Advertisement
Published: October 11th 2009
The Contiki adventure continues with Italy. We left Nice early one morning, and our desination was Pisa, where we would stay one night. However, on the way to Pisa we stopped to explore the Cinque Terre (the Five villages, or something). This was one of my favourite places on the Contiki trip - I finally felt like we were seeing the Mediterranean that I wanted to see (rather than all these big cities we had been in so far!!). Our first stop was Monterosso, where we had a couple of hours to spend. We found delicious Foccacia, which you can imagine was a highlight for Jane and I, the bread fanatics, cos its like ridiculously amazing bread... We went for a little wander after this and heard our Contiki day song, La Camisa Negra (the black shirt haha, its a spanish song...) playing in this random little market place! This was good fun, cos we had heard the song every morning for the past week or so, so had a little dance in the market square, as you do. THEN (dun dun dunnnnnnn) we went for an amazing swim in the Mediterranean Sea. This was especially exciting/weird for some Canadians
- who were used to swimming in fresh water lakes and were new to this whole “salt water” phenomenon. I think the water was saltier than in the Indian ocean, and we seemed to float more easily (but it also hurt the eyes rather a lot...). We lazed around on the beach for a while after spending a long time in the water, and then it seemed that we were being ordered to leave, because a rather large wave occurred and suddenly we were all sitting in about 10cm of water. Luckily I managed to hold my bag, containing lots of electrical things, above the water, but my clothes that I kind of needed to put back on were not so lucky. Because we were on a bit of a day trip we had left most of our gear in the coach, which was nowhere nearby, so I had an interesting afternoon in wet cold clothes. But it was a pretty hot day, so really it wasn't so bad!! Plus, I was lucky compared to some people, whose cameras and stuff got wet :-/
I think the next village we visited was Vernazza, where we only had about half an
watermelon sculpture
isn't that just coolhour to spend. We spent it well, on delicious Gelato. I can't remember the name of the next village, but it was linked to the next village by a path/trail along the cliffs - called The Path of Love (I forget the name in Italian....). So, we all walked this path, which is meant to be one of the most romantic places ever, and I walked it alone. Nice huh.
Anyway, along the way there are many padlocks attached to the fence. Supposedly, people who are in looove come here with a padlock, lock it and then throw the key into the ocean, never to be found again - symbolising their undying love for each other. Awwwwwww. Someone joked about using a combination lock... how times have changed :P
We left the Cinque Terre in the afternoon and contiinued on our way to our hotel in Pisa. We were sort of in the middle of nowhere and couldn't go out, so it was a quiet night for us. Next morning we packed up and left Pisa to go to Florence. What?! Leaving Pisa already?? Never fear, we stopped at the leaning tower after leaving our hotel :P TRICKED YOUUUUUU. We
all took the obligatory 'holding the tower up', 'pushing the tower over', 'doing something or other to the tower' photos, bought some souvernirs and got back on the coach. Pisa - tick. Yeah, Contiki is difficult like that. Technically I have been to Pisa, but I really have no idea what it is like there. Strange.
Florence (or Firenze, which is really much cooler, right?)
That afternoon we arrived in Florence, and Jane and I went to the Uffizi museum- some big art gallery place. We had to wait in line for about an hour and a half. It was both big AND full of art, mostly religious images, so it delivered what it promised. We spent a few hours in there, trying to listen to our little audio guide thing, but failing miserably because most of the time we couldn't work out which of the paintings in the room the audio was about. We had some funny dialogue going on... “maybe its that one, there are some sheep in the corner, and like, that kind of looks like a lion. Did he mention a lion?” “nahhh, look, its over there - dammit, I swear he said it was
on the left. Did he mean on the left of the last picture or on the left of the door as we came in? Whatever.” “Shall we stop listening to the guide??”
And so we did.
That night we went out to a karaoke bar. It was full of other contiki groups, I think. Anyway you can imagine what happened there. We had our fill of beer and delicious girly drinks, some of us sang karaoke songs and we danced the night away til we got bored and walked back to the hotel. Now, I'm pretty sure it was in Florence that we went on a walking tour thing. We saw a few copies of Michaelangelo's statue of David, which is a LOT bigger than I thought. I didn't see the orginal one, because we had spent the last afternoon in the Uffizi museum, but the copies all look the same anyway, so I didn't really mind. There was a lot of nice architecture in Florence, including some massive cathedral - the Santa Maria del Fiore (i think!!) - which according to Wikipedia has the largest dome of any cathedral in the world. I think this is the cathedral
which on the outside is decorated with white, pink and green marble. Its very pretty... I hope I'm thinking of the right one. Clearly I should have taken better (/some) notes whilst I was in these places :P
Florence was a very nice city to walk around in, but I unfortunately don't remember heaps about it. I'm sure when I look through my photos stuff will come back to me. But what I DO remember, is AMAZING GELATO! There was a place called “Festival de Gelato” that had like a billion different flavours, and we visited this place quite a few times in the two days that we were there :-) yum yum.
On our last night in Florence we went up to the Piazza Michaelangelo to have a group photo taken - in front of a beautiful view of Florence and the River Arno. From here we continued into the coutryside to a lovely little restaurant for what turned out to be one of the best special dinners of the tour. We had yummy Tuscan food - some weird vegetable THING and a nice pasta, and then roast pork mmmm. And the roast pork was presented to the assembled
tables with a fanfare (on piano) and i'm pretty sure some sparklers, although its possible I added them into the picture in my own imagination and it didn't really happen. It was very impressive, anyway :P
The entire way through this dinner we were entertained by a rather talented piano player. He played cliched things like “Piano man” and some requests from us, such as “La Camisa Negra” - our contiki tour day song!! So that was good fun. Its hard to really describe how nice this dinner was, so I guess I'll stop trying and move right along!
After dinner we headed back into Florence and went to a 'Space Electronica Disco' or some odd name like that, which was just a regular club, once again full of other contiki groups. This place was interesting though, because they had a unique way of keeping track of drinks. When you came in they gave you this little card, which the bartenders punched with a hole punch when you bought a drink. In order to leave the club later, you had to go to a special counter, give them your card/s and get a “yes you can leave cos you have
paid” Token. Kind of bizarre, but it means you dont have to carry cash around with you, cos they let you pay with a card at the end.
Next morning we left Florence for Rome, our final destination, and our last two nights together 😞
However, on the way to Rome we stopped in this great little Italian town, San Gimignano. It was very Tuscan (or I like to think so, anyway)... and surrounded by typical countryside, which I rather liked. Another good point - it had the BEST GELATO IN THE WORLD... apparently. And we tried it, and it was good. It has won awards, and stuff. We were only there for about an hour, unfortunately.
Rome So. Rome. What do you say about such a place?! I've heard other people call it old, dirty and hot. And yes, I can't really argue with any of them. It was all of these things, plus the drivers are nuts. But it is also a place where you can almost FEEL the history seeping out of the buildings. Its just... you can't help but be reminded of what used to be here, especially when you see things like the Coloseum
(in all its half-collapsed glory). And the Imperial Forum, where they have excavated to reveal evidence of the older, lower civilisations that existed in this place, in a different time. We did a tour of the Imperial Forum and I have to say, its a bizarre feeling, if you let yourself imagine this place all those years ago... you get to walk along what used to be the city streets, imagine them bustling, full of people going about their daily lives. And then you snap back to the present; and find the old streets deserted, and realise the real world now occurs about 10m higher than it used to, in the new streets of Rome. Just up there, see where those cars are driving? Yeah. Cool huh! And you cant help but wonder just how many layers of 'old forgotten city' there are...
After the Imperial Forum tour we were taken to the Colosseum, which was cool and big and its interesting to imagine it full of seats and people and gladiatorrrrrrrrrrs. We then lost the people we were heading to the Vatican with, but hilariously caught up with them at the metro station. We went to see St Peter's
Basilica, as you do... Ok, so it was very big and impressive and ornate and pretty, but I don't know... maybe I'd had my fill of churches by then... or perhaps it just means more to religious/Catholic people. Who knows! It was interesting to see, but I wouldn't be going back there in a hurry. One noteworthy thing - you are not allowed to take knives into the church. Sooooooo, if you are in need of a pocket knife whilst in Rome, go line up for St Peter's, and just before you go through the scanny security thing, check the bins to the side of the queue. I'll bet there are a good selection of pocket knives for you to choose from. Of course, then you can't go in to the church... but you get a free knife :D
There is only one more thing to say about Rome. Its where we had our farewell dinner for contiki. It was at this restaurant that had a stage attached, and there was this show on whilst we ate. It was pretty bizarre - I think it was meant to be a demonstration of Italian music from past to present (and I
have had Funiculi Funiculaaa in my head ever since...), but there was also a lot of dancing, and some moments of 'lack of context' where us english speakers didn't really know exactly what was going on. But it was a great, fun night, and as good an end to the contiki adventure as I could have asked for.
That night and the next morning there were obviously a lot of hugs and goodbyes and then it was all over.... two weeks with the same 39 people and suddenly you're all on your own...
... walking down some apparently endless street, with all your stuff, and no idea how much further you have to walk. The only map I had of my next hostel (still in Rome, but where I was meeting Mum) was a photograph I had taken of the appropriate region on a big map in the hotel lobby. As silly as it sounds, it got me there eventually and soon I was taking a well earned rest (and learning that there was a bus I could have caught that would have saved me a 40 minute walk along the endless street with all my stuff). Oops?
Anyway
eventually Mum turned up at the hostel, after getting off this wonderful bus at the wrong stop, and also having to walk too far :P That night some of the contiki crew were still hanging around Rome, so Mum and I headed in to the Spanish steps to meet up with them for dinner. We stayed one more night in Rome, and then got ourselves organised to catch our train to Venice.
And you'll have to wait til the next entry to hear about it! So long!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.289s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 40; dbt: 0.0855s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
