Alright, first things first. I made it home safely, if not late, but at least all in one piece. The trip was amazing, we (Kylie and I) made it to Valencia, Barcelona, Venice, Rome, the Vatican, and Palermo (Sicily) before heading home. We had a rough start, our gate was labeled wrong and the stewardess didn't check our tickets, so we accidentally boarded a plane to France. However, once past that hurdle things went significantly smoother. Here' s a picture of our first Hostel, in Valencia, located right in the Old Quarter. We spent our time exploring the city, going to the aquarium (2nd largest in Europe) and going to the beach. We also had Paella Valencia and Paella Mariscos, which both originated in Valencia.
I saw this picture in a tourist pamphlet and went on a search to find it. This was taken halfway through our epic 17hr day, turns out its located right off of the beach. Dunno why I liked it so much, probably because i'm on crew so i've come to like boats. This was the same day we ran around a castle in the old quarter, caught a football game, went to the aquarium, walked along the beach, had Paella, and saw the start of a protest (something about CO2). It was a LONG day, and there are many more pictures to show for it.
This is me in Barcelona, at the base of the Columbus statue which is located at the end of Las Ramblas, a famous line of streets. Two of our friends from London, Colleen and Ashley, were supposed to meet up with us in Barcelona, but before we had a chance to call them we randomly ran into them on the street. Good thing too, because their phone was broken. Barcelona has over 3 million people, yet we run into the only two we know, in a side street of an unpopulated area. What are the chances?
I just like this picture because of the trees- they look like they're out of Dr. Seuss or something. This park is right next to the Sagrada Familia, a famous church with a lot of Gaudi architecture. I took more pictures of the Gaudi influence, which is all over the city, but I just really like this one, so you'll have to wait to see the others. The authentic food we ate there were Tapas, a spanish appetizer, which we ate just before seeing a Flamenco show. Leaving Barcelona was when things started to get tricky.
Here's the deal with Venice: Never try to go there from Barcelona. You know what you will end up having to do? You will take the metro from your hostel to the train station, then a train to a bus depot, where you will buy a bus ticket to the airport, where you will get on a plane to Venice, where you will arrive at yet another bus terminal, where you will buy a bus ticket to the boat station, where you will catch a boat to the nearest station to your hostel, where you will wander around in the dark (oh yes it's night by now) trying to find your Hostel. Here you see all of my tickets: Metro, train, bus, plane, bus, boat. Just take my word for it: Don't do it.
We did end up making it, and a good thing too because Venice is AMAZING. A city on water! And it's sinking, so....i'm glad I got it off my list of things to do before I die/it sinks. While we were here the weather was less than amazing, a bit london-ish. Also, it was here that I had a momentary freak out about how much money I was spending, as did Kylie, and we decided to just have sandwiches for a few meals. That led us to a meal I will never repeat: Plain bread with prune jelly. Kylie thought it was grape jelly, but she was wrong, and we both suffered for it.
This is me in St. Mark's square. Lots of cool architecture and history here, but I was a bit damp and chilly, so we hurried through to find a nice warm, dry cafe. This was also our first city where we couldn't speak the language, so that was a bit bracing. All I could manage was 'parla inglese?' and if they said no then I just sort of... nodded, helplessly smiled, and wandered off. Public boats were expensive (€6.50 per ride) but we figured out that you can just sort of...hop on, and no one checks your tickets. Good times.
And from there we moved on to Rome. First we visited the Vatican, which was AMAZING. The artwork alone was breathtaking, though I admit (and as you can see in the picture) I was not quite humbled until I entered the Basilica. In this photo i'm just so excited to be NOT damp and cold in Venice, plus we had just found our hostel (with only a boat-train-bus ride to get there) so I was pretty excited. As you can tell.
Our Womens Hostel was actually a converted Convent, which we were a bit skeptical about (neither one of us is Catholic). However, 'Convent' really just meant 'feminist sleeping place', and we were right at home. After our crazy journey in Venice we were also skeptical about the location of the hostel, but as it turns out Rome is
tiny. We walked across and around the city in less than 5 hrs. Compare that to the fraction of Valencia we saw in 17 hrs and you catch my drift. Rome has around 5 million people, London has 7 million, and yet their size difference is immense! I couldn't believe it. We also had a delicious pizza, our 'authentic food' for the city.
This is the infamous colosseum . The day turned out to be gorgeous, and we passed many many ruins on our way to here. Past this we took a detour to the train depot (to get our overnight ticket to Palermo) and continued on to the Spanish Steps. We were promptly kicked off the Spanish Steps (something about them being a historical landmark, and us not being allowed to drip our gelatto on them...) but we just continued on to the Pantheon.
As we wandered the city we realized that the police kept setting up barriers everywhere we went. We realized eventually that there was some sort of protest going on, and we looked it up when we got back to our hostel. Apparently some legislation is being proposed which would privatize the Italian university, so these protests are being held all over Italy. This one attracted over 100,000 students the day we were there. This photo was taken with part of the pantheon on the side.
Alright, we're in the home stretch. From Rome we took a night train to Palermo. It was completely shady (aka sketchy) and we didn't really know what was going on. We felt fairly confident that we were on the right train, not on a plane to France, so we just got in our bunks, cuddled up in our saran wrap, and tried to sleep. That didn't last long, as they apparently give you a courtesy wake up call at 7am. At least we were on the right train.
Finding our hostel turned out to be even trickier, but if this is what the front area of your hostel looked like, wouldn't you have a hard time too? Apparently it was 'under construction' but it sort looked like it'd been that way for awhile. Nevertheless, it was probably the best hostel we stayed in. It was cheap, clean, and the guy that runs it is AMAZING. He was so helpful, gave us maps, directions, suggestions, bus numbers, coupons, the list goes on.
On his advice we took a bus to a city not 30 miles away, located up on a mountain. That strip of sun you see is basically outlining the original area of Palermo. The city also had a lovely church with craaazy mosaic artwork inside. We nearly missed the last bus back down again, but luck was on our side in the end.
I wasn't going to put this picture in here, but I can't figure out how to get it off my blog so i'm just going to leave it. In case you can't tell, that's me, and behind me is the same thing I just described. Gorgeous Palermo, even though in reality its quite dirty.
Our second day there we had a delicious italian breakfast at the hostel (did you know 'traditional italian breakfast' calls for cake? Nom nom nom) , bought a picnic lunch at a nearby local market, and headed to the beach side. It was yet another gorgeous day, and it was Sunday, so lots of families were out and about with their dogs and such. Our authentic food here was pasta and a delicious canoli. Ordering pasta was hilarious, because there were no pictures (it was a fancy place) so we literally just took a wild guess, pointed, and got a surprise meal. It was delicious though!
So thats a horribly shortened version of my amazing 10 day adventure. We caught our plane without too much trouble, but by the time we got back to London the tube was closed. We tried to navigate the night bus, but it doesn't really run very close to Gloucester road, so we had to walk a bit, and we didn't walk through the door till a little past 3am. Hopefully you can see why it took me awhile to get this all posted- the idea of summing up everything I did was just so daunting! Still, I gave it my best shot and i'm sure you'll hear more stories in time. Eventually i'll put all the pictures on my public Picassa account, but that calls for having a computer with picassa on it, which these school computers do not. Right, its past 1:30am now, so I need to go try to catch some sleep. Hope you enjoy and i'll try to get back into posting more often again! G'nite!
The rest of the day we wandered around Salisbury, taking a tour of the local Church and getting dinner before going to a show at the local theater. The Church was really cool, it was at least 700 years old, and the water table is barely four feet below. They even pulled up a tile, put a measuring pole in, and showed us how close the water level was. The baptismal font in the middle had a perfectly level surface, in which you could see a perfect reflection.
In this photo I was climbing unassisted up the North face of the mountain. I probably should have had someone with me, but I just kept repeating to myself the saying I'd heard so much as a child: If you can get yourself up, you can get yourself back down again. Then I remembered that it was Chris that used to say that, when I was all of 9 years old, climbing trees at the park with him underneath. A far cry from climbing mountains in Scotland, with hundreds of feet beneath me and no hospital for miles. Oh well!
