Good-bye Rome, Hello Paris

Colin and I discovered a couple of things while in Italy:  1. pizza, pasta, and gelati here is the most delicious we've ever had, and 2. we hate tourist-y areas with huge crowds and price gouging.

When in Rome, we didn't really do as the Romans...we did the tourist thing and visited all the must-see places.  Looking back, we probably should have taken the time to get out of the tourist-central area that is pretty much all of Rome.  The crowds, the aggressive peddlers, the price gouging, and the generally terrible service has really left a bit of a sour taste in our mouths. 

This is really an expensive city unless you know where to look, but even then it's still a bit on the expensive side.  Most restaurants you go to (especially near the tourist attractions) will charge you a mandatory service charge of anywhere between 10-15%, or a cover charge of about 2 Euro per person.  Plus if they give you bread, it's another 2 Euro per person. 

We also don't know what it is about our experience in Italy with service in general, but about 2/3 of the time it's been horrible.  For example, the reps at the service counter at the train stations have consistently been rude to us even though we've been completely courteous.  Many restaurants we've been to, the servers have looked at us like we were inconveniencing them in some way.  We've come to the conclusion that either Italians are not so hospitable, or they're just sick of the crazy amounts of tourists that come through every day.  We're hoping it's more the latter.

On a nicer note, the architecture in Rome is amazing.  It's difficult to believe the age of some of their structures and monuments because they're so well preserved.  The streets are so much cleaner than in Naples, and also much easier to maneuver than Venice.  The tour guides here in Italy are regulated and must be licensed in order to work, so we've found the prices for tours is one thing that isn't overpriced.  In fact, well worth the money at usually 8 Euro per person plus the entrance fee.

We visited the coliseum on Tuesday and were awestruck at how massive it was, and to think it was all built by hand...brick by brick.  Our ticket to the Coliseum got us into the Palatine on Wednesday which was where the Romans lived and worked.  It was basically just wall after wall of brick and stone ruins with marble columns interspersed.  Maybe we've done too much sightseeing, but we're feeling like everything is starting to look the same.  This 2,012-year-old brick wall looks just like that 2,027-year-old brick wall, which looks just like those 1,976-year-old brick walls over there.  It's really great that they're still in existence, but it's just so difficult to appreciate its importance when you're crammed into crowds and crowds of tourists, pushing and shoving.  It is crazy how sophisticated the architecture was thousands of years ago though.  Thursday we visited Vatican--the world's smallest sovereign state.  The art is just absolutely amazing.  It's unbelieveable the amount of money the church must have spent on everything.

We had rainy weather the first day in Rome, so we decided to skip Cinque Terre and make our train reservations to go straight to Paris...then found out the weather has been beautiful there.  Crap.  Oh well, we figured Cinque Terre is a place we should visit during warmer weather in order to enjoy its full potential anyways.  We'll have to make a point to go back during warmer months. 

After the 15-hour train ride, we arrived in Paris this morning.  We're here for 5 nights and after first day here, we're really liking it.  It is so multicultural here, and I'm loving putting all the years of French classes I took to use (though I am really rusty).  We bought a 4-day museum pass and will be blitzing through the next few days.  Then the plan is to go for a day trip to Versailles on Tuesday (thanks Lori for the suggestion).

The Vatican Museum - beautiful carving in red marble (that has been mined to extinction by the Romans)

The Fontana di Trevi - must-see at night...absolutely gorgeous

The Coliseum - it was raining and we weren't too impressed.



Pinocchio!

Fontana di Trevi again

Beautiful double helix staircase in the Vatican - actually 2 sets of stairs

Sorry the pictures are all out of order....it takes too long to try to organize them and I didn't think anyone would care. :)

Day 1 in Rome

Wow, what a full day.  We normally don't post anything until we've finished with a city but it was such a good day, we wanted to share right away. 

Colin and I have agreed that if we can walk somewhere, we will, just so we can avoid the buses.  (The weather is changing and it seems so many people are sick.)  We are walking machines!  We think we clear on average about 10k a day, sometimes more, sometimes less.  Our shoes we bought brand new before the trip are getting really worn in already.

Anyhow, we got to Rome this afternoon.  What a change from Naples!  The architecture is breathtaking.  I mean, we were fascinated with buildings that were hundreds of years old.  The ones here are thousands of years old.  We decided to take the walking tour at 5:30pm tonight with the company New Rome Free Tours.  Our tour guide was the infamous Stefano that everyone seems to have heard about on TripAdvisor.  We definitely recommend him if anyone comes to Rome.  He taught us all sorts of things about Rome and how to do things the way the Romans do--like how to drink from a fountain, eat spaghetti, cross a street, toss a coin into a fountain, and even what not to do--like order cappucino after dinner.  Cappucino is a morning drink, and you're not supposed to eat the foam off the top with a spoon--you drink it, not eat it.  If you cut your spaghetti with a knife or eat your cappucino, you're a "barbarian."  All jokes of course...he was seriously entertaining.  The 2-hour tour turned into a 2.5-hour tour, and by the time we were finished, we were famished!

We went to an Italian restaurant that Stefano recommended to us and ended up sitting next to 3 ladies that were on the tour with us:  Bonnie, Sherry, and Diana from Florida.  They were on an all-ladies trip, blitzing Italy in 1 week before returning home to Florida.  We had great conversation--pretty much told them our life story.  The topic of marriage came up and they calculated that they had 93 years of marriage between the 3 of them!  And they're all still happily married.  They said the key to a happy marriage is to take the time to do all-girls and all-guys trips every so often.  Agreed. 

We were eating our limone sorbetto dessert and Diana thought we were so cute, she had to take a picture for us.  Then the bills came and Colin and I were trying to figure out what everything was when Diana asked to see our bill.  We didn't think anything of it...thought she was helping us figure out our bill.  Next thing we knew, they were handing the bill back with money!  They paid for our whole dinner, and would not take no for an answer!  They said for us to take it as good luck for a great future together.  We were so shocked we didn't know how to react.  We gave them all hugs as they left the restaurant.  That was so sweet of them.  As I'm writing this, I'm still sort of speechless...for some strangers to be so generous is not anything we've ever come across before.

Stunning Venice vs. Stinky Naples

Well, it took us 15 hours to get from Prague to Venice, via Salzburg (not Vienna as originally planned).  We had to switch trains at midnight--won't do that again.  It was cold and wet, we were hungry, and nothing was open.  When we booked the reservation, we were told that the next train would already be there waiting by the time we arrived on the first train so we could just hop right on.  Nope.  When we got there, the train station was deserted, our train number wasn't on the list of departures, and we had no idea what the heck was going on.  Thank goodness we found an old Italian man there who was heading on the same train we were.  We were beginning to think we got on the wrong train and that we would have to sleep in the cold until the morning!

It was well worth it when we got to Venice though.  Wow, what a beautiful city...and no cars, just boats.  It was great not having to worry about crossing streets.  Although, Venice is really a world of its own.  It's surrounded by beautiful, vibrant, green ocean water; made up of 117 islands; connected by 429 bridges; pretty much entirely built on wood piles sunken under water.

According to the manager at our hotel, the tourist thing to do in Venice is to get lost on its streets.  So we did, and it wasn't difficult either.  The maps don't show all the street names and most streets don't go through--you either end up at a dead end, or at some steps that lead into the canal.  The only way we knew to get around was to retrace our steps and go by memory of landmarks.  Definitely a different experience.  Another great thing about Venice?  It has fresh fruit and vegetables!!  The first thing we did was buy a bunch to bring back to the hotel with us.  YUM.  We also had the most delicious gelato (multiple times) for only 1 Euro a cup.

We were only in Venice for 2 nights, then headed for Naples first thing Saturday morning.  Wow, what a shock when we finally got here.  From outside the train station, our first impression was that we were in Mexico!  The sidewalks were dirty, packed with people, lined with makeshift shops selling fake LV purses, and the streets were complete chaos.  Cars and vespas coming at you from everywhere and they don't slow down just because you're walking across the street...in fact I think they speed up.  Haha.  And to top it all off, there's currently a garbage strike going on in Naples--some piles are 6-feet high and smell horrible.  We're pretty happy we only booked 2 nights here.

We're staying at Hostel of the Sun--cute little place with all the amenities you need as a backpacker.  The girl at the front desk told us  last night of the best pizza place in Naples (Gino Sorbillo) so off we went.  Naples is the birthplace of pizza, you know.  Wow, that was definitely the most amazing pizza we have ever had, and it was cheap!  They were the about the size of a medium and ranged from 3-8 Euros a piece.  We've had 2 more since then and they don't even compare.  I think we're ruined for life now....the only place we'll ever find good pizza is in Naples.

Today, we visited the buried city of Pompeii.  It was a Roman city that was covered by a volcanic eruption in 79AD.  The volcanic ash seemed to preserve the city extremely well.  Almost 2,000 years later, archeologists are still able to uncover details of their stone flooring, murals (called frescos), and even the remains of humans and animals.

We're pretty tired from all the walking and travelling.  It's 10pm now and Colin's been passed out for the last hour next to me as I write.  We're both feeling a lot better, although it's taken me over a week to kick this cold.  The nice weather in Italy is helping ;)   Tomorrow, we head off to Rome!  Ciao.

Beautiful island cemetery in Venice...view from the water bus on the way to the hotel.

  

Our room at Ca' Bauta hotel in Venice...we were originally going to stay at their hostel but got upgraded to this beautiful room in a 400 year old palace.

Just off of the Rialto Bridge in Venice



We had to do one tourist-y thing ... this was the view from our gondola ride.



That's the gondola guy in the background.  His English wasn't too good so he spoke French.  All those French courses I took didn't completely go to waste ;)

That's the Rialto Bridge in the background...view from our gondola ride.

Naples - the only picture we got of our delicious pizza dinner at Gino Sorbillo

   

Pompeii - This is a plaster cast of a body that was preserved in the volcanic ash.  While digging, archeologists found a cavity in the volcanic rock with what appeared to be bones inside so they stopped digging and injected plaster inside the cavity.  This is what they ended up with after chipping away the rock around the hardened plaster.  You can see the expressions frozen on their faces at the time the eruption hit.  Creepy...and cool all at the same time.



This is how detailed their flooring was 2,000+ years ago...preserved by the ash.

The coliseum in Pompeii

Preserved 2,000+ year old fresco in Pompeii

Naples - Gallerie di Umberto - essentially a ritzy shopping centre

Great pile of garbage...there were tons of these all over the city.

Colin found Heaven in Prague

What?!  Beer is cheaper than water?!  We went to a Czech restaurant yesterday to have some traditional food and, being me, I order water.  The bill comes.  Beer, 40 Korunas ($2.50 Cdn).  Water, 98 Korunas ($5.75 Cdn)!!  Wow.  Serves me right for trying to order water I guess.  Won't do that again.

Prague has been absolutely amazing as well--what a beautiful city with so much history.  We've spent the last 4 nights in Prague and Colin and I have been packing our days completely full...leaving at 9am and getting back by 9pm...sometimes later.  We've been absolutely exhausted, and it doesn't help that we've both been a bit sick.  He's all better, now I'm trying to kick it by overdosing on vitamin C....work in progress.  One great thing is the weather Gods have been absolutely wonderful to us--we haven't been rained on yet.  It seems the rain starts after we get back to our hostel. 

Before coming to Europe, we knew what we would probably miss most are our dogs.  What we did not anticipate is how much we would miss vegetables and fruit!!  OMG...the common theme here is bread, cold cuts, and cheese for breakfast especially, and lots of bread and meat for lunch and dinner.  We're finding ourselves eating every last bit of anything remotely green on our plates, which is mostly garnish.  We're hoping Italy will be better.

We spent a lot of time in downtown Prague--very tourist-y but so much culture.  I really loved the outdoor market, and there's an awesome festival going on right now in Old Town Square--tons of delicious food and drink.  Prices in the city are not so cheap because it's mainly populated by tourists, but a lot of things are still less than at home.  Our tour guide told us the population of Prague is about 1 million, with 10 million tourists going through each year.  We saw our first string concert last night for $35 each, and spent about $40 each on a 1-hour Thai massage yesterday too--absolutely amazing.  We felt soooo good afterwards!  Just what we needed to continue on our journey. 

Today we went on a trip to Kutna Hora, a town about 1 hour from Prague, to see a chapel that's decorated on the inside with the bones of 40,000 people!  (Thanks, Sonia for the suggestion.)  There's a really long story behind all of that, but the gist is these are supposed to be the bones of the thousands of people who died from the plague in the area.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutn%C3%A1_Hora for a better explanation.  In Kutna Hora, we had a traditional Czech lunch, and Colin had their Kutna Hora beer for only 20 Koruna ($1.25 Cdn)! 
Our itinerary changed a bit again...we're off on our journey to Venice tomorrow via Vienna.  There don't seem to be any trains from Prague to anywhere in Switzerland!  Boo.  Then we thought we might spend a couple of days in Vienna since we're stopping there anyways but we realized after looking at the calendar that we are running out of time!  We're cutting Greece out entirely because of that.  Who knew 6 weeks would get filled up so quickly??  Guess we'll just have to come back another time.

Outdoor market near Old Town Square

Charles Bridge

Old man playing and instrument we've never seen before...sounds like bagpipes, but a lot quieter!

Bread baked over coals coated in sugar

Mmmmmmmmm....

Roast pork...with bread

Delicious chicken kebab in...yup, you guessed it...MORE BREAD!

Horse carriage ride...

The Rudolfinum in the background...where we saw the string concert

Look closely up top...you'll see a pair of skull and cross-bones.  This is apparently (and we believe it) the only Catholic church in the world where you will see such a thing!  This is where the inside is decorated in human bones.

The architect even signed his name on the wall in bones

That's a chandelier above Colin...apparently every bone in the human body can be found in it.  I didn't see any ribs in there though.

Here are a couple of pictures from the day before we came to Prague.  These were from Leipzig, Germany (pronounced Lype-zeesh).

Bodyworlds in Leipzig!  Some things we saw here that was different from the exhibit at home:  a fully fused skeleton of someone who had ankylosing spondylitis, a woman with an 8-month fetus, and a fully articulated male and female during intercourse. 

We visited the grave of Johann Sebastian Bach in the St. Thomas Cathedral

The Real Berliner

Can we say we <3 Berlin? We were originally going to stay here for 3 nights, but added another night because there was just so much to see.

We had a bit of an adjustment period coming into Berlin...we can't really read German, you know. But after spending the last few days here we really got the hang of it all. The transit system is so efficient! Made it so easy and affordable to get around. This amazing city has really grown on us and we're sorry to be leaving tomorrow.

Colin and I spent the last few days taking in the whole German history of WWII / Nazi Regime / Holocaust. We really have a profound respect for this city and country for owning up to such a heinous past. The massive numbers of memorials in one form or another dispersed all over the country are overwhelming to say the least. We found ourselves in awe upon the realization of the sheer epic significance of the land upon which we stood--this is the epicenter of WWII, where the world began to reshape into what we know of it today. This is where the word propaganda obtained its negative connotations. Where the term anti-semitism was born. Where one man with an incredible speaking ability was able to manipulate an army of otherwise intelligent and empathetic people to commit such horrendous crimes against minorities.

We have learned so much these last few days, returning to our hostel each night mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted. On our first day here, we took a walking tour with a company called New Berlin--where our tour guide, George, an American who moved to Berlin 3 years ago, taught us all about Adolph Hitler from start to finish. We absolutely recommend this tour to anyone visiting Berlin. It was affordable (some are free) and extremely informative--way exceeded our expectations. He gave us the run-down at each location we visited, including the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, Soviet War Memorial in Tiergarten, Reichstag (Parliament Building), the site of the Former SS and Gestapo headquarters, Goebbel's Propaganda Ministry, and the site of Hitler's bunker where he committed suicide (now, appropriately, a parking lot). Most of the city of Berlin was destroyed in the Battle of Berlin during WWII. The few remaining buildings and structures were repaired and you can still see where they were riddled with bullet holes and hit with bombs and shrapnel.

Yesterday, we took a ride out to see the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. On our way out, we met a couple of other travelers on their way to the same place: Izac from Australia (Perth), and Victor from Mexico. We lost Victor at the camp, but ended up going through the entire place with Izac. Wow, you really have to see it with your own eyes and physically experience it to be able to even slightly understand the horrors that occured there.

Today, we visited Treptower Park, the site of a 30-metre high memorial dedicated to the more than 20,000 Soviet soldiers who perished in the 12 days of the Battle of Berlin. 7,000 of these soldiers are buried there. We also revisited the Holocaust Memorial to see the museum there--I was brought to tears seeing the photographs during that time. It is a brilliantly presented memorial.

On a lighter note.....we have had an excellent time here. Everyone has been so polite and friendly. And the cars actually stop for you! We were quite pleasantly surprised, especially after having been nearly run over multiple times in Amsterdam. Just kidding...only once or twice. ;) Everything is so much cheaper here too!! We completely blew our budgets in Amsterdam, but made it all up in no time here.

Tomorrow, we go to Leipzig where we will visit the Bodyworlds exhibition and check out the site where Napoleon lost the Battle of 1813.

At Checkpoint Charlie - we did the tourist thing and paid them 2 Euros each for a picture.  We had to do it.

A Beer Bike!  So you get 10 people to sit on the stools, get served beer, and pedal around the square...we thought it was hilarious.

"The Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe" - No explanation...just a huge field of concrete blocks of different heights. 

The remaining foundations of the SS and Gestapo building--this was where they brought people to question, torture, and murder.

The longest piece of the Berlin Wall left standing.  This is to protect the foundation that was uncovered (picture above)./

This is Izac from Perth.  Was nice spending the day with someone other than each other ;)



The Death Strip at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.  The barbed wire in the background is electrified.  Where Colin is standing, he would have been shot, and the soldier who shot him first would get a bonus for it. 



Sachsenhausen - "Pathology Building" - where they performed all the autopsies



Sachsenhausen - one of 3 large rooms in the basement where the piles of bodies were thrown



Soviet Memorial at Treptower Park



The area leading up the the 30-meter bronze memorial at Treptower Park



That's Colin climbing the stairs up to the memorial...just to give you an idea of how giant this thing is.



Trees lit up at night on Unter den Linden - downtown Berlin



Lit up Brandenburg Gate



This is Currywurst.  Pretty much just curry ketchup on weiners...some sort of fad here in Berlin.

This was our hostel room at the Grand Hostel Berlin.  It was pretty much like a hotel room.  In fact all the hostels we've stayed at here in Germany have been like hotels...go figure?