Well, for those who don't know I have arrived back home, however, I still have updates to get to and apparently a bit of jet lag as it's 4:45 a.m and I'm wide awake. I did wake up at an earlier point in the night petrified with no idea where I was, forgetting it was actually my room at home. Anyway, on to Rome...
I started my 3rd day in Rome getting ready to check out the history that makes the city what it is. I wanted to be at the Colosseum early in the day, so I woke up around 7:30 a.m and walked about 25 minutes until I arrived there around 8:45. I heard the tours started at 9 and wanted to join along so I knew what I was doing. I finally found a tour, was pretty cheap and joined in there. As I was starting my tour I ran into the kids I met in Venice from Tennessee, so we decided we'd meet back up after we finished all our tours and I continued on my way. I'm really glad I did the tour or I would've had very little idea of what I was actually looking at. The Colosseum is definitely an awesome site, the way it was built and both inside and outside show how world class it must have been. The guide used one of those layover books to show what it used to look like before the semi destruction in the dark ages of stealing much of the materials and the earthquake that helped try to take it down. It was a scorching hot day out so I tried to stay out of the sun the best I could, unfortunately it was not easy. After the tour ended explaining many of the misconceptions of gladiators and how the building really wasn't used as much as you would think we were given free time to roam until the tour continued on to the forum and old archaeological grounds. I weaved in and out of the different sections, went to the top level, took a bunch of pictures and tried to find shading in the building for a while. As I was watching the street I noticed a giant race going on, not until later did I discover it was the Rome Race for the Cure, definitely a cooler location than most I would have to imagine. I headed out of the Colosseum and still had tons of time to kill, so I walked around checking out the race, finding some shade, extra water, and just walking around. I did see one person pass out from heat stroke to continue an unfortunate streak I had semi-developed of seeing at least one person having to be helped by an ambulance per city, I may be the devil.
While I was exploring the outer areas of the Colosseum and watching the race I also started watching my street sellers. I got really angry as I watched them try to sell overpriced water and sun umbrellas to the racers. Luckily, for once, I was not the only one in this situation as the police set up sting operations to shut these people down for at least the race. I watched the umbrella guy get taken out from behind and it gave me some solid satisfaction. Of course after they took his stuff they let him go, but it helped clear up the area for the rest of the event. It was finally time to continue my tour so I headed over and met up with the group. We had a different tour guide for the forum, which was nice, since he ended up being a lot more entertaining than the woman for the colosseum who just stuck to the informative approach. At least with the Colosseum a slight idea exists of what you are looking at, but with the forum and other archaeological ruins without a tour you are essentially just standing on open land with random old churches, some marble, and flowers. I saw the private chariot race course, some of the basing for the palaces that used to grace the hills above and just a general understanding of Roman history. That part of the tour lasted a little more than an hour until we were able to explore more of the land on our own. It's hard to describe what everything is, being everything is at the most of shell of the building it used to be, but I found it all very interesting. I walked another hour around the area, filled up my water bottle with the fresh free Rome street water and got some food. I went with the expected lunch of pizza, nothing fancy this time, and had about an hour to kill before having to meet up with the other people. After pizza I went and tried a gelato recommended in my book featuring a honey gelato, which was very good and interesting (if you're into honey).
I finally headed back to the Colosseum to meet up with the kids from Tennessee. It was good seeing them again and having some extra people to hang out with. We only hung out for a few hours. We went to the Vittorio Emmanuel II building, climbed up those steps and then checked out the old prison where St. Peter was held for a while. They were at a different hostel so I walked them to their hostel. Everyone was going out for one of the group member's birthdays that night, but at that point I was extremely sunburnt and knowing my own history I get pretty sick from the sun, so I decided not to meet up with them that night. After I left them at their hostel I walked back, but ended up getting myself lost for another hour in the city, which I enjoyed. When I was back to my hostel, however, my regular sun sickness started to seep in and I immediately down 2 bottles of water, got a solid lasagna meal, and headed back to the hostel. I was considering seeing a movie, but when I made it back, the sun caused me to pass out pretty easily, so I just hung around the room sleeping off and on for the rest of the night.
The next morning I woke up feeling refreshed, which made me happy and it was time to head to the Vatican. The tour I had gone on the day before pushed their group for the Vatican tour, so I decided to stick with them, plus it was at 10:30, so I didn't have to rush to be there around 9 a.m. I didn't do much beforehand besides grabbing a quick bite, then I started walking to the Vatican. Unfortunately the meeting spot still wasn't right next to the Vatican and it took me nearly an hour to walk from hostel to the meeting point. The tour started around 11:15 and lasted until 4:15, it was extremely informative and per one of my usual habits I spent a lot of time talking to the tour guide. We started in the museum seeing all the important paintings as he pointed out things that would not be noticed if I were just wandering by myself. He was very good and he had a nice touch of humor added in to the tour to not make it bland. One of his games he liked to do was a spot the celebrity look a like in the paintings or sculptures. Pretty amazingly some of them, including a great Sylvester Stallone of the 1500s look dead on.
We finally finished in the museum, mostly skipping the modern art. He gave us some time to ourselves if we wanted to look through the area or we could venture early to the Sistine chapel. Being that there isn't any truly significant modern art at the Vatican and I had seen plenty, I went straight to the Sistine chapel to check it out. Early in the tour he showed us what to look out for when looking around the room, so I was prepared as I walked into the mass of camera flashing, yelling by security not to take pictures, and announcements demanding silence over the PA. I took a few pictures, but it doesn't even matter, it's impossible to do justice to the amazement of that place. To think someone created all that makes the Sistine chapel what it is, is still a hard concept to fathom. I knew what to expect, but even that doesn't describe what your eyes see. After that we headed on to St. Peters Cathedral for the tour, which in itself is pretty amazing. I walked around for a bit after our group broke up, but didn't stick around too long because as much as I enjoyed the tour, 4+ hours of information is a lot to take in.
From Vatican City I grabbed some street pizza and headed back to the Colosseum where I was slated to meet up with the Tennessee kids one more time. Unfortunately, they had emailed me earlier in the day to change locations, but I was unable to check being that I was at the Vatican all day. I waited for about 30 minutes until I realized they really weren't coming and headed back to the hostel. I finally had a roommate for the night, my final one in Rome, but it was only one, so not too bad. I left the room shortly after meeting him, checked my mail to see if the Tennessee kids either didn't really like me and didn't want to meet up or if I had an email from them. I did have an email and tried to email them back to meet me later that night somewhere if they wanted, but unfortunately it didn't work out.
I grabbed a fresh ravioli dinner that night at a restaurant by my hostel and did my walk to the Spanish steps, this time knowing where I was actually going. I hung out there for an hour just taking in the atmosphere knowing I'd be leaving Rome the next. It was a Sunday night, so not nearly as busy as previous nights and the fountain in front was even drained. I then walked back to the hostel knowing I had to be up to go to Florence the next morning. I talked with my new roommate for a while, who had an 8 a.m flight to get to, so he warned me of an early wake up and apologized ahead of time. He wasn't that loud, but for about 3 hours in the night more glass breaking and screaming from the streets kept me up. I probably slept about 4 hours that night.
The next morning I got antsy and headed to the train station a bit early. I decided to grab some Mcdonald's hashbrowns because they're fucking good and they don't have them in every country I had noticed. I grabbed a couple, and started eating when I ran into 2 of the kids from Tennessee. They were doing laundry in the area and cutting through the train station, so we sat down, ate and talked for a while. It was cool running into them before heading off to Florence and confirmed that it was just a mixup and I'm not that annoying. I then headed on the train to make my way to Florence. I took the fast train, which was nice, but it also meant I wasn't going to sleep since it's only 1:30 hours.
I got to Florence around 1:15 as my train had been delayed about 30 minutes, my first real train delayed experience of my whole trip. I walked to the hostel from the train station, about a 10 minute walk, unfortunately I did get a bit lost on my way turning down the wrong street and it was more of a 20 minute walk for me. I got to the hostel and was unable to check in for the first 15 minutes. I met a guy from Manchester in his 30s, he worked for the BBC, but used to be essentially a professional traveler, as he talked about a 5 year period where he went around a lot of the world living in different places. He was a really nice guy and it worked out getting to talk with him for a while. We ended up being in the same room, which worked out well, except for the fact that he broke all snoring records and sent out a search team for me, which I will get to in a bit.
Once checked in I went to the Accademie to check out Michaelangelo's David. There are some pretty important art works in general in that place, including unfinished sculptures created by M himself, but once you walk in the David just steals the spotlight from everything. The wait was about an hour, I met a dude from Texas who I hung out in line with and talked to for a while. He was a nice guy, helped pass the line quickly, though not too huge into art so some of the things he was saying and my being able to respond made me feel like an art genius, which I am not. Either that or I was making shit up and fed him all sorts of wrong information, but either way I felt good about myself. I stayed there for about an hour exploring the rooms and always going back to catch another look at David to figure out how it's so amazing. I then left and headed straight to the Duomo area to grab some food and check out the lines there. I did some quick pizza, some gelato, and saw an empty line to climb to the top. I checked out the inside of the cathedral first, it was cool, but then climbing to the top, seeing the ceiling painting up close and then climbing all the way to the outside was well worth it. The views from the top of Florence were great, although it was quite the terrifying climb up all the winding, narrow stairways and the 400+ steps that went along with it.
Afterwards I headed back to the hostel and started to take it easy. I joined my Manchester friend on the balcony where we sat talking with a bunch of people from the hostel, drinking wine, and eating fresh tomatoes, cheese, and even a few olives. There were people from all over the world and of all ages at the table so it made for some interesting talk. After everyone finished a couple bottles of wine Manchester dude and I decided to get some dinner. I was a little tipsy at that point, as a bottle of wine would do that to me. We decided we would get some steaks so the receptionist booked us a reservation at a place I couldn't tell you anything about at this point in time. I could tell you though, it was a hell of a steak. It was essentially a Tbone, but unlike any other Tbone I have had before. It was about a kilogram in size, so over 2 pounds. We were advised to split it, which I'm usually not a fan of, but it worked out well. We also got some sort of radish with melted cheese appetizer that was very good and one more bottle of wine. It ended up being like a 120 euro meal for the two of us, but it was worth it. It was pretty late at that point, he wanted to go out more, but I decided it was time to pass out. We walked back getting semi-lost in the city, then he went out to some jazz club and I went to sleep.
I woke up around 9 the next morning to start my day and immediately headed to the Piazza di Michelangelo. It was quite the walk and mini hike all the way to the top, but you get incredible views of Florence from a different angle than the Duomo and another one of the infamous David statues lie atop. I hung up there for a while and then headed back down, I walked to a bunch of the different Palazzo's out there and walked along the Ponte Vecchio until ending up at the Palazzo Vecchio. I decided to go in and look around, it was very nice instead and there were some decent descriptions so I knew what I was looking at.
After that I was starving, so upon the advice of my cousin I headed to the central markets in search of the Perini special sandwich. I struggled to find the stand at first, weaving in and out admiring all the meats and cheeses. Finally the stand stood in front of me and I went right to it. I took advantage of their samples on the counter indulging myself in some fresh parm, prosciutto, and anything else I could get my hands on. My turn then came and I boldly asked for the special sandwich, terrified that I would be at the wrong place. The man's face lit up as he got ready to prepare this masterpiece. The woman next to me in line asked what it was I was actually ordering, of course I had no idea, but he went step by step explaining what was on the sandwich for all to see. When he finished I grabbed it, took a bite and it truly was a special sandwich. I don't remember what he put in it exactly, but was quite incredible. I went on eating my sandwich and walked around the rest of the markets. I then came back to Perini and bought some parm for later in the day. From there I walked around a bit of the other church areas, checked those out and had plans to go to the Uffizi, instead I went to the synagouge. I went to the museum area first where I was given a private tour by this older woman who worked there. We had a big discussion about the American Jews who face a huge culture shock with the orthodox synaguoge in Florence and around Europe in general. She was saying how they have a tendency to be a bit annoying and ignorant, unable to grasp some of the old rules. Then the conversation shifted to Jews marrying other Jews in the states as if she was sent by my mother or something. We talked for about 10 minutes on the subject, it was more her how it seems in America it isn't nearly as important anymore and with so many different branches of Judaism it's gotten lost along the way. She then had to go and I went down to the actual sanctuary and explored it for a while with another mini-tour. This time there were a couple more people as part of the tour and of course the middle aged Jewish woman who kept complaining gave a clear argument for the other side as to why not to marry a Jew (just kidding, all women complain). After that was done I decided I would just relax at the hostel.
I got back in mid afternoon and my boy from Manchester returned around the same time as well. We hung out on the balcony thing again, this time eating more cheeses, I stayed away from the wine at that point in time and many people started to join us with the eating and relaxing thing. Slowly people trickled in and it was decided at some point we'd go to a bar. I wasn't actually in the bar mood, but I can't deny I solely based my decision on two girls that were semi-quiet when they joined us as to if they'd go or not. They decided to go and so I acted like I was gonna go the whole time. We all went to a bar right by the hostel, I broke my rule of getting a beer in Italy, I tried to stick to wine, but for some reason I ended up going beer there. We all hung out for a while, I talked to those girls a lot, one more so than the other. Part of it was the other guys were like the crazy drinking to get drunk at that point it seemed and looking to party, I was looking for the more relaxed atmosphere, which was found in conversation with them. They were the first Jewish people I had met since back in Madrid, and they were actually my age. As the drinking came to a halt at that bar the girls and myself decided to get some dinner and split away from the group to meet up with them later on.
Dinner was good, us three split gnocchi, some crazy soup, and a pizza as well as a jug of wine. We had a nice dinner and then one of the two wanted to head back, which was fine with me cause I didn't want to meet up with the others at the bar much. I escorted the girls back to the hostel and ended up hanging out with one of them for the night. For the first time a girl I met didn't have a boyfriend (at least I don't think so), which was refreshing because as much as I like hearing about current relationships, it gets tired after a while. We walked around Florence, hung outside the Duomo and talked quite a bit. It's one of those bittersweet things, it was great to hang out with her for the night, but totally the type of girl I would've liked to actually date. So now comes the story of how I supposedly went missing...
Since we didn't meet up with the other people at the bar and I ended up hanging out with this girl all night, at around 4 a.m the Manchester guy arrived back at the hostel. He didn't realize I was actually around and he starts waking people up, asking them about random stuff and then asking if anyone had seen me. I wasn't really in the position to tell him where I was at the moment, so he went to sleep not knowing. Well the next day, I left with the girls at 7:30 a.m, they had to get to the train station as did I for a tour of the Tuscan region I was going on. Thus, nobody saw me at all the entire day (in the next blog entry since this is long as hell I'll start there). I got back around 8:30 to the hostel where the receptionist came up to me immediately excited to see I was still alive. She told me she emailed me as to where I was (cause you know, if I was dead or lost somewhere that email would've helped quite a bit) and that the guy was really worried about me. Throughout the rest of that night random people came up to me staying at the hostel and even the 70 year old Italian owner was happy to see I was okay coming up to me.
And now I must end this, it's 11:50 a.m, I haven't slept since I began at 4:45 (though I took plenty of breaks from writing in between). I will reconvene with the Tuscan tour, an extra day in Rome, and then finish with Athens before my final entry where I'll give you a peek into my thoughts, various favorites throughout, and whatever else I can unleash on the world, including tons of pictures.
Benjie
1 comment:
......... you're leaving stuff out.
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