Blogs from Rome, Lazio, Italy, Europe - page 300

Well, Les is up, up and away en route to Canada. In fact, she was up, up and away before I made it back to San Pietro metro station!! We were at the airport in lots of time and it is a good thing we were as the lineup for the 3 Air Canada agents was incredibly long. We learned from a fellow traveller that Air Canada has only been on its own here since April, that they used to fly under the El Italia umbrella but now have their own stations at the airport. They obviously have not had enough time to get any kind of electronic check in organized because we stood in line with people who did not have tickets or who had lots of check in luggage even though Les had both ... read more

Les has a very understated way of describing our 14 hour day, believe me. We did, indeed, get off the bus too early, about 1500 meters too early...for those who think in kilometers, that is 1.5 kilometers too early. This early descent from transport meant that we had to resort to shank's pony, walking along the narrowest shoulders I have ever seen, all of them cobblestoned and limited by ancient, ancient walls. We picked up a few more English speaking tourists on the way as we stopped for a bit of a rest at the entrance to the San Calisto catacombs before proceeding the remainder of the way to the San Sebastian catacombs. We chose to visit this section because the Lonely Planet guidebook said that it has the best guides and is not as over-touristed. ... read more

For those of you who couldn't view those pictures, make sure you copy and paste that link I put up into your browser. They aren't on this website, they are on Webshots. Here is the link again: http://community.webshots.com/user/rickrainy We had our first day in Rome yesterday, and then a bit today so far. Yesterday, after taking a morning train from Florence and getting to the hostel, we walked around to some of the sites that aren't really organized for tourism or cost money, like the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Piazza Novona (Bernini's Fountain of Four Rivers, which you may remember from Angels and Demons), and the Pantheom (also from Angels and Demons). That was about it for yesterday. We had a good dinner on a street cafe (a lot of Italian restaurants have this fixed menu ... read more

I think every body, at least from this side of the ocean has the dream to have an adventure in europe, experimenting, smelling, get the picture from knowing real people, so this was my opportunity, planning a clasic low budget, backpacking extreme travel to as manny countries you can in Europe. I plan this travel with my best friend, ,making a lot of research before departure, buying the travelguide for the low budget traveler "Let's go Europe" and planning every penny. So first of all having a cheap flight from Mexico City is difficult so the best way normally is making some stops so we book United Airlines MEX-IAD-Milan a very beautifull almost 24 hr journey. The first stop in Washington Dulles was a nightmare and a very new concept for me 6 hour delay of ... read more

Hm... where did I leave off.. I'll try to make this more exciting to read than the last few entries. Last weekend my friend Janice and I headed up to La Spezia (near Cinque Terre) to visit my friends Enzo and Sandro. They took us sport climbing near Porto Venere which overlooked the Ligurian Sea. I was proud of Janice for making the sketchy descent down in flipflop sandals and I was proud of myself for doing a few routes with certain techniques I havn't used in a long time (for the one person who would understand the lingo - crack climbing, laybacks, heelhooks). This weekend I decided to head down to Rome. since I've done most of the typical touristy things I had to seek out new and exciting adventures. Yesterday consisted of going to ... read more