Italy! Part One

So I just got back from 2 weeks in Italy for spring break. I can't find my camera cord at the moment, which upsets me! I really hope it's either hiding in my luggage or Serena has it, because otherwise I'm going to have to go buy a new one. So I can't post any of my new pictures right now.

So like I said earlier, I slept over Emily's place on Saturday night, woke up super early, and then dragged our luggage down the metro stairs so we could be there right when it opened. I feel like I've been lugging my suitcase up and down so many flights of stairs these past 2 weeks! Can't everyone just have elevators? We bought orlyval passes and took the train to Paris' Orly airport, arriving in plenty of time for our 7:30 am flight. We booked it so early because it was the cheapest one. By the way, easyjet's slogan is "If you're late, we won't wait."

We arrived in Rome around 9:30 or 10 on Sunday morning, and the first thing I noticed was how bright and sunny it was. This ended up being the hottest day of the whole trip. Emily and I took a taxi to the hotel, which was 30 euros split between the 2 of us. When we first arrived there, we were kind of like, "Hey, this doesn't look like Rome! It's not like the Mary-Kate and Ashley movie!" But actually, Rome is a very big city; the third largest in Europe I've been told, so we were still in Rome, but more near the countryside. During the whole trip in fact, none of the places looked exactly as I had imagined them. To me, Rome feels more like Los Angeles than Paris does. Maybe it's all the trees and greenery.

Anyway, the hotel was relatively nice, and we dropped off our bags and immediately took off to find the metro. I was saying, "Once I see the Colosseum, I'll really feel like we're in Rome." So we took the metro there, and stopped to take some pictures with graffiti along the way.

The countryside:

I really enjoyed the Colosseum, especially sicne it was so hot and sunny outside. It was surprisingly green around the area in a way that strongly reminded me of the LA Zoo. Since it was Sunday, there were tons of tourists milling about. It was so crowded! But over the course of the next 2 weeks, I went back to Colosseum several times, and got a different impression...

Me buying postcards:

We ended up eating pizza for lunch at a nearby cafe. I ate a lot of pizza while I was in Italy, and a lot of gelato, but I did a lot of walking too.

So eventually, after wandering around the Colosseum and the nearby ruins for a while and eating lunch, we went back to the hotel to relax. We ate a pasta, salad, and chocolate dinner that night with the rest of the people on the tour. We were exhausted so we went to bed right after dinner.

The next morning we drove on a coach bus all the way from Rome to Venice, (or Roma to Venezia as they say in Italy). It took a long time, maybe 6 hours. We stopped a few times along the way for lunch and breaks. (I bought Italian Elle!) I looked out the window and saw lots of countryside. During the long drive, we met some of the other people on the tour. There was a big group of girls studying abroad in London who were on spring break as well. There were a lot of young couples, and some single people traveling alone. I was surprised that not everyone was American: there were people from Australia, Japan, South Africa, etc.

When we finally arrived in Venice in late afternoon, Emily and I were psyched to discover that our hotel was really nice! It was not in the center of Venice, but it was right next to the train station that drives you into Venice.

Me laughing in the nice hotel room:

We took the train into Venice that day around 6, and left the city at 11. We ate gelato, and just wandered around looking at stuff. There is so much touristy shopping there! I kept thinking as we walked around, Venice reminds me of Disneyland! Disneyland without the rides; the overpriced touristy shopping part that everyone peruses once the rides have closed down for the night.

We walked to the Rialto bridge in the center of Venice and then made our way to Saint Mark's Square (San Marco). The place with all the pigeons!
I bought a glass pen for 3 euros that evening from a little store and waited as the lady behind the counter took 5 minutes to painstakingly wrap it up, in bubble wrap, paper, stickers.... It reminded me of that scene in Love Actually where the guy is buying a gold necklace and the guy takes a million years to wrap it up because he adds potpourri, a ribbon, a bag, etc. Now I just need ink to use it with...

The next morning, Emily and I decided to forego breakfast at the hotel and get an early start on the day. Everyone else on the tour woke up at 9, had breakfast, and didn't get into the city until 10:30. But Emily and I woke up at 7, took the 7:30 train, and got there by 8. In retrospect, this was a very good decision because while it was merely cold in the morning, it became windy and rainy later in the day. Emily and I actually did everything we could have possibly done to enjoy the good weather in Venice without knowing it. She told me later that she was glad I insisted on taking so many pictures in the morning, because the weather got so bad later on.

We walked around through the shops, the narrow streets, and went into some church.

We met up with the rest of the tour at 10:30 to go to a glassblowing demonstration, which was pretty cool. We watched some guy take a big glass rod, put it in a fiery oven, and use some tools to mold it into a horse.

After the glassblowing demonstration, they led us into some expensive store where a bunch of people bought glass. Then we went to a lace making demonstration. Making lace by hand looks incredibly boring and time consuming. Emily and I realized later during our tour that all the demonstrations we went on were really more like commercials. Since we had been in the city a lot already, we knew that the store was way overpriced; some of the trinkets cost more than our entire tour! It put things in perspective: which would you rather have, a cup or a week in Italy? It seemed suspicious how in every city, the demonstrations came first, before everyone had had a chance to shop around. The stores probably pays the tour organizers to take all the tourists there...

By the time the demonstrations were over, the weather had gotten worse. I was afraid it was going to rain, so I decided to feed the pigeons immediately. I had watched other people buy bags of birdseed and had pigeons fly all around them, and land on them, eating out of their hands. Initially, I thought I wanted to do that too, but it was too terrifying.

As soon as I bought the little bag of birdseed, they all started advancing toward me like an army and swarmed around me! Emily refused to go anywhere near them, se she took pictures of me from a distance. The pigeons were aggressive and not scared at all! Some started flapping around my head. I started screaming and shrieking and ran for my life. They ran after me! It was funny because I was running toward Emily and she was running away from me because I was bringing the pigeons to her. I fed them, tossing the birdseed as far away from me as possible. Trust me, it may not look scary, but it was. Especially since there weren't many other people feeding the birds because of the weather, so it felt like they were ALL clustered around me. The people on the tour later were like, oh, was that you screaming so much?

The rest of the afternoon was bad weather, so none of the gondolas were running, unfortunately. We went back to the hotel early, ducking into shops along the way to stay out of the rain. I bought a cat mask from one of the stores for 10 euros; not the one above, a different one.

I eventually started walking really close to people with umbrellas, sort of following them to use their umbrellas. Two of the people noticed what I was doing and shared umbrellas with me. We made it back to the hotel, wet and miserable, but our hotel was so nice, it cheered us up. I took a bath and we watched Italian tv. We joked about how we should have just stayed in the hotel the entire time, and told everyone we went into the city. We could have bought souvenirs from the hotel gift shop, taken pictures of the paintings and said they came from a museum, and photoshopped ourselves into pictures of the city.

It was funny because Emily and I ran for the train we had to take to get to and from Venice every single time we had to use it, because we were so paranoid about missing it. And each time we ended up running onto the train and waiting there for 10 minutes or so for it to leave.

And the next day: Florence!