Sunday, June 6, 2010

Roma - June 4th, 2010

Wow. Our last day of our vacation was PACKED.

After grabbing the WORST breakfast in all of Italy (extremely stale corn flakes with warm milk) we hit the streets to make like Huns and conquer Rome, all in a single day.

First on our list was The Coliseum. This humongous (colossal?) ruin must be seen to be fully appreciated. It is magnificently large, steeped in history, and haunted by hundreds of thousands of ghosts.

When we first arrived we were accosted by a pushy salesman offering to 1) help us skip the two hour line and 2) give us a guided tour. We decided it was our last day, and we'd like to see as much as possible, no matter what the cost. It was 25 Euro a person. We agreed. From there, we were directed to a second man, who took our money, told us the tour would start in 10 minutes, and asked us to wait "over there, in the shade". I did so, with GREAT paranoia. "Give me 50 Euro, then go sit way over there. See my official looking badge?" Would have been a great con, but turns out this wasn't the case. Not today anyway.

From there we were introduced to our tour guide, Paola. She gave us a tour of the Coliseum, complete with colorful commentary. We learned a LOT about the history behind the Coliseum. One of the most interesting things we learned is about the sea battles. Originally the Coliseum had a sand floor. When the sand had soaked up enough blood that the place needed to be cleaned they flooded the entire floor of the Coliseum, deep enough to float boats on. They would then have battles on little boats. This meant an interesting day of sport, plus a cleaning of the Coliseum. Later they took out the sandy floor and replaced it with a series of underground tunnels with a wooden ceiling, so that animals and combatants could be raised into battle. Both showier and quicker than entering them through the outside every time.

Apparently the Coliseum was also originally covered by a linen awning that would be angled by ropes to cover the crowd from the sun. Pretty freakin sweet.

The Coliseum was REALLY impressive, and our tour was GREATLY improved with the knowledgeable guide.

After the Coliseum we took a break for lunch. Elly and I hunted down an Internet Point to pre-register our seats on the flight the next day and to grab lunch from a grocery.

After lunch we met back up at The Coliseum to continue our tour. We got a new guide, Jason, who showed us The Forum, Palatine Hill and surrounding ruins. More massive stone ruins and beautiful gardens. Again, our tour was much improved by the guide.

Among the beautiful trees, vines, flowers, etc. were the umbrella pines. Rome imported these trees from the Middle East and lined their roads with them to shade their armies as they marched. These trees have extremely tall trunks topped by a wide canopy, perfect for the purpose of shade.

We learned about the significance of the ruins, the history of the founding of Rome and the start of the Roman Empire, of Mussolini building his palace on Palatine Hill amongst the ruins of previous emperors during World War 2. Our guided tour was WELL worth the money spent, I recommend it to anyone. The admission costs of the sites alone was worth 18 Euro a pop, and we had WAY more than 7 Euro of added enjoyment.

After the Roman ruins we moved on to Catholic Churches. We saw Saint Peter's Basilica and The Pantheon. The Pantheon was originally a building of the Roman Empire but was later remodeled by the Catholic Church. It used to sport a huge bronze dome, but now it has the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.

The Pantheon was impressive, but it was NOTHING compared to St. Peter's. A huge piazza encircled with columns and statues stood in front of the entrance to this huge church. Inside were many memorials to dead popes, erected to mark their burial sites, tombs, and urns. There were also several churches inside the basilica. Many of the ceilings had painted domes around a sky light, and ALL of the walls and ceilings were illuminated with paintings, gold, intricate carvings, and the like. It is also the site of Michelangelo's "La Pietà", a statue of Mary holding Jesus's corpse. The basilica really must be seen to be understood. I'm not catholic myself, but the church shocked into me a deep sense of reverence.

We saw the Trevi Fountain, a pretty awesome fountain built into the back of a building. It features Oceanus, the god of all water. By this point in the day we were both near dead from exhaustion, so I don't remember it all that well.

Finally we declared ourselves too exhausted to go on. We still had a 30 minute hike back to our hotel. we barely spoke to each other as we plodded back, we were SOOOO tired.

I took a quick shower to reenergize and we went out to dinner at "Sette Oche". Sette Oche is a great little restaurant. Elly and her parents went there for dinner when she was in Italy the first time, and it was good enough she wanted to take me back there. One of the memorable things about Sette Oche is that it has its own cat. This chubby cat wandered around from table to table offering affection, but (unexpectedly) scorning offered treats.

The waiter could tell we were both pretty exhausted, and suggested some wine. At first we turned him down, but thought better of it. After a few glasses of wine and some food we felt much better. After the rest of a liter of wine and a glass of limoncello (on the house, served in the traditional style) we were drunk. Fortunately we were on the same block as our hotel.

After drunkenly stumbling back to our hotel, we packed for leaving the next morning. Somewhere during our drunken packing Elly broke the pinky toe of her left foot. Somehow we got most of what we needed accomplished before crashing to sleep.

We woke up at 5:30 the next morning, finished packing, and hiked 25 minutes to the subway. Subway to Roma Termini station, train to the airport, jet to London, another jet to Denver. Bus from Denver to park-and-ride, then a ride with our friends Woggy and Karen to Buffalo Wild Wings. Karen had spent the last two weeks keeping our kitties company, feeding them, cleaning their box, watering our plants, and otherwise house sitting. We owed them BIG TIME so we treated them to dinner. Also, I was seriously craving spicy food by the second week in Italy, so the pain and suffering of BWW Blazin' sauce was appealing.

Over 24 hours after we woke up, and suffering from hallucinations of all our senses, we finally crashed in our own bed, Westminster, Colorado, USA, North America.

Ciao l'Italia!

Photos

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Roma - June 3rd, 2010

More trains today. The ride from Florence to Rome took us four hours. There was a two hour train, but that one was considerably more expensive. So we plugged in headphones to Elly's laptop and got our dose of American TV for the day.

We took a (crazy, nightmarish) taxi ride to our hotel, which is pretty cute. For whatever reason, the hotel has only rooms with a single bed, or a "triple" bed, which is a double and a single. So we have a bed just for our luggage. At least it will sleep well tonight.

We went out for a walk, using Google Maps to try to get to a specific shop to buy some stuff. We didn't actually make it. About half way there we got caught in the rain. Umbrella salesmen, people running around shrieking and laughing, umbrellas blown inside-out by the wind, streets running like rivers... Elly and I had one coat and one umbrella between us. We both ended up soaked, but it was fun and a bit romantic walking back to the hotel in the warm Roman rain.

Then we went out for dinner, and accidentally picked a restaurant. Most restaurants have a menu posted outside. We've found that you can eat REALLY well for under 10 Euro per plate, but it is basically impossible to tell the difference between an 8-Euro-a-plate and a 30-Euro-a-plate restaurant without seeing the menu. Well, we were walking close to the entrance to one restaurant and a little old man swooped in, asked us where we were from, sat us down, handed us menus, and wheeled over the buffet. We were both a bit flustered, but we decided to just go along with it. Apparently we made a few mistakes pouring wine, ordering food, etc. etc. etc. which they were quick to point out.

We were both under-dressed and out of our league. The prices weren't insane but were still pretty expensive, not quite double what we usually pay. Still, we had a delicious meal, and wine, and dessert. Not at all worth the difference in price, but it was still kind of fun and wild to be so far out of our element. Each table in the restaurant had its own waiter, who did nothing else.

After turning down secondi, and caffe, and "schnapps", we were each poured (not offered, just poured) an "on the house" dose of liqueur called "amaro". Turns out "on the house" means they bill you six Euro under "corrispettivo non pagato" which means "fee not paid". A bit frustrating. Twice now in Rome and once in Florence we have clearly been given the "American discount". It is sad and frustrating, but I'm not letting it get me down. Our dinner was still quite nice, and even with all the byzantine check gymnastics it came out to be about what I would have expected to pay for a similar meal back home.

Tomorrow we're going to suck the marrow out of the last of our trip. We're hitting up a couple of Roman ruins and squeezing in a bit more shopping before we call it quits. Then the day after that we're checking out early to bus to the airport to get on an 11:45 flight home.

Photos

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Firenze - June 2nd, 2010

Today was Florence "culture day". Elly and I hit up a few world-renowned sites of artistic and/or architectural merit. We visited Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Galleria dell'Accademia, Ponte Vecchio, and Palazzo Vecchio. For the uncultured (that's all of you, heheh), it means we visited some museums, some churches, and a bridge.

The basilica and the cattedrale were impressively large, stone churches, equipped with expansive, beautiful piazzas. The cattedrale was especially impressive. It was made from several different colors of polished stone, and adorned with relief carvings and gold illuminated paintings. One huge door of the cattedrale was made entirely of golden relief carvings, depicting various biblical scenes. I'm fairly certain it was real gold, too. The church was extremely impressive, to the point of being overwhelming.

On our way to the Galleria d.A museum rain started coming down pretty hard. Umbrella salesmen came out in droves, and soon the streets were filled with brightly colored blobs. We spent an hour waiting in line in the rain, huddled under a single small, blue umbrella that I'd brought with me from Colorado. We snapped some pictures and chatted, and the rain wasn't very cold so it wasn't too bad.

The museum featured renaissance and pre-renaissance paintings and statues, most notably Michelangelo's David. Most of the art was pretty skippable (especially pre-ren paintings, ugh.), but I was quite impressed by the statues. One large room featured full statues and shoulder-to-shoulder busts, all lifelike. I think most if not all of them were plaster casts, not the originals, but still quite impressive. Especially in such large quantity.

The David was definitely the prime attraction. It has a very commanding presence, to the point of seeming to be a living person in the room. This is due in no small part to the amazing detail on the statue,  down to tendons and veins visible on his hands. The statue is just under 500 years old and has been hanging out in that same room for nearly 140 years, standing 17 feet tall. It kind of makes you feel insignificant looking at it.

We passed through the cattedrale piazza again and then headed out to the Ponte Vecchio bridge. The Ponte Vecchio appears to be a normal street, lined with shops, but is actually a bridge over the Arno River. We snapped some good pictures of the river from the lookout on the center of the bridge and then walked down and took some pictures of the P.V. from another bridge upriver. Apparently when the P.V. was first built back in the Roman Empire, most bridges were lined with shops. Seems like a lot of work.

We then viewed some more impressive statues outside the Palazzo Vecchio and Galleria degli Uffizi. Elly's favorite statue (which was also viewable as a cast at the Galleria d.A.) was "Rape of the Sabines". The statue is really interesting, in that it was carved to be viewed from every angle, offering a different piece of the story as you spiral around it. It is also a single statue that features three full figures, which is apparently pretty rare.

My favorite was Perseus and The Medusa. It is a pretty bad-ass statue featuring greek champion Perseus decapitating Medusa. It looks like the action shot from a movie poster, and is actually pretty gory, as the decapitation isn't very clean, and there are are these gross dangly bits. Heh.

We had intended to hit up the Galleria degli Uffizi, but by the time we got around to it they had closed for the day. I guess it would have been sort of a bummer if we could actually suck out all of the culture Florence had to offer in a single day. I guess that'll just have to be our excuse to come back soon.

After a long day of culture, we stumbled upon this very cool, quirky restaurant. The place was painted up in black, dark reds and greens, and featured unique, weird lamps at each table. The food was really good, as usual in Italy, but the unique atmosphere was the best part. We were pretty hungry and exhausted by this time so we didn't get more than a couple of pictures.

Still pretty exhausted now, actually. Culture makes me tired, whew. I think its time to rot my brain with a couple of episodes of American television and then get some sleep. Tomorrow we have to check out early and catch a train to Rome for the last two days of our trip.

Photos

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Firenze - June 1st, 2010

Yesterday I ran out of laundry. I packed for 5 days, wanting to travel light and knowing that we'd get a shot at doing our laundry at some point. In my dreams we would come home after a day of seeing interesting sights and load our laundry into the washer and dryer convienently located next to our bed. It turns out INSTEAD, that when your clothes start standing up on their own around Day 11 out of 5 the closest self-service lavanderia is ten minutes away, and washing and drying and folding a single load of laundry is something that takes about two hours. This mundane, household chore took up our entire morning. I'm not sure if the benefits of traveling light outweigh the drawbacks of actually doing laundry while on vacation. If I had it to do again, and had some extra Euro jingling in my pocket, I guess I'd still travel light but pay someone else to do pickup, cleaning, and dropoff. Champagne wishes and cavier dreams.

With the laundry out of the way, we hit the streets of Florence to do some shopping. The store fronts were nice, and we bought a couple of things there, but the more interesting experience was the street market. A dozen blocks or more of little booths, selling goods made of leather and venician glass, lots of other random things. Silly trinkets abounded, such as 3 inch tall David statues and last supper placemats. There was also a great proliferation of "foreign" stuff, especially (inexplicably) Simpsons and Hello Kitty t-shirsts, posters, mugs, etc. The streets were packed with tourists, beggers and peddlers of the beautiful and the profane. All of this was going down in a piazza outside of a cathedral, which gave the market a bizarrly biblical atmosphere. We turned down many "half price" leather jackets, wrong-color 1up mushroom t-shirts, boxer shorts printed to look like the David ("down there"), etc, but we managed to buy a few things.

Today was "shoppin day" and tomorrow is "culture day", but our walking still took us by a couple of pretty amazing churches. Gigantic, intricate, colorful buildings that you kind of have to see in person to really believe. I snapped some photos that I know aren't going to do them justice at all. More to come tomorrow when we visit cultural sites on purpose.

Two more excellent meals for lunch and dinner today. Every real meal we have eaten here has been excellent. The meat is a bit too tender and fatty for our tastes, but the pasta and dolci are amazing. For lunch Elly and I got brave and ordered "Tris Dello Chef", which is the Chef's selection of three pasta dishes. All three were something we probably would not have ordered given the choice, but were quite good. We were both happy to have taken the risk. The highlight of dinner tonight was the dessert: fresh strawberries with marscapone cheese, sprinkled with chocolate nibs.

Today is running a bit short, so a word on tipping:
I'm not sure I've got this entirely figured out, but I think you basically never, ever tip here. All sit-down meals have a "coperto" cover charge per-person, and when you pay your bill at the end you pay the register directly, usually cash. I'm used to tipping a bit above 20% at home, so no additional tip at all has taken a bit of getting used to, and has left me feeling guilty and ashamed most of the time.

Tonight at dinner we had the best service we've had so far in Italy so I tipped 2 Euro on a 30 Euro tab. The coperto was 2 Euro per person, so I basically gave a 50% bump to the required cover. Only two euro and the server was all "Grazie mille! Have a good night! Grazie, good night, thank you, thank you." and clearly QUITE happy about the tip. This has both cemented my belief that tipping is a rarely-or-never sort of thing, but also showed me what a difference a Euro or two can make to a server's night. I'm not really sure how to proceed in the future. Ah well. A concern for the morning. Good night Internet!

Photos

Treni! - May 31st, 2010

There isn't much to say about today. We rode trains. We had to get back to Perugia to pick up Elly's abandoned power cord. The trip from Biassa to Perugia to Florence wound up taking all day.

I'm going to use this otherwise empty blog post to say that Elly's camera kicks ass. She's got a Canon PowerShot SD780 IS. It isn't a photographer's camera by any stretch of the imagination, but as a snap-shot camera it excels. It is fast and responsive. Its "auto" mode pretty much always takes perfect pictures, but if you want to get into tweaking settings to get a wild shot just right it has plenty of adjustments. If this one ever bites the dust I'd definitely buy another, or its younger sibling anyway. My only complaint is that 3x zoom never seems to be enough if I'm trying to take landscape shots of something far off. For everything else it works like a dream.

Though today's batch of photos really don't demonstrate its excellence, lulz.

Photos

Biassa e Riomaggiore e Manarola - May 30th, 2010

Our room at the hostel was private, which was great. The front desk guy was extremely helpful, providing us bus schedules and other conveniences. The breakfast there was "così-così" (so-so), but otherwise our stay was quite pleasant.

We slept in a bit, but we were fed and on a bus to Cinque Terre around 9:50. Cinque Terre ("five lands") is a series of five villages that have collectively become a national park. We took a bus from Biassa to the closest town, Riomaggiore. Riomaggiore is a bit bigger than Biassa, and completely tourism focused. The town is almost entirely shops, restaurants, and walking paths. We wandered around Riomaggiore for awhile, snapping pictures. Some other tourists were discussing a nearby beach, which we wandered around for awhile trying to find, but never did. After our short walk we decided to move on to the next of the five towns.

All five towns are connected by train and foot path. We bought a day pass and took a train to Manarola, the next town. Manarola had some better options for eating and shopping, so we spent considerably more time here than Riomaggiore. We wandered around, buying locally made wines and liqueurs from the tourist shops.

We had lunch at a nearly-sea-side ristorante. It was only one door down, had a clear view of the sea, and the menu was about half the price of the sea-side restaurant. Elly had salmon ravioli and I had "seafood spaghetti" which wound up being a Lovecraftian plate of spaghetti, eyes, legs, shells, tentacles, and unrecognizable fleshy rings. I sent my imagination on a break and chewed everything that seemed intended for eating. Incredibly fresh, quite delicious, but not necessarily the sort of thing I'd do on a regular basis. Elly and I worked out what most (but not all) of the items were: whole shrimp, octopus, squid, and mussels. Her lunch was also really delicious and easily identifiable, but I'm still glad I got what I did.

Cinque Terre is an interesting experience. The towns are quite beautiful, but are somewhat tarnished by the level of tourism. It gives off the aura of being both comletely authentic while also having a nearly Disney-esque level plastic fakeness. I think we got a slightly lop-sided view, though, because Elly was not feelng up to taking the famed walking trail between towns. The trail's beauty earned it the name "Via Dell'Amore", after all.

We didn't want to wait around for the bus to Biassa, so we took a train to La Spezia and bussed to Biassa from there, saving us over an hour. Between the train and the bus we enjoyed another cappuccino in the late-afternoon sun.

Once back in Biassa Elly switched shoes from "cute" to her more practical Keens and we went on a hike on the trails around Biassa. "Always follow the red and white" advised Luca, the front desk guy. Nearly an hour up the side of the mountain to a rest stop. The beauty of this trail is undescribable, and hundred or so photos I snapped do not do it justice. The entire hour hike is paved with ancient stone steps, winding its way up the mountain through arcane, untamed forest. Deep, healthy green entangled us all around. It was absolutely, incredibly awesome and I don't see the point of stumbling around the English language trying to describe it. It felt otherworldy and magic, like something out of a fantasy story.

Then there was benches and a refreshments booth at the top. The juxtaposition was surreal.

The hike really is worth more than the few messy sentences above, but this blog isn't the place for poetry.

Back to Biassa for anchovies, pizza, and lemon torte. Then back to the hostel for much-deserved sleep.

Photos

Biassa - May 29th, 2010

With our bags in hand we waved goodbye to Hotel Fortuna at 7:15am Saturday morning. Somehow we managed to leave Elly's laptop's power cord plugged into the wall, which is where it will stay until Monday evening. Doh. Each of us had a bag in each hand and a backpack on our backs. The two of us and all that heavy luggage had a long journey ahead of us.

We rode a bus down the hill to the train station, where we had breakfast. Breakfast was a chocolate croissant each, a cappucino for me and a hot chocolate for Elly. The croissants and Elly's hot chocolate were considerably lesser quality than we had become acustomed to at the pasticceria near Fortuna, but were still VERY good. The croissants were filled with chocolate mousse and even train-station, powdered hot chocolate is better here than in the US. And only 5 Euro for the whole breakfast. For the few of you who know what I mean by this: the chocolate croissants in the train station rival Jean Pierre's in Durango for deliciousness.

We bought two tickets to La Spezia, but neglected an important detail. Here is a bit of advice that I wish someone had told me: always know your transfers in advance! We made it okay, but it was pretty hairy there for a bit.

From Perugia we caught a train to Terontolo, from Terontolo to Firenze (Florence), Firenze to Pisa, Pisa to La Spezia. From La Spezia we took a taxi to Biassa. All told, the day consisted of four train rides, a bus, and a taxi, and took 5 hours. Except for Firenze to Pisa all of the transfers went pretty smoothly. When our train got to the end of the line in Terontolo we found a train destined for Firenze and hopped on. Same for the La Spezia train. The Pisa train was a different story. In Fierenze we got off the train and couldn't find ANY trains destined for Pisa. This is because the trains are named after their final destination, and Pisa is just a stop along the way. We couldn't find anyone to ask and the line to the ticket booth was too long to risk it. Elly and I each took 5 of the departure tickers and watched for "Pisa" in the list of stops. I didn't see any on my five, and Elly didn't see any on hers. As a last ditch effort, Elly got in the long line for the ticket booth and I double checked the the departure tickers. PISA. There it was. Platform 3, with only 2 minutes to make the transfer. I grabbed Elly out of line and we ran to the far side of the station. If the trains in Italy ran on time we'd have missed it. As it was, we had only JUST gotten our bags onto the train with us when the train pulled out of the station. LOOK UP YOUR TRANSFERS IN ADVANCE, you'll thank me later.

The cab ride to Biassa was another exciting story, though it is one you've heard many times before. Cab drivers are maniacs! The highlight of the ride was when the cab driver took a blind turn too quickly and nearly rear-ended a police car in his lane. He responded by cussing out the cop, shaking his fist, passing the cop in a no-passing lane, and speeding off many kilometers over the speed limit. The cop just watched it happen, too, I dunno WTF.

At the end of that harrowing ride, we wound up in the tiny mountain town of Biassa. Biassa is this super small, adorable little town laid out on a switchback on the side of the mountain. It has one hostel, one restaurant, one market, one church, and one B&B. We stayed in the hostel, but somehow wound up landing a private room though we didn't request one. Pretty freakin sweet.

We got to Biassa between pausa and dinner, so despite having not eaten since breakfast, Elly and I had to wait another two hours to eat. We laid out a plastic bag as a picnic blanket and ate some of our snacks. Our meal was comprised of kiwis, mozzerella, and crustini with pesto. We took a short walk, then napped until the ristorante opened. Another delicious italian meal and then straight to bed with us.

Photos

Friday, May 28, 2010

Perugia - May 28th, 2010

Today's quest to find "the cool street" took us out into the rainy streets of Perugia. Naturally, the rainy streets were much less crowded than their dry, sunny counterparts. There were still a pretty good number of people braving the weather anyway, equiped with umbrellas. Umbrella salesmen roamed the streets, selling umbrellas to tourists and locals alike, anyone who got caught out in the rain. We were offered an umbrella ourselves, but we were happy to share my little blue one as we walked through the tail end of the downpour. For all of its wetness, the rain was light and warm, and actually quite refreshing.

We were sucessful in our quest today, finding "the cool street", a winding, aspalt-paved road that zigged and zagged across bridges as it snaked its way up the hill. The road itself was interesting, but what got it the title of "cool street" is the spectacular views you could see from its railings. We snapped WAY too many pictures up there, many of them covering the same subjects we shot the day before, but from a completely uninterrupted angle. We spent much of the morning running around getting good pictures here.

We stopped into "Coop" (one syllable, pronounced "cope"), which may be the only all-encompassing grocery store in the area. Most of the shopping you do around here is in a tiny, specialized shop. Pastries from the pasticceria, hygeine and medicine from farmacia, sandwiches from paninoteca, gelataria for gelato, bottega di vino for wine. "Coop" is a chain of grocery stores more in the style we're used to in the US, but still a TINY, narrow little shop. The entirety of the store is about the size of a small aisle at a Safeway back home. Here at Coop we got some more bottled water, juice, and pesto. The pesto here is amazingly delicious. In our time here, Elly and I have eaten an entire jar of it spread on crostini bread. Molto delizioso!

Back to the hotel to drop off our bags (and to chronicle up to this point in the blog!) and now we're heading back out to the open-air market for more adventure.

...

The open-air market was mostly shut down today. Apparently it is a multi-level shopping extravaganza, but only on certain days of the week at certain times. What was available today when we went was mostly purses, lipstick, dresses, and other girly trappings. It was set up basically like a flea market. We didn't buy anything, and Elly doesn't do much window shopping, so we were in and out pretty quickly.

More random walking around, somewhat directed by gift shopping for friends. We picked up some things, but mostly we just walked.

Blogging a bit before dinner. We're going to go to La Pasteria for pizza in about 20 minutes.

...

Dinner was great! We both had pizza. Elly had a spicy diavolo pizza (red sauce, mozz, spicy meat) and I had a caprese pizza (fresh tomato, buffalo mozz, oregano). Very delicious. The service at this place was very good. Our server was this really cute middle-aged man who seemed to have a lot of fun working on his English with us. I got the impression that he may have been the owner of the place. We also had wine, cappucino, and dolce. Dessert was layers of cake, strawberry, and chocolate rolled together and sprinkled with cocoa and powdered sugar.

We have to get to bed early tonight, because we need to be out the door by 7am. We have a treno to catch to Biassa. The train ride will be about 5 hours. We're staying in Biassa 2 nights, then another train ride to Florence for 3 nights. After that we're heading back to Rome for another 2 nights. I'm not sure if we'll have internet access between now and Rome, but I'll continue to blog and take pictures, and upload them when I can.

Photos

Perugia - May 27th, 2010

I'm writing this on Friday. Yesterday was somewhat uneventful, but I'm retroactively blogging it anyway, plus I got some good pictures to post.

Elly and I stayed up a bit late on Wednesday night. We still woke up pretty early Thursday morning and had breakfast in the hotel breakfast room. After eating we both agreed that we were still pretty tired and went back to bed for a couple more hours. I love vacation!

Our quest for the day was to find, in Elly's words, "the cool street". She was awfully mysterious about it, so I'm not sure what we were actually looking for. She was attempting to use Google Maps on her phone to pick out a path, but it just doesn't work like that out here. There are streets on the map that don't exist in real life, or if they do they are possibly underground streets that we were not able to find. We attempted to pick out a path to "the cool street" and wound up just orbiting it for awhile.

At one point, we ran into a mass of school kids and their school. The via we were following dead-ended in a school yard. According to the map it kept going through, but we both felt like we were intruding, so we backed out and took another path. I should have snapped off some photos, but didn't think about it until later.

Up and down Perugian vias. We saw some new sights (new to me, anyway) but never found "the cool street". We're going to try again today. Among the new sights we saw was an awesome, tree-covered via, and Via Appia, a street criss-crossed with bridges and arches.

Another thing we came across that day: the cathedral piazza had a stage and tent set up for a concert of some kind. Live, Italian pop music played from there starting during pausa and continuing through that night. With our windows open we could hear the music all the way back at the hotel.

We had another awesome lunch. Every single restaurant we've been to here has been WORLDS better than American Italian food. Fairly cheap, too. Most restaurants have a deal where you can get prima e secondi e contorni (side dish, such as a salad or potatoes) e acqua e caffè e coperto (cover charge, basially the tip) for ~12-16 euros. That's basically $20 US. A burger, fries, and a latte in Denver can easily run $16-20 after tip, and the meals you get here are much better.

Elly's MS fatigue caught up with us today, so we had to take it pretty chill that afternoon/evening. Elly wasn't feeling up to leaving the room so I got to go on an adventure where I bought bottled water and gelato without her assistance.

Today we're going to take it pretty easy, Elly is still pretty fatigued. We're going to head out and try to find "the cool street" again.

Photos

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Perugia - May 26th, 2010, Part 2

After Elly's "pausa" nap we went out shopping. We bought some snacks, two shirts for Elly, a power adapter (for using Italy's electrical outlets), and some "cioccolata". This shopping took place on another long, up-and-down-stairs, meandering walk. Lots of exercise, whew! We also got two small gelatos to eat on the way back, thus negating the benefit of all that exercise. ;)

Our hop from shop to shop took us to a part of Perugia that actually LOOKED like a city, with roads and stuff. I was so shocked I snapped off a three picture photogasm.

Hours later (no exageration) we made it back to Piazza Bella Repubblica and Hotel Fortuna. A bit of freshening up and we went back out for a pizza dinner. Still unaccustomed to Italian eating, we decided to split a pizza. It will probably be best for us if we DON'T get accustomed to Italy's level of food intake, especially since we'll be returning to our sedentary lives in United States of Fatmerica. Amerifat? At any rate, back home if I ate a  two-course pasta lunch, pizza, and ice-cream all in one day I probably wouldn't need to walk several hours up-and-down stairs to get to it.

Home again, home again. Elly's laptop hard drive is filled with some American TV episodes. Watching a couple of those before bed each night has been a GREAT comfort, I highly recommend it when travelling abroad.

Culture Shock #8: Holy CRAP Italians party. Outside our window EVERY night is raucous signing, flirtatous shrieks, and other drunken revelry. The nights we've stayed so far have been Monday through Wednesday keep in mind. This isn't a weekend, or a holiday, or anything. This is SERIOUSLY worse than Boulder on The Hill.

Culture Shock #9: Customer Service. I'm learning things about my own country over here. It isn't that the customer service is BAD here, its that it isn't the finely honed razor of false smiles, "greeted by the hostess within 15 seconds", etc. They aren't the incredible drones of amazing customer service that they are in the US. Again, it isn't that they aren't attentive, polite, friendly, etc, its just... they aren't so "life or death" about how quickly and thoroughly they serve you. Once a waiter has taken your order and brought back your food you have to FLAG THOSE GUYS DOWN to get more service out of them. They're prompt and attentive once you've got their attention, though. Whether or not you need a refill, desert, etc. is entirely your responsibility, not theirs.

Culture Shock #10: The Bill. We finally figured it out today, after half a week of awkward meal endings. They don't bring you the bill here. They take the plates away, and then they don't care HOW long you want to sit at that table chatting. Only ONCE in all our meals in Italy did they bring us the bill. You're supposed to get up and pay on your way out, whenever you are ready.

Photos

Today's Vocabolario
I speak it all now, guys. Totally fluent. Nothing new to report.

Perugia - May 26th, 2010, Part 1

Today was pretty eventful. We started the day with "colazioni" (breakfast) in the hotel. Italians basically don't do breakfast at all, I guess to save room for lunch and dinner. We had some cappucini and yogurt, but they didn't have much else. I stuffed a portion-control packet of nutella and a packet of cookies in my pocket for later, just in case I didn't make it to "pausa".

After colazioni I took some time to post a blog post my backlogged blog posts and photos. You've seen the fruits of that labor by this point. Elly got frustrated because it took me WAY TOO LONG. Hopefully you guys appreciate this stuff, heheh.

Once Elly was able to drag me out of the hotel lobby we went for another long, beautiful walk through Perugia. It is amazing how you can see so many different places in such a small area. The way the streets weave in and out of each other, with all the narrow little shops, there really is a LOT more to see per square foot. Elly took me out to the apartment she stayed in while she was here, and my random wanderings took her to a few hidden nooks in her old neighborhood that she'd never seen before.

One of these nooks was this antique looking garden with a undomesticated, sunbathing cat. Elly spent a bit of time attempting to pet the kitty, but he was too timid. She got a pet or two on his head, but it became pretty clear that he wasn't used to being around people.

We wandered far and wide, up and down Perugian narrow, staircase vias. We walked and snapped photos for almost three solid hours.

Quite tired and hungry by this time, we went back toward the hotel to "al Mangiar Bene" for pausa. Down, down, down a narrow staircase to a cute little restaurant. This time I would not be defeated; I had a prima course (rigatoni in pepper-cream sauce), and a secondi course (prosciutto and mozzarella bufala).  We were both quite stuffed.

Its amazing to me how much Italians eat, but they're basically all so skinny. Then again, with all the staircases around here, I guess they get plenty of exercise.

Between regular tiredness and MS fatigue, Elly almost fell asleep at lunch. Back to the hotel for a nap (for her) and more blogging/pictures (for me).

No culture shocks today. At least not so far. I guess I'm Italian now. ;)

Photos

Vocabolario
"capisco" - understand
"non lo so" - I don't know
"quanto" - how much?

Perugia - May 25th, 2010, 22:20

Today started out by sleeping in WAY too late (nearly 11). We went out and first thing bought some ceramics from a once-a-week street market. We bought a pizza platter, a fridge magnet, and a tea/coffee mug, all hand-crafted, painted, etc. Very nice. Then we headed over to a pasticceria for breakfast. We each had a little dessert that was basically a stack of cocoa-dusted cookies with creamy filling between each one. Elly had one topped with white chocolate and I had one topped with an orange jelly thingie. I had another cappucino, Elly had hot chocolate. It was a far cry from our milk-and-cocoa-powder. It was a think, soupy concoction that began congealing almost immediately. I had two sips, and it was almost too much chocolate for me. So delicious, though.

After breakfast we went for a bit more of a walk and then back to our hotel room for a bit. Elly had a nap and I did some reading. Her MS fatigue was acting up a bit, so she got tuckered out pretty fast today. It's fine, though; the forced relaxation was awesome.

After some hotel-room time, we both went back out for "pausa" (pow-ZUH). I had tortoloni stuffed with mozz and tomato and smothered in basil-spinach pesto. The pesto was subtly creamy, but I can't tell if there was actually milk involved. Elly had chittarini, with a red sauce of some kind. Chittarini (if I have the spelling right) appeared to be a think spaghetti. We sort of half-assed our "pausa", only doing a single "prima" course, skipping the main "secondi" course. I can't imagine eating that much food, though. We'll get another run at it tomorrow, I guess. We did save a bit of room for dessert, though. A scoop of french vanilla ice-cream on top of a bed of fresh, sliced strawberries. Not exactly Italy-specific, but still very good. I had a bit of a culture shock at the restaurant, desribed further down.

After lunch we went on a long walk around Perugia. We just started wandering off in whatever direction our feet took us, which wound up being a bad idea because of Elly's MS. She got to the point where she couldn't really go on, but we didn't know the shortest way back to the hotel. She sat on some steps while I ran around trying to find the way back. I couldn't just go running off, though, because then I wouldn't have any way to find Elly again. I came up with a pretty clever solution, though; as I ran through the twisting maze of Perugian "vias" I took pictures of landmarks with my finger deliberately in the shot to point the way to go. Then, once I found my way to the main city square (and thus close to the hotel) I used my photos to guide me back to Elly. Once I successfully guided Elly back to the hotel we were both pretty pooped (Elly most of all, though I did all the running around). Our lunch plus walk took nearly four and a half hours.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed from the disasterously long walk, we decided to pretty much call it a day. We retired to our hotel a bit early, and used the down-time as an excuse to get a wifi connection and get T-Mobile to enable international calling. All the buildings around here are six stories tall and made of solid stone, so indoor mobile reception is a joke. It is going to be VERY nice to have google maps again, especialy since asking an Italian for directions is basically a lost cause because of the language barrier... and the culture barrier. Italians are apparently notorious for giving crappy directions. And no wonder, with the cities bulit the way they are.

Culture Shock #6: This one takes some explaining... We ate at a SUPER fancy restaurant, "la Taverna". No wine cheaper than 45 euros a bottle, no "secondi" main course cheaper than 20 euro. Remember, Euros are... around 1.3 dollars today. So if we were to eat "prima e secondi con vino" it would have run us $130+ for the two of us to eat lunch. DESPITE the fanciness of our cuisine, our table was still just plopped into some alley somewhere, with cars driving so close to the table that I could reach out and touch them with my fork if I wanted to. The back of my chair was against a mechanical gate, which led to a tiny parking lot. Cars and mopeds zipped by us several times, in and out of the gated parking lot, which I think led to some sort of a multi-residence building.

Culture Shock #7: They drive like maniacs here, whipping around at 30 miles an hour, weaving through these tiny alleys, narrowly missing hitting pedestrians, dining establishments... up and down steep stairscases... there aren't "sidewalks" and "roads", just "vias" which, if they happen to be car width, have cars zipping down them. And parking? Very few labeled spots. If a driver gets to a plaza near to his destination he just STOPS DRIVING in the middle of the plaza and gets out.

Photos

Today's Vocabolario
"questo" - this. Useful for ordering. ;)
"ancora" - now.
"e" - and.
"questo e cappucino; ancora! per favore" - Get a move on, Starbucks barista! I know Italian now.

Roma e Perugia - May 24th, 2010, 21:36

This is my first moment of respite since leaving Colorado. When we haven't been sitting in cramped litle seats we've been running around crazy trying to get to the next place. I'm now sitting at a night stand typing to a text doc on Elly's laptop; we haven't figured out how to Internet yet.

Saturday at 4:19pm Colorado time we jumped on an RTD bus to the airport, then at 8:15 flew British Airways 9 hours to London, Heathrow. Two hour layover (feels like 10 minutes, amazingly) then another couple of hours to Rome. Our flight kind of ruled. I don't know if this is the difference between British Airways and other airlines or if the bigger difference is international travel vs US local, or what. The in-flight meal was great. Elly had orange chicken and I had lasagna. Very good. Came with wine, a few sides, some sort of a custardy dessert with mango suace and chocolate chips. I didn't sleep a wink the entire first leg of the flight. Fortunately for me, the in-flight movie selection was pretty good and FREE. I watched Edge of Darknes, Pullham 123, Charlie Wilson's War, and The Princess and The Frog all from the comfort of the back of some guy's head. If the selection is the same on the way back I'm TOTALLY gunna watch Alien.

The downside of our flight was that Elly and I had to sit separately. Within sight of each other, but too far away to chat. Apparently you're supposed to check in online 24 hours before the flight to choose your seats, or something. It totally sucked.

Heathrow Airport is basically a giant mall, with airplanes that take you to your car instead of a parking shuttle. Seriously. DIA has a food court and some gift shops. Heathrow has multi-level clothes stores, candy shops, full-scale restaurant/bars, etc. Our "2 hour layover" wound up giving us 20 minutes between planes, though, so we didn't have much time to check stuff out.

I basically napped off and on from London to Rome. By the time we got on the plane in London we'd been awake almost 24 hours. We got in to Rome around 4pm (8am CO time) and rode a treno (train) from the Fiumicino Airport to Roma Termini station. We wound up taking a VERY wrong way out of the train station and spent well over an hour wandering back alleys, orbiting within a couple of blocks of the hostel we were supposed to be staying at. We finally found it, dropped off our bags, and grabbed some pasta around 10:30pm. The house wine we got with our meal tasted like medicated bathwater, but the pasta was quite delicious. A bit of a culture shock, though. Elly and I agreed that the first few bits of my lasagna and her canneloni were pretty so-so at first, but the meal got much better as we went. American pasta seems to substitute salt where Italy uses fresh tomatoes. It starts out seeming quite bland, but is actually really delicious.

Exhausted, we dragged our corpses back to the hostel and flopped into our beds. Good thing we were so tired, too. The hostel had several rooms, our room had 10 bunks, and at least one of the tiny bunks was hosting a young, amorous couple. Despite the lights, loud noises, etc I was out cold and slept for 11 hours solid. My sleep was punctuated by intermittent dreams where I was the only person capable of saving the world from Plant Man. Plant Man was a pathetic super-villian who used his control over plants to try to take over the world, but was trounced soundly by a real super-hero. After years in retirement, Plant Man was considering going back to his life of crime, and somehow I was the only one in the world who could talk him out of it. Totally bizarre dreams. Back to the real story...

Elly and I woke up, packed our bags, and walked down to Roma Termini to catch a treno to Perugia. After buying tickets we got a cioccolato muffin and a cappucino at a coffee shop in the train station. The train station, much like Heathrow airport, was ALSO a mall. Upscale fashion shops, restaurants, multi-level book stores, cell phone shops, etc all within a few second walk of the train platform. Consumerism is as rampant here as in America. That was a bit of a culture shock.

Beautiful train ride through the Italian country-side, interrupted by MS-related pseudo-medical emergency that I won't be chronicling here.

Upon arriving at the end-of-the-line in Peruga, we hopped a bus up the winding, narrow roads up the hill to the heart of Perugia. Exhausted again, we zombie-walked to Hotel Fortuna, dropped our bags on the bed and took a shower.

Hotel Fortuna is this amazingly beautiful, ancient, labarynthine building covered in ivy that snakes its way up the hillside in a microcosmic emulation of the rest of the town. I got some beautiful pictures from the terrace/roof, a few of which feature scenery rather than my beautiful wife.

Feeling a bit rejuvinated, we walked around Perugia, seeing some sites. We ate gelato and pizza and are now back at the hotel. Gelato here was basically the same as the gelato I've had in the US, but the pizza was amazing. Elly had a pizza that included sausage, I had basil, tomato, mozz, and buffalo mozz. Buffalo mozz is pretty similar to goat cheese in consistancy, but a bit different in flavor. Both pizzas were "molto bene". I was at first intimidated by the number of cherry-tomatoes on my pizza but they were the perfect firmness and ripeness, and extremely flavorful. I'm definitely going back to "il Bacio" for pizza again before we leave here.

We haven't really had a chance to relax or enjoy anything because of all the insanity involved with travel. I'm enjoying the trip so far, though.

The most incredibly awesome thing about Perugia so far is the design of the city. The whole place is built on the side of a hill, and follows a single basic design philosophy: massive, beautiful plazas connected by extremely narrow alleys.

Culture Shock #1: No real culture shock. They really are almost exactly like Americans, here. The old people dress the same as our old people, the young people dress the same as our young people. The biggest difference in the people is that the kids here that dress like we do are dressing like AMERICANS, as a trendy fashion statement. And the majority of them that dress like super-fashionable hipsters aren't doing so ironically, they're doing so because they're the "euro-trash" that hipsters are in many ways emulating. But peple are pretty much the same here as anywhere in the US.

Culture Shock #2: No handicapped. Not that they don't exist, I'm sure they do. But there are NO allowances for them. The entire world is made of stairs. I was first made aware of this because I was lugging around that heavy ass suitcase, and there was NEVER a ramp option. Now I notice it everywhere. In the US a building that can't be reached by the handicapped is a great offense, but here I have seen one ramp per hundred staircases. I've seen MAYBE MAYBE 5 ramps since getting off the plane in Rome. Which, by the way, is a subtle way of implying that I've seen 500 staircases in Perugia, which is no joke.

Culture Shock #3: NO DOOR KNOBS! OMG, why no door knobs? There are KNOBS, sure, but they don't turn! They come in two flavors: functionless knobs used to grasp the door, and knobs with giant functional buttons that do what a NORMAL knob does when you turn it. As an engineer I can appreciate the simplicity of a knob which, once firmly grasped, performs the function that will always follow, which is to open the door. These "auto-turning" knobs seem to be much less common than the "no-turn" knobs. You have to use a key to open the door in that case. Then again, maybe the fact that I've gone from restaurant to hotel to restaurant to hotel is corrupting my perspective. The same perspective in the US would convince me that all doors opened either with a key card and rotating handle or a door-width push bar.

Culture Shock #4: Toilets. Everything about a euro bathroom seems designed to confuse. The toilets are shaped differently for no good reason. Instead of being a basin that tapers to a narrow pipe, they are a DEEP basin that basical doesn't taper much at all, it just makes a 90 degree turn at such a sharp angle that it took me two flushes to realize anything was actually going on down there. And the tank isn't part of the toilet, it is hung on the wall just below the ceiling. And bidets. They look EXACTLY like a sink you'd need to kneel to use. There is a soap dish with soap, and a towel, and a faucet with hot and cold water, and a drain plug. But it is all DISTRESSINGLY just below knee level, right next to the toilet. I'm fairly sure I know the intended use, but I'm not going to rely upon American heresay to perform such a filthy and intimate task. World, let it be known! The next chance I get I'm going to google "bidet correct usage".

Culture Shock #5: No street signs! Plenty of streets, very few signs. When there are signs, they aren't intersection sign posts like in the US, just plaques set into the walls that you cant read unless you're walking down that street already. Oh, and I have no joke seen a street sign for a staircase. A little, winding staircase connecting two other roads named "via something-or-other".

Well, the sounds of the Perugia street and the fresh, Italian air wafting around my open window-shutters, and my bed calls to me. Or, at least, my spine calls to the bed. Holy crap I'm tired. Elly warns me that the bed is really uncomfortable, but she is doing so in the dream-like, leaden syllables of the already-sleeping. I'm hoping she's wrong, but either way I doubt it will matter much to me.

Photos

Today's Vocabolario
per favore - please
grazie - thank you
permesso - excuse me (I need to get by you)
scuzi - excuse me (oops, I bumped you, sorry)
bagno - toilet
multo/multi - many, much
treno - train
termini - terminal, terminus. End of the line.