Rome and Paris

The first challenge posed on this leg of out journey was locating our hotel in Rome, yes we had another of those. A very helpful florest (who likely watched us walk up and down the same street several times like every other confused and lost hotel guest) pointed us in the right direction, and we wandered into our hotel via the side entrance of a church!! Here's what www.rome-hotels-information.com had to say about our hotel:

"The Domus Sessoriana is a first-class hotel located on the slopes of the Esquiline Hill, in central Rome. There is no hotel in Rome, which is comparable to this one. The Domus Sessoriana is laid out in one wing of the Monastery of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which has been occupied by the Cistercian order since 1561. The traditional spirit of hospitality that rules the Cistercian order pervades the Domus Sessoriana. This hotel is infused with 2000 years of history and some of the city's oldest ruins can be viewed from the hotel terrace."

It was quite the place, to say the least!! Definitely wins the award for "Most Unique" for any hotel I've ever stated in!

From our hotel we easily made our through ancient and modern Rome as the city transitions seamlessly between each. It rained every day that we were there... Oh well, you can't win 'em all. Even a few torrential down pours couldn't damper our spirits, so we kept trucking along through the soggy streets and took in the Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum, The Vatican City and Museums (we saw the Pope!!), Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Piazza del Popolo... too many places to list!







The Colosseum.





The Roman Forum.





Us at Trevi Fountain.

I tell ya, those Roman Art and Architechure courses I took at UVic really paid off!!
We had some great Italian food, and some not so great "Italian" food! An of course, we got the usual tourist fleecing a few times!!

After Rome we took a 15hr night train to Paris... that's right, I said 15 hours. It actually wasn't as bad it sounds. We spent 4 days in Paris and saw so much! We didn't have the greatest weather, rain again, but our last day brought us sunshine and the chance to explore. Our hotel there deserves none of the praise that Domus did :)
Paris is a such a magnificent city and it was a fantastic place to finish up our trip! Here are a few of our highlights:






The Eiffel Tower during one of our cold, rainy day walks.






The Tower again at night. It's always lit with the yellow/gold lights but for 5min every hour it sparkles with thousands of twinkling white lights :)






The Catacombes. Have a read at the Wikipedia link for the details. This was easily the creepiest thing we've done on our trip, but it was certainly interesting and eye opening!! We joked about how weird it would be to grab a bone as a souvenir, and then when you leave there's a bag check/security point at which that day alone they have confiscated about 3 or so skulls and about 10 femurs!!! Crazy people...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris






Didn't make it in for a show (at €180 we thought it was a bit much!), but saw The Moulin Rouge up close!






Us on the Promenade Plantee, which I think is one of the best places in Paris. It's 4.5km of elevated park/pedestrian walkway on an old abandoned rail line. It was so beautiful to see a slice of nature and calmness in a big bustling city.

I can't believe it, but that's it. 6 weeks of planning, traveling, spending, seeing, doing, packing and repacking, losing our way only to find it again and loving every second of it... is all over. I can't wait to see everyone back home and share more photos and stories!

Cheers, Michaela!

Italia! Again...

After my last post we finished up our whirl wind tour of Italy and just arrived in Paris this morning after a 15 hour night train from Rome, but I'm getting ahead of myself...

Florence was our next stop after Venice (for which there are now photos added, below). We stayed 3 nights there and spent our days doing the usual touristy things while taking in some of the finer local cuisine! After wandering up and down our street searching for a great little restaurant called Osteria I Brincello that Matt found on Tripadivsor (a god send of a website by the way!) we realized that it was quite literally directly across the street from our hotel. Ok, so they're not always spot-on with the locations in the map feature! Our food was simple yet delicious, the way most Italian food is, and I enjoyed what was probably the best tiramisu I've ever had! We stopped to enjoy the varied goods offered at the street markets on the way to Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore and the Duomo and continued on across the Ponte Vecchio.












Basilica, no photo of the Duomo just yet... sorry.












Ponte Vecchio, the whole bridge is filled with jewelers shops on the inside!

Next we were off to Pisa. There's a tower there, it leans and well that's about all there is to see there. Seriously.












Obligatory tourist photo...

After Pisa, it was off to Naples. Naples is total dump. I have never in my life seen so much garbage in one place! It just went on and on and on...











This picture shows exactly what you'd see on nearly every block. We especially liked this one because the guy in front of his garage had to actually clear a path in order to drive in and out.

But, it wasn't all so bad. We had pizza at a restaurant that's been around since 1870. 1870!! Naples is the birth place of pizza and Pizzeria da Michele knows what they're doing. The menu offers either Margherita or Marinara pizza and beer, water or Coke. That's it, that's all.












Note the pic of Julia Roberts on the wall. This is the restaurant used in the movie Eat, Pray, Love for the Pizza scene!

Another plus side to Naples was the view from the hill top, which was incredible!! Mount Vesuvius in the background!













Speaking of Vesuvius... we took a day trip to Pompeii and seeing the ruins left by the Vesuvius eruption was mind blowing! The city was buried in 79 CE and parts of it are still full of vivid colours and elaborate details. We saw the famous (and eery) casts of bodies that were made by pouring plaster into the hollow spaces in the ground left after people decomposed. Lovely, I know. We also saw what's left of the basilica, forum, temples, homes, acquiducts... and a brothel!



















And... that's that! Next update will be a Roman/Parisian hybrid. Cities like Rome and Paris deserve their own blog posts :)

Ciao!!

France and a bit of Italy

Ok, I really thought Id be able to blog more, Im sorry Ive been so bad at keeping in touch.
Where are all the apostraphes you ask? I cant find the key on the keyboard of the computer in Pisa that Im using :)
Also, cant upload pics here but Ill try to add some in later.

France was awesome! We spent a few days in Montpellier, in the South. I loved it there, it was a laid back place with lots of other young people and lots to see and do. We visited some great parks and old town cafes, walked along the river, caught a photography show and rode the citys tram serveral times.



Next it was off to The French Riviera, I think riviera is French for "expensive"! We stayed 5 nights in Nice and spent a day in Cannes and a day in Monaco (technically its own country!). It was so nice there and we had fabulous beach weather, we went "swimming" in the Med (we got in the water a bit)!! Cold!!




Cannes is much smaller than Nice with a little less to offer in the way of shopping and sight seeing but we climbed the hill along the port and visited the museum thats at the top and took in some nice panoramas of the town. We each have a picture on what were pretty sure is the red carpet outside the building that houses the famous film festival.



Monaco was definitely not our scene! It is a beautiful town perched high on the hills over looking the port, and home to too many luxury cars to count, expertly manicured lawns and overpriced clothing stores. They were already setting up the famous Monaco Grand Prix car race so we missed out on the usual port view (big, expensive boats!). We tried our luck at Monte Carlo, and it turns out we didnt have any. I was up 20.00 Euros at one point, but lost it all to slot machine. Matt tried his hand at roulette and was even less successful.



All in all our experience in the south of France was great and I hope to return one day, with a little more spending money!

We then wisked ourselves off to Northern Italy, first stop Venice(ish). We stayed at a little hotel in a town called Campagna Lupia. It was only a few minutes to the local train station where we caught trains into Verona and Venice for a couple of fabulous day trips! Verona was so beautiful. We saw Juliettes balcony (massive tourist trap) and the old Roman arena and main square.



As usual we wandered the city streets aimlessly and came across old squares and cafes that take you back to another time. Venice is an interesting place, its hard to believe that a city can seem like its floating on water. Its made up of over 100 tiny islands connected by over 400 islands, and the tiny walkways and streets seem to go on forever in a maze. Its hard to understand how anyone knows their way around and can maneuver the streets on a daily basis!



We spent part of our afternoon there on the Lido which is long spit off the city with a nice beach and a fraction of the people (although Im sure it gets busy in the summer!). To cap off our day, we took a gondola ride! We had a really nice gondolier who gave us a little tour of the area and some history. I will get the pictures up as soon as I can.




More to come on the rest of Italy in a few days, including our day here in Pisa before heading south to Naples and Pompeii the back up towards Rome. Also, I can hopefully attach a few pictures when I have some decent wifi.

Ciao!! Michaela

Morocco

The trip to Morocco deserves a little more description since we didn't take many pictures, it didn't feel safe/appropriate to have our cameras out. The city is often described as having old world charm, being a place full of hustlers and hagglers and definitely revealing a different side of the region.

Our trip started with a ferry trip across the Mediterranean from Algeciras, which was over an hour late (but we did get a great view of the Rock of Gibraltar). When we finally docked, we realized that we had ended up 50km away from the city of Tangier. This was both confusing and slightly alarming to us as our hotel boasted being a couple hundred meters away from the port! It turns out that in late '07 (just after our guide book was published!) a new port called Tangier Med was built to handle all traffic from Algeciras!! Ooops. Once we eventually made it to Tangier, we were (or at least I was) surprised at just how different it was from where we had been. "Old world" was true, things were very old... and run down. "Hustlers and hagglers" were in no short supply! Everywhere you turned there was someone offering to help with your bags (for a price) or show you the town (for a price)... But, the shops, restaurants, markets etc. were full of North African flair with so many new sights and scents. We had a great time wandering the Medina and we definitely "rocked the Kasbah" ;) while keeping our belongings clear of pick-pocketers. Our hotel was great, right on the edge of the old Medina and it had a great bazar on the main floor that I could have spent days digging through!

The trip back to Algeciras was another story. There was a huge wind storm in the area and we were worried that the boats wouldn't sail, but they did... half an hour late. It turns out there's no such thing as a schedule in Tangier. Anyways, the wind. We're talking extreme gale force winds. BC Ferries would have cancelled everything in these conditions, but not the Med ferries. Nope, they just plowed right through it. We must have sailed through 30ft swells! People were getting sick all over the boat, dishes were breaking in the galley and any furniture not bolted down was flopped over. We'd look out the window and see ocean, then sky, then ocean, then sky. It took at least an hour to cross and if I hadn't put myself into a Gravol-induced coma I wouldn't have made it!

All in all, the most eventful/interesting part of our trip so far.

Here are some of the pics we got from Tangier:

Me at a high point in the Medina, very windy that day!




One of the 375 incredibly narrow "streets" in the Kasbah.




Part of the harbor/port, view from our room (this is one that the ferry used to go to!)




Bye for now,
Michaela

Spain, Morocco to come.

I've been a bad blogger, sorry! Back in the land of wi-fi :)

Spain is amazing! Morocco is interesting... Our time in these two beautiful countries consisted of us visiting Madrid, Toledo, Cordoba and Barcelona with a brief stop in Algeciras en route to Tangier.

The Spanish leg of our journey started in Madrid with us getting unintentionally lost while trying to find our hotel and continued, as it does almost everywhere we go, by wandering the city somewhat blindly and getting (intentionally) lost in the vast expanse of narrow streets and small plazas. There were many "cafe con leches" and pastries consumed here!

We've got a lot of ground to cover, so pardon the point form!


MADRID:

Madrid's Santa Maria la Real de la Almudena Cathderal and Museum. Cathedral was closed for construction, but the museum was interesting and we climbed to the top of the building and got an incredible 360 degree view of the city.





Plaza Mayor.




TOLEDO: day trip from Madrid.

San Juan de Los Reyes.




Narrow streets!




View of the city from hilltop.




CORDOBA: 2 days here, one very quiet/lazy as EVERYTHING was closed (Sun.)

The amazing Alcazar de Los Reyes Cristianos.



(photo of the garden below does not do this place justice, absolutely amazing!)



Last but not least, one of my favorite places so far BARCELONA:
A fabulous city that feels very un-Spanish with just enough European pizaz to remind you that you are indeed in Europe. Here we had some amazing food, stayed in a super grubby hostel (accommodation is pricey here!) and soaked up the beautiful works of one of worlds best known architects.

One of Gaudi's buildings, sorry I can't keep all of the names straight!


Another Gaudi.


And the creme de la creme, the Sagrada Familia with touristy audio tour!






Miss you all! I'll try to write more and keep you posted as we make our way through France. We're in Montpellier right now and it's just lovely!

"The great book, always open and which we should make an effort to read, is that of Nature." - Antoni Gaudi

Things I've Learned...

- Affixing street signs to poles is a North American thing. Look up to the side of the building for street names.
- In most European public washrooms we've visitied cold water, no soap and shotty air dryers are all you get to wash your hands with.
- No matter how many times I practice the local term for "sorry" or "thank you", I say "sorry" or "thank you" in English!
- If European women are setting the fashion trends that we'll soon see in N. America, then ladies... get ready for the return of the scrunchie!
- Asking to not have housekeeping is impossible.
- Cheap hotels have thin walls.
- Read the details on travel tickets, make sure your guide books and info are up to date and ask questions!!! (see my post about Tangier, when I get to it!)
- Planning this trip on the fly is a lot more work than I thought it was going to be, and I don't know what I'd do without Matty (and his iPad!)

Ireland

Perhaps we missed out on the true Irish experience, but I gotta say... not my favorite place so far. Dublin had some nice sights like their City Hall, Christ Church, Trinity College and the Temple Bar neighborhood. We had a great time at the Guinness Brewery and found the city green spaces nice, but all in all the city was dirty and their public transport was a hassle (at least as far as getting to our hotel). How was our hotel you ask? Well, imagine a luxurious old hotel, quaint rooms, clean facilities and polite staff all neatly packaged into a nightclub!!! We read the reviews, people said it was loud because it had a bar downstairs but never, NEVER, did we imagine that it could be that loud. Oh well, live and learn right?











But, the highlight of our time in Ireland had to be Kissing the Blarney Stone in Blarney, just outside the city of Cork. Finally, I have the gift of gab :) The train took about 3 hours from Dublin and was and was a nice
escape from the city. We saw roughly 17,000 cows and 20,000 sheep, give or take. The Irish countryside is beautiful, too bad we couldn't spend more time there.













Well, that's all for now. We're in Madrid at the moment and have booked a day trip to Toledo tomorrow and will probably head south to some beaches and more sun after that, I'll have lots more to share about Spain soon.

Adios,
M (and M)