At 7am on Tuesday morning two other girls and I started our travels. Our plane from Valencia to Rome was delayed about an hour, and when finally got on the plane, someone told us that there was a technical problem and we might have to change planes. 10 minutes later, someone else told us over intercom that it was just a pressure pipe and they are changing it, so everything is ok, but people were still flipping out and leaving. Again they got on the intercom and told us that since more than 5 people left the plane, now the airline is involved so the flight will be delayed longer. Goodness gracious, people, if they say it’s ok, it’s ok, you’re not gonna die! But we didn’t care about the delay that much, it just cut some of our tourism time. We got to Rome by 3 or 4ish (without dying), but then had to stand in line to reserve our train tickets to go to Venice. Rome being a large, famous city, and 4pm being a busy time of day, it took a good 2 and a half hours to get to the train station and wait in line, etc.
Apparently lastminutebooking.com is rather useful. One of the girls found a deal on it: 20 Euros total for a private hotel room (not a hostel) in the heart of Rome, in a room that’s usually 250!! Problem is, when they booked it, they didn’t realize that I would be tagging along, so they were hoping to sneak me into the tiny room with a double bed. The hotel is so small, though, 6 rooms, that there was little chance of succeeding, so we were just honest with the clerk guy and told him I needed somewhere to stay or else it was sleeping in the train station for me. The guy at the desk, an older Indian dude, clearly had a huge moral dilemma on his hands since according to the rules only 2 people to a room. 20 minutes after he let us chill in the room while he made a decision, he told us that he didn’t want me crammed in the double bed, so I could have an extra room for free as long as I was out of there by 6am!!
The dinner that night was quite a rip off. While we were looking for someplace cheap, a waiter outside a restaurant told us we could get a pizza for 9 euros, so we went inside. As soon as we entered, we realized it was a mistake to agree. The restaurant was gorgeous and expensive looking. They gave us bread without us asking for it—3 euros. I ordered a glass of wine. ¼ of the glass filled—7 euros. On top of that the actual food. Oh my.
The next morning we went to the Roman Coliseum and took a tour of that and the Palatine Hill. Honestly I thought the Coliseum was ok, but the tour of the Palatine Hill was more entertaining and had a lot more fun cultural facts included (such as the Romans saving their urine, boiling it so it acts as a bleach, and washing their clothes in it using laurel leaves to make the linen smell better). We then went in search of food but after the night before, our wallets were hurting, so we went to the market for some bread and salami to tide us over and ate it on some stairs of a church. For dinner that night we went on a little excursion. In the hostel (we switched) there was a sign that declared 10 euros for a meal and meeting other travelers. I still don’t know how it only cost 10 euros for 2 plates of pasta, fries, chicken, and a glass or two of wine. Rather efficient I ‘d say. There I met a Republican that is fed up with the States so is moving to Italy, a Californian traveling around Europe, and some Spanish girls traveling for the weekend. All very interesting, I must say.
Thursday we went to see the Pantheon & Trevi fountain and got on a 5 hour train to Venice. Let’s just mention that Venice is not rolling-suitcase-friendly and leave it at that, shall we? Our hostel was very clean and in a part of town that’s not
touristy, but not dull either. It was in a nice open piazza where a lot of students hung out. The first night we just walked around taking in the city. A map is absolutely necessary in Venice because the streets (or walkways rather) are so tiny and disorganized, so the tourist stores get a crapload of business because they don’t give out free maps. 2 Euros for a good one. It’s actually quite ingenious. Either get completely lost or give me money. But either way the city was very beautiful at night. We had kebaps , (omg kebaps are the best food in the entire world—not kidding), for dinner because they are cheap and wonderful and everywhere. The place we went in, though, was quite strange. There was a guy sitting in the only chair there was (the restaurant was like a hole in the wall) and he started talking to us in horribly broken English about how he was so fluent in English and he lived here and there, and he was attacked in NYC by hoodlums. He didn’t make sense at all and kept skipping from one topic to another. We got out of there in a hurry (after the cashier kissed one of the girl’s hands when giver her change back) and decided that that guy was drugged up and had the munchies. Weird.
The next day we went to Piazza San Marco and in the afternoon toured the Doge Palace (the doge is some sort of political figure) which was nice but of course nothing
compared to the Madrid Palace. There was a prison attached but it was a lot less interesting to tour than it sounds. We were all quite tired of looking at the frescos and couldn’t handle any more museums so we took a water bus down the grand canal then wandered around the city more—just walked around pretty much purposely trying to get lost, and then had a ball trying to find our way back. We ate at a little Italian restaurant and on the way back a group of young Italians (16-17 years old) were walking by us and one of them clapped his hands at us and said “My dream is to fly over the rainbow….the cat...is on…the table.” And we pretty much died laughing for a good 5 minutes. Haha.The next morning we planned to use our museum pass to see one of the 8 or so museums in the Piazza before we left, but one of us forgot the ticket in the hostel so upon arriving and realizing that, we just went and chilled out in the park until it was time to leave. The piazza de San Marco is world famous and for this, it was super super expensive to sit down at a café and prohibited to sit down in the square. After we found out we couldn’t visit the museum, I volunteered to buy a cup of coffee even though I knew there was a sitting fee involved. We went to one, but the first thing the menu said was “E 7.50 sitting fee for EACH PERSON whether they buy anything or not” on top of the 3 euro coffee or whatever, so we RAN out of there. Goodness gracious, que cara!
We hopped on a train to Verona, a little city that was supposedly the inspiration to Shakespear’s Rome & Juliet, so all the tourists gathered around Juliet’s balcony and
took pictures. We only had the afternoon in the city and there wasn’t much to see anyway, so I snapped a pic of the balcony, and after failing at finding Romeo’s house (very poorly marked and horrible map), I returned to the little bed & breakfast where we were staying. It was so cool! There was a loft for 2 beds and the bottom part had another bed & bathroom, and a table FULL of cookies, toast, croissants, coffee, tea, espresso…all for 3 people and a great price. Very nice.
Ugh, but the next morning we got up at 6am or something horrible like that and walked 40 minutes to the train station. I bought my ticket to Milan (where the airport was) for...I don’t remember, but very cheap and we all got on the train. When the ticket dude passed by to check them, he paused when he came to mine and another girl’s and said “You did not validate these—50 euro fine” and proceeded to explain that the little machines outside the train were to ‘validate’ the tickets. Unfortunately the FOUR TIMES we went to the ticket desk nobody bothered to tell the newbie Americans that we would go broke for not swiping a freaking ticket. I begged him saying that I didn’t even have that much on me and asked him to let it slip and if the next guy (on our connecting train) said something we would pay him instead. The guy replied that he would get in trouble if anybody found out, so we grudgingly combined all our money and came up with just enough between the 5 of us (we had 2 others join us) to cover it. And what do you know, on the next train NOBODY came by to check our tickets. Ugh, it makes me mad just thinking about it.
Well, that was our Italy trip and before that little instance I had been doing really good money-wise with all those 3 euro kebaps and 2 euro sandwhiches. In general I found the country rather charming and thanks to my Spanish background could understand quite a lot of the written Italian and a tiny bit the spoken. By the last day we realized that speaking in Spanish to an Italian works a lot better than struggling through the English communication.
Ok I’m gonna stop here and right a different entry about the last couple weeks so y’all don’t get bored to tears.
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