The Agony and the Ecstasy of driving in Italy: a travel summary of epic proportion

ok here goes. there may even be pictures included in this post, so get ready.


so i got to Genoa on Thursday night, May 29. Friday morning, we packed the car and headed for Pisa, stopping along the coast on the way. we arrived at maybe... 1 or 2 in the afternoon? and circled around the tiny roads of the city until we finally found a decent hotel with parking. If I'm not mistaken, we stayed at the Milano hotel or something like that. Anyway, we then walked towards the center of town to see the infamous tower as well as a duomo (generic term for something with a large dome in italy) and some very green grass.



I'm happy to report that the tower does, in fact, lean. we opted not to go inside anything, as it was all exhorbitantly priced, but it was all for the best. all i needed was to be that one person too many for the tower to finally go over. yeeeah. that would be a shame. as a side note, rita is shocked that i did not take a picture of me holding the tower up. hm. i think i'll live :)





So my parents had decided that despite the long distance, I needed to see Rome (which I am still thankful that they decided.) We decided to break the trip up and stay outside of the city the night before and drive in the next day.

In the morning we stopped in Luca, a town pretty close to Pisa. It was a really pretty walled town that we walked around. it had a really cool/pretty cathedral that was pretty similar to the stuff in pisa. a huge surprise was that they happened to be having an antique car show. apparently lucaians are huge car enthusiasts.

ok i suck at finishing this entry. gotta go.

to be continued...

italy...?

ok so i just sat here for awhile trying to come up with a clever title for this entry. a combination of distractions and hunger left me with a blank mind so i bought some food and decided just to jump into the entry. maybe something will come to me mid-entry.

my trip to italy can be described only as a whirlwind. and i dont mean this negatively, but i think i was in each place just long enough to get a feel for that town, see main sites and leave me wanting more time there, yet having no idea what i'd do with it.

my parents met me in the train station at Genoa. through a strange series of attempts, i told them through andrew on his cell phone, who was talking to my dad through his office phone, of the change of travel plans and they spent about an hour receiving each train that came in, hoping i'd be on it. once back at the hotel we decided to try and go for dinner. i was like 11pm and not only was everything closed, but we got caught in a ridiculous downpour, the likes of which hasnt been seen since biblical times, i would say. so we returned to our hotel wet and unfed. other than this, however, the whole week was pretty pleasant.

my parents rented a car. a brand new Fiat Punto with only 12km on it at the start. by the end of the 8 days there were no less than 2024km on it. so get ready for a travel summary of epic proportions. actually, i doubt i'll get that far in this session.. i'm out of time!

to be continued...

tail end of france. aka paris to nice to italy.

i guess i'll fill in the end of this leg of the trip purely to tell you about both the TRAIN FIASCO OF PARIS 2008 as well as the TRAIN FIASCO OF NICE 2008. do we see a theme here?

on our last morning in paris, we all split up. rosie got up early to make her way to the Louvre. as i am on the whole uninspired by art and was also trying to fight off a bad cough/sickness thing, i slept in. melanie got up to go shopping and lindsey stuck with me. i had to go to the internet cafe to book my flight from milan to madrid for the end of the italy trip with my parents, and she had to sort out the huge mess that happened with all her credit cards... somehow both her credit card and debit card numbers got stolen and were being used to purchase huge amounts of stuff around london. uggggh.

after that got sort of sorted out, melanie found us and we all put our energy towards buying her a dress that she could say was from paris and she could wear out to a fancy dinner in las vegas or something. we finally landed on a nice, not TOO expensive (like €75) dress. just in time to head back tot eh hotel to meet up with rosie, grab our luggage and head to the train station.

upon arrival at the station, melanie discovered she had forgotten her dress in the hotel lobby and runs to grab the subway back. we all waited with her luggage for awhile and when time got short we moved down closer to the train and still didn't see her. we didn't know what to do so i offered to stay and wait while lindsey adn rosie got on the train. i figured melanie and i could catch the next train that left in about an hour.

so i'm chilling, ready for a long wait when rosie comes sprinting fromt eh train to exclaim that melanie's already on the train! we book it back, rosie with her flip flops in hand as they flew off during the run. we get there too late and miss the train. rosie's stuff is on the train. melanie's humongous bag is with us. i've never seen rosie so upset in my life.

so we lugged the stuff to the ticket counter, paid another €6 or so to change our reservation to a train that went first to Marseilles then to Nice. we arrived about an hour or two late. our phones didnt work. we couldnt figure out how to get to the hostel with melanie's directions that involved a tram and a shuttle and a grocery store. probably because we were stressed and upset lol. so we took a stupidly expensive cab to the hostel.

this hostel was basically spring break: EU. everyone was drinking and being ridiculous. a strange night ensued and i crawled into bed at like 3 or 4. i was set to leave for Genoa, Italy that afternoon so when my roommates got up to leave, i slept in and then spent time on the internet then headed for the train station.

ok so are you ready for the NICE to GENOA FIASCO?

i get onto a pretty nice train with compartments with about 6 seats each. i had mine to myself. i get my luggage onto the luggage rack and settle down in the window seat about 30 minutes before departure and wait. and wait. and wait and wait and wait. about an hour or more goes by and we're still there. i hear voices in the hall and see people getting off the train, so i follow suit. i dont know french or italian, which is what everyone was speaking. but an old lady in broken english said ¨strike.¨

the french had gone on strike since i'd gotten on the train! professor wilkerson always spoke of how often the french go on strike, but it had yet to affect me. so i follow a bunch of australians who followed a bunch of italian speaking frenchmen onto some other platform and jump on some random train. i was completely unsure of where we were going but i attached myself to an older australian couple also heading for Genoa and we ended up in Ventimiglia, just over the border in Italy and met up with the train we were SUPPOSED to take. it had for some reason departed from Nice completely empty and met up with us in Ventimiglia. we got on and ended up in Genoa an hour later than originally planned.

so far, i'm not in love with transportation here.

lazy sunday afternoon

so i'm in madrid. in a VIPS with internet access. i'm soooo bored. the town basically shuts down on sunday and rita had to go home to northern spain for the weekend for some family stuff so i've been wandering and it's cold and windy and rainy. blah. i suppose i'll back up, since i haven't posted in like a week. i'll fill in the france-italy hole after this post.

so i got to madrid friday night. i met up with rita, who i met while studying abroad in china this past summer and who lives in madrid. that day had been her graduation so i we met up with her mom, cousin and friend and had dinner at like 11pm then went out dancing from about 1am to 4am. crazy spaniards.

i guess because her family was in town, we stayed in a hotel that night and when she had to leave the saturday morning for northern spain, said i could have the room for that night and on sunday she'd be back and we'd go to her apartment. so that was nice, if not a little confusing!

on saturday i went to retrieve ryan from the airport. knowing that i'd be in spain for 3 weeks, he decided to make use of his parents open-ended offer for a graduation present and decided to come to spain for the same time. when we got out of the metro, guess what ryan's first impression of madrid was? no less than 300 men and women riding their bicycles NAKED through the streets of spain. i mean... totally naked. unabashedly naked. surprisingly naked. soooo odd. ryan and i basically wandered around all day. ate at VIPS twice, since it was simple and close by. it was sunny and gorgeous and i'm sorry we didn't take better advantage of the day.

today i woke up and got breakfast in the hotel before checking out. little did i know, breakfast was NOT included and i got stuck with a bill for far too many euros. (it was like over €20 plus it looked like rita and her friend got breakfast 2 days ago so you can imagine how much the bill was...) on the other hand, i'm staying here basically rent free so in the larger picture, it's not soooo bad.

walking around with ryan, i figured we'd start at the Plaza Mayor and go from there. the problem was, in a sharp contrast to yesterday, today is pretty cold. i am not dressed weather appropriate and my luggage is at rita's friend's apartment. rita and i were supposed to go to Ibiza today, which is essentially a beach island, so i packed accordingly into my backpack before leaving the rest of my stuff at Lorena's... then it turned out Rita couldn't get back in time from her home to make the flight so we cancelled the journey. i'm wearing a dress with a cardigan... i'm very cold. a main reason why i've taken refuge in this VIPS.

ryan is all tuckered out. after being apparently wide awake at 6am, he seems to have maxed out on energy. in our desperation to find shelter from the cold, we had stopped in a starbucks where he fell asleep. i told him i'd be at vips for internet so i'd either go back there when i'm done or he could come here when he wakes up. not a great plan, but i wasn't exactly goign to sit there while he slept and he didn't seem very willing to wake up. i guess he's not as over his jet lag as he do proudly proclaimed earler :P

rita gets back at like 11 tonight. i havent eaten anything since that absurdly expensive breakfast. i think that's partially because i can't bring myself to spend more money since i spent an entire day's rations on that one meal without being aware of it. if i had been aware, i probably would have gone all out accordingly. actually, i wouldnt have eaten there at all. but that's neither here nor there.

a day in a valley whose name i couldn't even pronounce

so melanie really wanted to go to Loire Valley. like, really hard core wanted to go and see the chateus out there. i was indifferent /not really wanting to go, but figured i'd rather stay with the group. we had to take a train out to Tours and get picked up by a tour there. everyone else had bough eurorail passes and i had not. since a lot of my plans were so up in the air up until a week ago, it was hard to buy a whole lot ahead of time. anyway, so they paid 6 euro to reserve seats on the train and i went to buy a ticket and they hit me like 90 euros. holy crap. it was early in the morning so while i really should have been like, have fun guys i'll see you tonight, i dished out over $100 right there for a day trip. hooooly crap.

so we get there. it's cold. a little rainy. middle of nowhere (turns out we got out one stop early) and call this tour company that's supposed to pick us up. this was something melanie had planned so the rest of us were kind of like sitting ducks while we waited for a grey van to come get us and let her handle it. the chateus were cool. i can't remember the names of them, but i can tell you that they were french. i mean, they were pretty... but each one cost another 7 euros and then we had to pay like 20 or 30something euros to the driver... all in all, way too pricy a day. so we trained back. lindsey and melanie were cold and wanted to go back to the hotel. rosie and i really wanted to go see the basilisque de sacre ceure or however you spell that so we split up. rosie and i headed over to that area and had a delicious meal in a random cafe that we picked as we were walking around and then picked random things on the menu. we got a frenchy hamburger and a leg of chicken. and french fries! it was a pretty french meal, if i do say so myself. we walked up the 5 hundred million steps to the top of the hill that the basilisque is on. we thought we might die. but all of a sudden we turned a corner and there it was. it was magnificent.

i dont know why this place doesnt get more hype. we literally stopped in our tracks when we beheld this gigantic, beautiful building. it was too late to go inside (it was almost 11pm at this point) but we walked around it and took pictures and were just generally awe struck. amazing. a perfect end to the night.

an american in paris

ok paris was... cool. it was unbelievably close to what i've seen in movies and pictures. how often does that happen? so i believe i left off when we had finally arrived at our amazingly 2-star hotel in the Bastille area of Paris. luckily, this place had an elevator! (the previous hostel did not). granted, my suitcase (who has now been nicknamed 'squirt'... i'll explain after Paris) isn't that big and I can handle stairs alright. everyone else, however, has a little trouble. they're all smaller than me and have bigger suitcases! that just doesn't make sense.

anyway, one by one we went up (did i mention it was a teeny tiny elevator?) and found melanie bored and worried in the room. rosie and i were starving. we went out exploring around our hotel (granted it was like midnight at this point) and found a cafe that melanie had eaten lunch at (and had a bad experience with uncooked salmon... the french don't seem to like to cook their meat.) and settled in for a ridiculously expensive/yummy salad. this is when we had our first try at the sign language we would continue to use for the next 4 days or so. it went alright... melanie's really the best and worst at it. when she mimed a hairdryer i thought they were going to take away her wine.

the next morning we woke up at about 9:30 and ran downstairs for breakfast (which ends at 10) and had some croissants, coffee and orange juice. this meal didn't change for the next 4 days. granted, i'm not complaining :)

we decided to do all the ultra paris stuff the first day. we took the metro/train hybrid system out to the eiffel tower. i must say, after things in london not meeting my expectations, paris blew me away. the tower is freaking HUGE! i read that they were going to tear it down but then found out it was good for satellites or antennaes or something haha. we took pictures with it at every possible angle and decided to put off going up since it was sunday and the lines were ridiculous. we made our way towards the arc de triumph. again, humongous! it just chills there right in the middle of a traffic circle as people drive by. could you imagine driving past that every day during your morning commute? ridiculous. we took a lot more pictures and then went to find food because it was like 3pm and we were FAMISHED. at this point we were so hungry we weren't all that discriminating and ended up in a random italian restaurant where i had some decent tortellini with a diet coke, but it was again overpriced and not all that exciting.

after lunch we walked along the super expensive street whose name escapes me. we went into the louis vitton store (i probably misspelled that. don't hate.) where i felt a little nauseous/disgusted at not only the prices but the number of people buying things! a pair of sunglasses was over 300 euro. a key chain was over 200 euro. i mean... seriously? i can think of a lot of things i'd rather have for $1000 than a purse. but i guess i'm not schooled in brand names and can't appreciate the finer things in life. oh well, i think i'll live.

we strolled through the gardens in front of the louvre. that was pretty. we passed a bunch of random monuments we previously did not know existed. for instance, in the square where marie antoinette was beheaded they have replaced the guillotine with a huge obelisk that someone important in egypt presented to some french ruler awhile ago. very random.

we walked along the Seine to the latin quarter of paris. apparently it used to have a bunch of universities taught in latin in the area. we walked up to notre dame. man. that place is pretty. it's free to go inside, but i felt so bad about it. there was a mass going on so when youw alk in they send the mass people to the middle and the tourists to walk around the outside. it just felt way to disrespectful to take pictures while these people were trying to convene with God, so don't expect any pictures. everyone else was just snapping away though! and they didn't even turn off their flashes. i mean, now that i'm writing about it i guess it doesnt seem like a big deal, but at the time it made me uncomfortable. don't get me wrong, though. the cathedral is gorgeous. my only exposure to it before was the disney movie Hunchback of Notre Dame. i mean, they are all very talented artists over at disney, but it just didn't compare tot he real thing. the ceilings are so high! and the art and thestain glass windows... sigh. it was meant to be a bible for peasants who might not be able to read, so there are frescos and stuff everywhere of important scenes from the bible. i knew most of them... though i didn't remember the relevance of a story taht involved stabbing babies with swords. anybody know that one? i'd be curious to know.

we explored the little streets and alleys in the latin quarter for awhile and decided that we wanted coffee. unfortunately, it was well after 7 and every restaurant was well into dinner. so we stopped at a little crepe place and had the most delicious crepes ever with coffee. mmmm... ours had chocolate and banana. yum yum YUM.

we wandered a bit more, found an internet cafe but then it started to rain so we headed back to the hotel. melanie and i took naps (i have some sort of coughing sickness that i'm trying to get over and she was jetlagged still) while lindsey went running (of course) and rosie just went exploring. that was pretty much it for the rest of the day, we were exhausted.

London Retrospective :)

so i'm writing from my hostel in Nice, France. due to lack of internet and the surplus of aforementioned french keyboards, i've managed to get really far behind in my blogging. i was going to do a whole reflective entry on my impressions of london but instead i'll give you this:



*it's ridiculously diverse. you think america is a melting pot, you need to come here. you never know what language the person you talk to is going to speak! in fact, there was some frusteration because the people working the front desk at our hostel were not, in fact, english so that caused some issues. i mean, of all places, you'd think english would fly in ENGLAND right? i mean wtf lol. \

*nobody wears flip flops! we felt very out of place in our rainbows... atleast we were comfortable!

*native british people are nice. they would notice the abandoned looks on our faces and recongize lost foreigners and try to help. immigrants to london, however, couldn't care less. they could be down right mean! this came up several times. coming to mind now is an asian woman that glared at us the whole bus trip from our hostel to the bus station for taking up space with our luggage...

*they have weird tastes. onion and cheese sandwich anyone?

*overall,, not too different a feel from a place like new york. except everyone has an accent and just LOOKS british. i can't put my finger on how you can distinguish someone from london, but you can. i can't tell if it's the physical features of their face or just the slightly snooty way they carry themselves... either way, you can usually tell if you're about to be confronted with an accent or not.

*oh yeah, and it must SUCK to be a british guard. our walking tour guy took us to one specifically to take pictures with him. jeez that's awful. i mean, i totally went and took a picture with the guard cuz i know a good opportunity when i see one, but seriously... what a job.


i had a whole incoherent piece of paper filled out with dumb thoughts on the UK.. it hink i spared you the really bad ones that i thought were brilliant or humorous on the bus ride from london to paris... either way, london's cool but definitely not *my* european city where i dream to live.