So here's the recap of my Thanksgiving Break. The trip went through Venice, Florence, Rome, Sicily, and London. The group members were myself, John Easlea, Dan Huber, Alex Burkhardt, Shaun Yasaki, Lizzie Falknor, and Barbara Denlinger.
To start off break, SNCF, the French rail organization was on strike the week we left. This was a problem because we were counting on a train to get to Paris for our flight from there to Venice. Our flight was on Friday the 16th but we just needed to make it to Paris sometime for the flight, so we went to the train station on Thursday... and yada yada.... turns out we could go on Friday morning so that's what we did. After finally arriving in Venice and ridding ourselves of French socialistic idiocy, here's what happened:
Venice - wow what a beautiful city
Friday: after our flight arrived late in the evening, we bused into the heart of Venice: the island. We met up with our landlord for the next 2 nights. Let me tell you what, our accommodations in Venice were phenomenal. I'm sure they beat out any one else's in our entire group here in Nantes for the whole semester. We rented an apartment, and it was cool to get to 'talk' to the landlord, a real Venician as we checked in. I say 'talk' because he only spoke Italian and none of us did. That's probably why it was so fun. So after he left, we took a short walk around Venice at night to get ourselves acquainted with the city a little bit before we went to bed. Of course we were able to find an open Kebab place. Kebabs = greatness. After getting a bite, we headed back to the apartment and slept.
Saturday: Dan got up early in search of eggs for breakfast. When he finally returned, he let us know how easy it is to get lost in Venice. It's quite true. Walking in Venice makes you feel like a lab rat walking in a maze. There are no roads, just alleys in between buildings, so it's often hard to tell where you are at all. He also said he saw a house fire while he was lost, walking around. Anyways he returned, and we cooked eggs. A much better breakfast than the usual piece of bread hostels usually call breakfast. After breakfast, we made our way over to Saint Marco's Piazza (St Marks Sq) which is the main tourist area of Venice. There's a large, beautiful church there and a palace beside it with a large, open piazza beside them, which is rare in Venice. Most of Venice is houses, alleys, and of course canals. We walked around Venice all day, which is the best thing to do in Venice. It's a great city to get lost in because you can't get very lost on an island. We eventually made our way back to our apartment, and cooked pasta for dinner. After dinner we headed towards the start of the Grand Canal, the main canal, and hopped on a public transport boat for our night cruise. We could have taken an gondola ride, but public transport is just a bit cheaper :) After a beautiful night cruise, we headed back once again, chilled, and went to bed.
Grand Canal with gondolas
Our night cruise
St Marks Square at night
Florence - another beautiful city, not as beautiful as Venice though
Sunday: we took a train to Florence. Funny story: as we were getting off the train, there was a Canadian group of people about our age that were planning on going to Florence too. They were really loud and obnoxious. When we pulled in to Florence (Firenze in Italian) and one girl said, "we should be there by now". They were debating whether this was Florence or not, before they could see the city sign. When they saw Firenze, the one girl said, "See! I told you this wasn't Florence. There's not even a L in the name!" We just chuckled and headed towards our hostel. This place turned out to be another apartment, but without a kitchen. Regardless, it was still pretty nice. We first walked a little bit to get oriented with the city a little. After a little debating, we went into the Uffizi gallery, Florence's best art gallery. It was pretty nice, but I wasn't terribly impressed. As time wound into the night, we went to a lookout point where we could see the whole city at night. Florence is a really beautiful city. Then we went back to our room, and traded a round of backrubs, to help with the pain of carrying backpacks.
Monday: we first went to Duomo Cathedral, my favorite cathedral so far, and I've seen a few. Pictures really can't show how beautiful it is. We went up to the top of the dome, and saw yet another great view of Florence, this time in the day. It was cool to see all the red roofs of the houses. We ran into a few guys from our GCC group who were doing a similar trip through Italy. We decided to meet up later for dinner at our place. After splitting up and seeing another church, Brancacci chapel, we met up and had takeout for dinner. We chilled, relaxed and rested up for the next day.
Tuesday: We kind of wandered around a bit in the morning, just seeing some parts of the city not yet explored, then went to the train station for our train to Rome..
Duomo Cathedral
Florence at night
River running through Florence
Rome - a relatively old city
Tuesday: after getting to our amazing 10euro/night hostel (with included breakfast and dinner) we walked around Rome a bit, even though everything was already closed. We saw the Coliseum and the Pantheon. We got to the Pantheon before it closed, and got to see the amazingness of Roman architecture there. We walked around quite a bit more, saw a few fountains, and walked all the way to the Vatican to meet up with Shaun's friend. Turns out she couldn't come, so we ate dinner, had some gelato (simply amazing) and walked back to sleep.
Wednesday: we got up early to head to the Vatican, this time going into the Vatican Museum. We didn't walk though, cause it's quite a long walk :) The museum is just phenomenal. It has a great blend of history with art together. I saw a mummy, lots of other Egyptian artifacts, Greek sculptures, tapestries and many other things. Then the end of the museum culminated into the Sistine Chapel, probably Michaelangelo's greatest work. It was mindblowing how much he had to paint, and just how good it looked. We then sneaked out into a side exit to go into St Peters, the largest church in the world, by far. It is just super massive. The church itself is 6 acres, and has the largest dome in the world on top. It's pretty humorous that they have markers on the floor just to show where other churches would come to if you were to put them inside the chapel. After leaving, we headed to get more gelato. Me, John and Dan went together and bought a kg of it, cause you gotta go big, or go home. So we went big. If you're ever go to the Vatican, to go Old Bridge Gelateria. They load it on. We were completely satisfied, although I don't know if it's possible to ever not want more gelato. We bused back to the Coleseum to see it in the daylight, and half went inside, while I went with the other half to the Roman Forum. This is the area right next to the Coliseum where they are excavating ancient areas of Rome. It's neat to see remnants of ancient buildings, and some that are still partially standing. We then went back to the hostel for our free dinner. Afterwards me, Dan, and Lizzie went to a lookout point to see all of Rome at night. It wasn't as good of a view as Florence, but it was a nice relaxing activity to do. It's a lot harder to find everything in the Roman skyline, because Rome is just massive in comparison to Florence. We went back to the Old Bridge, because we were "in the area" :)
The Coliseum
St Peters, largest church in the world
Our kilo of gelato
Sicily - wow
Thursday: The next day we left for Palermo, Sicily. This was probably the longest day of the whole trip, considering the train ride was over 12 hours. Our train actually went onto a ferry to cross from Italy to Sicily. We were on the train all 12 hours. That was a long time. When we finally got off our train and bused to our hostel, we were pleasantly surprised with the amazingness of it. It was right on the Mediterranean, and was a super hostel. We went to sleep from exhaustion..
Friday: we woke up and were amazed at our view. In front of us was the Mediterranean and all around us were small mountains that cam up almost straight from the coast. It was yet another beautiful place. It's really hard to describe without pictures. So look below. The guys needed to get some hiking done, so that's what we did. It was quite an experience, considering it was part rock climbing, part hiking. Luckily, none of us died. We even got to see a wild board come storming down the other side of the hill and disappear around the corner. I got a video of it. We then went back to the hostel to meet up with the girls. We went out for Sicilian pizza, good and real cheap. Then we played cards by the ocean for a while, got invaded by a 6 year old Sicilian boy selling roses, and ended up playing a round of cards with us. The guys then headed to our caampground, the girls back to the hostel.
Saturday: we went to the beach. This is November 24th. After Thanksgiving, and we were at the beach. It was probably close to 70 degrees too. John actually swam. The water is so incredibly blue. So much bluer that I've ever seen. We chilled, walked around to some shops, then bused back to the airport to head to London.
The view from the hostel
A view from our hike
Look at how blue the water and sky are
London - a lot nicer than I thought it would be
Saturday: we flew into the airport around 11pm and we slept in the airport. It would have been too much of a pain to get to a hostel from Stansted, a 1.5 hr ride fron the city, so we just slept there. It was the worst night of the trip, but it wasn't too bad.
Sunday: We left at 8 for our hostel. After checking in, we started exploring the city. We first walked by Buckingham Palace, at the time of the changing of the guards. This was a mistake, there were people everywhere. We didn't even want to see the changing of the guards, but we ended up weaving our way through crowds and crowds of people go get through. We were heading to Mr Wu's Chinese buffet. I heard about Mr Wu's from talking to a guy in line for the airplane boarding. An all you can eat buffet for only 5 pounds. That's expensive, but not for London standards at all. It was a grand decision. I was full. We then walked around and saw all the major sights: the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, Parliament and Big Ben. It was hilarious to listen in on other people's conversations in other languages. They'd be rambling on and on, me of course not understanding anything, but then I'd hear "Beeg Ben" in the sentence. We walked by the sights, then headed to the hostel to regroup. After talking we decided we all had different ideas on what to do so we split up, I headed out on my own. I first went to Westminster Abbey for a free Organ recital, which was very, very good. It got me into the Abbey, which is otherwise closed on Sundays, plus there was great music. I then headed to the London Eye. I turned out to be the only person from our group that went on it, but I'm real glad I did. London was yet another great city to see at night. I headed up the river a bit to see St Paul's Cathedral from the outside, ended up chatting with a hobo, then started back towards the Hostel. I changed my path to see a few more sights on the way back, but eventually made it back. We played cards again before bed.
Monday: last day of the trip. We got up and had a pretty good breakfast, by hostel standards. Then we walked around a bit more and headed back to the bus station to head to the airport to head back home. And here I sit, tired, sore, ready for bed, ready to recover from the trip, and not a bit ready for schoolwork...
The London Eye
The London Eye at night
Parliament and Big Ben from the Eye
