And here we go...
Our journey to Rome began with Adam, David, Andreu, Dev, and I heading to the airport at around 6ish the day before our flight. We were flying out of Frankfurt Hahn Airport which, contrary to what the name suggests, is no-frickin'-where close to Frankfurt. We first took the train to the main airport of Frankfurt, switched to a train to the main train station, then caught a shuttle bus to the airport. The shuttle took about 2 hours. While waiting for the shuttle, we met this Australian guy whose name slips my mind that is studying in Genoa. He hung out with us until both of our respective flights were boarding.
After a fairly difficult night of sleep on the floor of Frankfurt Hahn, we caught our 6 a.m. flight to Rome. Andreu wasn't really prepared for the rough landing that seemingly always happens on a Ryanair flight as he was asleep and woke up quite startled. I'm beginning to think that Ryanair planes don't have suspension systems on their landing gear.
After surviving the rough landing, we caught yet another shuttle. This time it was to Rome city center. It was here that I found out that Roman drivers are bat---- crazy. The lines on the road didn't even seem to be suggestions, merely decoration.
We arrived at the city center, bought Roma passes, checked in to our hostel, and went to see the sights of Rome. At the Pantheon, we got the first glimpse that, apparently, all of Italy is under construction since the entire front of the building (and many other landmarks later in our trip) was covered in scaffolding. From the Pantheon, we wandered around some more, ate, and then went to the Coliseum. Our Roma Pass was good for two museum entries and all public transport in Rome. We used our first entry to walk into the Coliseum and the Roman Forum. Being a bit of a history geek, I enjoyed looking at the ruins and reading the different facts, though seeing so many ruins was a bit much. We were seemingly on Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum for forever before it began to rain. We scurried back to our hostel, showered, made one last venture at night to get pics of the Coliseum at night and the Circus Maximus (aka valley in the ground with gravel at the bottom), and called it a night.
Day Two in Rome consisted of going to the Vatican, waiting in long lines for the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's Basilica, and turning down countless people trying to sell tours for the different landmarks. I actually began to get pretty good at completely ignoring other people and brushing them aside. Thanks, Rome!
The museum at the Vatican was incredibly long with art collections from ancient Greece and Rome, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, and modern times. The designers of the museum, of course, put the main reason for going, the Sistine Chapel, at the very end of the tour. It was beautiful, though I struggled to sort out all of the roughly ninety bajillion scenes on the ceiling. Dev attempted to take pictures of the ceiling (which isn't allowed) and was kindly (or maybe not so kindly) asked to leave the Chapel. After the museum, we saw the Basilica which was pretty awe-inspiring. I really liked the Vatican as a whole, even though I didn't fulfill my goal of fist-bumping the Pope. Maybe next time. The night ended with David, Adam, two girls from Penn State that were in our hostel, and I going to a pub crawl. Knowing I had to wake up before 8 to catch a train to Pisa the next day, we came back fairly early. I did get a sweet t-shirt out of it, though.
Wednesday brought about Dev, Andreu, and I checking out of the hostel and heading to Pisa then Florence with the other two heading to Barcelona for the rest of the week. I fell asleep on the way to Pisa (though I did get to see some of the time the train was right on the coast--awesome), woke up when we got to Pisa, and, apparently in my sleepy state, left my jacket on the train. I didn't realize this until the next day when we were leaving our hostel in Florence. Trenitalia doesn't have a lost and found service anymore (discontinued last year), so it looks like I won't have a waterproof jacket the rest of this trip. Dag.
We spent about two or three hours in Pisa to see the Tower and a couple of other places before heading to Florence. I got the obligatory and cheesy "holding the up Tower" photo.
Once in Florence, we checked into our awesome hostel (it's too bad we were there for only one night) and began walking around Florence. The city was beautiful and had this unique charm to it. It was small enough that we were able to walk around all of it seeing the Duomo and Bell Tower then the city from Piazzale Michelangelo at sunset. We had a cheap, full Italian meal at an actual restaurant (I was getting tired of always eating pizza) and then ended our night.
The next day we attempted to head to Venice at around 9 or so only for every train to Venice until 12:30 to be sold out. We wandered around Florence and ate until our late train, caught the train, and finally arrived in Venice around 3. Venice was great even though we walked into dead ends countless times on the narrow "streets" (read: alleys) of Venice. It was neat walking through a completely pedestrian city as there are no cars or scooters or anything in Venice. The only transport are boats and the soles of your feet. We kept walking around until sunset, ate on the waterfront, and caught a vaporetto back to our hostel. Or well, we thought it was heading back to our hostel, but the line ended on a separate island, Lido. This led to us waiting around for about 45 minutes until a night line boat came to take us back. The entire ride I was paranoid because we didn't buy tickets and I didn't want to be fined an absurd amount.
The next day we stayed in Venice until about noon, so we could see Venetian glass-making on Murano before heading to Milan. My view of Milan was a bit sour at first since it didn't have the charm of Florence or Venice and I was tired. After resting a bit, my spirits and view of the city lifted. We looked in various stores of clothes and accessories that I'll never be able to afford from Armani to the Ferrari fan shop. To give you an idea about the ridiculous prices in the Ferrari store, they sold a pair of sunglasses with gold that cost about 20,000 euros.
Our Italy trip ended with us, once again, attempting to sleep on an airport floor. It didn't work out to well for me as I attempted to fight the cold of the floor (if only I had a jacket...), and a security guard yelled at us in Italian to move (I think that's what he said) since they had to clean the floor. These events resulted in about three hours of sleep and exhaustion the rest of the weekend. Maybe we need to rethink this sleeping in airports thing...
Some of us are going over to a German friend of ours place to have a barbecue later today. It should be a good time. We're throwing around the idea of going somewhere this weekend (perhaps Amsterdam?), but we'll see if that happens.
Until next time, Alles Gute.
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