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Published: September 5th 2007
Claudio
It's me!!!Italy. What can we expect from it? Gondolas and gondoliers singing "Oh sole mio!", Gladiators and of course PASTA and PIZZA!
None of this happened.
(It is all there but not for our budget!) We arrived in Venice. For this visit we have no more than 24 hours and we still have to sleep, since the last night we spent on the train. At the Venice train Station we bought the Orange Card (or was it Blue?), a ticket that gives you unlimited water transport around town plus some museum entrances included.
It was a good deal, we took the water bus to the Ostello Venezia, a nice and cheap hostel with a faaaaaar view to Piazza de San Marco. Dropped our bags and went straight to the Piazza.
The square is really beautiful, but the feeding of the birds, making them sit on the kids heads to take pictures is something gross. First because this picture is so common that it is cliche, second the hundreds of birds fed with tons of grains everyday produce tons of bird poo that ends on top of everything: Monuments, houses, churches, benches, tourists, me... destroying everything
(bird poo is very acidic, and Vatican
We had to redeem from our sins! But wasn't time enough for so many... hehehe. damages all the marble and granite on the buildings) not considering the diseases they carry. On top of that every corner has to be filed with enormous spikes to keep the birds away....
Changing subject, we are in Italy so we have to taste the local cuisine... hehehe we had exotic local food like lasagna for lunch and pizza for dinner! Very good, you should try!!!
After our super short stay in Venice, we took the train to Rome. I don't know why, but here we had to pay a fee on top of our europass ticket. The guy on the counter said that we had to pay the booking even though we didn't do a booking... strange these Italians.
Rome. We have being sticking to the International Youth Hosteling chain to find good, well located and not so pricey hostels. It worked well except in Rome. The HI hostel in Rome is faaaar away from the center, doesn't have buses after 10 and was in bad shape. We have to find something better next time 😊 ! It doesn't matter, we are not here for the hostel.
Rome is really a museum in the open sky.
Venice
The view from our hostel window. Every single corner has some ancient ruins, fountains, buildings, etc. I loved this variety of ancient sites, but an Italian friend said it sucks... strange these Italians! But he had his reasons, the underground train cannot expand because every time they start digging the new tunnels they find new ancient sites and stop digging!
The down side of Rome is the prices. A small bottle of water cost 4 euros! A true budget breaker! But it's still a place not to be missed!
Besides the nice monuments and the Colosseum we wanted to pay a short visit to our holy friend, The Pope. He wasn't there so we took the opportunity to walk around a bit in his residence. Fernando is guaranteed to go to Hell for offensive pictures in the holy site... hehe... sorry to the conservatives. The Vatican is really impressive and in the Vatican museum Claudio found his own statue from a few hundred years ago.
This was the end of the Italian visit. From Rome we took a flight to Portugal.
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