Italy Travelogue (Part 2)

That night I was interrupted mid sleep by someone opening the door. Turned out it was someone moving into the dorm - a lady from South Africa whose flight was severely delayed and she couldn't get any connecting buses/trains to reach the hostel. Anyway, after a brief hello, I went back to my dozing off.

21st March (Florence):


I got up early in the morning, showered, packed and checked out of the hostel. I then walked down to the Termini station to catch a train to Florence.

There are a number of different train services for travelling between cities in Italy. The regional trains are the slowest but the cheapest. They stop at most of the stations en route. The Eurostar trains are the most expensive but are fast and point-to-point. The Eurostar trains from Rome leave every half an hour for Venice and stop at Florence en route. The journey from Rome to Florence takes roughly an hour and a half and costs around €36. The Santa Maria Novella train station is the main train station in Florence. The journey further to Venice from Florence takes another two and a half hours and costs around €40. The direct ticket from Rome to Venice is therefore around four hours but the direct ticket costs around €55. You can book tickets in advance or find more information on the TrenItalia website here.

I reached Florence on a cloudy, dark and gloomy looking afternoon. After experiencing the weather's mood-swings in Rome, I was hoping to see sunshine later nonetheless. I had booked into a camp-site on the outskirts of Florence. Turned out it was an absolutely brilliant place with amazing views of the entire city of Florence. I was at a place called Piazzale Michelangeo (Link). The camp-site was a collection of people with their personal caravans or mobile homes and a large set of shared tents. Each tent had three beds. The challenging part was that these tents had neither electricity nor heating. A little battery powered light was handed out to me when I checked in. This sounded like fun!

I reached my tent and saw that my tent-mates were an American couple. The girl's ankle was badly sprained. She'd fallen while dancing in a club the previous evening. "It was pathetic - it was full of 19 year old American girls. Made me feel like my prom night." to quote the guy. I helped him get his companion into a cab and they went to a hospital. I had a leisurely lunch and went to the statue of David, an imitation of Michelangelo's most famous sculpture.

The square takes its name from the great bronze group that Giuseppe Poggi, the Italian architect placed in its centre, a real "pastiche" of the work of Michelangelo, composed of copies of his David (now in the Academy Museum) and the four allegorical figures Pope Clement VII commissioned him to carry out for the Medici tombs in the New Sacristy in San Lorenzo (these were for the tombs of Lorenzo Duke of Urbino and Giuliano Duke of Nemours).

I took a bus to the city centre which was about half an hour away on the bus.

Bus tickets in Florence cost €1.20 valid for a single trip or €4.00 for four trips and the tickets like Rome, can be found at tabacchi or at ticket counters on the bus station. The camp-site reception also sells these tickets.

I walked to the tourist information centre to see what I can find. I decided to walk to the the Accademia Gallery i.e. Galleria dell'Accademia (Link) which houses the world famous marble statue of David by Michelangelo (Link). It was raining quite badly by then and I thought I wasted an entire day in Florence. I decided to walk on in the rain anyway. The flimsy €3.00 umbrella that I'd bought on the walking tour of Vatican city seemed like every penny (or rather, cent...since we're talking Euros here) well spent. I reached the place only to find a humongous queue wrapping across three buildings. Ouch!

Determined not to let a day go waste, I got stuck into the back of the queue. I got speaking to a nice married couple. The husband was British and the wife was Spanish. They had married and were settled in Spain. Their little daughter was most amazing. She was eight years old and spoke the most amazing clear language I've ever heard a kid that age speak. Most of all, it wasn't gibberish and she sounded at least 15. The man told me that the little girl could also speak Spanish just as fluently. He was a big fan of India and spoke at length of his amazement with India and Indian food. He'd even taught his wife to make a number of curries though she admitted she couldn't make them as well as he does. The little girl then spotted a few girls, about 18 scribbling on the walls, writing their names. Graffiti is a major problem in Italy. A lot of the places are full of graffiti although people were sensible enough to make sure none was on the major monuments like the Colosseum or the Trevi Fountain etc. So the little girl actually went up to these girls and told them that scribbling on the walls was a wrong thing to do. It was hilarious to see a tiny eight year old scolding these older girls. We all had a good laugh. They were all from Chile and were scribbling their names on the wall.

I got some tips on Spanish cuisine from the lady while waiting in queue. After about an hour, I managed to get into the gallery with about two hours to spare before it closed. The most prized possession in this gallery is of course, Michelangeo's David and it is elaborately presented in a large hallway for itself. The statue itself is large and every bit of detail from the hair to the eyeballs to the veins on David's arms are carved in such detail that it is nearly impossible to believe that it is the work of a human hand. The rest of the gallery is full of other masterpieces but the David is surely something special.

I walked out of the gallery while it was still raining badly and walked around the city centre. The shops and the energy on the streets reminded me of a crowded evening on Laxmi Road in Pune. I walked into a Sisley store and felt like buying off half the shop. The suits in Italy really as good as their reputation. Brilliantly cut and most often a very good mix of classic and contemporary. I liked a three button jacket immensely but it was probably an inch too long. I asked if they could alter it for me but it would take them 3-4 days so I didn't buy it. I walked back to the bus stop near the Santa Maria Novella train station and took a bus back to my camp-site.

Back at the tent, the American couple were still gone. They returned late in the night. The girl had snapped her bone quite badly and needed to go back to USA and undergo surgery for it. They had spent the entire day shuttling from one hospital to a second one and were quite disappointed to have to cut their trip short. Unfortunate but unavoidable.

The night was chillier than I expected it to be. No wait... it was actually AWFULLY chillier than I had expected it to be. The rain only made things worse and half the night I could hear the rain slapping against the sheet of the tent. Now that I look back retrospectively, it was actually a good experience. I've never slept in a tent before so this was new and there was something special about hearing the rain almost sing you to sleep.

-PeAcE
--WiTh
---GuNs

Italy Travelogue (Part 1)

I'm back from my trip to Italy and I've been telling everyone that "How is Italy?" is the wrong question to ask. The question should rather be "How good is Italy?". The answer - unbelievably good!

I haven't written a travelogue for quite some time now and have been making up for that with photo travelogues. I've resolved to write one now for Italy though. I am going to write it in the form of an itinerary interspersed with details about travel, accommodation, attractions, costs etc. I will try to insert the local Italian names for places and things in Italics.

The Italian names for the Rome, Florence and Venice are Roma, Firenze and Venezia respectively. Please note that the bookings that I made from the UK are in £ (Pounds Sterling) whereas the amounts that I paid in Italy are in € (Euros).

19th March (Rome):

I took an early morning 06:00 flight from Leeds Bradford Airport to Rome with a connection in Amsterdam. I arrived in Rome at around 13:30. Italy is on Central European Time (CET) which is GMT + 1.00.

The Rome Fiumicino Aiport (Airport Code: FCO, Distance from city centre: 26 KM/ 16 miles) is used by most major airlines and is the most easily accessible. There is another airport in Rome called the Rome Ciampino Airport which is generally used by the smaller or budget airlines. There is a direct train called the Leonardo Da Vinci Express every half an hour from the Rome Fiumicino airport to the main railway station in the city centre known as the Rome Termini Railway Station (Stazione Termini). It costs €11 one way and takes about half an hour. The process to get to the city centre from the Ciampino airport is only slightly more complicated.

The second flight was slightly late so I reached my hotel around 14:00 local time. I had booked an airport pick-up service which dropped me off at my hostel in the city centre for £12. I barely missed a walking tour that started from my hotel so I thought I lost an entire day. I got a map and decided to wing it to the Colosseum (Colosseo) anyway. Surprisingly, the metro only took about five minutes to get to the Colosseum and so I managed to be in time to get in and spend a good two hours inside. Its remarkable how well a large structure like the Colosseum has managed to stand the ravages of time and natural erosion for almost 2000 years. If you didn't know how old it really was and were asked to take a guess, I am sure you would not be able to guess anywhere close to its actual age. It is magnificent.

You can get a bus or a metro to the Colosseum. There is a metro stop of the same name right outside the Colosseum. The tickets cost 1€ for 75 minutes and can be used for unlimited travel on buses or a single metro trip within the 75 minutes. Tickets (biglietto or biglietti plural) are available at all train stations, metro stops or at most tobacco shops (tabacchi). All train and bus tickets must be validated at validating machines before commencement of the journey. Validating machines for train tickets are available at the start of each platform, for metros before entering the metro platforms and inside the buses near the entrance. A ticket office or ticket window for any kind of tickets (bus, train, museums etc.) in Italy is called a Biglietteria. You can read more about tickets at this link.

On my way back, I stopped at a nice restaurant to have the original Italian Margherita pizza. It is the traditional pizza which has a thin crust with and tomato and mozzarella cheese toppings. Everything else is just a polluted form of the original "pizza". I must say it was the best Margherita pizza I've ever had. There is somehow that thing about food tasting the best in its original place. The only logical explanation I can find is that probably the small, seemingly inconspicuous ingredients are actually very different in different parts of the world. You may have the same chef making pizza with the same mozzarella cheese and tomatoes in India or the UK but maybe the taste of tomatoes is slightly different depending on where they are grown or when they are plucked etc.

I came back to my hostel around 18:00. I had booked a bed in a 4-bed en-suite dormitory but I was the only one in that dorm so I had it all to myself. It was good for me so I could throw my towel around! Unfortunately I did get quite bored in the evening so I went to the bar in the hostel to see if I could somehow amuse myself. I studied my map for a while, watched nonsense on TV and finished a drink while I was there. There was supposed to be a "pub-crawl" at 20:00 which I was wondering whether I should go on. The pub crawl basically meant a night tour of a few good pubs in the city with one hour of drink-as-much-as-you-can in one of the pubs. I don't drink so I would obviously be bugged while others got drunk but the prospect of a tour of the night-life did sound exciting. I decided to take a nap and then go on the tour. I slept at 19:00 and could only get up at 8:00 next morning. Whoops! That was a long nap...

20th March (Rome, Vatican City):

I looked up a three to four hour long walking tour of the Vatican City organised by the hostel and booked on to it. The tour guide was an American from Iowa who had decided to settle in Rome and make a living as a tour guide. Almost everyone except me in the group was American. I must admit I didn't quite get the American humour (or humor, as the Americans spell it) every time but it was a fun tour nonetheless.

The Vatican City is an independent country and the smallest in the world. It is a short bus or metro ride from the city centre of Rome or a pleasant long walk through the city.

We saw the Sistine Chapel (Capella Sistina) which has the famous roof painted by Michelangelo Buonarroti (yes, he has a last name). The famous painting of "God Creates Adam" is a part of this large roof painting. It is actually awe-inspiring and the brilliant three-dimensional effect created by Michelangelo on the curved roof is proof of his genius. Oh, just in case you didn't know - Michelangelo wasn't even a painter - he was a sculptor!

We also went to the St. Peter's Basilica which is one of the holiest places in the world for Catholic Christians. Most Papal ceremonies and addresses from the pope happen at this basilica.

I came back from the tour and had a late lunch with two guys I met on the tour - John, an American and Leah, a Canadian. They were both travelling alone like me but had been in Rome for about two weeks already. We had a debate about whether a penny is an official synonym for a cent or just a slang. Leah and I said that the penny is an official name for a hundredth of a Pound Sterling whereas the one cent coin in America is popularly and unofficially known as a penny. John disagreed. He announced "Guys, I'm American. I know my currency" and I told Leah that he had a point. We both pretended to agree.

I had something called Gnocci Al Pomodoro. Cookery fans can find the recipe for Gnocci Al Pomodoro right here.

Another nap and another miss for the pub-crawl! I decided to go on a walkabout anyway. I roamed around alone for about an hour on the empty streets around the city centre and realised that all those who told me that Rome is full of thieves and muggers had probably run into a bad area and some worse luck.

Off to Florence on the 21st...