I woke up with blood all over my sheets from my elbow; the band-aid obviously wasn’t good enough. I cleaned it and took a look: it was pretty bad and I couldn’t really straighten my arm. I would give it a day and if it didn’t get better, I would see a doctor (I am posting this 3 days after the incident. Good news, my elbow is healing. It still hurts to lean on it and straighten all the way, but the cut looks ok.) Both of us were pretty hung over this morning, but we had already bought tickets to tour the Coliseum so we had to go. It was so hot. We were pretty much shade hopping the entire afternoon. The Coliseum was cool and they had information panels in English. Here are some ... read more
We left Firenze and never looked back. Off to Rome! We met some new Aussies (of course) on the train ride over named Kat and Andrew. They have been dating for 5 years, graduated Uni a year ago, and decided to take off and explore Europe for 2 months together. They seemed to travel will together, but I don’t ever think Greg and I could do it. We would kill each other. We got to the hotel, which is right in Piazza Venezia, a huge plaza with crazy Italian drivers in a round a bout. We quickly learned that you have to be aggressive when crossing the street, even if cars are coming at you. We walked down to the Coliseum in the blazing heat and took some pictures of the Roman Forum along the way. ... read more
I could tell I was in Germany when I saw people with distinct German faces… like my mom’s nose and cheeks. I giggled to myself… remembering that my dad calls my mom a little hummel. Bahaha. I started to get a little nervous because I couldn’t get a hold of Mo. I just crossed my fingers that he was at the train station at Bamberg and I could find him! But it was so easy, he was just right at the platform! We went out for tapas and I had my first beer in Germany. I felt so much safer in Germany than in Rome… I am not sure if it was because I was with Mo or because Bamberg is a smaller town. I loved it within the first three hours. Mo set me up ... read more
Mary woke up at 6:15am. I didn’t need to catch a bus until 7:45, so I figured that if I woke up with her, I’d have plenty of time to shower, pack, eat and check-out. However, I didn’t even hear Mary leave, and I woke up at 7:18… 27 minutes to get all my shit together. Ali and I made it to the train station with time to spare. I am currently on my second of three trains, from Bologna (northern Italy) to Munich: 6 hour train ride. I curled up with my bags and feel asleep when I climbed aboard. When I woke up, I found myself in a valley between huge, tree covered mountains and vineyards scattered around. It was absolutely beautiful… couldn’t be captured on camera, but I tried. I was a little ... read more
Ali Battig was meeting us in the afternoon and crashing in our room for the night before she joins a tour group tomorrow. So Mary and I just went shopping again… I got a really cute dress on sale and a pair of jeans. I was just killing myself because my backpack is already so full. When Ali got here, we showed her the sights and recounted whatever information we could remember about the ruins from the other night. Met up with the Aussies for our last night and headed out to Sloppy’s again for dinner and drinks. The food was amazing, of course, and Albers and his friend joined our table. He kept ordering us carafes of wine and beer, the most amazing gelati I’ve ever tasted, and slices of watermelon. It wasn’t until the ... read more
Mary and I headed out for the Vatican and met the Aussies in the center plaza. We walked through the church, saw the tomb of St. Peter and climbed up the dome for a view of Vatican City. The corridors on this one were quick small, so if you are claustrophobic, I would advise against the ascent. We walked back through Rome to hit the Pantheon. It is a really cool temple that depicts what I imagined Roman buildings to look like. Inside, we sat for a while and noted how some of the decorations were quite similar to some of the things one might buy from street vendors on the way home from a good night at Sloppys. Perhaps the priest went on a shopping spree. As we are laughing, an announcement came on about ... read more
A couple of train rides out of Cinque Terre, we arrived in Firenze… our first real Italian city. It was only up until our stay in Firenze that I had printed out Google maps from the train station to our hotels… and of course the tourist information office in the train station was closed for construction. We finally decided just to call the hotel (duh). The hotel turned out to only be a 3 minute walk from the station. My favorite thing about Italy is the way they display their food: Gelati, pizza, calazones, fruit, pastries. Its arranged so perfectly based on color, texture, etc. And of course I’m a sucker for things that look pretty. We stopped at a place with a beautiful gelati display and journaled a little bit. We quickly found out that ... read more
Today we set out to hike the rigorous, 5 hour hike through all 5 villages. Starting at Riomaggiore, we look Lover’s Lane to Mangola. The walls are covered by people’s signatures, couples that have come to Cinque Terre. It’s also called Lover’s Lane because couples put a lock on the fence and throw the key into the sea. The path between Mangola and Corniglia was closed, so we hoped a 2 minute train ride. From there, we had to climb over 300 steep steps (so hot) to reach the village. It made me wonder how , or if, people in wheelchairs visit the place. Moving onto the next town, “ BEACH” was scribbled on a rock with sharpie pen, which is a little shady but it seemed like a good idea at the time. We didn’t ... read more
Another travel day… Needed a cappacino badly once we got to Ventimiglia, Italy, which is a town just over the border. Ordering was quite difficuly because we know absolutely no Italian. We got on the train to Genova and shared a cabin with 4 Italian guys about our age who were heading home to Milan after a 1 month backpacking/camping tour of Europe. They were quite animated and talked very fast, which started to make me nervous about being in a country where I don’t know the language. They told us a funny story from their trip: in Barcelona, they were camping and had put their shoes just outside the tent. In the middle of the night, 2 of the guys woke up individually and put their shoes back on so they wouldn’t get stolen, purely ... read more
We woke up around 10am and decided to get breakfast, get some emails in, and catch a bus for 2 hours back to Cannes for the day to meet up with our friends again. We got on the bus and it was literally 105 degrees plus humidity on the bus because the fan and AC wasn’t working. We sat there for 5 minutes while they tried to figure out the problem. All I could think about was how hot I was and the beads running down my back. They put us all on another bus and we were off. About an hour into the ride, we realized that we should give Nice a shot and go back. So, we jumped off in Antibes and caught the next bus back to Nice. We hopped off at the ... read more