I'm apparently not very good at this whole having a blog business. I didn't realize there were comments on any of my posts. Maybe I should investigate some notifications or something. Oops.
We're now sitting back in Toronto, right across the hall from where I started this blog 3 weeks ago and once again we weren't even supposed to be in Toronto. The flights we had booked were Rome - Newark - Denver - Saskatoon. But when we checked in at the desk in Rome we were told we'd now be flying Rome - Newark - Toronto - Saskatoon. This time the eff up by United / Continental (same airline now as they're currently merging) worked out in our favor though. Not only do we arrive in Saskatoon 10 minutes earlier, but we got to clear customs here in Toronto instead of having to do it in Saskatoon where the agents are generally grouchy and slow.
This comes at a cost though, Continental managed to mangle one of our bags. It was a small carry-on style one that we checked and really isn't made to be carried through an airport, and especially not when it is filled with wine. I think when the customs agent in Toronto saw me carrying this awkward bag up to her desk she took pity on us and let us slip through with one too many bottles of wine.
We'll be boarding our final flight home soon. See you all shortly.
-Ryan
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Island
The city of Rome is just outside the walls of our hotel property, but the hotel itself does not seem to belong to the city. I shouldn’t be surprised that this hotel is a little sanctuary of North America in the middle of Italy, nor is that a bad thing after 3 weeks of traveling, its just a bit strange to walk off a crowded Roman bus into a spacious, quiet hotel where the vast majority of people seem to be native English speakers.
The place has actually been great. Indoor pool, saunas, Turkish baths, restaurants and bars. They’ve also been very accommodating to tourists. They have shuttles to the major attractions and provided us right away with a good map of the city and information on how to find the hotel on public transit.
Our time here has been fairly well spent. Our first day we did a quick tour of the city and saw some of the major highlights (many of which we’ll end up looking up to see exactly what all our picture are actually of). There is a children’s book here that I might have to pick up before I go home. It has pictures of how buildings currently look (ie, 3 standing pillars and a few scattered bits of wall) with a plastic overlay of how the place probably looked hundreds of years ago. I think I’ve picked this book up at about 15 different locations across the city. Maybe I should have had Mel making a photo diary of all the places in Rome I read children’s books.
Our second day was scheduled to be a tour out to Pompeii, but I think we’ll have to settle for Google street view on that one as we woke up feeling terrible and decided to sleep in, do some shopping, and make use of the hotels spa area instead, which brings me to the one bone to pick with this place. In the spa area it is compulsory to wear slippers and bathing caps. Not so bad for people used to that who bring a proper swim cap and flip flops. But for us, we ended up wearing hotel shower caps with little slippers like my grandma used to wear. I can understand the caps might be to keep hair and hair related chemicals out of the pool water, but I’m pretty sure the slippers were just for the comic relief of the spa workers as they watch people grease their way around the slippery tile floor. Or maybe they just screwed up the Italian/English translation of “Slipper”. Instead of being a little shoe you slip ON it is a little shoe you slip IN. Once wet (so about 2 seconds into the spa) walking around on the tile of the spa was about like walking on icy roads in the spring when you get that layer of water to really make you slide around. We tolerated the rules though, but could not tolerate the place after about 5pm when the business men here for meetings decided it was time to slip out of their suits and into their speedos for a quick dip. Gah! I’m sure I don’t look great in my new Italian grape smugglers, but at least I don’t have to look at me. (JK, I did NOT purchase a speedo, but sure did threaten to on occasion).
Today we went to the Vatican. Big thumbs up for purchasing tickets online with a reserved time in the Vatican museums. It saved us about 3 hours of waiting in lines. In fact, we didn’t wait in a single line all day for more than about 5 minutes. I think by about noon the line to get in was closing in on a km long and 4 people wide! The tour guides were circling the end of the line like hungry sharks: “Skip the line!”, “No wait, tour with us!”, “Only 45 Euro to save 3 hours waiting!”. I think these tour guides are carnies during the summer, they made me hopeful to see a Skee-ball game nearby.
We’re now all packed and ready to come home. The only thing left to do is decide if I want pizza or pasta for my last supper here.
TTYL,
Ryan
The place has actually been great. Indoor pool, saunas, Turkish baths, restaurants and bars. They’ve also been very accommodating to tourists. They have shuttles to the major attractions and provided us right away with a good map of the city and information on how to find the hotel on public transit.
Our time here has been fairly well spent. Our first day we did a quick tour of the city and saw some of the major highlights (many of which we’ll end up looking up to see exactly what all our picture are actually of). There is a children’s book here that I might have to pick up before I go home. It has pictures of how buildings currently look (ie, 3 standing pillars and a few scattered bits of wall) with a plastic overlay of how the place probably looked hundreds of years ago. I think I’ve picked this book up at about 15 different locations across the city. Maybe I should have had Mel making a photo diary of all the places in Rome I read children’s books.
Our second day was scheduled to be a tour out to Pompeii, but I think we’ll have to settle for Google street view on that one as we woke up feeling terrible and decided to sleep in, do some shopping, and make use of the hotels spa area instead, which brings me to the one bone to pick with this place. In the spa area it is compulsory to wear slippers and bathing caps. Not so bad for people used to that who bring a proper swim cap and flip flops. But for us, we ended up wearing hotel shower caps with little slippers like my grandma used to wear. I can understand the caps might be to keep hair and hair related chemicals out of the pool water, but I’m pretty sure the slippers were just for the comic relief of the spa workers as they watch people grease their way around the slippery tile floor. Or maybe they just screwed up the Italian/English translation of “Slipper”. Instead of being a little shoe you slip ON it is a little shoe you slip IN. Once wet (so about 2 seconds into the spa) walking around on the tile of the spa was about like walking on icy roads in the spring when you get that layer of water to really make you slide around. We tolerated the rules though, but could not tolerate the place after about 5pm when the business men here for meetings decided it was time to slip out of their suits and into their speedos for a quick dip. Gah! I’m sure I don’t look great in my new Italian grape smugglers, but at least I don’t have to look at me. (JK, I did NOT purchase a speedo, but sure did threaten to on occasion).
Today we went to the Vatican. Big thumbs up for purchasing tickets online with a reserved time in the Vatican museums. It saved us about 3 hours of waiting in lines. In fact, we didn’t wait in a single line all day for more than about 5 minutes. I think by about noon the line to get in was closing in on a km long and 4 people wide! The tour guides were circling the end of the line like hungry sharks: “Skip the line!”, “No wait, tour with us!”, “Only 45 Euro to save 3 hours waiting!”. I think these tour guides are carnies during the summer, they made me hopeful to see a Skee-ball game nearby.
We’re now all packed and ready to come home. The only thing left to do is decide if I want pizza or pasta for my last supper here.
TTYL,
Ryan
Saturday, October 9, 2010
When in Rome...
...internets are expensive and keyboards are messed up! There is a note on the monitor that reads "For the @ Press AltGr + Q" but there was no map pointing out the Alt-GRRRRRrrrrrr button and most of the keys are worn down in here. I eventually found it and life continues though.
The last couple days were spent in La Spezia and Cinqe Terre (as an aside, a woman just walked past the business center here with wrap around ear muffs on. Its about 24C outside! WTF?). We hiked most of the Cinque Terre trails, but one section was closed due to weather, rain the night before makes it dangerous I guess, as opposed to the first section we did which was ALWAYS dangerous. We both survived though, despite not having hundreds of dollars of trekking gear to help us like about half the people had (the other half was split between people in normal street wear like us and people hiking in beach wear and flip flops which must have make the hard core hikers feel a bit over...geared?).
We're in Rome now as you might have guessed by the title. Plan to visit the ancient city tomorrow, Pompeii Monday and the Vatican Tuesday. I think we even made it to our hotel without getting anything stolen in the Rome train station, but I haven't really checked to make sure all my organs are still intact, I hear the pickpockets are really skilled here!
No internets (for a reasonable price) in our room so I probably won't post again until we're about to head home.
-Ryan
The last couple days were spent in La Spezia and Cinqe Terre (as an aside, a woman just walked past the business center here with wrap around ear muffs on. Its about 24C outside! WTF?). We hiked most of the Cinque Terre trails, but one section was closed due to weather, rain the night before makes it dangerous I guess, as opposed to the first section we did which was ALWAYS dangerous. We both survived though, despite not having hundreds of dollars of trekking gear to help us like about half the people had (the other half was split between people in normal street wear like us and people hiking in beach wear and flip flops which must have make the hard core hikers feel a bit over...geared?).
We're in Rome now as you might have guessed by the title. Plan to visit the ancient city tomorrow, Pompeii Monday and the Vatican Tuesday. I think we even made it to our hotel without getting anything stolen in the Rome train station, but I haven't really checked to make sure all my organs are still intact, I hear the pickpockets are really skilled here!
No internets (for a reasonable price) in our room so I probably won't post again until we're about to head home.
-Ryan
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
A bus to call our own
So the B&B we're staying at in Florence is sort of out of the way. In fact we seem to be in some sort of no man's land that doesn't even get included in maps. Seriously, there are 3 bus routes that go within a block of our place, but all the maps end about 2 blocks early. Even the city's bus maps show that the route continues, but it just seems to fall off the edge of the page. In any event, one of these routes is brand new, it just started running 3 days ago. Needless to say, when asking for directions on that route nobody has a clue. This has lead to a bit more walking around than required, but as a bonus we accidentally found one of the Piazzas we wanted to see.
Our first full day in Florence was pretty great actually. We got in to a gallery to see the statue of David, climbed up to the top of the cathedral's dome here for an excellent view of the city, and then went through a nice market that we spotted from the dome. Despite not being any sort of art buff, or really a fan of much art at all, there is a lot of very impressive stuff here. And admittedly, the 2.5 hours to wait to see the statue of David was a long time, it was still well short of the 8 hours to see David Sedaris last summer so this was totally worth it.
We learned 2 important lessons today. 1) To get all the Nutella out of a pack of Nutella and bread sticks you have to have about a tablespoon of delicious hazelnut/chocolate/icing stuff on each bread stick and 2) If a dude on the street playing a guitar-looking thing for tips thinks you're going to throw out the last of your gelato since you're about to enter a church he'll GLADLY take it off your hands.
I'm just going to throw in a couple pictures of the day, probably without any smart-ass comments...I'll leave that to you.
Our first full day in Florence was pretty great actually. We got in to a gallery to see the statue of David, climbed up to the top of the cathedral's dome here for an excellent view of the city, and then went through a nice market that we spotted from the dome. Despite not being any sort of art buff, or really a fan of much art at all, there is a lot of very impressive stuff here. And admittedly, the 2.5 hours to wait to see the statue of David was a long time, it was still well short of the 8 hours to see David Sedaris last summer so this was totally worth it.
We learned 2 important lessons today. 1) To get all the Nutella out of a pack of Nutella and bread sticks you have to have about a tablespoon of delicious hazelnut/chocolate/icing stuff on each bread stick and 2) If a dude on the street playing a guitar-looking thing for tips thinks you're going to throw out the last of your gelato since you're about to enter a church he'll GLADLY take it off your hands.
I'm just going to throw in a couple pictures of the day, probably without any smart-ass comments...I'll leave that to you.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Italia! Where "H" is heard, and not seen.
We just arrived in Florence today after 3 nights in Venice. You would think in a town with no roads that traffic wouldn't jam up, but you'd be wrong. Gondola traffic can get totally stalled when about 50 tourists in a group all want rides at the same time through tight canals. Seeing that really did a good job of busting the illusion of the quiet, romantic gondola ride through the city. Made me glad Mel and I just toured the Grand Canal from the comfort of our water bus...with about 120 Euro to spare in our pockets.
We both really enjoyed Venice and besides getting lost a few times early on everything went smoothly (including the flights with Alitalia, no lost bags and no cancellations, plus I'm sure they decrease the oxygen in the cabin because we both fell asleep as soon as we boarded and basically time traveled from Greece to Venice).
I have piles of pictures of the city as we spent the majority of our time just walking around enjoying all the sights Venice has to offer. We even managed to take in a live show depicting the history of the city. The gellato was as good as I was told it would be and believe it or not I think I like the pasta here even better than Chef Boyardee raviloli!
We're off to see the sights of Florence tomorrow and then going for a wine tour to Chianti Wednesday. We're planning to hit Cinqe Terre after that and finally on to Rome then home.
TTYL,
Ryan
We both really enjoyed Venice and besides getting lost a few times early on everything went smoothly (including the flights with Alitalia, no lost bags and no cancellations, plus I'm sure they decrease the oxygen in the cabin because we both fell asleep as soon as we boarded and basically time traveled from Greece to Venice).
I have piles of pictures of the city as we spent the majority of our time just walking around enjoying all the sights Venice has to offer. We even managed to take in a live show depicting the history of the city. The gellato was as good as I was told it would be and believe it or not I think I like the pasta here even better than Chef Boyardee raviloli!
We're off to see the sights of Florence tomorrow and then going for a wine tour to Chianti Wednesday. We're planning to hit Cinqe Terre after that and finally on to Rome then home.
TTYL,
Ryan
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