Spring Break

Wow, I am really bad at updating -- this post is about 2 weeks tardy. But people keep nagging me to describe the intricacies of Spring Break in Italy, so I'll try my best. I warn you, though, this will be long.

Rome
Our Ryanair flight left at 7 a.m. -- one of the only times you can get a cheap fare. With a long trek out to Luton airport and taking into account check-in time, that meant we had to leave campus at 3 a.m. to make the flight. Two night buses got us to the airport and after a two-hour flight we were in Rome.

Our hostel was right next to Rome's train station and pretty impressive as far as hostels go. We booked two beds in a four-person room within a larger flat. We had a common room, a semi-private bathroom and a balcony overlooking the apartments of actual Romans. After eating some amazing lasagna at a restaurant across the street, we got a little lost finding our way to the Colosseum. Rome's random, non-grid layout confuses me and makes my inability to read a map incredibly annoying. We found our way to the Colosseum after a brief detour and then walked over to the Forum. We were about 5 minutes late and they had already locked the gates, so we decided to go looking around elsewhere. I could still remember where most of the sights were from my last visit to Rome. Just on the other side of the Forum we saw the Trajan's forum, a ton of other ruins and my favorite building, the Monument of Vittorio Emmanuel -- Italy's first king. Right next to the Forum is the Mamertine Prison, which is said to have held Peter and Paul. Next, we walked to the Trevi Fountain, which I think is the prettiest thing in all of Rome. We also saw the Pantheon (although we forgot to go in) and the Spanish Steps (which I think are overrated) before heading back to the hostel to collapse.

The next day we set aside for visiting the Vatican. The entry lines are notoriously long, so we were prepared to wait. We started at the Vatican Museums, home of the Sistine Chapel and an immense collection of paintings and sculpture. Although the line stretched all along the Vatican walls nearly to St. Peter's, the wait was surprisingly only an hour long. After being herded through the museums with the throngs of tourists, we took a secret passageway out of the Sistine Chapel that landed us right in the middle of St. Peter's Basilica. Normally you have to exit the museums and walk all around the wall to St. Peter's and then wait in line again -- we saved at least an hour. I said hello to the dead popes again (including everyone's favorite, John Paul) and then toured St. Peter's. The largest church in the world, St. Peter's can hold 60,000 people and is considered the traditional burial site of the apostle Peter. It's also where Charlemagne was coronated and home of Michelangelo's Pieta sculpture.

With the Vatican out of the way so quickly, we had time to return to the Forum to look around some more. The Forum was the central area of ancient Rome and was the site of commerce and justice. Today, the Forum is a huge stretch of ruins situated under Palatine Hill. Most of the buildings have been reduced to mere columns or foundations. It's flanked on each side by enormous arches. After looking at rocks for a few hours, we went back to the hostel to take a nap. We ate a free dinner at the hostel before going back in to town to see the Colosseum at night.

We had already hit most of the sights so on our final day in Rome, we went in search of some more obscure places. First we took the metro to the Piramide stop, which is, not surprisingly, right next to a large white pyramid built in the Egyptian style. It sits right next to remains of the old Aurealian Wall that marked the borders of ancient Rome. Right behind the pyramid was an old non-Catholic cemetery for foreigners who died in Rome. Aside from being gorgeous, the cemetery held the graves of John Keats and Percy Shelley. Apryll wanted to visit some catacombs and one of the workers at our hostel recommended some right down the street from the Hard Rock Cafe. The catacombs consisted of about four rooms on the second-story of an old church that were decorated with thousands of human bones. It was creepy and definitely not worth the admission.

We remembered to return to the Pantheon so we could look inside and then went to Piazza Navona. Then we walked along the Tevere River and walked the entire width of the city back to the hostel. That night we ate Chinese and went to bed early.

Florence
The next day we woke early to catch a train. Before going to Florence, we stopped over in Pisa to look at the tower. We ate lunch at a patio restaurant overlooking the tower and then hurried back on to a train to Florence. This city is probably my least favorite in all of Italy. The directions to our hostel were crappy and when we finally got there, it took forever for the lady to answer the door. Through some fluke they gave us a room to ourselves; it was painted pink and baby blue with creepy children's bedspreads. I felt like I was in some demented orphanage in a horror film. We hurried over to the Accademia so Apryll could see David. Amazingly, there was no line at all. Then we went to the Uffizi art gallery, which also had no line but closed soon after Apryll went in. We spent the rest of the night walking around town and I grumbled about how overpriced everything was in Florence.

There's not much else to see in Florence aside from the Accademia and the Uffizi, so the next day we took a train out to Siena. We had no idea what was there -- it was one of the only towns close enough to use for a day trip. Siena was gorgeous and had a real small-town feel to it. We saw Il Campo, the main square, which was full of sunbathers and loafers. Siena doesn't have many attractions, so we went church hopping, starting with the Duomo. Next we walked all over town and uphill to St. Catherine's church. The outside is all brick and looks strangely like a power plant. Inside the wooden ceiling is impossibly high and the entire church is sparse and empty, highlighted by its absence of tourists. The greatest thing about this church (aside from no other visitors while we were there) is the preserved head of St. Catherine, which is on display in all its rotting glory. There was really no explanation about how she lost her head or why it was on display. Wikipedia tells me her foot is in Venice.

After walking around Siena a little more, we took the train back to Florence just in time for dinner. We were trying to find a cheap place to eat, when all of a sudden we heard Coolio's 1995 hit, "Gangsta's Paradise," playing at a restaurant in what looked to be alley. It was clearly a sign we should eat there, and their enormous 5-euro pizzas were confirmation.

Venice
The next morning we caught another early train to Venice. This city is a pretty expensive place, so we had booked beds at a campground outside the city on the mainland. The website promised it wasn't too far away, which proved to be a lie. We had to take two buses out to the campsite, amounting to about an hour's journey from Venice proper. After settling in to a nice trailer, we had to wait on the highway for the hourly bus into the airport. Then at the airport, we switched to another bus that went into Venice. We were only staying one night, so we had to make our time count. Venice is a really confusing city to walk through and we had trouble locating the grand canal. We finally found signs pointing the way to San Marco's Piazza and followed then there. Here we went in St. Mark's elaborate basilica and tried to find a place to eat dinner. Finding all the restaurants impossibly expensive, we settled on McDonald's. We wanted to go on some sort of boat ride since we knew we couldn't afford a gondola. But the grumpy boat employee explained that all those touristy routes were only open in the summer season. So instead we bought "one-way" rides on the water buses, big boats with chairs that stop along the main canal and port. But the boats ran in a loop so we just never got off at the stop they told us to. We had no idea where the boat was headed, so I was surprised (and a little horrified) when we seemed to be heading into the open sea. Our boat's route went in a huge loop around some of Venice's islands and finally returned to the grand canal.

It was getting dark so we wandered around the city looking for things to do. Most of the interesting museums and churches had already closed and it was getting chilly, so we just went in anywhere that was open and free. So in that spirit, we found ourselves in a church converted into an exhibit about violins. Next we found another exhibit of Leonardo DaVinci's machines and inventions. It cost too much money so we just looked at the Leo souvenirs before wandering around the city some more. We had to stop on the original Bridge of Sighs -- we saw its little brother a few weeks ago in Cambridge.

After another mammoth bus ride back to the camp ground, I realized that Venice is near two airports and we had been confused about which one our flight departed from. We had no idea how to get to our actual airport and the office at the campsite was closed. So instead of sleeping in like we thought, we got up at 5 a.m. to give ourselves enough time to figure out how to get to the airport. We eventually figured it out -- it just required three long bus rides -- and were even early for checking in.

Punting on the Cam

After an uneventful week, Apryll and I had to have some fun this weekend. On Friday we went to late night at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which contains artifacts from all around the world. I liked looking at the Samurai swords and trying out the learning activities for kids, including designing my own family crest. Then we ate at the most delicious crepe restaurant in South Kensington.

Today we used our rail pass to travel to Cambridge. Once there we took at cab to the Orchard Tea Room in the outskirts of town. We didn't think about the orchard being wintry, so there wasn't much to look at. But we enjoyed our English tea and lunch. We decided to walk back into town isntead of paying another 10-pound cab fare. We were following the road our cab took when we saw a sign for a footpath back to Cambridge. We weren't exactly sure where it led or if we were headed the right way, but we carried on regardless. Amazingly, we made it back to town quickly and found the boat company that we had booked a tour with.

The boats are called punts and resemble flat-bottomed gondolas -- they're even propelled by guides in the back who use poles. The weather was nasty and no one else had booked a tour so we had a boat to ourselves. Luckily it was stocked with cushions, blankets and umbrellas for our comfort. Our guide, Giles, was a high-school aged kid who kept us entertained during the ride. He told us about the colleges and we answered his questions about Oklahoma. I asked him if he'd ever dropped his pole in the river or if he'd ever fallen in. He said yes to both.

It was still cold and rainy after our boat ride so we had tea and scones at a nearby cafe. Then we walked around town and shopped for souvenirs before heading back to London.