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Tour of Italy

Fri Jul 03, 2009 12:21 (UTC -5)

On Saturday morning, Andy and I were in Pisa, Italy. Our hotel was across town from the famous leaning tower, but Pisa is a small city, so it was a short walk. As we got closer to the tower, the density of touristy places like gift shops increased. Finally, I could see the top of the tower above the rooftops. Andy had walked around town the night before and had been impressed by how much the tower leaned. Now it was my turn to see.

Mine and many others’. Throngs of people shuffled around in front of the Field of Miracles, next to the ancient city’s cathedral and its ill-planned bell tower, which leaned noticeably, almost threateningly. I was impressed.

The first thing I thought to do was to take a lot of pictures. Next, I decided to get a picture of myself with the tower. When you see photos of people standing of the Field of Miracles with the leaning tower behind them, they’ve risked being whistled at by a police officer. You’re not supposed to stand on the grass.

Being myself, I didn’t stand on the grass. But I’d kick myself if I didn’t pose for the cheesy holding-up-the-tower photo that everyone else was looking ridiculous doing.

We checked out the area for a little while and considered taking a tour of the tower, but neither of us especially wanted to do it. So we walked our hungry selves back down the narrow streets of Pisa. A guy outside a restaurant charmed us to a table, where we enjoyed our first real (“real”?) Italian meal. There I learned that the restaurants in Italy often serve multiple courses. I had rigatoni (or something like that) bolognese; chicken, veal, and potatoes; and finally, a small fruit salad.

We didn’t have much else to do in Pisa, so we went back to the station and took the next train for Rome, where we had a hostel booked for Sunday and Monday nights, but not that night since it was too late to do that online. Andy had called the hostel and asked if we could stay there that night also, and they said it was no problem.

We arrived in Rome and set out for the hostel. I had written down the address and the name of the nearest subway station. But the nearest station wasn’t very close. I blame this on the fact that Rome’s subway system has only two lines. After asking various people for directions, we took a bus in the right general direction. Eventually, we found someone who could tell us exactly where the hostel was.

The hostel was in the northwestern portion of the city, near Vatican City and the 1960 Olympic complex. This was our second stay at a hostel, so I got more of a feel of what hostels in general were like. Apparently, they are all pretty shoddy. They didn’t give us a key when we checked in, and when I asked about it, they said they didn’t give out keys to the rooms. Our room was bigger than the last and had lockers for our stuff, but it was deficient in other ways, as we would soon find out. (Keep reading!)

We asked the guy at the desk to recommend a cheap restaurant, so he gave us the name of a pizza place down the road. We found it and had a seat only to realize that it wasn’t particularly cheap. We ate there anyway. The service was very good, and the waiter, who spoke English, was more than happy to tell us what everything on the menu was.

I decided to try some different Italian food, so I had tripe. It was really chewy, and it tasted kind of funny, but I’m glad I tried it. After the meal, we realized that that probably wasn’t the pizza place. It just had the same name.

On Sunday, I went downstairs for breakfast at the hostel. You could have a small piece of bread, some butter and jelly, and a tiny cup of coffee or whatever. Anything else you had to pay for. I pretended to be ignorant and took a croissant, but I got found out and had to pay for it. Then I got the bread. It was the last breakfast I ate at the hostel. Upstairs in the lobby, I saw two people hand in their room keys.

We set out to see some of Rome’s many sights. We started at the Spanish Steps, probably the most famous staircase in the world. In front of the steps is a fountain.

My AAA guidebook to Europe said that Rome was a city of fountains, and I soon realized how right it was. Our next stop perambulating about the city was the Trevi Fountain, a large and absolutely beautiful work of art.

Next, we set out for the Pantheon, also a short walk away.

I only knew it from the movie Angels and Demons, but it is in fact a church that was originally a Roman temple (as the name implies!). It’s a circular building whose dome contains a natural skylight. Around the crowds of people you can find the tombs of the Italian kings Humbert I and Victor Emmanuel II, as well as the artist Raphael. I didn’t actually find Raffi, but I can assume that he was there.

We walked further toward our ultimate destination, the colossal Colosseum. On the way, we saw a massive monument to Victor Emmanuel. It was really amazing to see.

By this time, we were hungry, so we found a restaurant and split a pizza for lunch. We didn’t have to go very far from the restaurant to pass by some ruins and see the Colosseum.

We decided to get a guided tour, which was pretty convenient. I learned a lot about the colorful history of the stadium and what it was like in its glory days. There was a long break in the tour when we were free to wander around. Since Andy hadn’t slept much the night before, he took a nap on an old column. And you know what? I was perfectly fine with it.

After checking out the place a little while longer, we continued our tour at the adjacent Palatine Hill, where Rome was supposedly founded and where the Roman Empire was headquartered. On the hill were ruins of a palace and other homes. Next to the hill lay the ruins of the Roman Forum.

That’s where our tour ended. Since it was getting late, we asked the tour guide if he could recommend any good, cheap vegetarian restaurants in the area. He gave us a card (he had several) for a certain bar across the river. He said they had a buffet that was free as long as you bought a drink.

After checking out the Forum down below…

…we went to get dinner. We had been walking everywhere all day, but many of the sights in Rome are close together. Even the restaurant wasn’t that far. We eventually found the place, which seemed to be a hangout for the locals. The buffet wasn’t much, but it was almost all vegetarian, to Andy’s delight. For my drink, I had a beer. It’s an acquired taste that I think I’m acquiring.

We were sort of close to our hostel by then, but we were tired of walking, so we took a bus to a subway station and went back from there.

There are three types of days we tend to have: travel days, sightseeing days, and rest days, generally in that order. Monday was largely a rest day. I had wanted to go to the Vatican that day, but I had just found out that everything there was closed because it was important Catholic feast day. So we decided to mosey to the train station to get our next tickets early.

Once we were at the station, we started to plan out the logistics of our exit the next day. We would have to check out of the hostel in the morning and visit the Vatican with our backpacks. We saw that there was a place at the train station where we could pay to store our bags for a few hours. Then, when we saw how long the line for tickets was, we decided to save that for tomorrow.

We ate pasta at a restaurant across from the station. It seemed to be something like a club at night because we ate near a sort of stage, but at lunchtime they were playing American songs from the ’50s and early ’60s.

After wandering around the neighborhood a bit, we went back to the hostel and chilled, enjoying the Wi-Fi that we had to pay for. We got in touch with Mark and found out that he would be arriving in Rome soon and would also be going to the Vatican tomorrow. We didn’t really make plans to meet up, though.

It was about then that I noticed the little bites on my arms. Andy had more of them; he would sleep without a shirt on. Yes, it seems that while I had a somewhat good night and slept fairly tight, I in fact let the bedbugs bite. Disgusting.

To save money, we had dinner at the hostel. It turns out that they have halfway decent food beyond the free breakfast. And by halfway decent, I mean just that. Not all the way decent. So that was pretty much my day. Andy went out to a club, and I retreated to our room, where I had a hard time getting to sleep knowing that insects would soon be crawling all over me and eating my flesh.

On Tuesday, we set out for the Vatican. I decided that we shouldn’t leave our bags at the train station beforehand because the back-and-forth would eat up a lot of time. The world’s smallest independent state was actually only a few blocks from our subway stop. As we got nearer, Andy realized that the place looked familiar. He had gone out for a run and apparently found himself in St. Peter’s Square.

We checked out the square first. I was a little underwhelmed. I guess I was expecting it to be more grandiose.

Then we headed toward the Vatican Museums, where one would find the Sistine Chapel and other famous sights. Andy was tired from carrying his bags and from going out the night before, so he decided to skip out on the Vatican and go right to the train station. He wanted to get free Wi-Fi from the only place in Europe where you can reliably find it: McDonald’s.

Yes, in the past week or so we’ve found ourselves at more than one McDonald’s, often buying token or not-so-token amounts of food to justify using the free, unlimited wireless Internet. And you know what? McDonald’s is a restaurant that has delicious, inexpensive food. We don’t eat there every day. We would prefer to go anywhere else. But sometimes, we need to get in touch with our families. Think of the children!!

So I stood in line for the Vatican Museums. The line was long, but it moved fast, and I was in after 15 minutes. Taking my giant backpack to the cloakroom or whatever you’d call it was no problem. I got the student discount and was then free to explore the several museums.

I started with a collection of early Christian art, which turned out to be a bunch of Greek and Roman sculptures. The place looked more like a warehouse than a museum, an ugly labrynth of a room with objects here and there, free to walk up to and often not labeled in any language.

After that, I saw signs for the philatelic and numismatic (stamp and coin) museum, which I totally didn’t know that Vatican had. As a banknote, coin, and (sometimes) stamp collector, I was pumped. This would totally be my favorite museum at the Vatican. But then I was informed that that museum was closed that day. NOOOOOO!!!!!

I decided not to waste time, so I followed the signs for the Sistine Chapel. To get there, you have to go through almost everything. Which is not to say that the other stuff isn’t worth seeing. There are lots of courtyards and terraces surrounding long, lavishly decorated rooms with old maps and globes and elegant paintings and statues and mosaics and tapestries. It really is spectacular. What’s also impressive is that you’re allowed to take pictures there.

If you don’t like crowds, though, you wouldn’t like it. There was a whole mob of people going through. Everyone seemed to be following the signs for the Sistine Chapel, and I though they would never end, but finally, I made it. There were signs saying not to talk or take pictures.

I don’t know why, but I expected the Sistine Chapel to be bigger. It’s a chapel. It’s about as big as a chapel could conceivably be, but it’s still a chapel. Michelangelo’s frescoes, which cover the walls and ceiling, are fantastic. And the room was unbelievably crowded with people talking and taking pictures. A guard would periodically try to shush the crowd to no avail. And since they weren’t doing anything about the many people taking pictures, I took one. Of course, it wasn’t very good.

After that, I went through a few more fancy rooms and then found myself back where I started. I got my bag back and returned to St. Peter’s Square. As I was getting in line to go into St. Peter’s Basilica, someone else getting in line at the same time called my name. It was Mark!

This was the second time he had met me unexpectedly. The first time was in Madrid, when I happened to run into his travel companion, Dan, who took me back to their hostel. We were both pretty surprised that we would coincidentally find each other in Vatican City even though we knew we were both going to be there that day. It’s small, but it’s a big place.

We headed into St. Peter’s Basilica, the spiritual heart of Catholicism, after I put my backpack in another cloakroom without a problem. One of the first sights you can see in the Basilica is Michelangelo’s sublime Pieta:

As we wandered around the huge building, Mark asked about the significance of the things we were seeing. We talked about our respective religious upbringings, mine as Catholic, his as Pentecostal.

After that, we visited the grottoes downstairs, where some popes and other important people are buried. No photography is allowed there, and they try to move you through the place pretty fast, probably because it’s so small. They have a guy standing in front of John Paul II’s grave whose job is to keep people from standing in front of it for more than about two seconds.

By then, it had been a few hours since Andy and I had split up, so I parted ways with Mark to meet him. Once I found him at the McDonald’s, I had lunch there (see justification above), and we got our tickets to our next destination… Venice!

The train to Venice was a high-speed train, so we got there in about four hours and change. It was dark when we arrived, and outside the train station, we could see the Grand Canal, Venice’s main drag, illuminated by the lights all around it.

The only way to get around in Venice is by boat or by foot, and the public transportation is a system of numbered boat routes. We took a boat to the famous Piazza San Marco, near where our hotel was located. (I don’t think I would ever stay at a hostel again.) With enough asking for directions, we made our way through the ancient, narrow streets and found the hotel.

It was late and we were hungry, so we asked the guy at the desk for a recommendation. He told us how to get to a restaurant that was owned by the owner of the hotel. It wasn’t far away. Even though it wasn’t exactly cheap, we ate there anyway. This was the first time I had been to a restaurant that not only had a service charge but also a cover charge per person. Apparently a lot of the restaurants in Venice are like that.

Our hotel room was small but nicely kept. There was no Internet access in the hotel, so we would have to find it somewhere else. Tired, I took my first shower in a few days (I tried to shower at the hostel but there was little semblance of convenience or privacy) and went to sleep.

On Wednesday, after I had a free breakfast that was actually good, we embarked on a mission to find free Wi-Fi. As you might imagine, we failed. We had lunch at a restaurant that wasn’t so great; the food was expensive and microwaved. It tasted okay, but it wasn’t worth it.

We found a couple of Internet cafes nearby that were kind of expensive, and we ended up making do with them. During our wanderings throughout the day, Andy and I (but especially Andy) learned how to get around the neighborhood. The ancient streets can be kind of confusing, but the little bridges over the little canals are wonderful to see.

We made it to the Piazza San Marco, where there was a sort of classical music concert going on. There were also lots of pigeons. I took lots of pictures of the landmarks in the square, St. Mark’s Basilica…

…and the Campanile, a bell tower.

I went back to the Internet cafe to do some important things. We had planned to go to Croatia next, but Andy preferred to go to Switzerland with Mark, so I made arrangements to stay with an Esperanto speaker there by myself. While I was Internetting, I got an e-mail from Mark about Switzerland plans, but Andy wasn’t there to answer because he was at a laundromat. By the time he met up with me, the Internet cafe was closed, so we had to find Wi-Fi elsewhere.

We went back to Piazza San Marco because the guy at the Internet cafe said there was a restaurant-type place where we could connect to their network. I don’t know what was up, but the way to the restaurant was blocked, and a police officer there told us that it was full. She asked a nearby woman, apparently from the restaurant, about our request to use the Internet there, and she laughed. I shot them a dirty look as we were walking away.

I remembered hearing from the guy at the Internet cafe that their other location had a Wi-Fi signal after hours. So we went there. We had to sit right outside the building, but it worked. We were on the steps of a little bridge going over a little canal. Andy made plans with Mark, and I burned off the rest of the time I had bought.

By then, it was 11 PM, and a lot of the restaurants were closing. That didn’t keep us from stopping to take nice time exposures, like this one from the famous Rialto Bridge:

Eventually, we found a place where we could get pizza even though it was technically closed. Then we headed back to the hotel. It wasn’t supposed to be a long day, but it really was.

On Thursday, we headed to the train station because Mark and Dan were supposed to be getting in from Rome around 2:00. After a quick lunch, we headed to their platform. We didn’t see them, so they apparently didn’t take that train. We went ahead and got our tickets for the next day; Andy’s for Switzerland, mine for Croatia. Unlike other places we’ve been to, the people at the ticket desks didn’t have rail schedules for other countries; we had to get them at the information desk. It was a rigmarole.

By then, we had eaten up a few hours, so we decided to eat up some more time at a nearby Internet cafe. After that, we walked around through some parts of the city we hadn’t been to yet, including the old Jewish ghetto, which still had a Jewish character to it. Before we knew it, it was time for an early dinner, so we had some pasta at a restaurant. Pizzas and basic pasta dishes are about the cheapest thing you can get at a restaurant in Venice (and probably elsewhere).

After dinner, we found a McDonald’s that had free Wi-Fi, no password required. (For the curious, it’s at Strada Nova 3923, near Ca’ d’Oro.) We were there while they were closing, so when Andy asked them about the Wi-Fi, they gave him some free food. We got cheeseburgers (without the meat) and Fantas. Nice! On the way back to the hotel, we encountered a polite Canadian woman who mentioned that there would be a city-wide Wi-Fi network starting tomorrow.

This morning, Andy left for the train station, and I checked out of the hotel. They let me leave my bag there till later, so I was relatively free to wander around. In Piazza San Marco, I saw large signs saying that July 3, 2009, was Wi-Fi Day. I checked out the shops and did some errands like picking up some Croatian kunas for the next part of my trip. I also went to McDonald’s for the Wi-Fi multiple times (hint: I’m there now).

I’m going to miss Italy, especially Venice, which has a charm of its own. Tonight, I’m heading to Croatia, where I’ll hopefully get to visit some distant relatives. If not, it’ll still be a nice few days. It’s supposed to be a beautiful country, and I’ll be staying with friendly people.