Leaving Roma - City on the Water - Impromptu Sidetrip

Leaving Roma

 

We're leaving Italy already. It was never supposed to be a huge section of our trip but still...the time we spent here went by so fast. Let me get you up to speed:

I think our last update was from Roma - the night before we left. The following morning, we woke up early since we had a date with the Colosseum. They opened up the dungeons and third tier to the general public that morning...for the first time in 40 years! We had reservations for a guided tour, so we wanted to make sure we got there on time.

After checking out, we dropped our packs at the train station and headed off to the Colosseum. This was the place where gladiators had fought against each other and animals in ages past! Although the walls have started to crumble, much of the impressive structure still stands.

We bypassed the long line, laughing at the tourists waiting for tickets ^_^ and picked up our reservations. The tour guide arrived shortly and showed us around the second tier. You could see all the way down into the underground levels (now visible because of the decay of the floor) - if you could see around the tourists.

Then the fun began. Our guide led us though a locked gate to another set of stairs, and we climbed up to the third tier. Our small tour group was the only one up there, so we had no problems seeing down. It was truly an awesome view from the top. Behind us, we could see the Roman Forum. The tour guide rambled on, but I didn't listen. (We generally look down on guided tours - the only reason we paid for one was to get access to the top tier and dungeons.)

We descended until we were at the level of the arena, and went through another set of locked doors. The dungeons awaited us! We saw tunnels and vaulted caverns where animals and gladiators used to wait their turn. Admittedly it was nothing like what we expected - we only saw a small portion of the dungeons - but it was well worth it. I'm sure David will go into more detail about the Colosseum and the surrounding area.

We saw the Roman Forum and then headed off to catch a train. One thing worth mentioning: we had to wait for a few hours at the train station since our train was pretty late. The later it got, the more homeless people showed up - and many of them were pretty crazy. We were glad when our train got there because it got very sketchy at the station.

Our train ride was made in comfort and style since we managed to snag a private compartment for 6 and take it over. We soon discovered that if all the seats were slid back, they met in the middle and created a comfortable double bed.

There was a slight snafu in the morning - our train stopped just short of Venezia and started going in the opposite direction after a short delay. We got off at the next stop (an hour later) and caught a train back, but our car had ended up in some random town called Latisana. We spoke with someone else later who had been on the same train and he had reached Venezia just fine. The only explanation I can come up with is that our car got switched onto another train - which is very odd. But we did get there eventually.

City on the Water

 

Venice! The city on the water - the place of canals, vaporettos, gondolas, and masks. I had been especially looking forward to seeing it on our trip, and let me tell you, it did not disappoint. We made the trek across the island to our hotel in about a half hour, then went back out to explore.

Starting off with the obvious: there are no roads in Venezia. Only canals. So instead of cars, there are boats. Personally I liked the absence of noise brought by cars, but the downside was that transportation is expensive. It would've cost us €6.50 to get to our hostel by waterbus. Taxis and gondolas can be even more expensive, often charging up to €100/hour. So we walked everywhere, which wasn't a problem since Venezia isn't a huge place.

The city is just as you would picture it from a movie or whatever. It's very beautiful and, I suppose, romantic if you're there with the right person.

During our first full day in Venezia, we took a trip over to Murano, a neighboring island. The trip only cost us 2 euros each way, luckily. Murano is famous for its glassblowing artists and I wanted to see the works firsthand. Now, normally I'm not an art fan - but when you see a guy effortlessly shaping a small elephant using tongs and a blowtorch, you can't help but be impressed. I enjoyed watching him work.

One thing you have to remember about Venezia is that it's right on the ocean, so the tides cause problems. At high tide, spots in the city tend to flood with up to 3-4 inches of water. We found that out the hard way when our route was blocked by a veritable lake - we had to backtrack around it since neither of us had adequate footwear. (My boots are only somewhat water-resistant.) In St. Mark's Square - a very popular tourist attraction - they set up temporary raised paths every day so that people can still get from A to B.

Our hotel had advertised free wifi, but I ended up paying $5/night for it. I spoke with the manager though and I may get a refund. In fact, the hotel overall was underwhelming - but it was a place to sleep. Oh well.

We had real Italian pizza one more time before we left Venezia. I'll never like American pizza quite as much now. Our last meal in Italy was pasta - it was very good but not as different from American dishes as the pizza.

I'll never forget what Venice looks like at night. The moon reflects off of the Grand Canal and makes the scene look like something out of a movie. The sight escapes description by words - my only advice to you is to go to Venezia and walk the streets by night yourself. The silence envelops you and you can look out across the water for ages.

Eventually we had to leave Venezia - and Italy. We took a night train out after saying farewell to the city on the water. I'll say this, though - Venice is one of the places that I know for sure I'll be back to. Arrivederchi for now, Venezia!

Impromptu Sidetrip

 

Our train was heading to Budapest, Hungary on part of a side trip we created. Hungary was never on our original itinerary, but we had a few days to kill while we were waiting for a package from home to arrive at our next waypoint. The ride there was certainly an interesting experience, if not a restful one.

We were in a 6-person compartment again, but with assigned seats this time. We were sharing it with two friendly Poles, a Hungarian with two dogs, and a Russian. The Poles spoke a little bit of a lot of languages - mostly English and Polish though. The Russian guy shook his head when asked if he spoke English. The Hungarian dude rambled at us in Hungarian with an English word thrown in every few sentences.

We struck up a conversation with the Poles - the guy with the dogs wanted to join in as well and talked at all of us in Hungarian throughout the train ride. The Russian guy was silent.

We had to pass through Slovenia and Croatia to get to Hungary. Slovenia implements the Schengen Agreement so we had no trouble with customs. However, the dogs started barking if anyone knocked on the compartment door. They barked for an hour straight at one point, which caused the Russian guy to tell us to "Shoot the dogs, please.". (Evidently he did speak English and just wasn't in a friendly mood XD).

One of the Poles saw my class ring and thought I was engaged. I was amused XD but had to admit that it was only a high school ring.

The Hungarian guy also thought I was German - which was one of 5 individual instances on this trip where someone has mistaken me for a German. One time someone even told me that I speak Spanish with a German accent, which completely mystified me.

Anyways, the Poles and the Russian guy got off about 4 hours into the trip. We had 10 hours left to go with the other guy talking amiably in Hungarian XD. We got some sleep, but unfortunately Croatia is not a Schengen country. We were woken up about every hour and a half by armed border guards who wanted to check our passports. There was one time 4 guys lined up outside our compartment, and each of them wanted to see our passports...

We got here safely, though. I think this blog post is fairly long as it is, so I'll tell you about what happened when we got to Budapest in another post!

< Derek >

The Adventures of a Lifetime

The Adventures of a Lifetime

So the past few days have been pretty interesting. I left off my last post at Versailles, which David covered pretty well, so I'll move on from there.

We took day trips into Paris from Helen's house. It only cost about 5 euros each way for the bus/train combination - plus, the train ticket can be used once as a metro ticket. We saw a cool flea market and bought French berets XD. I've been wearing mine everywhere. I think David prefers not to look like a tacky tourist like me though. :P

Helen's daughter Catherine had plans to go to a party while we were in town, and she invited us to come along. This wasn't a normal party though. This was a party in the Catacombs, the 200-mile maze of tunnels underneath the city of Paris. 

We agreed to meet her at midnight outside of a designated metro station. When we got there, we saw young adults and teens climbing down into a grate in the sidewalk - undoubtedly the entrance to the catacombs. We waited until 12:45 and decided that she probably wasn't coming, for whatever reason - or perhaps we had missed her. Either way, we still wanted to go to the party so we followed a group of kids down the rabbit hole.

The grating was thick, solid metal. It had an opening that you had to put your hand into to find the lever to open it. You've probably walked across hundreds of these in various cities. But this one was different. Inside we found a steep, twisting stone staircase. It was pitch black inside once the grating was shut. Luckily I had brought along a headlamp so I could see as we climbed downwards. According to one of the youths we were following, we had gone down 20 meters (65 feet).

Each group going to the party had a guide - someone who had memorized the route through the catacombs by heart. It would be very easy to get lost in the dark tunnels, so we kept up with the guide. It took us a full half hour to get to the cavern where the party was, which was probably so that the police couldn't find it. (This was technically an illegal party, since nobody is allowed in the catacombs. But a police car drove past while some kids were climbing down the grate and didn't stop, so I assume they have bigger fish to fry.)

There were stretches of our journey where we had to crawl through narrow passageways. Good thing I'm not claustrophobic. 

The party itself was nothing like what I expected. It was in the middle of a group of larger rooms with higher ceilings - people hung out and talked in the other rooms if they didn't want to be in the thick of things. The party cavern was hopping, though. They had somehow gotten party lights, booming speakers, and a freaking /mix table/ down into that cavern, and techno was blasting. People were dancing and we joined right in, after promising our guide to meet him every hour. Everyone was very friendly, and they were just there to have fun. One guy used a torch and an alcoholic drink to breath fire - check out my YouTube page at youtube.com/user/phprogrammer to see it for yourself. (Look for Party in the Catacombs.) 

I had a fantastic time down there. When I tired of dancing, I did some exploring of the surrounding caverns. I always kept close enough so I could hear the music, though, since I didn't want to be wandering for eternity. 

When we got back to the top, I saw that my hand had inexplicably turned silver. Someone told me that's what happens if you touch the walls of the catacombs.

Around 3am, everything abruptly stopped. Music and lights turned off. Nobody seemed to know why, but the crowd started to disperse into various tunnels leading off of the party cavern. We figured that there had been a problem with the electricity (where did they get it from, anyways? Was there a generator or something?) so we found our guide and started to make our way back topside. People were still arriving at this point, too. 

When we finally got back up, we had a heck of a time getting back to Helen's house. She had given us a route map for a specific night bus but it turned out that bus was no longer in operation. We found one that went to Versailles but unfortunately we still had a 40-minute walk to Buc. We got back around 6 in the morning and started to pack since we had a 9:40 train to catch. We were exhausted, but we didn't have much of a choice.

The train made it to Nice without any problems at all. We were actually on time for it, which goes against our rule that states "No matter how early you plan to arrive for a train or bus, you will always be sprinting at the last minute to catch it."

Nice was nice. It's on the Cote d'Azur, and the water was a spectacular shade of blue. We checked into our hostel and basically collapsed for the rest of the night. They had a huge collection of movies so it was all good.

Unfortunately it rained for the whole next day. We really didn't do anything of interest since the only things to do in Nice involve swimming. 

We went for a swim on the rocky beach the next day. The water was a bit cold but pleasant, and as mentioned above the sea was beautiful. 

One of the things that caught our eye was a half day trip of scuba diving, organized through the hostel. It cost 42€, which was reasonable. David cleared the trip with his cardiologist and we signed ourselves up! Scuba has been one of the things I've been dying to try ever since I learned about it, so I was pumped.

In the morning we walked down to the port and filled out the necessary paperwork. We got wetsuits, masks, weight belts, and fins, and hopped into the boat with our instructors and another more experience group of divers. On the way to the dive site, we had a quick 10-minute intro to the important skills...how to defog your mask, pressurize your ears, etc. The experienced group went in first with the instructors, leaving us alone on the boat. They were out for 40 minutes or so.

When they came back, the instructors had us hop into the water. My instructor hooked me up to my buoyancy vest, air tank, and regulator, and we swam over to the dive site. He kept his hand on my vest the whole time and pretty much controlled the experience. I put my regulator in and we started to descend by letting air out of the buoyancy vests.

I could hear my breathing underwater. I sounded exactly like Darth Vader XD it was creepy. But it was amazing how clear and blue the water was off the Azure Coast. As we went down, my ears noticed the pressure change surprisingly quickly and started screaming in pain. I equalized the pressure every meter or so though and that neutralized the pain. We descended to about 6 meters. Small schools of fish swam around us, without any apparent fear. I saw sea urchins and exotic varieties of fish. We skimmed over the rock ledge and looked out over the drop-off point. I want to learn to go deeper by taking a class back in the States.

The sights we saw were cool, but the real novelty was swimming without having to worry about coming back up for air. I could take my time looking at everything and just breathe naturally when I needed to.

After about 25 minutes, we came back to the surface. I heard a sound in my ears like air draining from a balloon and figured my ears were equalizing automatically.

We changes back into our dry clothes to be warmer - although it's worth mentioning that the wetsuits were very warm. They had wine for everyone to drink as we relaxed on the way back to the port. (Not the best thing for keeping warm, but the sun had come out and I wasn't too concerned.)

It was a fantastic experience. Worth every penny that we spent, in my opinion.

We said goodbye to France that night with crepes. We had ordered bus tickets to Florence for 4:00am the following morning - basically the only way to get out of Nice. We were in the middle of a transport strike in France and almost none of the trains were running. 

Au revoir, France! We had some great times there - from the Pyrenees to the Catacombs to the Cote d'Azur. 

I'm writing this from our hostel in Florence, Italy. Ciao! The only problem here is that neither of us speaks Italian so the language barrier will be even more of a problem here. Oh well - we're heading out to have lunch and explore the city. 

Edit: Pics added!