Italian Escapades

Wow, so this is Italy! It’s truly a shame that I couldn’t spend more time here because it is truly a beautiful country. Lissie and I have been taking trains everywhere and have had a great chance to see the countryside. To be quite honest, however, most of it looks exactly like Greece. But it is still beautiful!

Our first day of travel was long… 3-hour train, 16-hour ferry, 5-hour train again. But we finally got there and were able to meet the other six from Concordia who flew directly to Rome the day before. We all went out to dinner at a restaurant called “Concordia” that we figured was pretty appropriate.

If you can believe it, Lissie and I saw the majority of the large sites in Rome within the only full day we were there. We saw the Spanish Steps the first night so were able to cross them off our list. We got up at 5:30 AM to get to the Vatican by 7:00 when it opened. We saw St. Peter’s Basilica when there were maybe 20 others there (first picture) and it was still quiet inside (absolutely gorgeous!!) and then took the Cupola tour and climbed up into the top of the basilica and then up into the cupola and saw the Roman skyline. It was gorgeous. Then we went to the Vatican museum which was filled with so many things that I don’t even know what to say. We were told that if you spent one minute in front of every piece in the museum, you would be there for over 14 years! Needless to say, we had to pick-and-choose what we saw. The second picture shows a painting on the ceiling... a PAINTING. Not a sculpture. It was amazing. We ended up going to the rooms of paintings, Egyptian stuff, map room, modern art, and of course the Sistine Chapel (third picture). Everybody says it is beautiful, but you have no idea until you can see it for yourself. It was crowded with tourists, so that wasn’t very pleasant, but the frescos were gorgeous!!

This is where my blog pictures end... I haven't taken the rest off of my camera yet. They will come in the next one hopefully!!

Then Lissie and I went to the Coliseum and took a tour of the inside. It is colossal… just like its name. It was originally used as an arena for gladiator fights and other types of violent entertainment involving people and/or animals.

Then we walked to the Pantheon which is a domed church that defies the laws of physics because of how it was built. The dome doesn’t have many supports on it and it is miraculous that it is still standing. It was very pretty inside.

Then we went to the Trevi Fountain which is just as spectacular as pictures show. We both, of course, threw money in backwards to ensure good luck, a good life, and a return to Rome.

Then we walked to the Church of Santa Maria di Maggiato (or something like that) which was one of the only other churches in Rome to rival St. Peter’s in size, although it was obviously significantly smaller. It was also very pretty inside.

We met our group for supper at the Arch of Constantine which was near the Coliseum. The 8 of us walked to the Piazza Navona for dinner. Three of them have birthdays coming up soon, so we celebrated that tonight by dressing up and eating nicely. It was delicious! Then we split up and went back to our respective hostels to sleep.

Lissie and I walked 14 miles on that day….. needless to say, our feet hurt by bed time! It was also kind of funny because the first night we were there, it stormed incredibly hard and we got caught in the rain and were soaked from head to toe. Our shoes were soppy and we weren’t looking forward to having to put them on again for our long day of walking. That obviously didn’t help our sore feet by the end of the day, but it wasn’t as bad as either of us anticipated, so we were grateful for that.

The following day, we went to the Roman Forum, the Palantino, the Circus Maximus, and the Mouth of Truth in the morning before 12:00 when we had to get back to the train station. We got on a train around 1:10 and came to Siena, which is about 3 hours away. We had a huge bus fiasco because the public transportation here isn’t clear to non-Italian speakers, and since it is a small town, not many people spoke English. We finally found a hostel to stay in… it is a bit out of town but is quite nice. We met a woman from Australia who helped us get to the hostel and then joined us for dinner at a local pizzeria that was delicious!! We had an early night because we wanted to have an early morning!

The first bus that drove by our hostel left at 7:20 AM, so we decided to catch it and see the city all morning. We got to the first church, called the Duomo, before 8:00 AM. The church is covered in black and white marble so it resembles zebra stripes. It looks really gorgeous. We found a pamphlet that had a walking tour of Siena, so we followed that around the older parts of the city. We saw a few other churches, a few gorgeous views of the surrounding areas, and we ended in the Piazza del Campo which is a large square outside of a governmental building and is used for horse races twice a year. Unfortunately it happens in like March and September, so we weren’t anywhere near seeing them. By this time we had walked over 4 miles and it wasn’t even 10:30 AM, so we caught a bus back to our hostel and decided to try and get on an earlier train to Pisa.

We got into Pisa early, easily found a cheap hotel and then we wandered aimlessly around Pisa for the night. We had pizza at a restaurant that looked at the tower, had gelato on the lawn in front of the tower, and had a relaxing night without anything pressing on our minds.

We left Pisa this morning and got on a train at 11:45 that eventually landed in Zurich. We spent over 9 hours on the train today, but Switzerland is gorgeous!! We are here for the next three days (which should all be nice weather) and I am so excited to see the mountains!

Speaking of nice weather, I hear the weather back home is going to suck these next few days. That's too bad.... you should probably order sunshine and warm weather for when I get home, though. Thanks, that'd be great!

More pictures!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000694&l=dd2fd&id=1273320032

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000696&l=54b57&id=1273320032