Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Venice

It's been a while without an update. Kevin says he was hoping we'd finish this trip by Christmas. I'll blame part of the delay on the fact that my mom was here visiting last weekend and I wasn't going to sit here and write blog posts while she was here. Anyway, the next stop on our trip was Venice. Now, the first thing to do when you're hearing about Venice is to check out this picture. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Crazy, huh? There is basically no order at all to the way the buildings are arranged. Some of the streets you see there are actual streets and some are canals. You can see the rail line we took to get there starting at the top left of that satellite picture. Hm, looks like google has some halfway decent imagery of Venice too.

Anyway, Venice is different. I think it first hits you when you step out of the train station and see the view above. On a related note, I recently discovered that Photoshop has a built in photomerge function. Pretty cool.

We walked across the bridge you see on the left there and over to the dock for one of the water busses they have that run down the main canal. That allowed us to get a good look at a lot of the city without paying for an expensive tour. We saw a number of churches, buildings with doors that led right into the water, and what is probably one of the world's largest balloon animals.


Of course, I can't forget to mention that we also went under the most famous bridge in Venice, the Ponte di Rialto. You can see a couple of gondolas in the shot below too.


And because it seems like otherwise this post about Venice couldn't be complete, let's throw in some pictures of guys in striped shirts driving gondolas. This is the part where my mom would bring up a certain insurance commercial.

Hey, how'd that guy in the white shirt get in there? Someone call security!

Anyway, after we got off our "bus" we headed in to the city to look around a bit on more solid ground. We walked by a number of different shops selling Venetian glass. I thought that stuff was cool, so I will now show you a bunch of examples. They make all kinds of stuff out of glass.


Eventually we got pretty hungry and we grabbed some dinner at a little place in an alley. Kevin and I both got a pasta dish with seafood in it. That dinner was fantastic, and even though it cost plenty of money it was still cheaper than what we spent on that crappy meal in Florence. I was too busy enjoying this one to take pictures of it.

After dinner we walked back to near the place where we caught the "bus" and grabbed a real bus (the kind with wheels) to take us to our hostel campsite place.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Florence

The next morning we got up and headed out to check out the sights in Florence. Our first destination was the Galleria dell'Accademia, a museum housing a number of different works of art (most notably including Michelangelo's David.) While we waited in line there were a number of vendors walking around or standing on the side of the road selling various things. Many of them had identical sets of poster prints of artwork. One guy was walking around selling rainbow flags that had the word "PACE" (peace) on them. He was asking 20 euros for them. With some haggling and a little help from the guy in line behind us, Kevin bought one for 7.

Inside there were a number of works of art, mostly consisting of different pieces of sculpture. The hall leading up to the David held a number of partially completed works done by Michelangelo. This museum, like many places we went, had the idea that flying halfway around the world and then paying a good-sized admission fee to get in to see this stuff did not give us the right to take pictures of it. As you can see I thought those rules made total sense. It did make getting good shots in lower-light conditions rather difficult though (since there were picture nazis patrolling each room to prevent such horrible offenses.)
Another room was full of sculptures by one particular artist. It included a few different sculptures of people after they had died.


After we left the museum we headed over to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, more commonly known as the Duomo. Basically, it's a massive church with a huge dome on top that makes it one of the most defining landmarks in Florence.




The interior of the dome was painted with an elaborate mural as seen below.


Outside the Duomo, we stopped at the stand of a local artist and I bought the picture you see at the left. We snapped a few more pictures of the Duomo, grabbed some tasty pasta for lunch (no scallopini this time) and headed back to the hostel to pick up our stuff and move on.

On the way to the train station, we made sure to hit up a gellato place one last time. After all, Florence is the best place to get gellato you know. Rick Steves said so.

Evening in Florence

<obligatory note about how this is my first post using Windows Live Writer>

Following our late afternoon departure from Cinque Terre, we arrived in Florence. We trekked from the train station over to our hostel, which was our nicest one up to that point. We actually had our own private room and there was free Internet access available (little did we know that was the first and last time we'd see that at a hostel.) On top of that, it was in fairly easy walking distance from the train station; a welcome difference from the other places we stayed.

That evening we went out and looked around the city a bit. We decided we'd stop at a restaurant for some dinner and had really the only lousy dining experience we had in Italy. It started with the guy at the front of the outdoor patio area where we chose to eat. Apparently it was only like his second or third day on the job. Of course, we didn't know that as he told us about the place and tried to get us to stop there. The deal that got us in the door was the 14 euro 3 course meal, for which we were told we could pick any one item from each of three sections on the menu. What followed was a series of misunderstandings on our part, mistakes on the newbie's part, and what we have to believe were deliberate misrepresentations on the owner's part.

As it turns out, we couldn't pick the 13 euro fish entree that we had both seen on the menu which made us like the deal so much. We couldn't pick the 12 euro fish dish below it either. This bait and switch stuff ticked us off. We saw a "scallopini" dish on the menu that we were allowed to order and Kevin asked if that meant scallops. We both decided on that one and ordered some white wine to go with it since that's what you get with seafood. We also both ordered gnocchi for our first course. Italians eat salad as the third course in a meal. For the third course, Kevin ordered one kind of salad and I picked the other kind we were allowed to order (that part of the menu was limited for the "deal" as well) mostly just to prevent us from ordering the exact same thing. We also both ordered some water.

The wine came and he gave us a whole bottle even though Kevin told him we didn't need it. We had asked for a carafe which he said would be 6 euros. He left the bottle saying he would only charge us for what we drank. The cost for the bottle "for us" would be 10 euros. The water came and he gave us the wrong ones (Kevin ordered the carbonated version, I like my water without bubbles.) Ok, no big deal, we switched. The gnocchi came and it was actually quite good. Now at this place they have these little things that hold salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar or some such stuff. Throughout the meal the guy kept bringing it to us and then taking it away to give to another table. I think they only had like 2 or 3 of them to service the whole patio of roughly 20 tables. Same deal for the grated cheese in a bowl that we were given (which is served by hand.) That's really sanitary. Everyone's hands in the same cheese bowl. Yum.


The salad came out next. This was out of order, since it was supposed to be third. Whatever. As it turns out, the salad I ordered was something a lot closer to what I would call greasy home fries. Admittedly, this one was my bad. Kevin said he knew and thought I was aware of what I was ordering. That didn't make my "salad" any more appetizing. Oh, I forgot to mention that he reversed our salads when he brought them out and we had to switch again.

Last came the main course. It appeared to be chicken. Wait... chicken? We thought we ordered scallops? I asked if what was on the plate was scallops. The guy said "yes, scallopini" and left despite our confused and skeptical looks. We sat there for a little while, trying to confirm that what we had was chicken and we were not crazy. I went over to the guy who talked us in to this place and asked him to identify my dinner. He said it was chicken, but he wasn't sure which dish (that's when he told us how new he was.) Apparently he was fresh from Australia and just got this job. I asked him what "scallopini" was and he said it was scallops.

Kevin and I sat there looking unhappy and not eating for a while while our server walked right past us multiple times. That guy was either blind and oblivious or he was hoping he wouldn't have to address the issue if he ignored it long enough. I believe the second theory. He was wrong. He eventually stopped at our table and asked if everything was ok. I told him it wasn't.

We explained that we had ordered the scallopini looking for scallops. His response was something along the lines of "scallopini... is meat, and today it's chicken." We told him that the other guy said scallopini was scallops. He was not convinced. Kevin told him how he is a vegetarian who doesn't eat meat that isn't seafood. After some arguing, he took the plate of chicken back and left. He had wanted to bring something else (for which he would charge the full price without the "deal" no doubt) but Kevin ended up getting him to just take back the dish. At this point we were skeptical and unsure of what to do. The guy had made no attempt to apologize or make amends for the situation. Even if it was entirely our fault, he could have at least said he was sorry for the misunderstanding.

Based on the way he was treating us, we didn't think he was even telling the truth about the scallopini being chicken. We remembered at this point how we had specifically asked about that dish being scallops and talked about how we were getting white wine to go with it since it was seafood. We weren't positive, but we were pretty sure he had agreed when we asked about it being scallops before ordering. We debated getting up and leaving right then. Unfortunately we didn't have any kind of unbiased reference to check the translation and we needed to know if the guy was lying to us. At that point I decided to go ask at another restaurant. They all had people and servers out on their patios, so I got up and walked over to a nearby one.

I asked the woman there what scallopini meant. She said "veal." Not the response I was expecting, but also not chicken. I asked if she was sure. She said yes. I asked, "so it's always veal, it can never be anything else?" That's when she revealed that at other restaurants it could be pork or beef, but here it was always veal. I confirmed that it could be chicken too and walked back to my table.

I finished up my scallopini and we asked for the check. Our friend asked how much of the wine we'd had and we told him just the one glass each. He wrote down the charges for all the items on the paper tablecloth for us. He charged us 3 euros each for the glasses of wine (recall that the carafe was going to be 6 and the whole bottle was 10.) He also charged us 3 each for the water. He charged Kevin the full price for each of the 2 dishes he got which would have been in the 3 course deal. We paid the bill, added no tip and left. As we were walking away I noted to Kevin that despite all that (and to add to the crappiness of it) there wasn't even a single event that really made it a good story. If the guy had actually outright lied, it probably would have been better. I vowed to make a story out of it anyway.

On the way back to the hostel, we grabbed some gellato. We wanted something to redeem the lousy vibe that had been given to the evening. That's about as good of a something as I can think of.

[EDIT: this post got deleted and I recovered it from a backup. Man I am not having good luck with this blog.]

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Back in the USA

Whew, we made it. No thanks to those stupid terrorists in London. Forget nail clippers and pocket knives, a tube of toothpaste is now public enemy number one on airplanes.

Anyway, even though I'm back now I will continue to catch up on the backlog of daily updates I didn't do while on the trip. That way you all can see the stuff we did and I'll have a record of it later when I forget it all. So check back here in the next few days for more updates on that.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Cinque Terre


After living on a backpack's worth of stuff for the night, Kevin and I checked out of our hostel tent and jumped on the train with that backpack to the northernmost town of Cinque Terre, Monterosso. It was a gorgeous day.


As mentioned before, Cinque Terre is a mountainous area made up of five little villages. Each of these villages is right on the West coast of Italy, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. They are all very similar in appearance, full of little shops, public squares, and swimming areas. They are connected by a series of trails and visitors will commonly start at one and hike to the others in a day. They are also connected by a train that runs along the coast and stops at each of them. We took the hike.

Like I said, the weather that day was extremely beautiful. The sun was out, the sky was clear, and the water looked amazing. Of course, with the hot climate we had been experiencing in Italy and the fact that we were hiking for hours right in the middle of the day meant that we ended up totally dripping with sweat and worn out by the end of the day. We drank a lot of water that day. Now you know why the pictures you'll see here (with the exception of that one at the top that we took before the hike) are all of the fantastic views we saw and not of us; we looked gross.

Along the way we saw lots of people going both directions. Cinque Terre is clearly a popular destination for all kinds of people, especially on days like the one we had I'm sure. The greetings, excusings, and thankings given throughout the day were done in all kinds of languages. It was really quite amusing as we walked along to say and hear "Ciao. Hi! Bonjour! Excuse me. Gratze. Bye! Hallo. Thank you. Tschuss! Hello."

At the end of the hike, in the village of Riomaggiore, we were really tempted to go for a swim. We decided against it though, because we didn't really have the means to dry off and we didn't want to be wet on the train. We had to settle for some Gellato. I got one scoop of strawberry and one bannana. Kevin asked what would go well with the flavor he wanted (literally "what marries well" in Italian) and then when he got his cone the guy serving it said "just married" in English.

After a tiring afternoon of hiking we took a train back to the place where our stuff was stored, retrieved the bags, and got on another train to Florence.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Rome to Cinque Terre

Here is another retro post, since I am finally able to get my laptop online again and at this point I am way behind with the updates. So here goes. When we last saw our heros, they were headed to bed after their first day in Rome.

The next morning, we woke up and headed over to Vatican City. Our first destination there was the Vatican Museum which is a HUGE place absolutely packed with all kinds of art. I mean seriously, the vatican has a lot of art. The line to get in was almost as long as the museum is large (see part of it in the picture to the right,) but thankfully it moved along pretty quickly. The wait also allowed me to get my first (but not nearly last) taste of the Italian ice-cream-like frozen treat, gellato.

Inside the museum we saw works of sculpture and painting from all over the world, including some pretty famous stuff. Below you can see part of Michelangelo's work on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel (yes, the entire chapel is inside the Vatican Museum.) It was interesting because that one part that you always see is actually a relatively small section of the ceiling as a whole. I really don't know why that one small panel is the only part people ever see.


After checking out the vatican museum, we hiked halfway around Vatican City in the wrong direction (the whole thing is surrounded by a big wall so you can't see in) and then back around to St. Peter's Square. That is where you see us in the picture at the right. The large cathedral you see behind us there is St. Peter's Basilica, the largest such structure in the world. Supposedly there are lines on the floor inside there to show where each of the next few largest cathedrals would fit if you put them inside it. We didn't see any lines.

After the Vatican it was time to move on to our next destination, so we headed back to the train station and picked up our bags to leave. As Kevin was in a shop buying a gift for a friend, I noticed the clerk looked kinda like Mo Rocca. I snapped a quick, blurry pic of him in bad lighting so you could try to judge for yourself.

From there we hopped on a train to our next stop, Cinque Terra. By the time we got there it was pretty late and we were beat. We checked out one of the towns (for those who didn't click the link above, Cinque Terra means "five towns") and then grabbed a local train to our hostel campground to hit the sack in our own private tent. I was apparently too tired to take any pictures at that point, so pretend the shots below were taken at night.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Bed

So after getting that last post up and accidentally overwiting the first europe post, I have to get to bed. more updates to come later...

Hey, Internet!

It's been a few days since we could get online, so I've got quite a number of backlogged tales to record here. Of course it is again late and I need to get to bed, so I will try to hammer out an abbreviated account of each of the last few days. Here goes monday (in Rome, Italy.) We flew from Berlin to Rome on Monday morning on EasyJet air (one of the discount European airlines.) We then took a bus from the airport to the middle of the city and hauled all our bags over to the train station where we knew we would be able to check them so we wouldn't have to carry them around all day. After waiting in a crazy long line at the bag check (right), we were significantly less weighed down and we were on our way. We took the Roman subway a few stops south and went to check out the site of these old roman ruins of a bunch of palaces and other buildings. Basically all this stuff, only a lot more run down. We went to that site first because the tickets for those were the same as the tickets for the Colosseum, but the line was much shorter to get in to the other ruins. I can't say I know exactly what everything we saw was, but I can say it was totally cool to see it all. I must have taken the best of the pictures there with my film camera, so you'll have to take my word for it. While we were there we heard a bunch of Billy Joel music coming from some speakers in the distance. We thought that was kinda funny. Later, we asked some Americans that we saw to take a picture of us (left) and they told us that it wasn't just music we were hearing, it was Billy Joel doing a sound check for his free show that night in front of the Colosseum. Our plans then changed for the evening. Next we headed over to the Colosseum, tickets in hand, and skipped the huge line to buy tickets there (thank you Rick Steves.) I would have to say that this was the highlight of the afternoon. It's pretty amazing. So much so, I think it deserves some big pictures.While we were there, we saw the stage they had set up for the concert later that evening. You can see the view of the stage from the Colosseum to the right. After that, we went on through Rome checking out some other sites, including one of the big fountians, a big obelisk that the Romans stole from the Egyptians, and the Pantheon. Aw what the heck, I'll throw in some big pics of those too. We then headed to our hostel to check in and cool off a bit (by the way, it was ridiculously hot while we did all this stuff.) We found out that could be kinda a fun place to be, but it was pretty far out from Rome so not very convenient. Note to travelers: if you try to save money by booking really cheap places that are far away from where you really want to be, you may end up spending all that saved money (plus a bunch of time) getting to and from that location. That evening we headed out to see Billy Joel and Brian Adams live in front of the Colosseum. There were quite a few other people there, as well. It was tough to get good pics in that light, but I managed a couple decent ones (out of many) it seems. From there we ate dinner at a local restaurant and took a cab home.