute little teeny piazza del Fico. I was right in between two Americans - a couple from Madison WI and a mother and daughter from, of all places, Fall River, MA. LOL! Their accents were terrible LOL Anyway, but they were really nice. They were on a group tour and this was a free time for them because they didn't want to see the opera. Everything they said just reaffirmed why I didn't want to take a tour. They didn't even know how to get back to their hotel or even what street it was on! I gave them my bus map because I wasn't going to need it anymore. They were in awe of the fact I researched and did it all myself but I explained to them it was really not that hard and that with hopping on and off buses and subways all day I really felt like a local hopping all across town and that I never had to worry because I could figure out a way back. I got the feeling that if they ever came back, they'd do it themselves lol. Anyway I had another incredible pizza margherita and a little thing of white wine and a plate of olives from their antipasti bar. Total was 13 euros plus a little tip. So cheap and sooooo good. So after we were done they wanted to show me this gelato place - it ended up being right near the pantheon and right near the place I went to the other night that had 100 flavors or something and was sooooo good - this place was good but not as good as that one, but still, good enough LOL. Then I showed them how to read the stops at the bus station and all that stuff lol
9:15pm - got off the bus 64 at piazza venezia and made it to the hotel. And now I have to pack :'( :'( :'(
So, this is the last real blog entry. Thanks for reading, those who did! I'll post some wrapups and stuff, for those few who care LOL
Day 45
Monday September 10
7:10am - woke up
7:45am - had breakfast
8:15amish - went to the bus to go to the Vatican, which was a few blocks away, not too bad. It is the "big bad bus 64" where all the pick-pocketers allegedly are. Two buses were there at the same time so I got on the (much emptier) second one. Nice.
8:45am - got off at the St. Peter's stop and went into the church for a few before my tour of the excavations underneath the church. Wow. It is huge. And beautiful.
9:10am - found the Excavations office, after being let in by the amusingly-dressed Spanish Guard. Went in to get my ticket and he said, the tour will leave at 9:15 not 9:30. I wonder what would've happened if I had shown up a few minutes later LOL Anyway. There was a nice American couple who hadn't gotten the tour like I did but just showed up. Proof positive that can work.
The tour was amazing. A little over an hour and led by a very knowledgeable guide, she explained the whole excavation and that it happened from about 1939 to 1949, when they uncovered this whole Roman Necropolis underneath the Cathedral. So you got to see all these mausoleums, which had been really well-preserved because when they built the first St. Peter's in the 4th century, they just leveled the hill and filed it in with dirt, so it was all preserved. They had to work in secret at night during the war and everything. Pretty neat. So this thing used to be on street level, so the paths we walked on were the same roman streets, and the vast majority of the bricks and constructions and paintings and statues and urns and tombs and all were all in great condition. What's too bad is that because it's all under the church, which is obviously crazy heavy, and if they kept going it would be dangerous structurally. So that's too bad. But we did get to see what it looked like before they cleaned it out and it was basically a ton of stuff in dirt. So anyway it was really cool and even though it was really humid down there, it was totally fascinating.
10:30am - hung a turn after the tour and went back in the Cathedral to look at it more closely.
11:00am - found the 62 bus and took it to Largo Argentina and found the Jewish ghetto. I didn't realize how close it actually was to where I'm staying. But it's not that far from Campo de Fiori, etc. There's a kind of main street where there were jewish and kosher bakeries and some really nice shops that had all kinds of silver stuff, and lots of restaurants (even Mk Kosher LOLLLL). Of course, the restaurant I wanted to try was closed on Monday so I went to the one next to it.
1:15pm - found the Synagogue and Hebrew museum right around the corner and went in and explored. Had some nice exhibits from things that had been rescued from when the original ghetto's 5 synagogues were demolished for the new one.
2:15pm - guided tour of the synagogues (the major one and the Spanish little one) led by this girl who was really cool. She is from the area and her grandmother hid as a nun during WWII to avoid deportation. The synagogue is beautiful, only about 100 years old and kind of built like a church because the architects weren't Christian.
3pmish - walked across the bridge to Trastevere and did a Frommers walking tour through the neighborhood. Definitely has a grittier and more raw feel to it. Went into the big 4th century church there, very beautiiful
4:45pm - found a gelato place Rick Steves's book mentions and had a duo of chocolate and cinnamon. Tastyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
5:00pm - took tram 8 to Largo Argentina and decided to visit a bunch of the churches around the Pantheon. Very pretty.
7:00pm - walked around and sat in piazza navona for a while just people-watching.
7:45pm or so - went to Piazza Pasquino, a little square right next to Navona, and ate at Ristorante Terra di Siena - it was actually Tuscan food, but the more important thing was… A WHOLE DAY WITHOUT PIZZA LOL!!! Had some extra euros that I figured I should get rid of so I had salad, chicken, and chocolate cake. Yum. Total was 25 euros. Not so bad for a nice place. Realized that if I don't want bread I have to tell them no or you pay 2 euros for it, but oh well lol. Sat next to an American couple from Syracuse. They were nice, we chatted for a while.
Took the bus back to piazza venezia and walked back to the hotel. A bit of a walk from the bus but nice to see the ancient stuff lit up at night again.
10:30pmish - got back to the hotel.
7:10am - woke up
7:45am - had breakfast
8:15amish - went to the bus to go to the Vatican, which was a few blocks away, not too bad. It is the "big bad bus 64" where all the pick-pocketers allegedly are. Two buses were there at the same time so I got on the (much emptier) second one. Nice.
8:45am - got off at the St. Peter's stop and went into the church for a few before my tour of the excavations underneath the church. Wow. It is huge. And beautiful.
9:10am - found the Excavations office, after being let in by the amusingly-dressed Spanish Guard. Went in to get my ticket and he said, the tour will leave at 9:15 not 9:30. I wonder what would've happened if I had shown up a few minutes later LOL Anyway. There was a nice American couple who hadn't gotten the tour like I did but just showed up. Proof positive that can work.
The tour was amazing. A little over an hour and led by a very knowledgeable guide, she explained the whole excavation and that it happened from about 1939 to 1949, when they uncovered this whole Roman Necropolis underneath the Cathedral. So you got to see all these mausoleums, which had been really well-preserved because when they built the first St. Peter's in the 4th century, they just leveled the hill and filed it in with dirt, so it was all preserved. They had to work in secret at night during the war and everything. Pretty neat. So this thing used to be on street level, so the paths we walked on were the same roman streets, and the vast majority of the bricks and constructions and paintings and statues and urns and tombs and all were all in great condition. What's too bad is that because it's all under the church, which is obviously crazy heavy, and if they kept going it would be dangerous structurally. So that's too bad. But we did get to see what it looked like before they cleaned it out and it was basically a ton of stuff in dirt. So anyway it was really cool and even though it was really humid down there, it was totally fascinating.
10:30am - hung a turn after the tour and went back in the Cathedral to look at it more closely.
11:00am - found the 62 bus and took it to Largo Argentina and found the Jewish ghetto. I didn't realize how close it actually was to where I'm staying. But it's not that far from Campo de Fiori, etc. There's a kind of main street where there were jewish and kosher bakeries and some really nice shops that had all kinds of silver stuff, and lots of restaurants (even Mk Kosher LOLLLL). Of course, the restaurant I wanted to try was closed on Monday so I went to the one next to it.
1:15pm - found the Synagogue and Hebrew museum right around the corner and went in and explored. Had some nice exhibits from things that had been rescued from when the original ghetto's 5 synagogues were demolished for the new one.
2:15pm - guided tour of the synagogues (the major one and the Spanish little one) led by this girl who was really cool. She is from the area and her grandmother hid as a nun during WWII to avoid deportation. The synagogue is beautiful, only about 100 years old and kind of built like a church because the architects weren't Christian.
3pmish - walked across the bridge to Trastevere and did a Frommers walking tour through the neighborhood. Definitely has a grittier and more raw feel to it. Went into the big 4th century church there, very beautiiful
4:45pm - found a gelato place Rick Steves's book mentions and had a duo of chocolate and cinnamon. Tastyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
5:00pm - took tram 8 to Largo Argentina and decided to visit a bunch of the churches around the Pantheon. Very pretty.
7:00pm - walked around and sat in piazza navona for a while just people-watching.
7:45pm or so - went to Piazza Pasquino, a little square right next to Navona, and ate at Ristorante Terra di Siena - it was actually Tuscan food, but the more important thing was… A WHOLE DAY WITHOUT PIZZA LOL!!! Had some extra euros that I figured I should get rid of so I had salad, chicken, and chocolate cake. Yum. Total was 25 euros. Not so bad for a nice place. Realized that if I don't want bread I have to tell them no or you pay 2 euros for it, but oh well lol. Sat next to an American couple from Syracuse. They were nice, we chatted for a while.
Took the bus back to piazza venezia and walked back to the hotel. A bit of a walk from the bus but nice to see the ancient stuff lit up at night again.
10:30pmish - got back to the hotel.
Day 44
Sunday September 9
7:45amish - woke up. Realized I can hear everything in the lobby lol but I don't think it woke me up thankfully.
8:30amish - went out and asked for breakfast. Figured it would be a little ridiculous to call her when I would be able to hear the phone ring that's how close I am. Couple minutes later, she brings breakfast to my room (where there's a little marble table and chairs) on a tray - a fresh croissant with powdered sugar, basket of little fresh rolls and a couple packages of those damn biscuit cracker "toast" things, butter and several kinds of jellies/jams, yogurt, and a cappuccino out of a nescafe machine. And OJ was in my fridge. AND I figured out what the curious tasty pink beverage was at my Venice hotel! It is the same juice in my fridge here - in a blue bottle called orange "rossa" - it's a drink with 30% of this "red orange" juice. Anyway, the juice is pink and tastes the same so I guess it is the same as the one in venice. I'm glad to know what it was ;) Anyway, breakfast wasn't smashing, but it was enough to start the day.
9:30am - for some reason I was slow getting out today, but I made it to the Colosseum and was able to bypass the ticket line because of my RomaPass. Woohoo! So pretty much walked right in and started walking around. I mean wow, there's not much to see there, except the HUGEness of it. Unbelievable. You try to picture the place full of 250,000 people, watching cruelty to both humans and animals - it's difficult. So I walked around the lower and upper levels and just soaked it all up and stuff. Pretty amazing.
10:15am - walked across and down the street to the entrance of the Palatine Hill, which is included with the ticket to Colosseum, and is more ancient ruins right next to the Forum - it's the old imperial palaces. Whoa. This place is huge. You, of course, gotta walk up a hill, and then it's just a bunch of rubble. It's harder to imagine what used to happen there, and it's especially hard to imagine the opulence - apparently these palaces were obscenely gorgeous. Here and there you could see some of the mosaics that had survived - colorful little tiles and stuff. And that was pretty impressive. At one part you could look down upon the Circus Maximus, which is just a big open field filled with little white balls of some kind (those aren't ancient, obviously lol). I spent a long time here, simply because it took me quite some time to find my way OUT lol!
Noonish - Finally I weaved my way through and ended up in the Forum (they connect), where I left to find my way to a place for lunch. I was going to go over to the Circus Maximus and up the Aventine hill to try to find this little keyhole where if you look through you can see the dome of St. Peter's. But really, it seemed like a lot of walking (uphill) just to take a pretty picture. So I decided to skip it, and my feet thanked me.
12:45pm - Had no clue where to go for lunch so I turned to the Rick Steves book and found a place up the hill from the other side of the Colosseum called something dello Studente. It was a lot more expensive than I had been expecting, but whatever. I was here, I was hungry. So I got a "chicken cutlet with mixed salad" for 11 euros. Well, let me say. This is the only meal I've had on my ENTIRE Trip that was so bad I couldn't eat. The chicken "cutlet" was an oval-shaped fried chopped-and-formed THING that was GRAY inside. I mean. 11 euros!?!!?! I guess I figured for that price it would be an actual piece of chicken!! So I basically had an outrageously expensive salad and bread for lunch. Very disappointing. I guess in almost what, probably close to 100 meals over the last almost 6 weeks, I've been very lucky to have just one meal that was truly bad, but I was pretty surprised because it was in the Rick Steves book. And also the service was awful. People were getting up to get their own menus and the people behind me actually complained to the waitress about how long it took her to take their order. This place had 3 waiters/waitresses and maybe 15 tables - no excuse, especially considering the cost of the food. Ah well.
1:20pm - was now just a short way from the hotel so I went back, replenished my water, sat for a few minutes, and decided to give the Archeobus a roll - it goes down the ancient Appian Way and out to the Aqueducts. I got a discount with the RomaPass and I wasn't sure what to do this afternoon so I figured why not.
1:40pm - Took the subway a stop to the station and just made a bus leaving around 2pm. Because it was Sunday, their service would stop a little earlier, so we wouldn't be able to get off and back on. I had decided I wasn't going to try to walk the road or bother with the catacombs, so this didn't bother me. It was run by the same company that did the 110 tour I did the day I got here so I figured it'd be just as decent. It's an open-air bus just like the other and off we went. This road is just so old. Sometimes it was difficult to follow the commentary because it was not timed exactly to when we were passing things, but the stuff along the way was still cool to look at.
But the best part was when we were turning onto another part of the Way and there was a couple who had just gotten married and their photographer. And the photographer starts waving around and screaming and I thought he was mad at the bus for getting into his way or something. But no!!!1 He wanted the bride and groom to get ON the bus to take pictures! LOL!!! Okay then. So the bus stops and they get on and take pictures from off the edge, borrowing one of the umbrellas of this lady up front and everything LOL. Then they get off and he has all of us on the bus go over to the side and wave for a picture. It was absolutely hilarious; the whole scene LOL. Anyway, continued on out to the aqueducts, which just kept going and going and were so well-preserved. The thingy may have even said that they're still being used today. If so, wow.
3:45pm - Anyway, made it back into town and I got off at the Piazza Venezia stop, which is closer to my hotel and right at the base of the Capitol Hill. Climbed Michelangelo's staircase and went into the square he designed with lots of statues and whatnot - it has 2 museums and also apparently the mayor of the city still lives right on this hill. Couple of nice views of the city on one side and the Forum on the other. Went into the church near it and then up a side entrance to the huge white Victor Emmanuel monument, which I thought was a castle the first day when the bus tour drove by. I mean it's huge white marble, made in the early 1900s. Mussolini used part of it to give some of his speeches. Walked through it (it has an inside, and a café, and a bookstore - yes this is a MONUMENT). Went outside to the front where they have this huge statue and found a nice little integrated bench in the shade to people-watch and rest. Funniest thing (to me) was there were multiple guards (who appeared to be actual police or something) blowing a whistle at people. Finally I realized it was to stop people from sitting on the steps (of which there are hundreds, if you come up the monument on its front, which I didn't do). One girl sitting on the bench a few yards away from me had taken off her shoes and he told her to put them on. Later she and her friends asked why and I couldn't understand the italian obviously but I guessed at some words and think it basically boiled down to, this is an important monument and you have to respect it. I mean that's fine and I can understand no eating or no smoking, but really, sitting down for a few minutes on the steps? Sliding your shoes off? Multiple guards for this but nothing about the graffiti and pickpockets and dishonest cabbies and all the other (in my opinion) much more serious problems this city has? Interesting. I'm not meaning to complain about it, just noting that I find it interesting where their priorities are lol.
4:30pmish - anyway, descended the statue and made it back to the hotel. Was getting hungry so I went to this little pizza place/deli/market that was open right across from my hotel and tried to get "pizza bianca" which I think is just like bread with some stuff on top and supposed to be a roman specialty. Well they didn't have any. So I just came back to the hotel and snacked on what I had here.
5:45pm - wandered around the neighborhood a bit and went to the internet café for 45 minutes. Wandered around a bit more and found a little teeny pizza place off a little side alley/street right near the bottom of the street near the forum that had supposedly good pizza and cheap. In my wanders, I looked at a few places and honestly, there were things I'd eat - pastas, etc. But I am afraid to order chicken in this city again after 2 questionable experiences the past 2 days at lunch LOL didn't really feel like a steak, and I like pizza way more than pasta. So really what is the point LOL
7:20pn - so I just went to this little pizza place which had nice little tables outside, etc. called Alle Carrette
Was next to this guy who, when he heard me tell the waiter I was american (he asked if I was spanish? LOL) he asks where I'm from. So he's American too, from Idaho, but we talk throughout our meals and I find that he works for the UN doing public resource projects and he's lived all over the world - in East Timor, and currently Mongolia since March and is here for a week for a conference about forestry. He lived in Rome for over 3 months last summer and blahblah. Was quite interesting all around. He gave me a tip about a little square nearby that's a good place to have an afternoon coffee or drink - I'll have to try to check it out before I leave. Anyway I had a margherita pizza which was made the ultra-thin crust Roman way and it was indeed quite good. I also had a bruschetta with olive paste yummy. Total was 9:50, just left a 10. By the time I left, people were starting to wait!
8:30pmish - stopped at the little gelato place a few doors down from the hotel and got a lemon granita - figured I'd try something different. She squirted some lemon syrup at the bottom, yummy.
9:00pm - back at the hotel, gonna wash out a couple pairs of pants just to make sure I have enough to get home. Not too much!
7:45amish - woke up. Realized I can hear everything in the lobby lol but I don't think it woke me up thankfully.
8:30amish - went out and asked for breakfast. Figured it would be a little ridiculous to call her when I would be able to hear the phone ring that's how close I am. Couple minutes later, she brings breakfast to my room (where there's a little marble table and chairs) on a tray - a fresh croissant with powdered sugar, basket of little fresh rolls and a couple packages of those damn biscuit cracker "toast" things, butter and several kinds of jellies/jams, yogurt, and a cappuccino out of a nescafe machine. And OJ was in my fridge. AND I figured out what the curious tasty pink beverage was at my Venice hotel! It is the same juice in my fridge here - in a blue bottle called orange "rossa" - it's a drink with 30% of this "red orange" juice. Anyway, the juice is pink and tastes the same so I guess it is the same as the one in venice. I'm glad to know what it was ;) Anyway, breakfast wasn't smashing, but it was enough to start the day.
9:30am - for some reason I was slow getting out today, but I made it to the Colosseum and was able to bypass the ticket line because of my RomaPass. Woohoo! So pretty much walked right in and started walking around. I mean wow, there's not much to see there, except the HUGEness of it. Unbelievable. You try to picture the place full of 250,000 people, watching cruelty to both humans and animals - it's difficult. So I walked around the lower and upper levels and just soaked it all up and stuff. Pretty amazing.
10:15am - walked across and down the street to the entrance of the Palatine Hill, which is included with the ticket to Colosseum, and is more ancient ruins right next to the Forum - it's the old imperial palaces. Whoa. This place is huge. You, of course, gotta walk up a hill, and then it's just a bunch of rubble. It's harder to imagine what used to happen there, and it's especially hard to imagine the opulence - apparently these palaces were obscenely gorgeous. Here and there you could see some of the mosaics that had survived - colorful little tiles and stuff. And that was pretty impressive. At one part you could look down upon the Circus Maximus, which is just a big open field filled with little white balls of some kind (those aren't ancient, obviously lol). I spent a long time here, simply because it took me quite some time to find my way OUT lol!
Noonish - Finally I weaved my way through and ended up in the Forum (they connect), where I left to find my way to a place for lunch. I was going to go over to the Circus Maximus and up the Aventine hill to try to find this little keyhole where if you look through you can see the dome of St. Peter's. But really, it seemed like a lot of walking (uphill) just to take a pretty picture. So I decided to skip it, and my feet thanked me.
12:45pm - Had no clue where to go for lunch so I turned to the Rick Steves book and found a place up the hill from the other side of the Colosseum called something dello Studente. It was a lot more expensive than I had been expecting, but whatever. I was here, I was hungry. So I got a "chicken cutlet with mixed salad" for 11 euros. Well, let me say. This is the only meal I've had on my ENTIRE Trip that was so bad I couldn't eat. The chicken "cutlet" was an oval-shaped fried chopped-and-formed THING that was GRAY inside. I mean. 11 euros!?!!?! I guess I figured for that price it would be an actual piece of chicken!! So I basically had an outrageously expensive salad and bread for lunch. Very disappointing. I guess in almost what, probably close to 100 meals over the last almost 6 weeks, I've been very lucky to have just one meal that was truly bad, but I was pretty surprised because it was in the Rick Steves book. And also the service was awful. People were getting up to get their own menus and the people behind me actually complained to the waitress about how long it took her to take their order. This place had 3 waiters/waitresses and maybe 15 tables - no excuse, especially considering the cost of the food. Ah well.
1:20pm - was now just a short way from the hotel so I went back, replenished my water, sat for a few minutes, and decided to give the Archeobus a roll - it goes down the ancient Appian Way and out to the Aqueducts. I got a discount with the RomaPass and I wasn't sure what to do this afternoon so I figured why not.
1:40pm - Took the subway a stop to the station and just made a bus leaving around 2pm. Because it was Sunday, their service would stop a little earlier, so we wouldn't be able to get off and back on. I had decided I wasn't going to try to walk the road or bother with the catacombs, so this didn't bother me. It was run by the same company that did the 110 tour I did the day I got here so I figured it'd be just as decent. It's an open-air bus just like the other and off we went. This road is just so old. Sometimes it was difficult to follow the commentary because it was not timed exactly to when we were passing things, but the stuff along the way was still cool to look at.
But the best part was when we were turning onto another part of the Way and there was a couple who had just gotten married and their photographer. And the photographer starts waving around and screaming and I thought he was mad at the bus for getting into his way or something. But no!!!1 He wanted the bride and groom to get ON the bus to take pictures! LOL!!! Okay then. So the bus stops and they get on and take pictures from off the edge, borrowing one of the umbrellas of this lady up front and everything LOL. Then they get off and he has all of us on the bus go over to the side and wave for a picture. It was absolutely hilarious; the whole scene LOL. Anyway, continued on out to the aqueducts, which just kept going and going and were so well-preserved. The thingy may have even said that they're still being used today. If so, wow.
3:45pm - Anyway, made it back into town and I got off at the Piazza Venezia stop, which is closer to my hotel and right at the base of the Capitol Hill. Climbed Michelangelo's staircase and went into the square he designed with lots of statues and whatnot - it has 2 museums and also apparently the mayor of the city still lives right on this hill. Couple of nice views of the city on one side and the Forum on the other. Went into the church near it and then up a side entrance to the huge white Victor Emmanuel monument, which I thought was a castle the first day when the bus tour drove by. I mean it's huge white marble, made in the early 1900s. Mussolini used part of it to give some of his speeches. Walked through it (it has an inside, and a café, and a bookstore - yes this is a MONUMENT). Went outside to the front where they have this huge statue and found a nice little integrated bench in the shade to people-watch and rest. Funniest thing (to me) was there were multiple guards (who appeared to be actual police or something) blowing a whistle at people. Finally I realized it was to stop people from sitting on the steps (of which there are hundreds, if you come up the monument on its front, which I didn't do). One girl sitting on the bench a few yards away from me had taken off her shoes and he told her to put them on. Later she and her friends asked why and I couldn't understand the italian obviously but I guessed at some words and think it basically boiled down to, this is an important monument and you have to respect it. I mean that's fine and I can understand no eating or no smoking, but really, sitting down for a few minutes on the steps? Sliding your shoes off? Multiple guards for this but nothing about the graffiti and pickpockets and dishonest cabbies and all the other (in my opinion) much more serious problems this city has? Interesting. I'm not meaning to complain about it, just noting that I find it interesting where their priorities are lol.
4:30pmish - anyway, descended the statue and made it back to the hotel. Was getting hungry so I went to this little pizza place/deli/market that was open right across from my hotel and tried to get "pizza bianca" which I think is just like bread with some stuff on top and supposed to be a roman specialty. Well they didn't have any. So I just came back to the hotel and snacked on what I had here.
5:45pm - wandered around the neighborhood a bit and went to the internet café for 45 minutes. Wandered around a bit more and found a little teeny pizza place off a little side alley/street right near the bottom of the street near the forum that had supposedly good pizza and cheap. In my wanders, I looked at a few places and honestly, there were things I'd eat - pastas, etc. But I am afraid to order chicken in this city again after 2 questionable experiences the past 2 days at lunch LOL didn't really feel like a steak, and I like pizza way more than pasta. So really what is the point LOL
7:20pn - so I just went to this little pizza place which had nice little tables outside, etc. called Alle Carrette
Was next to this guy who, when he heard me tell the waiter I was american (he asked if I was spanish? LOL) he asks where I'm from. So he's American too, from Idaho, but we talk throughout our meals and I find that he works for the UN doing public resource projects and he's lived all over the world - in East Timor, and currently Mongolia since March and is here for a week for a conference about forestry. He lived in Rome for over 3 months last summer and blahblah. Was quite interesting all around. He gave me a tip about a little square nearby that's a good place to have an afternoon coffee or drink - I'll have to try to check it out before I leave. Anyway I had a margherita pizza which was made the ultra-thin crust Roman way and it was indeed quite good. I also had a bruschetta with olive paste yummy. Total was 9:50, just left a 10. By the time I left, people were starting to wait!
8:30pmish - stopped at the little gelato place a few doors down from the hotel and got a lemon granita - figured I'd try something different. She squirted some lemon syrup at the bottom, yummy.
9:00pm - back at the hotel, gonna wash out a couple pairs of pants just to make sure I have enough to get home. Not too much!
Day 43
Saturday September 8
7:15amish - woke up. Realized that this hotel probably didn't provide any breakfast. I can't believe this place is 115 euros a night. Anyway, I didn't unpack much obviously, but at least I was only going across the hall. Went across and finally met the elusive Alberta who runs the Hotel Paba. What a sweet little old woman LOL. At first I thought she was a guest and I was like "Do you work here?" LOL I felt badly. Anyway, she took my luggage and I paid for the other hotel in cash and went across the street to a pastry shop and got a chocolate croissant for a euro. Yum.
9:00amish - took the bus 571 to those ruins I was at yesterday, which is near Campo de Fiori. Walked there and found the cute little produce market and bought some tomatoes and plums. There were other kinds of stalls selling crappy looking clothes and also ones selling crazy spice mixes and stuff. They had "pizza" mix and "bruschetta" mix and stuff. LOL
9:30am - found a big street and caught bus 40 to Via Nazionale, which was luckily right up the block from where I wanted to start the Frommer's "Heart of Rome" walking tour. Started at the President's house, where there were lots of cops and it almost looked as if he had either recently come or gone. Anyway, did the tour, which went by some of the places I went on the night tour last night so it was neat to see like the Trevi Fountain and other places during daylight. Went to the Spanish Steps but started at the top. Realized that they are not THAT far away from my hotel, but I am still glad I took the taxi last night. It continued down some of the fancy shopping squares, to some ancient ruin-y type things, and back down right near my hotel.
Tonight is this big thing here called La Notte Bianca - where the whole city stays up all night. Museums and restaurants and stuff are open until like 5am and I guess a lot of the museums are free. I'm just like, keep me away. I mean I'm sure I'll get to see some of it when I'm out for dinner, but still, sounds like no fun.
12:30pmish - was hungry and right near my hotel so I figured I'd just find a place right by the hotel and then go, officially check in to the proper hotel, and get settled. Found a pretty cheap trattoria right across the street that had a wide selection of pretty cheap food and just picked it. Had a small salad and what was supposed to be chicken milanese. I'm not so sure it was chicken, it may have been pork? Anyway, it was alright. But the guy, he took the plate away before I was even done (big piece of lemon on the plate LOL wahhh). I thought this was odd considering all I had read about the Italian waiters just leaving you be, etc. Also, the guy said he remembered me. I'm like, errrrrr from where? He said "From the hotel" - he must have seen me going into or out of the hotel building yesterday I guess. But like, a little creepy? LOL. Anyway, total was 10 euros.
1:15pm - went to the hotel where my stuff was already in my room. All the rooms appear to be right off the reception area. So at least my room is not facing the busy street but just the backside, so that's nice, but I'll hear anything that goes on at the reception desk lol. Luckily it closes from about 9pm to 7:30am she said. Anyway, this hotel is MUCH nicer. A huge comfy bed (which was a nice surprise since a lot of reviews said the one thing they didn't like were hard beds lol), good a/c, cute little bathroom, tv with satellite (though the only english I can find is BBC World), and a minibar, nice so I can keep cold water. Relaxed for a few. Asked her where the closest internet place is, she showed me on a map and also showed me a lot of the sights and gave me a very handy bus map. She said something about having her own wireless and that I could use it - I thought she meant something similar to the one in england where they gave me the password to get onto the wireless, but no she meant let me borrow her laptop. I was like, oh that's not necessary lol and she said she won't give out the password. I don't understand why she won't let guests use the wireless, even if it cost a little. What would I do with the password, sell it? LOL. Ah well no big deal, just seems curious.
Oh and she explained (I asked) why the metro stopped working - they are doing work on that line so it stops around 9pm or so. Unbelievable! If they are doing construction, post a freaking sign in a few languages so there is much less confusion!
1:45pm - found the internet café which is really almost right across the street. Pretty cheap and pretty high-tech. Spent about 15 minutes and 70 cents mostly deleting emails LOL
2:00pm - realized this was probably not the best time of day to go to the Forum, but oh well. I had finished the walking tour faster than I thought (seems to be the trend of my trip LOL) and didn't have anything planned to do. I can always do something else tomorrow afternoon (or maybe not(?) since it's Sunday lol) or whatever, since tomorrow I have scheduled for "ancient Rome" day. Had meant to try a little gelato place a few doors down from the hotel that advertised home-made gelato (well, most places do) and I must say, in terms of the quality of the flavors, I think it's one of the better. The coffee was really strong and the chocolate tasted like melted chocolate. Yum.
2:15pm - made it to the entrance of the Forum where the Rick Steves audio guide stops. On my way there, a guy hawking something (was walking so fast I didn't even see) tried sticking stuff in front of my face, following me down the sidewalk. I just kept walking fast and he finally gave up and started to laugh. No dude, I'm the one laughing, at you. These people are truly pathetic. But there were a couple of intelligent entrepreneurs who had frozen water bottles. I should've bought one.
Anyway, started the walking tour, which led me through the whole thing, explaining the buildings, etc. It's kind of hard to fathom how old this stuff is and that you're walking on the same bricks and stones that people did over 2000 years ago. Crazy, really crazy. Spent a good hour or more walking, gazing, sitting in the shade (it's hot out) and just looking and imagining what this place was like so long ago, etc.
3:30pm - left through the exit closest to the street up to my hotel and stopped at this crazy little market across the street. They have a huge long deli full of all kinds of Italian specialties, and then they have pastas, all kinds of olive oils, etc. What a crazy little place. Bought a small and big bottle of water to keep in the fridge and came back to the hotel to relax a bit during the hottest part of the day before going out and exploring a new area and dinner.
5:15pm - left and got on the metro one stop to the train station. Had heard about all the horror stories of the pickpockets on the metro so had a hand on my bag at ALL times. But it wasn't that busy, so I imagine the problems aren't as bad then anyway. Switched to the A line and took 4 stops to the Piazza del Popolo stop and went into the church right there. It has a couple of Caravaggio paintings, as if I am familiar with his work and would appreciate it anyway LOL.
6:00pmish - Wandered around to find the place I wanted to eat for dinner - a Neapolitan pizza place a local on TripAdvisor recommended. Didn't open til 7:30. Had like an hour and a half to kill LOL
Walked up the steps, hill, steps, hill, etc. you get the point to the Pincio, a hill and park high above the Piazza del Popolo. Beautiful views and my goal was to see the sunset but I didn't quite make it. Bought one of those nifty frozen water bottles and just sat and people-watched for a while.
6:45pm - descended back down to Piazza del Popolo and went into one of the other churches (there are 3 on the square LOL). In the third, it looked like a wedding was just ending. There was a horse-drawn carriage there with white ribbons, and a ton of people. There was also a huge group of "goth" teenagers, all dressed in black. Sat and just watched the busy scene on the square for a while.
7:25pm - got up and walked around and about 10 min later went into the restaurant, which at this point was mostly empty. But by about 7:50 it was getting really full. Anyway, I had a - shocker - margherita. But it was totally different because it was Neapolitan style. The crust was thicker, especially around the edges - and wonderfully charred yet chewy. Lots of yummy sauce and the cheese was kind of in clumps. Whatever. It was fantastic. LOL. I don’t know if I can ever eat pizza in the US - especially in LA - ever again. Anyway, total including soda was 10.50, charged it and put one euro on the table.
8:10pm - left (and by this time people were waiting to get tables in the restaurant) and walked down the short block to Via del Corso - a major street in Rome that goes all the way from the Piazza del Popolo to near the Colosseum and forum, near where I'm staying. Because of this Notte Bianca festival I was told public transportation could be a mess and I was better off walking. Kind of a far walk but I had rested up in the early afternoon to give my feet a chance to make it back LOL!!
But oh wow. The street was filled. The shops were mostly all open, some even had special "Notte Bianca" sales. Churches were even all open, families were out, groups of teenagers were out, tourists, locals, you name it. It was an absolutely fantastic scene. I took a short couple blocks detour to find one of the best gelato places in the city - della Palma - and got a cup with Rocher (chocolate ice cream with pieces of ferrero rocher candy and hazlenuts - in Amanda's honor), cappuccino (which was a mousse of coffee and some other stuff) and chocolate mousse. I think this is the best gelato I've had. The texture was just so unbelievably creamy, that's what made the difference. Anyway, this Notte Bianca is really special. Tons of people all out in the streets - behaving but having fun - just wandering around, shopping, eating and drinking, cheering and singing, dancing, etc. I'm still not even sure what this festival is even about, but I know it was a lot of fun and I am quite lucky for my visit to have coincided with it. Apparently it goes on all night. I don't have the energy for that but what I experienced of it was great. And if I had attempted public transportation or just given in and taken a taxi, I would've sadly missed it all.
Anyway, backtracked to Via del Corso and made it all the way down to where it meets the via de Fori Imperiali, where the Forum and, at the end, Colosseum are, and also Trajan's column/market and some other stuff. Busy scene, there were multiple stages set up with crowds of people sitting on steps overlooking the biggest stage. Guess there will be a concert later. I walked all the way down to the Colosseum, determined to get a good night shot. Of course this meant finding a place to set the camera down to use the night scenery mode! Kept wandering around snapping away, hopefully getting a couple good ones here and there. Walked up an old stairway to get a better view, kept snapping away, etc. Finally I got to the point where I figured that was as good as I was gonna do, so my next goal was to ultimately find the hotel LOL. Wasn't quite sure where I was but I knew the general direction I had to go, and I ultimately came out about 5 doors below my hotel. Perfect.
10:10pm - back at the hotel and feet hurt now. But what a fun day. I like Rome much better today LOL!!
7:15amish - woke up. Realized that this hotel probably didn't provide any breakfast. I can't believe this place is 115 euros a night. Anyway, I didn't unpack much obviously, but at least I was only going across the hall. Went across and finally met the elusive Alberta who runs the Hotel Paba. What a sweet little old woman LOL. At first I thought she was a guest and I was like "Do you work here?" LOL I felt badly. Anyway, she took my luggage and I paid for the other hotel in cash and went across the street to a pastry shop and got a chocolate croissant for a euro. Yum.
9:00amish - took the bus 571 to those ruins I was at yesterday, which is near Campo de Fiori. Walked there and found the cute little produce market and bought some tomatoes and plums. There were other kinds of stalls selling crappy looking clothes and also ones selling crazy spice mixes and stuff. They had "pizza" mix and "bruschetta" mix and stuff. LOL
9:30am - found a big street and caught bus 40 to Via Nazionale, which was luckily right up the block from where I wanted to start the Frommer's "Heart of Rome" walking tour. Started at the President's house, where there were lots of cops and it almost looked as if he had either recently come or gone. Anyway, did the tour, which went by some of the places I went on the night tour last night so it was neat to see like the Trevi Fountain and other places during daylight. Went to the Spanish Steps but started at the top. Realized that they are not THAT far away from my hotel, but I am still glad I took the taxi last night. It continued down some of the fancy shopping squares, to some ancient ruin-y type things, and back down right near my hotel.
Tonight is this big thing here called La Notte Bianca - where the whole city stays up all night. Museums and restaurants and stuff are open until like 5am and I guess a lot of the museums are free. I'm just like, keep me away. I mean I'm sure I'll get to see some of it when I'm out for dinner, but still, sounds like no fun.
12:30pmish - was hungry and right near my hotel so I figured I'd just find a place right by the hotel and then go, officially check in to the proper hotel, and get settled. Found a pretty cheap trattoria right across the street that had a wide selection of pretty cheap food and just picked it. Had a small salad and what was supposed to be chicken milanese. I'm not so sure it was chicken, it may have been pork? Anyway, it was alright. But the guy, he took the plate away before I was even done (big piece of lemon on the plate LOL wahhh). I thought this was odd considering all I had read about the Italian waiters just leaving you be, etc. Also, the guy said he remembered me. I'm like, errrrrr from where? He said "From the hotel" - he must have seen me going into or out of the hotel building yesterday I guess. But like, a little creepy? LOL. Anyway, total was 10 euros.
1:15pm - went to the hotel where my stuff was already in my room. All the rooms appear to be right off the reception area. So at least my room is not facing the busy street but just the backside, so that's nice, but I'll hear anything that goes on at the reception desk lol. Luckily it closes from about 9pm to 7:30am she said. Anyway, this hotel is MUCH nicer. A huge comfy bed (which was a nice surprise since a lot of reviews said the one thing they didn't like were hard beds lol), good a/c, cute little bathroom, tv with satellite (though the only english I can find is BBC World), and a minibar, nice so I can keep cold water. Relaxed for a few. Asked her where the closest internet place is, she showed me on a map and also showed me a lot of the sights and gave me a very handy bus map. She said something about having her own wireless and that I could use it - I thought she meant something similar to the one in england where they gave me the password to get onto the wireless, but no she meant let me borrow her laptop. I was like, oh that's not necessary lol and she said she won't give out the password. I don't understand why she won't let guests use the wireless, even if it cost a little. What would I do with the password, sell it? LOL. Ah well no big deal, just seems curious.
Oh and she explained (I asked) why the metro stopped working - they are doing work on that line so it stops around 9pm or so. Unbelievable! If they are doing construction, post a freaking sign in a few languages so there is much less confusion!
1:45pm - found the internet café which is really almost right across the street. Pretty cheap and pretty high-tech. Spent about 15 minutes and 70 cents mostly deleting emails LOL
2:00pm - realized this was probably not the best time of day to go to the Forum, but oh well. I had finished the walking tour faster than I thought (seems to be the trend of my trip LOL) and didn't have anything planned to do. I can always do something else tomorrow afternoon (or maybe not(?) since it's Sunday lol) or whatever, since tomorrow I have scheduled for "ancient Rome" day. Had meant to try a little gelato place a few doors down from the hotel that advertised home-made gelato (well, most places do) and I must say, in terms of the quality of the flavors, I think it's one of the better. The coffee was really strong and the chocolate tasted like melted chocolate. Yum.
2:15pm - made it to the entrance of the Forum where the Rick Steves audio guide stops. On my way there, a guy hawking something (was walking so fast I didn't even see) tried sticking stuff in front of my face, following me down the sidewalk. I just kept walking fast and he finally gave up and started to laugh. No dude, I'm the one laughing, at you. These people are truly pathetic. But there were a couple of intelligent entrepreneurs who had frozen water bottles. I should've bought one.
Anyway, started the walking tour, which led me through the whole thing, explaining the buildings, etc. It's kind of hard to fathom how old this stuff is and that you're walking on the same bricks and stones that people did over 2000 years ago. Crazy, really crazy. Spent a good hour or more walking, gazing, sitting in the shade (it's hot out) and just looking and imagining what this place was like so long ago, etc.
3:30pm - left through the exit closest to the street up to my hotel and stopped at this crazy little market across the street. They have a huge long deli full of all kinds of Italian specialties, and then they have pastas, all kinds of olive oils, etc. What a crazy little place. Bought a small and big bottle of water to keep in the fridge and came back to the hotel to relax a bit during the hottest part of the day before going out and exploring a new area and dinner.
5:15pm - left and got on the metro one stop to the train station. Had heard about all the horror stories of the pickpockets on the metro so had a hand on my bag at ALL times. But it wasn't that busy, so I imagine the problems aren't as bad then anyway. Switched to the A line and took 4 stops to the Piazza del Popolo stop and went into the church right there. It has a couple of Caravaggio paintings, as if I am familiar with his work and would appreciate it anyway LOL.
6:00pmish - Wandered around to find the place I wanted to eat for dinner - a Neapolitan pizza place a local on TripAdvisor recommended. Didn't open til 7:30. Had like an hour and a half to kill LOL
Walked up the steps, hill, steps, hill, etc. you get the point to the Pincio, a hill and park high above the Piazza del Popolo. Beautiful views and my goal was to see the sunset but I didn't quite make it. Bought one of those nifty frozen water bottles and just sat and people-watched for a while.
6:45pm - descended back down to Piazza del Popolo and went into one of the other churches (there are 3 on the square LOL). In the third, it looked like a wedding was just ending. There was a horse-drawn carriage there with white ribbons, and a ton of people. There was also a huge group of "goth" teenagers, all dressed in black. Sat and just watched the busy scene on the square for a while.
7:25pm - got up and walked around and about 10 min later went into the restaurant, which at this point was mostly empty. But by about 7:50 it was getting really full. Anyway, I had a - shocker - margherita. But it was totally different because it was Neapolitan style. The crust was thicker, especially around the edges - and wonderfully charred yet chewy. Lots of yummy sauce and the cheese was kind of in clumps. Whatever. It was fantastic. LOL. I don’t know if I can ever eat pizza in the US - especially in LA - ever again. Anyway, total including soda was 10.50, charged it and put one euro on the table.
8:10pm - left (and by this time people were waiting to get tables in the restaurant) and walked down the short block to Via del Corso - a major street in Rome that goes all the way from the Piazza del Popolo to near the Colosseum and forum, near where I'm staying. Because of this Notte Bianca festival I was told public transportation could be a mess and I was better off walking. Kind of a far walk but I had rested up in the early afternoon to give my feet a chance to make it back LOL!!
But oh wow. The street was filled. The shops were mostly all open, some even had special "Notte Bianca" sales. Churches were even all open, families were out, groups of teenagers were out, tourists, locals, you name it. It was an absolutely fantastic scene. I took a short couple blocks detour to find one of the best gelato places in the city - della Palma - and got a cup with Rocher (chocolate ice cream with pieces of ferrero rocher candy and hazlenuts - in Amanda's honor), cappuccino (which was a mousse of coffee and some other stuff) and chocolate mousse. I think this is the best gelato I've had. The texture was just so unbelievably creamy, that's what made the difference. Anyway, this Notte Bianca is really special. Tons of people all out in the streets - behaving but having fun - just wandering around, shopping, eating and drinking, cheering and singing, dancing, etc. I'm still not even sure what this festival is even about, but I know it was a lot of fun and I am quite lucky for my visit to have coincided with it. Apparently it goes on all night. I don't have the energy for that but what I experienced of it was great. And if I had attempted public transportation or just given in and taken a taxi, I would've sadly missed it all.
Anyway, backtracked to Via del Corso and made it all the way down to where it meets the via de Fori Imperiali, where the Forum and, at the end, Colosseum are, and also Trajan's column/market and some other stuff. Busy scene, there were multiple stages set up with crowds of people sitting on steps overlooking the biggest stage. Guess there will be a concert later. I walked all the way down to the Colosseum, determined to get a good night shot. Of course this meant finding a place to set the camera down to use the night scenery mode! Kept wandering around snapping away, hopefully getting a couple good ones here and there. Walked up an old stairway to get a better view, kept snapping away, etc. Finally I got to the point where I figured that was as good as I was gonna do, so my next goal was to ultimately find the hotel LOL. Wasn't quite sure where I was but I knew the general direction I had to go, and I ultimately came out about 5 doors below my hotel. Perfect.
10:10pm - back at the hotel and feet hurt now. But what a fun day. I like Rome much better today LOL!!
Day 42
Friday September 7
7:30amish - woke up. Finished packing.
8:00am - went to breakfast. Same as always.
8:35am - checked out. Went out to the D bus and hopped on. It left at 8:49, to be exact :p
9:10am - get to the train station - 45 minutes too early but rather early than late. My train didn't even have a track yet lol. Sat and waited and figured out it was coming from Milan at 9:45.
9:50am - train arrived a little late. So then it left about 10 min late. No biggie, I was in no rush. Found my seat, blahblah. Train ride went fast, only an hour and a half and a lot of it through tunnels under hills and stuff.
11:35am - arrived in Rome. What a fancy modern station (I guess it's just a few years old). Paid a lot (70 cents, or about a dollar) to use the space-agey bathroom - but hey it was clean and a real toilet so whatever LOL. Went out to find the official cab stand when a guy approached me talking in English asking if I wanted a cab. I ignored him and sped up and kept walking. Had read too much about these fake cabbies that way way overcharge and are assholes. Found the official stand where all the cabs are white and have signs and numbers and a sticker from the city. Cool. And the meter was running. Excellent. I gave the guy the address and he goes. I think he may have gone a circuitous route but he was pointing out sights as we went, which was nice enough. Got there in a few minutes and the number on the meter was 5 something. He asks me for like 20 euros (I think). I was like WHAT? He says "for the luggage, the luggage" and I say "luggage is una (one)." I argue with him and he doesn't speak much English and hey, I've got my bag at this point so I could just leave and he can't do much, so I stick a 10 in his face and he mutters something and leaves. That was still too much, but better than 20. And 10 is what I was expecting it to be, so whatever. So much for him being nice lol. I kind of understand why people get exasperated with this city. Even if you are careful and don't get pickpocketed, you have to be on your toes every single second. Being on edge is not really a fun way to travel. But anyway.
12:10pm - went up to the Hotel Paba. The owner Alberta who I had spoken to wasn't there but a maid who spoke no English was. Well she spoke a teeny bit. I said who I was and she was aware. So she tells me that she'll take my luggage and to go to #280 (few doors down the street) and talk to the woman for the Hotel Ferraro, where I'd be sleeping tonight. Found her no problems, she knew who I was. Sweet lady, she asks if I just arrived in Rome and I tell her yes but that I had been to Florence and Venice and she says "ah, they're nice. But this is Rrrrrrrrrrrrroma" - I hope she's right! So she brings me back up to across the hall from the Paba, where the actual rooms of the Ferraro are and she shows me all the various keys (one to get in the building, one to get into my room and TWO to get into the 2 doors of the hotel). So, I'm glad that I am only here for 1 night. It's not terrible, the bed's OK, but it faces the (busy, loud) street, is pretty beat up, there's not even a phone. The toilet and shower are in the same teeny little "bathroom" etc. Not worth 115 euros, that's for sure. But whatever, the owner of Paba was nice enough to let me know way in advance and make the arrangements for me, it's not worth getting upset about just for 1 night.
12:45pm - starving by this point. I had read about a little place down the street that was good but I looked at the menu and it was appetizer like things and nothing sounded good. So I found a probably overpriced and not particularly wonderful big cafeteria type place that had pastas and pizzas and just had some pasta. That and water and the cover was 11.50, oh well. So I give her 20.50 and she doesn't like the 50 apparently, so whatever. She gives it back to me and then tries to give me only 8 euros and says "this ok?" or something and I'm like "no, it's not" so she begrudgingly gives me the 50 cents and tells me tip is not included LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I left a euro on the table. Whatever. I wanted to tell people I saw arriving to leave. But I was hungry and it was edible.
1:45ish pm - walked up Via Cavour and saw the St. Peter in Vincoli church, but it was closed (a lot of churches here seem to close from like 12-3pm or so for the 'siesta'). Found an ATM that looked safe (2 people before me used it and got cash successfully) so I got some. Hopefully it will be enough to get me through the rest of my trip, but I think it will be close. Kept walking and made it to Piazza de Repubblica (not to be confused with the square of the same name in Florence!) with a super old church. Went in, very pretty. Was going to go to the baths of Diocletian around the corner but it was closed. Ooooookay. So at this point I am right across from the train station and I am like, what should I do. I went to the train station and to the info office and bought my RomaPass for 20 euros - it lets you into 2 sights and gives 3 days of transportation. Considering the colosseum alone is 10 euros, that is a great deal. Then to figure out something to do, I looked in the Rick Steves book to see what he said about the 110 hop on hop off bus tour, which I had read about a lot but never particularly with much attention because I hadn't planned on going on it. Sounded like it would be a good overview of the city, and I was feeling a little overwhelmed by it, so I found the ticket desk and bought a 16 euro ticket. Expensive but you get headphones with explanations of everything, and it's a 2-hour bus ride. So really, not so bad.
3:00pm - Caught a bus and realized.. Didn't have my sunglasses with me (in my backpack at hotel) and wasn't sure if I had put sunscreen on my shoulders (and it was probably not on my face anymore). Oh well. Not much to do about it. After a couple stops some people in a covered part got off so I moved up and was more protected from the sun. Anyway the tour was pretty good, got to whiz past most of the major sights and a little handle on the geography and take a lot of pictures
5:00pm - got back to the station and was going to buy a 1 day pass for tomorrow before I validate the RomaPass and either the line was super long at the info desk, the machine was down and then one told me to put 4 euros in for the ticket so I put a 2 euro coin and it pretty much ate it and didn't decrease the amount and the English option wouldn't work. So 2 euros lost and screw that lol.
Started walking back towards the hotel. Found the big Santa Maria Maggiore church, huge inside and really beautiful. Wandered around in there for a few minutes and wondered why Rick Steves's stuff didn't even mention it. Perhaps no major art, but a huge beautiful free church to go into. Weird. Anyhoo, walked down Via Cavour and got a coffee gelato. Then made it back to St. Peter in Vincoli, which was now open. Also very pretty inside. The main attraction here is a beautiful marble statue of Moses done by Michelangelo. Someone put a 50 cent coin into a little machine and it lights up. Neato. And this church is free so you get to see huge major art for free. Nice.
6:00pmish - Went back to the hotel for a few minutes to plan my attack and sit down etc. Was planning to do the Rick Steves night stroll walking tour and eat in a well-reviewed pizza place along the way so I studied the map and figured out how to do it.
6:30pm - set off to go to Campo de Fiori to start the walking tour. Passed the entrance to the Forum, which is right at the end of the street where the hotel is. Cool. Passed Trajan's Forum and Market, which was all under construction unfortunately. Got a teeny bit lost but then figured out where I was and made it close to Campo de Fiori, but first there was this big area of more old ruins that had been uncovered in the 20s (1920s that is). Neat. Campo de Fiori is just a big square, but in the mornings there's a produce open-air market there; I'll check it out tomorrow.
7:10pm - walked towards Piazza del Fico, which is right by the big Piazza Navona. Walked by the famous "Baffetto" or something pizza place, which already had a small line of 10 or so people. Laughed because allegedly the place I was going to right down the street was better, cheaper, and easier to eat it. Indeed so. Little Da Francesco was a typical little italian restaurant with simple tables that had the red and white checkered clothes on them. Had a diet coke and margherita pizza. And let me tell you I think it's the best pizza I've ever had. But I'm not sure why. The crust was so thin and crispy and charred from the wood oven. And I think it was good because it had more sauce on it than a lot of the pizzas I've had over the past week and a half or so. The kitchen was open so you could see him making pizzas and at one point, there were at least 10 pizzas lined up to be delivered. And on one he cut salmon fresh to order. Really cute little place, fantastic pizza, NO COVER CHARGE!! So total was 9 euros and I left one on the table.
7:50pm - set off to find Piazza Navona. Only a couple blocks on the map, I must have taken a wrong turn or something LOL. Anyway found it. Busy and lots of touristy rip-off looking places lining the square. Followed the tour to the pantheon (which I - embarrassingly - didn't realize was a church inside), which was actually open, so that was cool. Then went through some other squares, took a detour to Giolotti's gelato, a fancy place where the gelato is quite yummy (had a cone of chocolate for 2 euros - if you take it away it's much much less expensive) to the Trevi fountain. Wow. Bigger than I thought. So busy. Kept one hand on my bag at all times and tried to snap some night scenery pictures.
9:15pm - Made it to the Spanish Steps, which are a bore and just as disappointing as people on TripAdvisor said, then went to find the metro to take to the station then to switch to Cavour, the stop a couple min from the hotel. Went into an open tabacchi shop to buy a ticket and she said "finished" I didn't know what she meant but it meant I wasn't gonna get a ticket. Then I went into the station to see if there were machines or something and a guard/cop was standing at the entrance turning people away. Perhaps that's what "finished" meant. People had no clue what was going on and of course I don't speak Italian so I REALLY had no clue. But I knew my hotel wasn't that close and I knew my feet were starting to hurt after walking all evening. Had no idea if the buses were even running, where to get a ticket, or which bus would even go where I needed. So I was like, fuck it, I will just take a freaking taxi. The taxi stand was close and I was directed to a female cabbie. Cool! I tell her Via Cavour and realize I don't have my phrasebook with me to be able to say the number. Oy. So she goes to Via Cavour and then I am just like "cavour metro" because I knew the metro stop was just a couple min walk from the hotel) and she is like "Ah ok!" Perfect. Meter said like 5 euros, I gave her 7 more because I appreciated her honesty than anything lol. I know that's too much tip here, but whatever.
It is really beyond me why the metro would inexplicably stop on a Friday night by 9:15pm. I mean, this is a city where people don't even really eat DINNER til then. I don't understand, I really don't. But at the end of my first day here, Rome reminds me a lot of NYC - a lot of great stuff, but for me, too big, too annoying, too loud. The churches are beautiful, the ancient sights are unreal. But so far, I'm finding it a frustrating place to be.
9:35pmish - back at the hotel. MTV is the only English TV station. hahaha
7:30amish - woke up. Finished packing.
8:00am - went to breakfast. Same as always.
8:35am - checked out. Went out to the D bus and hopped on. It left at 8:49, to be exact :p
9:10am - get to the train station - 45 minutes too early but rather early than late. My train didn't even have a track yet lol. Sat and waited and figured out it was coming from Milan at 9:45.
9:50am - train arrived a little late. So then it left about 10 min late. No biggie, I was in no rush. Found my seat, blahblah. Train ride went fast, only an hour and a half and a lot of it through tunnels under hills and stuff.
11:35am - arrived in Rome. What a fancy modern station (I guess it's just a few years old). Paid a lot (70 cents, or about a dollar) to use the space-agey bathroom - but hey it was clean and a real toilet so whatever LOL. Went out to find the official cab stand when a guy approached me talking in English asking if I wanted a cab. I ignored him and sped up and kept walking. Had read too much about these fake cabbies that way way overcharge and are assholes. Found the official stand where all the cabs are white and have signs and numbers and a sticker from the city. Cool. And the meter was running. Excellent. I gave the guy the address and he goes. I think he may have gone a circuitous route but he was pointing out sights as we went, which was nice enough. Got there in a few minutes and the number on the meter was 5 something. He asks me for like 20 euros (I think). I was like WHAT? He says "for the luggage, the luggage" and I say "luggage is una (one)." I argue with him and he doesn't speak much English and hey, I've got my bag at this point so I could just leave and he can't do much, so I stick a 10 in his face and he mutters something and leaves. That was still too much, but better than 20. And 10 is what I was expecting it to be, so whatever. So much for him being nice lol. I kind of understand why people get exasperated with this city. Even if you are careful and don't get pickpocketed, you have to be on your toes every single second. Being on edge is not really a fun way to travel. But anyway.
12:10pm - went up to the Hotel Paba. The owner Alberta who I had spoken to wasn't there but a maid who spoke no English was. Well she spoke a teeny bit. I said who I was and she was aware. So she tells me that she'll take my luggage and to go to #280 (few doors down the street) and talk to the woman for the Hotel Ferraro, where I'd be sleeping tonight. Found her no problems, she knew who I was. Sweet lady, she asks if I just arrived in Rome and I tell her yes but that I had been to Florence and Venice and she says "ah, they're nice. But this is Rrrrrrrrrrrrroma" - I hope she's right! So she brings me back up to across the hall from the Paba, where the actual rooms of the Ferraro are and she shows me all the various keys (one to get in the building, one to get into my room and TWO to get into the 2 doors of the hotel). So, I'm glad that I am only here for 1 night. It's not terrible, the bed's OK, but it faces the (busy, loud) street, is pretty beat up, there's not even a phone. The toilet and shower are in the same teeny little "bathroom" etc. Not worth 115 euros, that's for sure. But whatever, the owner of Paba was nice enough to let me know way in advance and make the arrangements for me, it's not worth getting upset about just for 1 night.
12:45pm - starving by this point. I had read about a little place down the street that was good but I looked at the menu and it was appetizer like things and nothing sounded good. So I found a probably overpriced and not particularly wonderful big cafeteria type place that had pastas and pizzas and just had some pasta. That and water and the cover was 11.50, oh well. So I give her 20.50 and she doesn't like the 50 apparently, so whatever. She gives it back to me and then tries to give me only 8 euros and says "this ok?" or something and I'm like "no, it's not" so she begrudgingly gives me the 50 cents and tells me tip is not included LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I left a euro on the table. Whatever. I wanted to tell people I saw arriving to leave. But I was hungry and it was edible.
1:45ish pm - walked up Via Cavour and saw the St. Peter in Vincoli church, but it was closed (a lot of churches here seem to close from like 12-3pm or so for the 'siesta'). Found an ATM that looked safe (2 people before me used it and got cash successfully) so I got some. Hopefully it will be enough to get me through the rest of my trip, but I think it will be close. Kept walking and made it to Piazza de Repubblica (not to be confused with the square of the same name in Florence!) with a super old church. Went in, very pretty. Was going to go to the baths of Diocletian around the corner but it was closed. Ooooookay. So at this point I am right across from the train station and I am like, what should I do. I went to the train station and to the info office and bought my RomaPass for 20 euros - it lets you into 2 sights and gives 3 days of transportation. Considering the colosseum alone is 10 euros, that is a great deal. Then to figure out something to do, I looked in the Rick Steves book to see what he said about the 110 hop on hop off bus tour, which I had read about a lot but never particularly with much attention because I hadn't planned on going on it. Sounded like it would be a good overview of the city, and I was feeling a little overwhelmed by it, so I found the ticket desk and bought a 16 euro ticket. Expensive but you get headphones with explanations of everything, and it's a 2-hour bus ride. So really, not so bad.
3:00pm - Caught a bus and realized.. Didn't have my sunglasses with me (in my backpack at hotel) and wasn't sure if I had put sunscreen on my shoulders (and it was probably not on my face anymore). Oh well. Not much to do about it. After a couple stops some people in a covered part got off so I moved up and was more protected from the sun. Anyway the tour was pretty good, got to whiz past most of the major sights and a little handle on the geography and take a lot of pictures
5:00pm - got back to the station and was going to buy a 1 day pass for tomorrow before I validate the RomaPass and either the line was super long at the info desk, the machine was down and then one told me to put 4 euros in for the ticket so I put a 2 euro coin and it pretty much ate it and didn't decrease the amount and the English option wouldn't work. So 2 euros lost and screw that lol.
Started walking back towards the hotel. Found the big Santa Maria Maggiore church, huge inside and really beautiful. Wandered around in there for a few minutes and wondered why Rick Steves's stuff didn't even mention it. Perhaps no major art, but a huge beautiful free church to go into. Weird. Anyhoo, walked down Via Cavour and got a coffee gelato. Then made it back to St. Peter in Vincoli, which was now open. Also very pretty inside. The main attraction here is a beautiful marble statue of Moses done by Michelangelo. Someone put a 50 cent coin into a little machine and it lights up. Neato. And this church is free so you get to see huge major art for free. Nice.
6:00pmish - Went back to the hotel for a few minutes to plan my attack and sit down etc. Was planning to do the Rick Steves night stroll walking tour and eat in a well-reviewed pizza place along the way so I studied the map and figured out how to do it.
6:30pm - set off to go to Campo de Fiori to start the walking tour. Passed the entrance to the Forum, which is right at the end of the street where the hotel is. Cool. Passed Trajan's Forum and Market, which was all under construction unfortunately. Got a teeny bit lost but then figured out where I was and made it close to Campo de Fiori, but first there was this big area of more old ruins that had been uncovered in the 20s (1920s that is). Neat. Campo de Fiori is just a big square, but in the mornings there's a produce open-air market there; I'll check it out tomorrow.
7:10pm - walked towards Piazza del Fico, which is right by the big Piazza Navona. Walked by the famous "Baffetto" or something pizza place, which already had a small line of 10 or so people. Laughed because allegedly the place I was going to right down the street was better, cheaper, and easier to eat it. Indeed so. Little Da Francesco was a typical little italian restaurant with simple tables that had the red and white checkered clothes on them. Had a diet coke and margherita pizza. And let me tell you I think it's the best pizza I've ever had. But I'm not sure why. The crust was so thin and crispy and charred from the wood oven. And I think it was good because it had more sauce on it than a lot of the pizzas I've had over the past week and a half or so. The kitchen was open so you could see him making pizzas and at one point, there were at least 10 pizzas lined up to be delivered. And on one he cut salmon fresh to order. Really cute little place, fantastic pizza, NO COVER CHARGE!! So total was 9 euros and I left one on the table.
7:50pm - set off to find Piazza Navona. Only a couple blocks on the map, I must have taken a wrong turn or something LOL. Anyway found it. Busy and lots of touristy rip-off looking places lining the square. Followed the tour to the pantheon (which I - embarrassingly - didn't realize was a church inside), which was actually open, so that was cool. Then went through some other squares, took a detour to Giolotti's gelato, a fancy place where the gelato is quite yummy (had a cone of chocolate for 2 euros - if you take it away it's much much less expensive) to the Trevi fountain. Wow. Bigger than I thought. So busy. Kept one hand on my bag at all times and tried to snap some night scenery pictures.
9:15pm - Made it to the Spanish Steps, which are a bore and just as disappointing as people on TripAdvisor said, then went to find the metro to take to the station then to switch to Cavour, the stop a couple min from the hotel. Went into an open tabacchi shop to buy a ticket and she said "finished" I didn't know what she meant but it meant I wasn't gonna get a ticket. Then I went into the station to see if there were machines or something and a guard/cop was standing at the entrance turning people away. Perhaps that's what "finished" meant. People had no clue what was going on and of course I don't speak Italian so I REALLY had no clue. But I knew my hotel wasn't that close and I knew my feet were starting to hurt after walking all evening. Had no idea if the buses were even running, where to get a ticket, or which bus would even go where I needed. So I was like, fuck it, I will just take a freaking taxi. The taxi stand was close and I was directed to a female cabbie. Cool! I tell her Via Cavour and realize I don't have my phrasebook with me to be able to say the number. Oy. So she goes to Via Cavour and then I am just like "cavour metro" because I knew the metro stop was just a couple min walk from the hotel) and she is like "Ah ok!" Perfect. Meter said like 5 euros, I gave her 7 more because I appreciated her honesty than anything lol. I know that's too much tip here, but whatever.
It is really beyond me why the metro would inexplicably stop on a Friday night by 9:15pm. I mean, this is a city where people don't even really eat DINNER til then. I don't understand, I really don't. But at the end of my first day here, Rome reminds me a lot of NYC - a lot of great stuff, but for me, too big, too annoying, too loud. The churches are beautiful, the ancient sights are unreal. But so far, I'm finding it a frustrating place to be.
9:35pmish - back at the hotel. MTV is the only English TV station. hahaha
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Day 41 pictures
not too many today since everywhere I went inside didn't allow pictures, but they are here
again, not sure when i'll update again :(
again, not sure when i'll update again :(
Day 41
Thursday September 6
Woke up super early, not even sure what time LOL
8:00amish - ate breakfast.
8:20am - hopped on the 23 bus to the Duomo and walked to the Accademia. My hotel had made me a 9:30 reservation and I didn't want to miss it and have to wait 2 hours in case I got a little lost or something. Well when I got there around 8:40 or so, there was a whole huge long line that looked like all tour groups, and I wasn't sure where to go. So I show the guy at the door that I have a reservation and he waves me in. So I walk up and just buy my ticket, whoa. So much for 2 hour waits. The nice thing about not using my reservation is that I saved 3 euros, 10 instead of 13.
I didn't realize this museum was ALL religious stuff (my bad I guess). So most of it was, well, not really interesting. Walked around and looked, but really, yawn - reaffirms my dislike of art. OK so the David statue is impressive. Humongous and really detailed. Sat and looked at it for a few minutes, and dodged the tours to see the rest. There was a room of plaster models for a lot of statues, that was interesting. But to me the best part was an exhibit, I assume temporary, about old italian musical instruments. They had marble pianos and guitars, violins with wood carvings, things like that. So beautiful. The most impressive was a harpsichord with thousands of precious and semi-precious stones put right into the case. Wowie.
9:30amish - Spent close to an hour in the museum all-told, and made my way to the Medici Chapels, where the family is buried and with some stuff from Michelangelo. Paid the entry, 6 euros I think, and went in. Very beautiful chapel, although most of it was under restoration construction. Creepy to see these people's graves, but at least they weren't as nutty as the Hapsburgs! The chapel Michelangelo did was really beautiful - all white marble with a bunch of statues - but the best part was behind the alter, there were sketches on the wall, presumably done by Michelangelo and his assistants as they were building the room. They were faded, but you could almost go back 400 or so years and feel it. Pretty neat.
10:30amish - went through the San Lorenzo street market - mostly leather goods and pashminas, etc. Mostly kinda seedy and crappy-looking guys doing the selling. I wandered through but didn't even see anything I was remotely interested in. Made my way through that market to the Mercato Centrale - a 2-story food market. The bottom floor is mostly meats, cheeses, wine stores, and the like. The 2nd floor is the produce. Beautiful stuff and so cheap. Tomatoes for about a euro a kilogram and things like that. Bought a couple different kinds of Italian olives - some bright green Sicilian ones and some marinated green Sicilian ones and some black ones with pits that put canned ones we're used to to shame. Spent like 3 euros, not bad. Much cheaper than Vienna's market, and less scary too LOL!! This one place, the woman asks if I am looking for anything specific. I say no, so she gives me samples (oh, and she's an expat from the US who didn't seem to want people to know that) of Vin Santo (a sweet wine) and a little biscotti, and then she made me try a teeny sip of limoncello and I nearly choked. How do people DRINK that stuff. Holy crap.
11:30am - went outside and wandered. Then sat down in the cute little Piazza Mercato Centrale behind the market on a bench under a tree. Wandered a bit more and started getting hungry.
Noonish - right by the Piazza Mercato Centrale I found Trattoria Mario's - a little place I had read about. The menu is limited and posted on the wall and you sit elbow-to-elbow at communal tables on stools, and it was awesome. The waitress said that the minimum size for the bistecca fiorentina was 700-800 grams, aka way too much for me, so she offered me this smaller steak instead. Didn't really know what it was or even how much it cost so I said OK lol! It was delicious. Really rare inside and charcoal grilled, it was so tasty. Ended up being 11 euros, the water was a whopping 80 cents and cover a whopping 80 cents for a total of 12.30. Goes to show how much freaking money places make when they charge 3 euros for the same exact glass bottle of water. This place was great fun. Some tourists but plenty of Italians, and plenty of people waiting outside when I left around 1.
1:00pmish - walked a couple blocks to the church near the train station - Santa Maria Novella. Paid the 2.50 to go in and the guy tearing off the tickets tells me to put my jacket on. I had no idea why, I'm wearing a shirt with sleeves and my shoulders were covered but whatever no big deal to put on my jacket lol. The church is huge and mostly famous for 2 crucifixes - one painting and one carving. Interesting to compare them I guess. There were some pretty frescoes and the like, and I had a little Rick Steves tour to explain it, so that helped.
1:30pmish - since I was right by the station I had my pick of buses so I got on the first one that would take me to the hotel and went back.
2:00pm - chilled at the hotel for a little while and then took bus 23 to near Santa Croce. Walked a few blocks to the Synagogue. Entered at the same time as this American couple, he Jewish she not, from Michigan. They were funny and very nice and we chatted a bit. Anyway paid 5 euros and had to lock my bag in a locker and go through a high-tech rotating metal detector, including no cameras or phones or anything like that. But anyway, at 3 there was an "info session" about the synagogue, which is really beautiful and it is indeed the green dome I pointed out in my pictures the other day. The inside was all hand-painted to look like wallpaper and it is much bigger than the others I've seen. It has an organ and a church-like pulpit - the girl said that was due to 2 of the 3 architects being Christian. It's orthodox and pretty much the only one in the city, even though there are 1000 Jews she said. She also said that for normal shabbat services there are maybe 20 people there. Wowie.
3:30pmish - caught the C bus to Santa Croce as this bus was right near the Synagogue and walked around in the pedestrianized area. Found the "famous" gelato place Perche No and got a duo of "tartufo" (truffle - an interesting kind of chocolate) and "coffee mousse" - oh man. Rick Steves is right when he says gelato in this city is an art form - there was nothing like this stuff in Venice (although that little place was good and surprisingly much cheaper than in Florence, it doesn't compare). So good. Wander around and go into the Orsanmichelle church that had been closed the other day. Try to find the Church of Dante which I had heard was beautiful inside, but it appeared to be closed :( Walked around to the Mercato Nuovo and bought a cheesy David magnet (gotta get a cheesy magnet in each city!). Went back to piazza della Signoria and checked out the Loggia with some statues in it - I hadn't realized that those were actual statues (not copies or whatever) of some actual serious artists, so checked them out more closely, then walked through the Uffizi Courtyard, which is lined with statues of great Italians like Donatello, Michelangelo, some of the Medicis, and more.
Wandered the Ponte Vecchio one last time, looking at all the glittery goodies, and took my good old D bus back to the hotel for a while.
6:00pm - got back to the hotel, relaxed for a little bit before going to dinner.
6:40pm - left to get the 23 bus around the corner to the Santa Croce area again to try a pizza place that had been highly suggested on TripAdvisor by several people. Had walked by it earlier in the day and it looked good and easy to get to so I figured I'd give it a try. Waited for the bus, and waited and waited and waited. On the schedule 3 buses were supposed to have gone by. In the other direction, 3 buses DID go by, and 3 bus Ds and several others. But as I was waiting I noticed something fascinating. When there is traffic on a road that has one lane going in each direction, the scooters and even CARS will just cross the strip into the other direction's lane and pass a bunch of cars!! OMG!!! I can't believe in the half hour I was waiting there were no accidents LOL!
7:10pm - FINALLY the bus came and it was packed. And then guess what, another one was right behind it and even PASSED it at some point lol. Anyway, got off at the right stop despite the bus being so full, walked the one little block to the place and easily got a table on their huge terrace on this little piazza, Piazza S.P. Maggiore or something. Place is called I Ghibellini and they had a huge menu with tons of pizzas and pastas and all kinds of stuff, at really great prices. Had a pizza "salamino piccante" (aka pepperoni LOL) and I wasn't that big a fan of the salami but the pizza itself was fantastic. Such a thin crust and crispy and charred from the wood or coal oven, huge, great sauce and cheese. Really good. Had a 1/4 liter of prosecco and a bottle of water, ALL for 11 euros including cover and service. Can't beat that especially sitting out on a beautiful night on this terrace. Plus, something I liked a lot, not even the terrace had smoking. People left their tables and went into the square to smoke. First time I've seen that all trip pretty much. But great for me! Really nice little place. If I'd gone earlier in my trip, I probably would've gone back at least for lunch and tried something else because it all looked so good coming out!
8:45pm - back at the hotel. Had walked across the Ponte alle Grazie and finally managed to get some night pictures of the Ponte Vecchio and caught the bus 23 right across the bridge back. Now time to pack and try to get blog updated before going to Rome. Not sure what the internet situation will be like but I know my hotel doesn't have it so I will probably not update again until I get back to my parents' :( At least my train doesn't leave til almost 10am tomorrow, a little later than I thought (glad I checked it tonight lol) so I don't have to rush in the morning. Good, maybe I can sleep a little later :D
Woke up super early, not even sure what time LOL
8:00amish - ate breakfast.
8:20am - hopped on the 23 bus to the Duomo and walked to the Accademia. My hotel had made me a 9:30 reservation and I didn't want to miss it and have to wait 2 hours in case I got a little lost or something. Well when I got there around 8:40 or so, there was a whole huge long line that looked like all tour groups, and I wasn't sure where to go. So I show the guy at the door that I have a reservation and he waves me in. So I walk up and just buy my ticket, whoa. So much for 2 hour waits. The nice thing about not using my reservation is that I saved 3 euros, 10 instead of 13.
I didn't realize this museum was ALL religious stuff (my bad I guess). So most of it was, well, not really interesting. Walked around and looked, but really, yawn - reaffirms my dislike of art. OK so the David statue is impressive. Humongous and really detailed. Sat and looked at it for a few minutes, and dodged the tours to see the rest. There was a room of plaster models for a lot of statues, that was interesting. But to me the best part was an exhibit, I assume temporary, about old italian musical instruments. They had marble pianos and guitars, violins with wood carvings, things like that. So beautiful. The most impressive was a harpsichord with thousands of precious and semi-precious stones put right into the case. Wowie.
9:30amish - Spent close to an hour in the museum all-told, and made my way to the Medici Chapels, where the family is buried and with some stuff from Michelangelo. Paid the entry, 6 euros I think, and went in. Very beautiful chapel, although most of it was under restoration construction. Creepy to see these people's graves, but at least they weren't as nutty as the Hapsburgs! The chapel Michelangelo did was really beautiful - all white marble with a bunch of statues - but the best part was behind the alter, there were sketches on the wall, presumably done by Michelangelo and his assistants as they were building the room. They were faded, but you could almost go back 400 or so years and feel it. Pretty neat.
10:30amish - went through the San Lorenzo street market - mostly leather goods and pashminas, etc. Mostly kinda seedy and crappy-looking guys doing the selling. I wandered through but didn't even see anything I was remotely interested in. Made my way through that market to the Mercato Centrale - a 2-story food market. The bottom floor is mostly meats, cheeses, wine stores, and the like. The 2nd floor is the produce. Beautiful stuff and so cheap. Tomatoes for about a euro a kilogram and things like that. Bought a couple different kinds of Italian olives - some bright green Sicilian ones and some marinated green Sicilian ones and some black ones with pits that put canned ones we're used to to shame. Spent like 3 euros, not bad. Much cheaper than Vienna's market, and less scary too LOL!! This one place, the woman asks if I am looking for anything specific. I say no, so she gives me samples (oh, and she's an expat from the US who didn't seem to want people to know that) of Vin Santo (a sweet wine) and a little biscotti, and then she made me try a teeny sip of limoncello and I nearly choked. How do people DRINK that stuff. Holy crap.
11:30am - went outside and wandered. Then sat down in the cute little Piazza Mercato Centrale behind the market on a bench under a tree. Wandered a bit more and started getting hungry.
Noonish - right by the Piazza Mercato Centrale I found Trattoria Mario's - a little place I had read about. The menu is limited and posted on the wall and you sit elbow-to-elbow at communal tables on stools, and it was awesome. The waitress said that the minimum size for the bistecca fiorentina was 700-800 grams, aka way too much for me, so she offered me this smaller steak instead. Didn't really know what it was or even how much it cost so I said OK lol! It was delicious. Really rare inside and charcoal grilled, it was so tasty. Ended up being 11 euros, the water was a whopping 80 cents and cover a whopping 80 cents for a total of 12.30. Goes to show how much freaking money places make when they charge 3 euros for the same exact glass bottle of water. This place was great fun. Some tourists but plenty of Italians, and plenty of people waiting outside when I left around 1.
1:00pmish - walked a couple blocks to the church near the train station - Santa Maria Novella. Paid the 2.50 to go in and the guy tearing off the tickets tells me to put my jacket on. I had no idea why, I'm wearing a shirt with sleeves and my shoulders were covered but whatever no big deal to put on my jacket lol. The church is huge and mostly famous for 2 crucifixes - one painting and one carving. Interesting to compare them I guess. There were some pretty frescoes and the like, and I had a little Rick Steves tour to explain it, so that helped.
1:30pmish - since I was right by the station I had my pick of buses so I got on the first one that would take me to the hotel and went back.
2:00pm - chilled at the hotel for a little while and then took bus 23 to near Santa Croce. Walked a few blocks to the Synagogue. Entered at the same time as this American couple, he Jewish she not, from Michigan. They were funny and very nice and we chatted a bit. Anyway paid 5 euros and had to lock my bag in a locker and go through a high-tech rotating metal detector, including no cameras or phones or anything like that. But anyway, at 3 there was an "info session" about the synagogue, which is really beautiful and it is indeed the green dome I pointed out in my pictures the other day. The inside was all hand-painted to look like wallpaper and it is much bigger than the others I've seen. It has an organ and a church-like pulpit - the girl said that was due to 2 of the 3 architects being Christian. It's orthodox and pretty much the only one in the city, even though there are 1000 Jews she said. She also said that for normal shabbat services there are maybe 20 people there. Wowie.
3:30pmish - caught the C bus to Santa Croce as this bus was right near the Synagogue and walked around in the pedestrianized area. Found the "famous" gelato place Perche No and got a duo of "tartufo" (truffle - an interesting kind of chocolate) and "coffee mousse" - oh man. Rick Steves is right when he says gelato in this city is an art form - there was nothing like this stuff in Venice (although that little place was good and surprisingly much cheaper than in Florence, it doesn't compare). So good. Wander around and go into the Orsanmichelle church that had been closed the other day. Try to find the Church of Dante which I had heard was beautiful inside, but it appeared to be closed :( Walked around to the Mercato Nuovo and bought a cheesy David magnet (gotta get a cheesy magnet in each city!). Went back to piazza della Signoria and checked out the Loggia with some statues in it - I hadn't realized that those were actual statues (not copies or whatever) of some actual serious artists, so checked them out more closely, then walked through the Uffizi Courtyard, which is lined with statues of great Italians like Donatello, Michelangelo, some of the Medicis, and more.
Wandered the Ponte Vecchio one last time, looking at all the glittery goodies, and took my good old D bus back to the hotel for a while.
6:00pm - got back to the hotel, relaxed for a little bit before going to dinner.
6:40pm - left to get the 23 bus around the corner to the Santa Croce area again to try a pizza place that had been highly suggested on TripAdvisor by several people. Had walked by it earlier in the day and it looked good and easy to get to so I figured I'd give it a try. Waited for the bus, and waited and waited and waited. On the schedule 3 buses were supposed to have gone by. In the other direction, 3 buses DID go by, and 3 bus Ds and several others. But as I was waiting I noticed something fascinating. When there is traffic on a road that has one lane going in each direction, the scooters and even CARS will just cross the strip into the other direction's lane and pass a bunch of cars!! OMG!!! I can't believe in the half hour I was waiting there were no accidents LOL!
7:10pm - FINALLY the bus came and it was packed. And then guess what, another one was right behind it and even PASSED it at some point lol. Anyway, got off at the right stop despite the bus being so full, walked the one little block to the place and easily got a table on their huge terrace on this little piazza, Piazza S.P. Maggiore or something. Place is called I Ghibellini and they had a huge menu with tons of pizzas and pastas and all kinds of stuff, at really great prices. Had a pizza "salamino piccante" (aka pepperoni LOL) and I wasn't that big a fan of the salami but the pizza itself was fantastic. Such a thin crust and crispy and charred from the wood or coal oven, huge, great sauce and cheese. Really good. Had a 1/4 liter of prosecco and a bottle of water, ALL for 11 euros including cover and service. Can't beat that especially sitting out on a beautiful night on this terrace. Plus, something I liked a lot, not even the terrace had smoking. People left their tables and went into the square to smoke. First time I've seen that all trip pretty much. But great for me! Really nice little place. If I'd gone earlier in my trip, I probably would've gone back at least for lunch and tried something else because it all looked so good coming out!
8:45pm - back at the hotel. Had walked across the Ponte alle Grazie and finally managed to get some night pictures of the Ponte Vecchio and caught the bus 23 right across the bridge back. Now time to pack and try to get blog updated before going to Rome. Not sure what the internet situation will be like but I know my hotel doesn't have it so I will probably not update again until I get back to my parents' :( At least my train doesn't leave til almost 10am tomorrow, a little later than I thought (glad I checked it tonight lol) so I don't have to rush in the morning. Good, maybe I can sleep a little later :D
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Day 40
Wednesday Sept 5
6:45am - woke up even though I'd set my alarm for 7:10. Booooooo.
7:40am - went to breakfast and ate pretty quickly. Didn't bother getting a cappuccino and the regular girl wasn't there anyway.
8:00amish - went to get the bus - and I could see my breath!!! Oh my! Anyway, got on the D bus and took it to the station. Took about 20 min. Tried to find the SITA bus station, I knew it was somewhere "to the left" of the station looking at it LOL!! Walked around a bit and finally found it. Hooray. Got a return ticket - 13 euros. Well I think it was just 6.50 each way and no discount for return. Whatever. It was a comfy coach so well worth the money. Not like taking a city bus or something like that
8:50am - bus leaves for Siena. Pretty ride but I think I doze off during a lot of it LOL.
10:15am - bus was supposed to arrive at 10:05 but was delayed a bit due to inexplicable traffic on the windy little roads up to the town. One of the advantages of taking the bus was that it arrives a lot closer to the town center than the train. And luckily there are little signs everywhere, like in Venice, telling you where to go. I decided to head for the Duomo first and get that out of the way, then check out the big big square. But first I wanted to find a little pottery shop someone had suggested on TripAdvisor. Found it, absolutely gorgeous hand-painted stuff in the Sienna style. Most of it was very expensive too, but I got a couple cute little magnets.
10:30amish - make it to the Duomo and walk right in. Admission was 6 euros, more than usual because right now they have the intricate marble floor designs uncovered. They are quite beautiful. I guess they are mostly old testament images but some were Siena-related I think. Some pretty paintings and a little chapel with 2 nice statues by Bernini. AGAIN there were signs ALL OVER THE PLACE TO NOT USE FLASH and everyone was using flash. Roarrrrrrrr. Anyway. But I guess if people don't tell them not to, they just keep doing it. I just wish people would realize the flash RUINS THE ART. This is really a pet peeve of mine. And the tour groups. When you can only walk through a little roped off area and the tour has stopped TAKING UP THE WHOLE PATHWAY, IT'S REALLY ANNOYING! Anyway I spent about an hour or so inside the church. Didn't bother going into the museum or Baptistry or whatever else there was there in the huge complex. As I left the church, the line now stretched REALLY long. Wow, I was glad I went in when I did.
11:45amish - made my way to the main square, Il Campo. Wow, it's huge. Lots of people bustling about, relaxing, sunbathing (even though it was cool, the sun was bright and skies blue). Wandered around it and the streets leading off it. Tons of little shops in Siena selling local specialty panforte (like a dense fruitcake, some shop had some samples and I found it absolutely nasty), little things of various tuscan wines and olive oils, lots of limoncello (which I found odd because it's not a Tuscan thing - guess they know the tourists like it?), lots of pottery, etc.
12:30pm - got hungry and was too lazy to try to figure out a nice place, so I had "fast food" pizza at a place on Il Campo - I could sit by the door and look onto the square and for 6.30 I got a huge piece of pizza (it was like 1/4 of a big American-size pizza), a drink and some fries. Pizza wasn't bad either! It was "pizza diavola" aka pizza with spicy salami aka pepperoni. I had wanted to try it to see what it was like so I figured probably ok to try at a place like this. Not bad. Not as spicy as pepperoni. Btw pepperoni pizza in Italy would just be roasted bell peppers or something. Heh.
1:00pm - walked around a bit more, into the little grocery/wine/enoteca shops and just looked around. Made it to a San Domenico (pardon my spelling) church, which was free to get into. Big and empty inside but some pretty almost modern-looking stained glass windows. Ok so the church is for Saint Catherine. But like, in the church in a display case, you can see a thing with her THUMB. Um, EW much? And then apparently in a little side chapel, above it is her actual head?? Okay, that just creeped me out. So I had to leave.
2:00pmish - I knew I wasn't too far from the bus station now, so I tried to find it. Somehow ended up at the stadium and had difficulty finding my way out LOL. Anyway found this set of stairs that let out to the street and bam right there was the station. Nice. 2:20pm and the next "rapida" bus was leaving at 2:50. so found a shady spot to sit, because I figured what would I do for just a few min.
2:50pm =- took the bus back, once again pretty sure I fell asleep on and off for a good portion of the ride. This old American couple behind me were interesting. The man was giving commentary on things and if I had had to listen to it for much longer I probably would've smacked him :D
3:55pm - bus arrived early, so I went to the train station where the city buses leave and found the bus to Fiesole, bus 7. Left at 4:20pm, not bad. Guess what, annoying old couple got on LOL. Luckily because I got on there at the station I got a seat. The bus got very full as it made its way up the hill. And it was UP A HILL. Didn't love it too much.
4:50pm - arrived at Fiesole, and couldn't really find the views. Then I felt some drops, it was starting to drizzle. The bus was leaving again at 5pm so after about 5 minutes up there, I just hopped back on. It was not for me. LOL. Unfortunately I had to stand but a half hour later I was back at the station and the D bus left right near it so I waited for that.
5:45pm - caught the D bus back to the hotel right around 6pm. Relaxed for a little bit
6:40pmish - went down to confirm the bus with the girl at the desk and she drew me a picture LOL They are so helpful and nice here. Was time for the "happy hour" so I had some olives (duh) and some other Americans were there. This couple was talking about Skype so we started chatting. They live just outside Houston and sounds like they have a lot of money and travel a lot, so yeah.
7:30pm - caught the Bus 23 to the Duomo to find a place to eat. I had the names of a few places around there that were supposed to be good, so I picked a direction. By the San Lorenzo church I found Regginella - they had all kinds of pastas, pizzas, etc. This is what I had heard, and it was true - the waiters were hilarious. They had the radio on and kept changing the station and were singing and dancing along. OK so most of the people eating there were tourists and speaking English but the waiters were funny about it. This british woman next to me said her meal was "simply spiffing" and the waiter was so amused he kept going around saying it LOL. I had a "tomato salad" which was some tomato with a little lettuce, carrots, and olives in the middle, and some pasta. Pretty tasty, total 17 euros including water. The waiter asked where I was from and I said I grew up near Boston, then he tried speaking in a Boston accent. When I told him it sounded more like a NY accent he tried to sound all Sopranos, then the people next to me were from Kansas and he starts going "howdy y'all" and then he says "no that's more Texas" LOL!!!!!! OK so it wasn't the best food ever but it was reasonably priced and the place was fun.
8:45pmish - was going to find one of the "Famous" gelato places but it was kinda chilly and then I couldn't even find it, so I walked down to across the ponte vecchio to see if I could catch the D bus. By now it was 9:25. Last D bus leaves the Ponte Vecchio at 9:15. Of course. LOL
9:30pm - start walking along the river in the hopes some other bus might be coming. Made it to the next bridge after the ponte vecchio, only a few minutes, and saw a bus 13 coming across the bridge. I knew bus 13 went to the square where my hotel is, so I ran and caught it. HOORAY! Back to hotel by 9:40.
Flickr was down tonight so I dunno when I'll be able to get pictures up from yesterday and today
6:45am - woke up even though I'd set my alarm for 7:10. Booooooo.
7:40am - went to breakfast and ate pretty quickly. Didn't bother getting a cappuccino and the regular girl wasn't there anyway.
8:00amish - went to get the bus - and I could see my breath!!! Oh my! Anyway, got on the D bus and took it to the station. Took about 20 min. Tried to find the SITA bus station, I knew it was somewhere "to the left" of the station looking at it LOL!! Walked around a bit and finally found it. Hooray. Got a return ticket - 13 euros. Well I think it was just 6.50 each way and no discount for return. Whatever. It was a comfy coach so well worth the money. Not like taking a city bus or something like that
8:50am - bus leaves for Siena. Pretty ride but I think I doze off during a lot of it LOL.
10:15am - bus was supposed to arrive at 10:05 but was delayed a bit due to inexplicable traffic on the windy little roads up to the town. One of the advantages of taking the bus was that it arrives a lot closer to the town center than the train. And luckily there are little signs everywhere, like in Venice, telling you where to go. I decided to head for the Duomo first and get that out of the way, then check out the big big square. But first I wanted to find a little pottery shop someone had suggested on TripAdvisor. Found it, absolutely gorgeous hand-painted stuff in the Sienna style. Most of it was very expensive too, but I got a couple cute little magnets.
10:30amish - make it to the Duomo and walk right in. Admission was 6 euros, more than usual because right now they have the intricate marble floor designs uncovered. They are quite beautiful. I guess they are mostly old testament images but some were Siena-related I think. Some pretty paintings and a little chapel with 2 nice statues by Bernini. AGAIN there were signs ALL OVER THE PLACE TO NOT USE FLASH and everyone was using flash. Roarrrrrrrr. Anyway. But I guess if people don't tell them not to, they just keep doing it. I just wish people would realize the flash RUINS THE ART. This is really a pet peeve of mine. And the tour groups. When you can only walk through a little roped off area and the tour has stopped TAKING UP THE WHOLE PATHWAY, IT'S REALLY ANNOYING! Anyway I spent about an hour or so inside the church. Didn't bother going into the museum or Baptistry or whatever else there was there in the huge complex. As I left the church, the line now stretched REALLY long. Wow, I was glad I went in when I did.
11:45amish - made my way to the main square, Il Campo. Wow, it's huge. Lots of people bustling about, relaxing, sunbathing (even though it was cool, the sun was bright and skies blue). Wandered around it and the streets leading off it. Tons of little shops in Siena selling local specialty panforte (like a dense fruitcake, some shop had some samples and I found it absolutely nasty), little things of various tuscan wines and olive oils, lots of limoncello (which I found odd because it's not a Tuscan thing - guess they know the tourists like it?), lots of pottery, etc.
12:30pm - got hungry and was too lazy to try to figure out a nice place, so I had "fast food" pizza at a place on Il Campo - I could sit by the door and look onto the square and for 6.30 I got a huge piece of pizza (it was like 1/4 of a big American-size pizza), a drink and some fries. Pizza wasn't bad either! It was "pizza diavola" aka pizza with spicy salami aka pepperoni. I had wanted to try it to see what it was like so I figured probably ok to try at a place like this. Not bad. Not as spicy as pepperoni. Btw pepperoni pizza in Italy would just be roasted bell peppers or something. Heh.
1:00pm - walked around a bit more, into the little grocery/wine/enoteca shops and just looked around. Made it to a San Domenico (pardon my spelling) church, which was free to get into. Big and empty inside but some pretty almost modern-looking stained glass windows. Ok so the church is for Saint Catherine. But like, in the church in a display case, you can see a thing with her THUMB. Um, EW much? And then apparently in a little side chapel, above it is her actual head?? Okay, that just creeped me out. So I had to leave.
2:00pmish - I knew I wasn't too far from the bus station now, so I tried to find it. Somehow ended up at the stadium and had difficulty finding my way out LOL. Anyway found this set of stairs that let out to the street and bam right there was the station. Nice. 2:20pm and the next "rapida" bus was leaving at 2:50. so found a shady spot to sit, because I figured what would I do for just a few min.
2:50pm =- took the bus back, once again pretty sure I fell asleep on and off for a good portion of the ride. This old American couple behind me were interesting. The man was giving commentary on things and if I had had to listen to it for much longer I probably would've smacked him :D
3:55pm - bus arrived early, so I went to the train station where the city buses leave and found the bus to Fiesole, bus 7. Left at 4:20pm, not bad. Guess what, annoying old couple got on LOL. Luckily because I got on there at the station I got a seat. The bus got very full as it made its way up the hill. And it was UP A HILL. Didn't love it too much.
4:50pm - arrived at Fiesole, and couldn't really find the views. Then I felt some drops, it was starting to drizzle. The bus was leaving again at 5pm so after about 5 minutes up there, I just hopped back on. It was not for me. LOL. Unfortunately I had to stand but a half hour later I was back at the station and the D bus left right near it so I waited for that.
5:45pm - caught the D bus back to the hotel right around 6pm. Relaxed for a little bit
6:40pmish - went down to confirm the bus with the girl at the desk and she drew me a picture LOL They are so helpful and nice here. Was time for the "happy hour" so I had some olives (duh) and some other Americans were there. This couple was talking about Skype so we started chatting. They live just outside Houston and sounds like they have a lot of money and travel a lot, so yeah.
7:30pm - caught the Bus 23 to the Duomo to find a place to eat. I had the names of a few places around there that were supposed to be good, so I picked a direction. By the San Lorenzo church I found Regginella - they had all kinds of pastas, pizzas, etc. This is what I had heard, and it was true - the waiters were hilarious. They had the radio on and kept changing the station and were singing and dancing along. OK so most of the people eating there were tourists and speaking English but the waiters were funny about it. This british woman next to me said her meal was "simply spiffing" and the waiter was so amused he kept going around saying it LOL. I had a "tomato salad" which was some tomato with a little lettuce, carrots, and olives in the middle, and some pasta. Pretty tasty, total 17 euros including water. The waiter asked where I was from and I said I grew up near Boston, then he tried speaking in a Boston accent. When I told him it sounded more like a NY accent he tried to sound all Sopranos, then the people next to me were from Kansas and he starts going "howdy y'all" and then he says "no that's more Texas" LOL!!!!!! OK so it wasn't the best food ever but it was reasonably priced and the place was fun.
8:45pmish - was going to find one of the "Famous" gelato places but it was kinda chilly and then I couldn't even find it, so I walked down to across the ponte vecchio to see if I could catch the D bus. By now it was 9:25. Last D bus leaves the Ponte Vecchio at 9:15. Of course. LOL
9:30pm - start walking along the river in the hopes some other bus might be coming. Made it to the next bridge after the ponte vecchio, only a few minutes, and saw a bus 13 coming across the bridge. I knew bus 13 went to the square where my hotel is, so I ran and caught it. HOORAY! Back to hotel by 9:40.
Flickr was down tonight so I dunno when I'll be able to get pictures up from yesterday and today
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Day 39
Tuesday September 4
7:45amish - woke up, blahblahblah
9:00am - went to breakfast.
9:30am - set out to find the Cascine Park market - supposedly very good and only on Tuesday mornings. Well. It was pouring. POURING. I thought my umbrella would be enough. It was not. I got on the D bus and went out pretty much to the end and would walk the rest of the way. Well. Great plan in nice weather. Not great in not nice weather. Walked part of the way there and was so wet (I mean, my pants were wet from top to bottom and my feet were squishing. Seriously. Not good.), I couldn't do it anymore. Really wanted to see this market, but I wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway. Waited for a bus when I saw a stop. Got off at the station and waited for one of the buses that would take me to the hotel.
10:30amish - made it back to the hotel and changed. Felt so good to be dry LOL. Dried out and stuff for a while and went back out.
11:30am - took the D bus a few stops to the Pitti Palace. Bought both tickets - one to see the apartments of the palace and the other to see the treasury and gardens - 20.50 euros total. Ouch. Really they should have a single ticket that will get you into everything. But whatever. It was indoors. LOL. The apartments were nice, different from the ones before because of all the Renaissance art plastered all over the walls. Every ceiling was ornate, the next one more so than the last. Very pretty. Finished seeing this and quickly walked through the modern art gallery included on that ticket. As much as I am not a fan of art, I am less a fan of modern art, I was there maybe 10 min tops LOL.
12:30pm - went to a little place near the Palace called La Mangiatoia or something like that. They had really cheap food. The waiter was really nice. When I attempted to order, he says, where are you from? And I'm like, DUDE THIS GUY IS BRITISH LOL!!! So I tell him from the US and I say where are YOU From. And then he tells me his life story about living half his life in Italy and blahblah and then after I order he comes back and tells me all about how he's moving to Seattle and all these things. It was pretty funny LOL. I had pasta and roasted chicken. Both very good and probably too much food - the chicken was a quarter chicken and was very tasty and juicy and tender. Total for everything including soda and cover was 11 euros, left 12 on the table. And of course, the sun was out and skies were blue.
1:15pm - went back to the palace. Went to the Treasury and saw all the silver and gold stuff and the jewels. There was one crown that was diamonds and huge purple stones. It was amazingly beautiful. Went through this and out to the Boboli Gardens. Also beautiful, but uphill lol. Walked up and tried to find the Bardini gardens - I was walking uphill on the side of a hill (great views of the city, but still not so fun for a heights-hater like myself lol), finally I saw signs for it. Found the building and a lady asked to see my ticket and then I try to find the gardens and… I'm not sure I ever actually did. I started going down this windy gravelled path down to the city, whatever. My feet were hurting at this point of course and I was annoyed, and had no choice but to walk lol. So finally I ended up at this empty building. I was like, am I supposed to be here? But I didn't see anywhere else to GO. Finally I reached the ground level and there was a girl setting at the desk. I just walked out and saw on the sign outside the door "Bardini Gardens" or whatever. OK so I HAD been in the right place. Still no idea what I saw or did or where I was. Ah well, it was an… experience LOL.
3:00pm ish - I ended up near Ponte alle Grazie so I decided to go over the bridge back to Santa Croce area. Found the famous Vivoli gelato place and got a little cup of chocolate "ricci" (dunno what that means) and coffee. Very good but the one I stumbled upon was better, and a bigger cup for less money.
3:30pmish - Went to the Santa Croce church just a block or so away. Entry is 5 euros but it's more like a museum than a church. Statues by Donatello, tombs of people like Michelangelo and Galileo among others, some famous chapels, etc. I actually spent a good bit of time there seeing everything. Very pretty. But OMG, right at the entrance it SO CLEARLY SAYS NO FLASH PHOTOS. And SO MANY PEOPLE TOOK FLASH PHOTOS. I don't know why this annoys me so much but gosh, it is just so disrespectful, not to mention the fact that the flash actually ruins the art.
4:45pmish - Anyway, I was going to catch the bus back to the hotel for a while before dinner. After wandering around, I realized that the buses take a different route back than they do going from the hotel because of all the narrow one-way streets and such. So I make it back to the river and cross the Ponte alle Grazie and a bus whizzes by me (there are 3 or so that would take me back to the hotel). Then another. Then a third. So I've missed all 3 and they only run about every 15 minutes give or take. I actually get to a stop and see that they've all arrived early! Ah well. I decide to just keep walking, there was nowhere to sit so standing there waiting would be just as painful for my feet than carrying on walking.
5:00pmish - barely able to move my feet :p got back to the hotel. Someone new there, well, new to me. She hands me my key as I walk in. WTF. These people are psychic :p So I just chill, relax, look up restaurants online for later, etc.
6:45pm - go get on the D bus to Ponte Vecchio. Stay on the same side of the river as the hotel (the south side). Go a very short way to the Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco (white boar), which was spoken so highly of on TripAdvisor. OK it's a little bit of a nicer place, but I'm entitled sometimes. Plus… … … THEY HAD PRIME RIB ON THE MENU. Game over. Place is so cute inside. I was there early, right before 7, so it was empty (but I thought I'd have to get there super early to be able to get into this place from what I had read). Great service, the guys were nice. When one game to get my order he asks in Italian and I say meekly "do you speak English?" and he says "yes but I speak Italian better" LOL!! So I had that (16 euros for a nice cut of tasty beef about an inch thick, with delicious CRISPY roasted SKINLESS potatoes!) and water and "fettunta" aka a fancy italian name for delicious garlic bread drenched in unbelievable olive oil. Next to me were these two adorable older ladies who had just arrived. They're from Santa Fe. One was named Lois (SERIOUSLY MOTHER STOP FOLLOWING ME AROUND PLEASE THANKS :p), the other Miriam. They were so funny and very nice. We chatted throughout our meals. At the end they put 2 cover charges on my bill (an extra 2 euros, but still), and I ask the guy and he says "but you are only one!" and laughs. Fixed it no problem. Total 23.50, ok expensive, but it was PRIME RIB :D So naturally, one of the better meals I've had on the whole trip.
8:15pm - leave restaurant and walk back to the bus stop (about a 1 min walk), sit and wait for about 10 min. While I'm waiting, these two guys at the base of the ponte vecchio who are selling some crap on a couple sheets scurry and pack up their stuff and run away. Then I see two cops come down the bridge. LOL! I forgot to write about it but I saw the exact same thing happen yesterday when I was waiting for the Duomo to open. I wonder why, maybe selling on the street like that is illegal even if you're not selling knock-offs. Either way it was funny. Yesterday, the cops were on motorcycle so if they had wanted to catch the guys they could obviously have done so, but they didn't. Interesting for sure. Anyway, bus came at 8:25 and took it to the hotel in about 5 min.
9:30pm - laundry time :( And I have a lot to do too.
11:00pm - should be going to bed early because I want to try to go to Siena by bus earlyish tomorrow, but we'll see LOL
7:45amish - woke up, blahblahblah
9:00am - went to breakfast.
9:30am - set out to find the Cascine Park market - supposedly very good and only on Tuesday mornings. Well. It was pouring. POURING. I thought my umbrella would be enough. It was not. I got on the D bus and went out pretty much to the end and would walk the rest of the way. Well. Great plan in nice weather. Not great in not nice weather. Walked part of the way there and was so wet (I mean, my pants were wet from top to bottom and my feet were squishing. Seriously. Not good.), I couldn't do it anymore. Really wanted to see this market, but I wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway. Waited for a bus when I saw a stop. Got off at the station and waited for one of the buses that would take me to the hotel.
10:30amish - made it back to the hotel and changed. Felt so good to be dry LOL. Dried out and stuff for a while and went back out.
11:30am - took the D bus a few stops to the Pitti Palace. Bought both tickets - one to see the apartments of the palace and the other to see the treasury and gardens - 20.50 euros total. Ouch. Really they should have a single ticket that will get you into everything. But whatever. It was indoors. LOL. The apartments were nice, different from the ones before because of all the Renaissance art plastered all over the walls. Every ceiling was ornate, the next one more so than the last. Very pretty. Finished seeing this and quickly walked through the modern art gallery included on that ticket. As much as I am not a fan of art, I am less a fan of modern art, I was there maybe 10 min tops LOL.
12:30pm - went to a little place near the Palace called La Mangiatoia or something like that. They had really cheap food. The waiter was really nice. When I attempted to order, he says, where are you from? And I'm like, DUDE THIS GUY IS BRITISH LOL!!! So I tell him from the US and I say where are YOU From. And then he tells me his life story about living half his life in Italy and blahblah and then after I order he comes back and tells me all about how he's moving to Seattle and all these things. It was pretty funny LOL. I had pasta and roasted chicken. Both very good and probably too much food - the chicken was a quarter chicken and was very tasty and juicy and tender. Total for everything including soda and cover was 11 euros, left 12 on the table. And of course, the sun was out and skies were blue.
1:15pm - went back to the palace. Went to the Treasury and saw all the silver and gold stuff and the jewels. There was one crown that was diamonds and huge purple stones. It was amazingly beautiful. Went through this and out to the Boboli Gardens. Also beautiful, but uphill lol. Walked up and tried to find the Bardini gardens - I was walking uphill on the side of a hill (great views of the city, but still not so fun for a heights-hater like myself lol), finally I saw signs for it. Found the building and a lady asked to see my ticket and then I try to find the gardens and… I'm not sure I ever actually did. I started going down this windy gravelled path down to the city, whatever. My feet were hurting at this point of course and I was annoyed, and had no choice but to walk lol. So finally I ended up at this empty building. I was like, am I supposed to be here? But I didn't see anywhere else to GO. Finally I reached the ground level and there was a girl setting at the desk. I just walked out and saw on the sign outside the door "Bardini Gardens" or whatever. OK so I HAD been in the right place. Still no idea what I saw or did or where I was. Ah well, it was an… experience LOL.
3:00pm ish - I ended up near Ponte alle Grazie so I decided to go over the bridge back to Santa Croce area. Found the famous Vivoli gelato place and got a little cup of chocolate "ricci" (dunno what that means) and coffee. Very good but the one I stumbled upon was better, and a bigger cup for less money.
3:30pmish - Went to the Santa Croce church just a block or so away. Entry is 5 euros but it's more like a museum than a church. Statues by Donatello, tombs of people like Michelangelo and Galileo among others, some famous chapels, etc. I actually spent a good bit of time there seeing everything. Very pretty. But OMG, right at the entrance it SO CLEARLY SAYS NO FLASH PHOTOS. And SO MANY PEOPLE TOOK FLASH PHOTOS. I don't know why this annoys me so much but gosh, it is just so disrespectful, not to mention the fact that the flash actually ruins the art.
4:45pmish - Anyway, I was going to catch the bus back to the hotel for a while before dinner. After wandering around, I realized that the buses take a different route back than they do going from the hotel because of all the narrow one-way streets and such. So I make it back to the river and cross the Ponte alle Grazie and a bus whizzes by me (there are 3 or so that would take me back to the hotel). Then another. Then a third. So I've missed all 3 and they only run about every 15 minutes give or take. I actually get to a stop and see that they've all arrived early! Ah well. I decide to just keep walking, there was nowhere to sit so standing there waiting would be just as painful for my feet than carrying on walking.
5:00pmish - barely able to move my feet :p got back to the hotel. Someone new there, well, new to me. She hands me my key as I walk in. WTF. These people are psychic :p So I just chill, relax, look up restaurants online for later, etc.
6:45pm - go get on the D bus to Ponte Vecchio. Stay on the same side of the river as the hotel (the south side). Go a very short way to the Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco (white boar), which was spoken so highly of on TripAdvisor. OK it's a little bit of a nicer place, but I'm entitled sometimes. Plus… … … THEY HAD PRIME RIB ON THE MENU. Game over. Place is so cute inside. I was there early, right before 7, so it was empty (but I thought I'd have to get there super early to be able to get into this place from what I had read). Great service, the guys were nice. When one game to get my order he asks in Italian and I say meekly "do you speak English?" and he says "yes but I speak Italian better" LOL!! So I had that (16 euros for a nice cut of tasty beef about an inch thick, with delicious CRISPY roasted SKINLESS potatoes!) and water and "fettunta" aka a fancy italian name for delicious garlic bread drenched in unbelievable olive oil. Next to me were these two adorable older ladies who had just arrived. They're from Santa Fe. One was named Lois (SERIOUSLY MOTHER STOP FOLLOWING ME AROUND PLEASE THANKS :p), the other Miriam. They were so funny and very nice. We chatted throughout our meals. At the end they put 2 cover charges on my bill (an extra 2 euros, but still), and I ask the guy and he says "but you are only one!" and laughs. Fixed it no problem. Total 23.50, ok expensive, but it was PRIME RIB :D So naturally, one of the better meals I've had on the whole trip.
8:15pm - leave restaurant and walk back to the bus stop (about a 1 min walk), sit and wait for about 10 min. While I'm waiting, these two guys at the base of the ponte vecchio who are selling some crap on a couple sheets scurry and pack up their stuff and run away. Then I see two cops come down the bridge. LOL! I forgot to write about it but I saw the exact same thing happen yesterday when I was waiting for the Duomo to open. I wonder why, maybe selling on the street like that is illegal even if you're not selling knock-offs. Either way it was funny. Yesterday, the cops were on motorcycle so if they had wanted to catch the guys they could obviously have done so, but they didn't. Interesting for sure. Anyway, bus came at 8:25 and took it to the hotel in about 5 min.
9:30pm - laundry time :( And I have a lot to do too.
11:00pm - should be going to bed early because I want to try to go to Siena by bus earlyish tomorrow, but we'll see LOL
Monday, September 3, 2007
Day 38
Monday September 3
8:10am - woke up finally. Bright!
9:00amish - went to breakfast, there was like NO ONE in the room lol. Very pretty room lots of tables (take note again Axel hotel LOL), nice buffet of pastries and cakes, croissants, bread, yogurts, some cold cuts, juice, cereals, normal stuff. A girl came and offered a cappuccino so I got one. It was yummy, more milk and creamier than at the place in Venice.
Set out for the day, got a bus 3-day pass from the front desk, they will just put the 12 euros on my hotel tab, how convenient. Got my slip for my free lunch, cool. He even walked outside with me to show me EXACTLY where the Bus D left lol. One was there so I hopped on and took it to the Ponte Vecchio. Walked across and up to the Duomo.
9:40am - Duomo opens at 10, the line was pretty short so I was like, whatever I'll just wait. Opened up at 10, got right in. The lady in front of me was wearing spaghetti straps and I swear, she saw the sign with the RED LINE through the TANK TOP picture (no reading skills necessary), and then seemed surprised and as if she didn't understand when the man told her "you have to cover your shoulders." then people were taking pictures with flash. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. So anyway, it's huge inside, but kind of empty.
Anyway. Walked around a bit more, found the Palazzo Vecchio and went in. The line wasn't long but they were doing security checks and it was taking FOREVER. This couple in front of me were clearly American and arguing about something. They had a train to catch in a while or something like that. So we finally get inside after about 10-15 min and the couple goes up to the ticket window and is like "it COSTS? All THAT and it COSTS? We only have about 15 minutes" I was like, well yes, of course it costs. Anyway, I am 25 so I got a 4.50 ticket. Pictures with no flash were allowed, cool. The most impressive thing about it was the ceilings. Every room had an ornate painted pretty ceiling. Neat. Not all that much terribly different from some of the other palaces in Venice and Vienna (ok, I'm not an art person please keep that in mind lol), but enjoyable nonetheless. Up on the 2nd floor there were beautiful views of Florence and the hills too, almost worth the price of admission right there).
11:00amish - after about 45 min in the Palazzo Vecchio I made it over to the Bargello - the statue museum. Everyone says it's quiet and under-visited. I don't like paintings, but statues are nice. So I went over. Admission only 4 euros to see some really famous artists' stuff. Cool. It was indeed pretty quiet there even though some of the other biggie museums are closed. Interesting, I wonder why people want to wait hours to see the Uffizi but not bother to go into the Bargello at all - there are Donatello statues and lots of other stuff. Anyway, it is very pretty inside with a courtyard, after looking at the ground floor statues I sat and just soaked it in for a few, then went upstairs. They are restoring Donatello's bronze David statue and they had it right there kind of as a "restoration exhibit" with a brochure explaining the whole process. Too bad to not be able to see the statue but interesting to see the restoration process.
Something annoying is that all over the place it said NO PICTURES, but people were taking pictures - WITH FLASH - all over the place. Arrrrgh. But the security people were right there and not doing anything about it. Ah well. Too bad to see people using flash on works of art from the 1400s and stuff, though. Sat in the courtyard again for a few and set off to the Ponte Vecchio to make my jewelry decision so that I could stop going back and wanting more and more :p
11:45amish - walked up and down, saw one shop with a really neat-looking ring for 70 euros. I thought if I bought that, I could even get something else maybe! Went into the shop I found the nice earrings in yesterday. They were a little more than I was thinking, just under 150 euros. Not enough to get the tax back and too much to buy those and the ring. Thanked the woman for helping me and set off to find the Trattoria Bordino for my free lunch.
12:20pm - went in the trattoria and showed my little slip. Got seated at a big round table with a bunch of guys speaking italian - a communal table in the middle. OK cool. Adorable little restaurant with brick interior, bottles of wine all around, dessert table off to the side. Really really cute. Another girl got seated next to me so at least there was another female LOL. Got a "menu" on a piece of paper - 2 choices, one was 7 euros and the other was…. BISTECCA ALLA FIORENTINA!!! Mmmm mmmmm mmm… only 10 euros, so I figure either it will be small or crappy, but considering most places only offer it for 2 people, and I wasn't paying for this one, I might as well try. Well. It was smallish (but more than enough for lunch!) and SO GOOD. Ahh mmmm so tasty. And with a nice little salad too. And all free, even better! Can't beat that! Probably the best lunch I've had on my entire trip and I didn't pay for it lol. When the guy took my plate I said I was from the hotel david and blahblah and he asked if I liked the Italian atmosphere with the big table in the middle and stuff and I said yes of course!
1:10pmish - set off on the south side of the river down Borgo San Jacopo. Passed a bunch of the restaurants that have come highly recommended on TripAdvisor, will probably return. Passed the Santo Spirito areas and just kept wandering down along the streets parallel to the river.
2:00pmish - found Gelateria la Carraria and it looked good so I had some. A 2-flavor cup was only 1.50. I had something like "Fendante" and chocolate mousse. Oh god. I don't know what Fendante was, but it was an extremely dark rich chocolate. And the chocolate mousse was light and tasted just like, well, chocolate mousse. Oh god, it was good.
Found a line D bus stop and one was coming in about 2 minutes so I waited and hopped on. Got off at the Ponte Vecchio and went back to the jewelry place with the ring. The guy was nice and unlike most of the stores someone else was actually buying something. Had him take out the ring and another one, which was cheaper but not as nice. That one was too big anyway but the one I had seen earlier fit. It is like a greek style (see pic). He didn't have any particularly smashingly beautiful earrings but he did have this tri-colored chiseled and all glittery bracelet. Too pretty to pass up, really unique and pretty and I liked the tri-color. All 18k gold and so yellow, we don't have gold like that in the US! So I broke down and bought both - at least, buying them in the same place, you can get the tax back, so he showed me the form and filled out most of it for me and told me what I had to do at the airport to get the money back. Shouldn't be too hard and will be at least 20 euros worth, so that's cool. So now I won't go back there, and I won't think about it anymore LOL. I really like what I got, I've never seen anything like either of them before :) And I don't think the prices were TOO Bad (if you ignore the exchange rate of course :D )
3:00pmish - hopped on the D bus which was just pulling up and came back to the hotel for a bit. Did more today than I expected so why not relax a little. Got back to the hotel, and I see that the maids put my dirty laundry in a plastic bag for me (usually I have been doing it myself but had been feeling lazy this morning lol). How nice of them to do that lol.
5:09pm - caught the bus 13 from the square right outside the hotel up to the Piazzale Michelangelo. Wow. The view. Wow. Walked around the square just snapping away.
Walked up to the San Miniato al Monte church, up a looooooooot of stairs lol. More people were there than I expected, but I wouldn't call it "busy" walked in and heard some chanting. Well I'm not Catholic so I really have no idea what it was lol. Went down behind the altar to the back where a lot of people were either sitting and watching or standing and praying or whatever with them. Sat and watched/listened for a while, it was beautiful and peaceful. Walked around the rest of the church complex and sat on the steps in the shade and just relaxed, looked at the view below, etc.
6:30pmish - went to the Ristorante Michelangelo - considering its location and the view, pretty reasonably priced. The guy said I couldn't order food til 7, I was like, fine, I can just sit and drink and enjoy the view from the terrace. So I ordered a glass of wine (soda was SIX EUROS WHAT THE CRAP) and they brought some cracker/pretzels with it and enjoyed it. Then at 7, ordered a good old pizza margherita. I figured, I was paying enough for the wine (5 euros) and the cover charge (3 euros) that I could go cheap on the meal. Pizza was fine but it was perfectly round and evenly made so I'm guessing it may have been frozen. Ah well, it was worth it for the view right at sunset! Total, 15 euros.
7:30pmish - took some more pictures around the square at sunset, looked at the bus 13 schedule to get one back, and got some homemade gelato from the restaurant I ate at - they had a gelato thing, got a cup of what they called "Cacao" (cocoa) - was a very rich chocolate, very tasty. Hopped on the bus around 7:45. Had looked at the stops listed on the sign at the stop in the Piazzale, thought it was 3 stops, but it made stops in between, and in the buses in Florence there are no stop guides. Oy vey. So, after the bus crossed the river, I knew I was a little bit screwed. LOL. So I got off and figured that across the street, there would be a bus going back in the opposite direction. There was, bus 12. It was going to come in a few minutes at 8:15 (thank god) and would go back up to the piazzale before coming back down to my stop, Ferucci. So I get on, it goes all the way up, blahblah and then on the way down. It stopped once, then I saw it whiz by another stop. So I hit the "stop" button and prayed it would be at the right place. When I saw the "hotel david" writing on top of the fence, I was so grateful LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, 8:45pm - back at the hotel and veeeeery tired.
8:10am - woke up finally. Bright!
9:00amish - went to breakfast, there was like NO ONE in the room lol. Very pretty room lots of tables (take note again Axel hotel LOL), nice buffet of pastries and cakes, croissants, bread, yogurts, some cold cuts, juice, cereals, normal stuff. A girl came and offered a cappuccino so I got one. It was yummy, more milk and creamier than at the place in Venice.
Set out for the day, got a bus 3-day pass from the front desk, they will just put the 12 euros on my hotel tab, how convenient. Got my slip for my free lunch, cool. He even walked outside with me to show me EXACTLY where the Bus D left lol. One was there so I hopped on and took it to the Ponte Vecchio. Walked across and up to the Duomo.
9:40am - Duomo opens at 10, the line was pretty short so I was like, whatever I'll just wait. Opened up at 10, got right in. The lady in front of me was wearing spaghetti straps and I swear, she saw the sign with the RED LINE through the TANK TOP picture (no reading skills necessary), and then seemed surprised and as if she didn't understand when the man told her "you have to cover your shoulders." then people were taking pictures with flash. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. So anyway, it's huge inside, but kind of empty.
Anyway. Walked around a bit more, found the Palazzo Vecchio and went in. The line wasn't long but they were doing security checks and it was taking FOREVER. This couple in front of me were clearly American and arguing about something. They had a train to catch in a while or something like that. So we finally get inside after about 10-15 min and the couple goes up to the ticket window and is like "it COSTS? All THAT and it COSTS? We only have about 15 minutes" I was like, well yes, of course it costs. Anyway, I am 25 so I got a 4.50 ticket. Pictures with no flash were allowed, cool. The most impressive thing about it was the ceilings. Every room had an ornate painted pretty ceiling. Neat. Not all that much terribly different from some of the other palaces in Venice and Vienna (ok, I'm not an art person please keep that in mind lol), but enjoyable nonetheless. Up on the 2nd floor there were beautiful views of Florence and the hills too, almost worth the price of admission right there).
11:00amish - after about 45 min in the Palazzo Vecchio I made it over to the Bargello - the statue museum. Everyone says it's quiet and under-visited. I don't like paintings, but statues are nice. So I went over. Admission only 4 euros to see some really famous artists' stuff. Cool. It was indeed pretty quiet there even though some of the other biggie museums are closed. Interesting, I wonder why people want to wait hours to see the Uffizi but not bother to go into the Bargello at all - there are Donatello statues and lots of other stuff. Anyway, it is very pretty inside with a courtyard, after looking at the ground floor statues I sat and just soaked it in for a few, then went upstairs. They are restoring Donatello's bronze David statue and they had it right there kind of as a "restoration exhibit" with a brochure explaining the whole process. Too bad to not be able to see the statue but interesting to see the restoration process.
Something annoying is that all over the place it said NO PICTURES, but people were taking pictures - WITH FLASH - all over the place. Arrrrgh. But the security people were right there and not doing anything about it. Ah well. Too bad to see people using flash on works of art from the 1400s and stuff, though. Sat in the courtyard again for a few and set off to the Ponte Vecchio to make my jewelry decision so that I could stop going back and wanting more and more :p
11:45amish - walked up and down, saw one shop with a really neat-looking ring for 70 euros. I thought if I bought that, I could even get something else maybe! Went into the shop I found the nice earrings in yesterday. They were a little more than I was thinking, just under 150 euros. Not enough to get the tax back and too much to buy those and the ring. Thanked the woman for helping me and set off to find the Trattoria Bordino for my free lunch.
12:20pm - went in the trattoria and showed my little slip. Got seated at a big round table with a bunch of guys speaking italian - a communal table in the middle. OK cool. Adorable little restaurant with brick interior, bottles of wine all around, dessert table off to the side. Really really cute. Another girl got seated next to me so at least there was another female LOL. Got a "menu" on a piece of paper - 2 choices, one was 7 euros and the other was…. BISTECCA ALLA FIORENTINA!!! Mmmm mmmmm mmm… only 10 euros, so I figure either it will be small or crappy, but considering most places only offer it for 2 people, and I wasn't paying for this one, I might as well try. Well. It was smallish (but more than enough for lunch!) and SO GOOD. Ahh mmmm so tasty. And with a nice little salad too. And all free, even better! Can't beat that! Probably the best lunch I've had on my entire trip and I didn't pay for it lol. When the guy took my plate I said I was from the hotel david and blahblah and he asked if I liked the Italian atmosphere with the big table in the middle and stuff and I said yes of course!
1:10pmish - set off on the south side of the river down Borgo San Jacopo. Passed a bunch of the restaurants that have come highly recommended on TripAdvisor, will probably return. Passed the Santo Spirito areas and just kept wandering down along the streets parallel to the river.
2:00pmish - found Gelateria la Carraria and it looked good so I had some. A 2-flavor cup was only 1.50. I had something like "Fendante" and chocolate mousse. Oh god. I don't know what Fendante was, but it was an extremely dark rich chocolate. And the chocolate mousse was light and tasted just like, well, chocolate mousse. Oh god, it was good.
Found a line D bus stop and one was coming in about 2 minutes so I waited and hopped on. Got off at the Ponte Vecchio and went back to the jewelry place with the ring. The guy was nice and unlike most of the stores someone else was actually buying something. Had him take out the ring and another one, which was cheaper but not as nice. That one was too big anyway but the one I had seen earlier fit. It is like a greek style (see pic). He didn't have any particularly smashingly beautiful earrings but he did have this tri-colored chiseled and all glittery bracelet. Too pretty to pass up, really unique and pretty and I liked the tri-color. All 18k gold and so yellow, we don't have gold like that in the US! So I broke down and bought both - at least, buying them in the same place, you can get the tax back, so he showed me the form and filled out most of it for me and told me what I had to do at the airport to get the money back. Shouldn't be too hard and will be at least 20 euros worth, so that's cool. So now I won't go back there, and I won't think about it anymore LOL. I really like what I got, I've never seen anything like either of them before :) And I don't think the prices were TOO Bad (if you ignore the exchange rate of course :D )
3:00pmish - hopped on the D bus which was just pulling up and came back to the hotel for a bit. Did more today than I expected so why not relax a little. Got back to the hotel, and I see that the maids put my dirty laundry in a plastic bag for me (usually I have been doing it myself but had been feeling lazy this morning lol). How nice of them to do that lol.
5:09pm - caught the bus 13 from the square right outside the hotel up to the Piazzale Michelangelo. Wow. The view. Wow. Walked around the square just snapping away.
Walked up to the San Miniato al Monte church, up a looooooooot of stairs lol. More people were there than I expected, but I wouldn't call it "busy" walked in and heard some chanting. Well I'm not Catholic so I really have no idea what it was lol. Went down behind the altar to the back where a lot of people were either sitting and watching or standing and praying or whatever with them. Sat and watched/listened for a while, it was beautiful and peaceful. Walked around the rest of the church complex and sat on the steps in the shade and just relaxed, looked at the view below, etc.
6:30pmish - went to the Ristorante Michelangelo - considering its location and the view, pretty reasonably priced. The guy said I couldn't order food til 7, I was like, fine, I can just sit and drink and enjoy the view from the terrace. So I ordered a glass of wine (soda was SIX EUROS WHAT THE CRAP) and they brought some cracker/pretzels with it and enjoyed it. Then at 7, ordered a good old pizza margherita. I figured, I was paying enough for the wine (5 euros) and the cover charge (3 euros) that I could go cheap on the meal. Pizza was fine but it was perfectly round and evenly made so I'm guessing it may have been frozen. Ah well, it was worth it for the view right at sunset! Total, 15 euros.
7:30pmish - took some more pictures around the square at sunset, looked at the bus 13 schedule to get one back, and got some homemade gelato from the restaurant I ate at - they had a gelato thing, got a cup of what they called "Cacao" (cocoa) - was a very rich chocolate, very tasty. Hopped on the bus around 7:45. Had looked at the stops listed on the sign at the stop in the Piazzale, thought it was 3 stops, but it made stops in between, and in the buses in Florence there are no stop guides. Oy vey. So, after the bus crossed the river, I knew I was a little bit screwed. LOL. So I got off and figured that across the street, there would be a bus going back in the opposite direction. There was, bus 12. It was going to come in a few minutes at 8:15 (thank god) and would go back up to the piazzale before coming back down to my stop, Ferucci. So I get on, it goes all the way up, blahblah and then on the way down. It stopped once, then I saw it whiz by another stop. So I hit the "stop" button and prayed it would be at the right place. When I saw the "hotel david" writing on top of the fence, I was so grateful LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, 8:45pm - back at the hotel and veeeeery tired.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Day 37
Sunday September 2
6:45am - woke up before the alarm :( laid in bed for a while and finished packing up
8:05am - went to breakfast. There was an american couple from Virginia there. We chatted a bit.
8:35am - checked out of the hotel and went to the vaporetto. Waited til 8:52 and took the #82 to the train station.
9:20am - arrived at the train station and tried to find out how the heck to get to Mestre. Tried 2 different ticket machines and they would not give me a ticket! Finally I found an information office and not many people in line. Asked the guy, how the heck do I get to Mestre. He tells me the souvenir shop would sell the tickets (the line at the desk was so incredibly long I would miss my train if I waited in that line to take a 10 minute train to Mestre lol
Bought the big one euro ticket to Mestre and hopped on a train to leave at 9:46. No problem. A couple people sat outside me and I felt really badly asking them to move so I could get off but oh well.
9:56am - arrived at Mestre and carried my bag down the stairs to the monitors to find my train. Lo and behold it was leaving from the same platform I'd just gotten off of. Oh well, it wasn't that many stairs and I wasn't in a rush. Went back up and sat down for a while and just waited.
10:35amish - train came and I realized, the printout she gave me cut off my seat, so I rushed and sat down right on the platform and opened up my computer to find the email LOL. Found it, found carriage 8 and went on my merry way. In a berth of 4 seats with a table in between, seated with a mom and 2 kids, power outlets, an electric shade on the window, reclining seats, very nice for 2nd class. Plus the way the seats are organized, there is space in between them for luggage, so since I took a small suitcase (HOORAY FINALLY IT WAS WORTH IT), it fit nicely and I have foot space haha.
11:05amish - train stops in Padova (Padua) and a couple (American perhaps?) get on and find people in their seats in the berth next to us. There's this old guy and he realizes his ticket is from yesterday, right as the ticket dude was coming by to check. I felt badly for him, then again maybe he did it on purpose?
1:25pm - uneventful train ride. Arrive pretty much on time, grab my suitcase and get off. Find the signs to Taxi and hop in without having to wait. Ask the guy in Italian how much it would cost to get to my hotel, don't have a clue what his response was LOL. But I hopped in, he seemed nice. It ended up taking less than 10 minutes and costing 9.90. I gave him 11. On the way we passed the center of town, I think the Duomo, and the line stretched around the building and down the street. Oy vey!
1:40pmish - get out of the taxi and the guy at the hotel opens the door and comes down the 3 steps and takes my bag. OK I can tell this place is gonna be awesome :) Check in and he doesn't even ask for a credit card. Then he shows me on a map where I am and where the buses are and all that. Cool. I'm in room 8 on the first floor. And he gave me the wireless info too! Nice!
And oh it is lovely. It's a double for single use so the bed is bigger, the room is bigger. Wood floors and furniture, high ceiling with a remote-controlled a/c. bathroom is a bit small but perfectly fine. Nice closet, tv, fridge, and a little balcony!!!!! Oh I will have to sit out there sipping something at some point :) the prices for the minibar are so reasonable - only a euro for water. How did I snag such a deal for 75 euros!
Hooked up my computer, connected to the wireless no problem, and deleted all but 7 of the 74 of my emails that had accumulated in the last 4-5 days LOL. Rested for a bit and skyped with my parents and set out to explore a bit. On my way out, the guy handed me a couple papers, one with my Accademia reservation on it and the other for my free lunch. He said, decide when you want to go, hand us the paper we'll write it and make you the reservation. Wow, nice. It's a little place near the Ponte Vecchio. Cool :)
3:00pmish - walked towards the Ponte Vecchio, figured I'd test out the walk and see how long it actually is. Beautiful views of hills one way and into florence's center the other. Took pictures along the way of course. Crossed the Arno river at the Ponte alla Grazie (the one before the Ponte Vecchio), found the Piazza Santa Croce - huge church! Wandered a bit and it was getting busier. Found Vivoli's gelateria (one of the more famous ones here) and it was closed :( Found a little café that was open and got a cup of Chocolate and coffee for 2 euros - I'd barely eaten anything all day! Mmmmm it was good. The chocolate had chocolate chips in it and the coffee had coffee beans throughout it (ok they were bitter but.. Still tasty).
Wandered and found the Piazza della Signoria, one of the bigger squares. I wads just standing there soaking it in when a guy comes up and tries to ask if I knew where the Uffizi was. I replied in English and he was like "OMG you're American" LOL!!! Then I saw he was wearing a Connecticut shirt so I say, UConn? And he's like, yes. And I say "my mom went there" so we start chatting - his wife was on the phone with family. Turns out they had just come from Venice on a train slightly later than mine. So we look at my handy popout map and see that the Uffizi is right there. Then they invite me to go in with them, they had some kind of complimentary tickets. I was tired, feet starting to hurt again, and the last thing I wanted to do was look at some art. So I thanked them but declined. They were like, since we are here would you take a picture of us. Of course I did and the woman offered to take a picture of me, I was like oh sure why not! Anyway they were very sweet and I forget their names but it was nice to chat for a few.
I kept wandering and found the Ponte Vecchio. Oh my god. Half the stores were closed but still, the gold. It was everywhere and unlike the Murano glass which by and large wasn't my style, I could buy hundreds of things here. I will have a hard time finding something to buy, I mean just one thing. LOL!! I did see one pair of earrings at one place that I couldn't see the price but didn't think they'd be TOO outrageous, and they were gorgeous. I'll go back sometime during the week when all the stores are open, and somehow I will make my mind up!
Anyway, now I was back across the bridge, I set back towards the hotel. Saw a little market that was open, got a bottle of water and some salami to snack on.
5:00pmish - made it back to the hotel. Walk is about 15-20 min, not a bad walk and certainly pretty, but I think I will be utilizing the bus, especially since a 3-day pass is only 12 euros. The front desk was now manned by a girl, who says hi and is like "Room 8?" and I am like "how did you know that?!!!" and she's laughing and goes "I know" LOL. How cool.
Relax for a while.
6:45pmish - go down and ask her if there are any places open for dinner. She shows me a couple that I had actually heard about and where they were. Very cool. She tells me to go into the garden for the happy hour thing. They have red and white wine and some kind of juice. Green olives, 2 kinds of corn nuts (yes mom corn nuts LOL), and some little savory pastries and stuff. I had some olives and a glass of juice, and just sat in the cute little garden for a bit.
7:05pm - went back in, remembered to give the girl the thing for my lunch, she said she could book it for tomorrow. Cool. I will be near there - it is right by the Ponte Vecchio anyway. Hopefully there will be something I want to eat? LOL.
Wandered, looked at the places she suggested that were open. All within maybe a 5 min walk from the hotel down the street.
7:20pm - decided on Trattoria Gigi for 3 reasons: 1) it was open, 2) it came highly recommended from people at tripadvisor and 3) it had something non-pasta, non-pizza that I'd want to eat. Perfect! Very adorable inside, high arched bricked ceilings, etc. Had the "pollo frito" aka, FRIED CHICKEN! Ahhaha. Yummmmmm. I think, what it was, was a hacked up bone-in chicken breast breaded and fried in olive oil. Whatever it was, it was good. Maybe slightly overcooked, but it wasn't pasta or pizza so it was good, plus even though it was something normal, it was still Italian because of the batter and olive oil. Plus I had never eaten pieces of fried chicken with the bone in, so it was an experience. It came with some kind of "fried vegetables" which were like, squash or zucchini blossoms or something. Tasted it and honestly it just tasted like the batter. When she took away my plate she said something that I imagine was "you didn't like it?" LOL Anyway total was 17.50 euros including water and cover. Not bad for a nice meal in a nice little place. I left 2 euros on the table as tip, I'm still not sure what I am supposed to be doing where this is concerned, so I guess I will just kinda keep winging it lol.
8:10pmish - came back to the hotel, the girl at the desk asked if I had a nice dinner so I told her yes and where I went.
10:55pm - today's pictures will be up tomorrow, I am tired!
6:45am - woke up before the alarm :( laid in bed for a while and finished packing up
8:05am - went to breakfast. There was an american couple from Virginia there. We chatted a bit.
8:35am - checked out of the hotel and went to the vaporetto. Waited til 8:52 and took the #82 to the train station.
9:20am - arrived at the train station and tried to find out how the heck to get to Mestre. Tried 2 different ticket machines and they would not give me a ticket! Finally I found an information office and not many people in line. Asked the guy, how the heck do I get to Mestre. He tells me the souvenir shop would sell the tickets (the line at the desk was so incredibly long I would miss my train if I waited in that line to take a 10 minute train to Mestre lol
Bought the big one euro ticket to Mestre and hopped on a train to leave at 9:46. No problem. A couple people sat outside me and I felt really badly asking them to move so I could get off but oh well.
9:56am - arrived at Mestre and carried my bag down the stairs to the monitors to find my train. Lo and behold it was leaving from the same platform I'd just gotten off of. Oh well, it wasn't that many stairs and I wasn't in a rush. Went back up and sat down for a while and just waited.
10:35amish - train came and I realized, the printout she gave me cut off my seat, so I rushed and sat down right on the platform and opened up my computer to find the email LOL. Found it, found carriage 8 and went on my merry way. In a berth of 4 seats with a table in between, seated with a mom and 2 kids, power outlets, an electric shade on the window, reclining seats, very nice for 2nd class. Plus the way the seats are organized, there is space in between them for luggage, so since I took a small suitcase (HOORAY FINALLY IT WAS WORTH IT), it fit nicely and I have foot space haha.
11:05amish - train stops in Padova (Padua) and a couple (American perhaps?) get on and find people in their seats in the berth next to us. There's this old guy and he realizes his ticket is from yesterday, right as the ticket dude was coming by to check. I felt badly for him, then again maybe he did it on purpose?
1:25pm - uneventful train ride. Arrive pretty much on time, grab my suitcase and get off. Find the signs to Taxi and hop in without having to wait. Ask the guy in Italian how much it would cost to get to my hotel, don't have a clue what his response was LOL. But I hopped in, he seemed nice. It ended up taking less than 10 minutes and costing 9.90. I gave him 11. On the way we passed the center of town, I think the Duomo, and the line stretched around the building and down the street. Oy vey!
1:40pmish - get out of the taxi and the guy at the hotel opens the door and comes down the 3 steps and takes my bag. OK I can tell this place is gonna be awesome :) Check in and he doesn't even ask for a credit card. Then he shows me on a map where I am and where the buses are and all that. Cool. I'm in room 8 on the first floor. And he gave me the wireless info too! Nice!
And oh it is lovely. It's a double for single use so the bed is bigger, the room is bigger. Wood floors and furniture, high ceiling with a remote-controlled a/c. bathroom is a bit small but perfectly fine. Nice closet, tv, fridge, and a little balcony!!!!! Oh I will have to sit out there sipping something at some point :) the prices for the minibar are so reasonable - only a euro for water. How did I snag such a deal for 75 euros!
Hooked up my computer, connected to the wireless no problem, and deleted all but 7 of the 74 of my emails that had accumulated in the last 4-5 days LOL. Rested for a bit and skyped with my parents and set out to explore a bit. On my way out, the guy handed me a couple papers, one with my Accademia reservation on it and the other for my free lunch. He said, decide when you want to go, hand us the paper we'll write it and make you the reservation. Wow, nice. It's a little place near the Ponte Vecchio. Cool :)
3:00pmish - walked towards the Ponte Vecchio, figured I'd test out the walk and see how long it actually is. Beautiful views of hills one way and into florence's center the other. Took pictures along the way of course. Crossed the Arno river at the Ponte alla Grazie (the one before the Ponte Vecchio), found the Piazza Santa Croce - huge church! Wandered a bit and it was getting busier. Found Vivoli's gelateria (one of the more famous ones here) and it was closed :( Found a little café that was open and got a cup of Chocolate and coffee for 2 euros - I'd barely eaten anything all day! Mmmmm it was good. The chocolate had chocolate chips in it and the coffee had coffee beans throughout it (ok they were bitter but.. Still tasty).
Wandered and found the Piazza della Signoria, one of the bigger squares. I wads just standing there soaking it in when a guy comes up and tries to ask if I knew where the Uffizi was. I replied in English and he was like "OMG you're American" LOL!!! Then I saw he was wearing a Connecticut shirt so I say, UConn? And he's like, yes. And I say "my mom went there" so we start chatting - his wife was on the phone with family. Turns out they had just come from Venice on a train slightly later than mine. So we look at my handy popout map and see that the Uffizi is right there. Then they invite me to go in with them, they had some kind of complimentary tickets. I was tired, feet starting to hurt again, and the last thing I wanted to do was look at some art. So I thanked them but declined. They were like, since we are here would you take a picture of us. Of course I did and the woman offered to take a picture of me, I was like oh sure why not! Anyway they were very sweet and I forget their names but it was nice to chat for a few.
I kept wandering and found the Ponte Vecchio. Oh my god. Half the stores were closed but still, the gold. It was everywhere and unlike the Murano glass which by and large wasn't my style, I could buy hundreds of things here. I will have a hard time finding something to buy, I mean just one thing. LOL!! I did see one pair of earrings at one place that I couldn't see the price but didn't think they'd be TOO outrageous, and they were gorgeous. I'll go back sometime during the week when all the stores are open, and somehow I will make my mind up!
Anyway, now I was back across the bridge, I set back towards the hotel. Saw a little market that was open, got a bottle of water and some salami to snack on.
5:00pmish - made it back to the hotel. Walk is about 15-20 min, not a bad walk and certainly pretty, but I think I will be utilizing the bus, especially since a 3-day pass is only 12 euros. The front desk was now manned by a girl, who says hi and is like "Room 8?" and I am like "how did you know that?!!!" and she's laughing and goes "I know" LOL. How cool.
Relax for a while.
6:45pmish - go down and ask her if there are any places open for dinner. She shows me a couple that I had actually heard about and where they were. Very cool. She tells me to go into the garden for the happy hour thing. They have red and white wine and some kind of juice. Green olives, 2 kinds of corn nuts (yes mom corn nuts LOL), and some little savory pastries and stuff. I had some olives and a glass of juice, and just sat in the cute little garden for a bit.
7:05pm - went back in, remembered to give the girl the thing for my lunch, she said she could book it for tomorrow. Cool. I will be near there - it is right by the Ponte Vecchio anyway. Hopefully there will be something I want to eat? LOL.
Wandered, looked at the places she suggested that were open. All within maybe a 5 min walk from the hotel down the street.
7:20pm - decided on Trattoria Gigi for 3 reasons: 1) it was open, 2) it came highly recommended from people at tripadvisor and 3) it had something non-pasta, non-pizza that I'd want to eat. Perfect! Very adorable inside, high arched bricked ceilings, etc. Had the "pollo frito" aka, FRIED CHICKEN! Ahhaha. Yummmmmm. I think, what it was, was a hacked up bone-in chicken breast breaded and fried in olive oil. Whatever it was, it was good. Maybe slightly overcooked, but it wasn't pasta or pizza so it was good, plus even though it was something normal, it was still Italian because of the batter and olive oil. Plus I had never eaten pieces of fried chicken with the bone in, so it was an experience. It came with some kind of "fried vegetables" which were like, squash or zucchini blossoms or something. Tasted it and honestly it just tasted like the batter. When she took away my plate she said something that I imagine was "you didn't like it?" LOL Anyway total was 17.50 euros including water and cover. Not bad for a nice meal in a nice little place. I left 2 euros on the table as tip, I'm still not sure what I am supposed to be doing where this is concerned, so I guess I will just kinda keep winging it lol.
8:10pmish - came back to the hotel, the girl at the desk asked if I had a nice dinner so I told her yes and where I went.
10:55pm - today's pictures will be up tomorrow, I am tired!
Day 36
Saturday September 1
7:00am - woke up :( but stayed in bed and watched tv for an hour before taking a shower and going to breakfast, etc. I could see out the window that it was clear and beautiful out
9:10am - went to breakfast. While I was there, the girl working the front desk in the mornings asked me if I was all set for my departure tomorrow. I said yes my train leaves just before 11am blahblah and then I mention it leaves from Mestre (the train station 10 min by train away from Venice itself, on the mainland). She tells me something to the effect of "omg that's awful Mestre is a pain to get to but one leaves from the Venice station at 11:23!" Ok I KNOW before I booked my ticket a couple months ago that I checked all the trains and there was definitely NOT one leaving from the Venice station. Anyway she pretty much demands that I log in to my email from the front desk so she can get my codes and try to change my reservation for me LOL. She tried, but it said no space. No problem, I will just leave here extra early and figure it out. But it was awfully sweet of her to try, then she printed out my train information and also the times of the trains connecting the Venice station to the mestre station. What kindness and service! :)
Anyhoo, 9:45am - went to the vaporetto stop to get the boat to the glassmaking island Murano. One was leaving at 10:01 but another direct boat was leaving at 10:15. The first one was so full so a lot of us just waited. It was hard because the waiting thingy is on the water and it was all rocking back and forth today like crazy. Really thought I was gonna be sick and was really glad I didn't have all that much for breakfast lol.
10:15 - get on the boat, line 5 (which I had not seen in any of my materials anyway), gets to Murano in like a half hour. It was a very rocky ride, argggggh. I got off at the third stop on Murano (called Colonna) because it looked like it was a better one on my map. A lot of people got off at the first one and I think probably by mistake because it looked farther from the main drag. Anyway.
You get off and are immediately bombarded by glass shops. My goal was to buy a little something to take back that wasn't so terribly fragile I mean all the stuff is gorgeous but #1: you don't know what's real and what's Chinese, #2 a lot of it is quite expensive and #3 it's fragile and I really just don't need it. Problem is that 95% of the stuff in the shops is all the same. Reminded me of Arizona and the Native American jewelry/pottery stuff. It's literally a whole canal lined up on BOTH sides with shop after shop after shop. So I just wandered up one side, crossed, and wandered the other side going into any shop with a more interesting display window. Most of the jewelry (earrings specifically, which is what I was mostly looking for) was not on real metal - I could tell because they were anywhere between 3 and 10 or so euros. Plus I would think if something was on real silver, it would say. Once in a while it did, but not often. Finally I found a shop that had a few little pairs of simple little dangly glass beads and the thing said it was silver .925. They were only 16 euros too. So if I couldn't find anything I liked better I would go back and confirm they were made on murano.
1:00pmish - Kept wandering. Feet killing. Getting really hungry. Kept walking trying to find a place to eat. Didn't want anything too huge but needed something. Finally all the way up at the northern part of the island I found a little Osteria (Osteria del Duomo or something, which is funny since it wasn't by a church lol) that had cheap pastas and whatnot. Had spaghetti and a side order of nice big green olives and some water. Total was 12 euros including a little tip, just left it on the table and went.
2:00pmish - wandered into more shops. Found some pretty things but nothing that really blew me away so on my way to the Faro vaporetto stop I went back to that other place and the purple (oh, did I mention they were purple? Or did I even have to? ;)) earrings were still there. I asked the girl if they were made in Murano and she said yes everything in the shop was guaranteed and she did say they're made out of silver although I am still a bit suspicious because of the price. Anyway, bought them and she put a little sticker that said "certificate of authenticity" or something similar, so at least they are cute and should be real handmade little glass beads. Just a little something :)
2:30pmish - got on the LN vaporetto to go to Burano from the Faro stop. This boat was a lot bigger and thus a lot more stable. It took oh, about a half hour or so to get to Burano. Lots of people on the boat but it was big enough to be able to sit down thankfully.
3:15pmish - Burano is very cute. Lots of brightly-colored houses along the main drag that are kept in really good condition. I must admit, I didn't really get off the touristy streets, but I still found it relatively quaint and charming. Burano is famous for lace and since I don't particularly like lace I didn't even look in those shops but it was odd that so many shops were also selling Murano glass, just like in Venice itself. There was actually one shop that was selling really pretty Murano jewelry and there were a couple of nice pairs of silver earrings, but I didn't really need another and I'll be buying gold stuff in Florence anyway, so no need ;) Kept wandering a little, went up to the other end of the main street and walked back. Got a lemon granita which was not nearly as good as the one yesterday (didn't taste as much like real fruit), and
4:15pm - made it back to the vaporetto stop. I was going to go to the third of the islands, Torcello, but it was already after 4pm and I was tired and knew I had to pack later, so I just found the one to get back to Piazza San Marco, which was easy because that's where the crowd was lol. The LN line again but towards San Marco. Tons of people, I was like oh crap what if I miss the boat it only leaves every half hour or hour or something. Anyway a HUGE boat pulled up around 4:25 and emptied out. So it was a triple decker type boat so no problem getting a seat etc.
At the first stop, which was a half hour from Burano but still a ways away from San Marco, this Italian family (parents and an adult son) sat near me. OMG you hear about the Italian guys who never leave home but I had never actually experienced one, in italy. But OMG LMAO!! The guy had this book (and I mean a thick magazine type thing) full of watches and he kept showing them to his mom and she kept saying "Belissimo!" or something. OMG It was so hilarious and the dad only got any attention when he sneezed. It's hard to explain but it was so funny. AT one point I swear, the son leaned across the aisle and kissed his mom on the cheek. LOL and I think in between observing this cultural quirk, I dozed on and off LOL.
5:45pm - I didn't realize it was going to take over an hour to get back! Well it did lol. Got off and found a couple more shops around the area near my hotel, it was all pretty much the same as what I'd seen on Murano itself. Borrrrrriiinggggg.
6:10pm - back to the hotel for a little while. Started packing to make it easier on myself later.
7:00pm - went out in search for dinner. Looked at a couple of menus for 2 places right off the Rialto bridge area that were highly recommended. They both looked good but nothing that really jumped out at me for the price (a bit more expensive considering the location). So I went back to that pizza place I had tried to go to on my first night here that never opened.
7:20pm - It was opened and busy and I got a table in their lovely little courtyard. Had a margherita pizza and a coke, total was just over 11 euros, pizza was quite good, yummy charred crust. By the time I left (just before 8) people without reservations were waiting. And there were a lot of locals there (including a big party for… a birthday maybe?), so I think it was a good choice. No english menu, which was kind of nice. What I didn't understand was that they had an inside with several tables but none were being used. I mean yes it was a gorgeous night but hey give people the option of sitting inside if they don't want to wait. Anyway.
8:10pm - found my favorite gelato place on the way back and got a cup of chocolate. Wandered back and took one last look through Piazza San Marco.
8:30pmish - back at the hotel, will just chill, finish packing, and watch some tennis and will have an early night to bed because I'm tired and I will need my energy for Florence, which I'm sure will be hotter. And hopefully I will have internet there (hotel's supposed to have free wireless) so that I can update all this good stuff and keep in touch.
7:00am - woke up :( but stayed in bed and watched tv for an hour before taking a shower and going to breakfast, etc. I could see out the window that it was clear and beautiful out
9:10am - went to breakfast. While I was there, the girl working the front desk in the mornings asked me if I was all set for my departure tomorrow. I said yes my train leaves just before 11am blahblah and then I mention it leaves from Mestre (the train station 10 min by train away from Venice itself, on the mainland). She tells me something to the effect of "omg that's awful Mestre is a pain to get to but one leaves from the Venice station at 11:23!" Ok I KNOW before I booked my ticket a couple months ago that I checked all the trains and there was definitely NOT one leaving from the Venice station. Anyway she pretty much demands that I log in to my email from the front desk so she can get my codes and try to change my reservation for me LOL. She tried, but it said no space. No problem, I will just leave here extra early and figure it out. But it was awfully sweet of her to try, then she printed out my train information and also the times of the trains connecting the Venice station to the mestre station. What kindness and service! :)
Anyhoo, 9:45am - went to the vaporetto stop to get the boat to the glassmaking island Murano. One was leaving at 10:01 but another direct boat was leaving at 10:15. The first one was so full so a lot of us just waited. It was hard because the waiting thingy is on the water and it was all rocking back and forth today like crazy. Really thought I was gonna be sick and was really glad I didn't have all that much for breakfast lol.
10:15 - get on the boat, line 5 (which I had not seen in any of my materials anyway), gets to Murano in like a half hour. It was a very rocky ride, argggggh. I got off at the third stop on Murano (called Colonna) because it looked like it was a better one on my map. A lot of people got off at the first one and I think probably by mistake because it looked farther from the main drag. Anyway.
You get off and are immediately bombarded by glass shops. My goal was to buy a little something to take back that wasn't so terribly fragile I mean all the stuff is gorgeous but #1: you don't know what's real and what's Chinese, #2 a lot of it is quite expensive and #3 it's fragile and I really just don't need it. Problem is that 95% of the stuff in the shops is all the same. Reminded me of Arizona and the Native American jewelry/pottery stuff. It's literally a whole canal lined up on BOTH sides with shop after shop after shop. So I just wandered up one side, crossed, and wandered the other side going into any shop with a more interesting display window. Most of the jewelry (earrings specifically, which is what I was mostly looking for) was not on real metal - I could tell because they were anywhere between 3 and 10 or so euros. Plus I would think if something was on real silver, it would say. Once in a while it did, but not often. Finally I found a shop that had a few little pairs of simple little dangly glass beads and the thing said it was silver .925. They were only 16 euros too. So if I couldn't find anything I liked better I would go back and confirm they were made on murano.
1:00pmish - Kept wandering. Feet killing. Getting really hungry. Kept walking trying to find a place to eat. Didn't want anything too huge but needed something. Finally all the way up at the northern part of the island I found a little Osteria (Osteria del Duomo or something, which is funny since it wasn't by a church lol) that had cheap pastas and whatnot. Had spaghetti and a side order of nice big green olives and some water. Total was 12 euros including a little tip, just left it on the table and went.
2:00pmish - wandered into more shops. Found some pretty things but nothing that really blew me away so on my way to the Faro vaporetto stop I went back to that other place and the purple (oh, did I mention they were purple? Or did I even have to? ;)) earrings were still there. I asked the girl if they were made in Murano and she said yes everything in the shop was guaranteed and she did say they're made out of silver although I am still a bit suspicious because of the price. Anyway, bought them and she put a little sticker that said "certificate of authenticity" or something similar, so at least they are cute and should be real handmade little glass beads. Just a little something :)
2:30pmish - got on the LN vaporetto to go to Burano from the Faro stop. This boat was a lot bigger and thus a lot more stable. It took oh, about a half hour or so to get to Burano. Lots of people on the boat but it was big enough to be able to sit down thankfully.
3:15pmish - Burano is very cute. Lots of brightly-colored houses along the main drag that are kept in really good condition. I must admit, I didn't really get off the touristy streets, but I still found it relatively quaint and charming. Burano is famous for lace and since I don't particularly like lace I didn't even look in those shops but it was odd that so many shops were also selling Murano glass, just like in Venice itself. There was actually one shop that was selling really pretty Murano jewelry and there were a couple of nice pairs of silver earrings, but I didn't really need another and I'll be buying gold stuff in Florence anyway, so no need ;) Kept wandering a little, went up to the other end of the main street and walked back. Got a lemon granita which was not nearly as good as the one yesterday (didn't taste as much like real fruit), and
4:15pm - made it back to the vaporetto stop. I was going to go to the third of the islands, Torcello, but it was already after 4pm and I was tired and knew I had to pack later, so I just found the one to get back to Piazza San Marco, which was easy because that's where the crowd was lol. The LN line again but towards San Marco. Tons of people, I was like oh crap what if I miss the boat it only leaves every half hour or hour or something. Anyway a HUGE boat pulled up around 4:25 and emptied out. So it was a triple decker type boat so no problem getting a seat etc.
At the first stop, which was a half hour from Burano but still a ways away from San Marco, this Italian family (parents and an adult son) sat near me. OMG you hear about the Italian guys who never leave home but I had never actually experienced one, in italy. But OMG LMAO!! The guy had this book (and I mean a thick magazine type thing) full of watches and he kept showing them to his mom and she kept saying "Belissimo!" or something. OMG It was so hilarious and the dad only got any attention when he sneezed. It's hard to explain but it was so funny. AT one point I swear, the son leaned across the aisle and kissed his mom on the cheek. LOL and I think in between observing this cultural quirk, I dozed on and off LOL.
5:45pm - I didn't realize it was going to take over an hour to get back! Well it did lol. Got off and found a couple more shops around the area near my hotel, it was all pretty much the same as what I'd seen on Murano itself. Borrrrrriiinggggg.
6:10pm - back to the hotel for a little while. Started packing to make it easier on myself later.
7:00pm - went out in search for dinner. Looked at a couple of menus for 2 places right off the Rialto bridge area that were highly recommended. They both looked good but nothing that really jumped out at me for the price (a bit more expensive considering the location). So I went back to that pizza place I had tried to go to on my first night here that never opened.
7:20pm - It was opened and busy and I got a table in their lovely little courtyard. Had a margherita pizza and a coke, total was just over 11 euros, pizza was quite good, yummy charred crust. By the time I left (just before 8) people without reservations were waiting. And there were a lot of locals there (including a big party for… a birthday maybe?), so I think it was a good choice. No english menu, which was kind of nice. What I didn't understand was that they had an inside with several tables but none were being used. I mean yes it was a gorgeous night but hey give people the option of sitting inside if they don't want to wait. Anyway.
8:10pm - found my favorite gelato place on the way back and got a cup of chocolate. Wandered back and took one last look through Piazza San Marco.
8:30pmish - back at the hotel, will just chill, finish packing, and watch some tennis and will have an early night to bed because I'm tired and I will need my energy for Florence, which I'm sure will be hotter. And hopefully I will have internet there (hotel's supposed to have free wireless) so that I can update all this good stuff and keep in touch.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)