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Published: January 27th 2009
Tower view
Looking across the sea toward the west side of the island. - VeniceI recently returned from an amazing 18 day European vacation with Emily. The journey took us from Italy - Greece - Hungary - Czech Republic.
Because flights were booked for leaving Luleå, I had to leave the night before our flight out of Stockholm and sleep in the airport. I found a nice wood bench and got about two hours sleep to start off the journey, but it was free lodging! After three hours on two busses to get from the main Stockholm airport to Ryanair's ($60 flight to Italy) I met Emily (for the first time in three weeks) and we were on our way.
Ryanair is a very interesting airline. They provide the cheapest flights available and the shortcuts were noticeable. There are no assigned seats on their flights so people started lining up at the gate 20 minutes before boarding. Emily and I caught onto this and there was a rush to the plane so that people who wanted to sit with each other could. Luckily Emily and I got two seats together in the last row of the plane. Another way Ryanair is able to provide cheap flights is by using inexperienced pilots. Not that
they are unqualified, but they are usually in their twenties and have not been flying commercially long enough to get a high salary. Our landing in Venice was pretty rough.
Venice was noticeably warmer than Sweden which was welcomed with open arms. We were able to take a bus from the airport right to the island of Venice. It took us a few wrong turns to find our hotel but we made it and went out to have dinner before falling asleep exhausted from getting there. Venice is a really beautiful city. It was really interesting to be in a city with no cars or bikes! The only way to get around the island was by foot, water bus, or water taxi. Emily and I spent our full day there walking all around the city and taking it in. There was no single monument that made this city for me, all of the houses looked like monuments, the city as a whole was its greatest quality. We climbed up one tower across the water on a smaller island and saw the city from above which was breathtaking. Glass blowing and mask making are very popular in Venice. There were
many shops selling glass art (more than any other city on our trip) and many mask shops and vendors. Making masks was an artistry, many of the mask shops had a man at a table in the center making masks. We assumed he was the owner of the store and made all the masks in it. I guess they dress in them for a huge festival every summer. Something I may have to plan on going back to experience.
From Venice, Emily and I took a train to Parma, Italy to stay with my friend Gabrielle Azzali. Gabe studied at my highschool in St. Paul during our senior years. During that time I became pretty close friends with him and have visited him once before. It was great to see him again for the first time in three and a half years. Like close friends it was as if it was only a few weeks ago. We had delicious Parma ham and Parmesan cheese (products the city is world famous for). As well as plenty of wine (for which I have grown a taste for on this tour of Italy). In the wealthy areas of Italy they have an
Getting a jolt
An espresso was needed. -Venice Apertivo time. At around 5pm every day you go to a bar and have a drink or two while appetizers are provided free of charge. It seems like a very luxurious way of living to me and now it makes sense why they don't eat until 9pm. Max met up with us in Parma and it was great to see him, although it made me a little homesick of my friends back home.
After spending two days with Gabe and his hospitality, Max, Emily, and I took a train to Florence to spend a day there. We climbed up one of the biggest towers in the city (450+ stairs) and took in a great view of the city. From there we marched to the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge, lined with jewelry stores, and got a few good pictures. We then hopped on the train to Cortona, Italy to meet with Max's family.
Cortona is a magical city in the heart of Tuscany that lies behind a wall on top of a mountain. It is where they filmed much of the film
Life is Beautiful. I had a very cheap plate of duck, rabbit, boar, and chicken ($7) which
Night view
Because of the holidays all of the busier streets had lights along the top which was really festive. - Venice was delicious. We stayed at the Grady's Villa, a beautiful house in the country. The city was surrounded by fog the first night and day. It was eerie driving up the mountain through the fog it was so thick. The fog cleared just as we were leaving and we got a quick view of the hills and city below. Cortona was one of my favorite cities on this trip and I am very thankful to be able to get the hospitality of Max's family.
From Cortona, Emily and I took a train to Rome. We arrived on Christmas eve and took a short walk around during the night and visited the Trevi Fountain. That night we watched some of the Pope's midnight mass on TV and went to bed, we were going to see him on Christmas day. We asked the front desk of our hotel when the Pope was speaking and he said 9.30am. We hustled down to the Vatican in the morning and got there around 9.30. We saw a couple of nuns leaving the Vatican and when we walked in it was relatively empty. We were pretty disappointed because we thought we missed it. So since
Foggy day
On the right is the cathedral. - Parma we were there we used our time to look at the Sistine Chapel, which is made entirely of marble, gold, and silver. Because we were in Rome during Christmas we weren't able to see the Vatican museum which houses all of the great murals of da Vinci and Raphael among others. Upon walking out of the chapel we noticed people starting to gather around the seating which was gated off. We didn't miss the Pope! Emily and I decided to wait around (about 2 hours) to see the Pope address the people, and we ended up getting a seat about 15 rows out. The Vatican oval was filled with thousands of people by the time he began at noon. It was really nice to hear his voice, he has a very elegant way of speaking (although it was in latin and I didn't understand any of it). At the end of his speech he spoke about 40 different languages wishing the people a happy new year and to find peace and joy. Overall it was a good experience to have but I don't see any reason to see it again in my lifetime.
Most things were closed on Christmas
The tower we climbed (on right)
The inside was far less impressive than the outside- Florence day so we just saw some of the ruins from the outside. After calling our parents, we went to a delicious dinner at a restaurant named Maccheroni. We had the best food of the whole trip there. I got a plate of lamb and Emily got a plate of chicken. It was the perfect Christmas dinner and we ended the night following some students into a bar for a drink before bed. Among the group was a student from Luleå who I recognized, so I talked to him for a little bit. Small world.
Our second full day in Rome was spent seeing all of the ruins (we skipped the inside of the Colosseum because of 1-2hr line formed). The pictures will speak for themselves. The most impressive part for me was being able to walk to the top of the Palatino and view all of the ruins from above.
We left Rome for Ancona to take a ferry to Patras, Greece. The ferry was 22 hours so Emily and I had to pay extra to get beds. Everybody was smoking inside the ferry and when we were exiting it smelled awful. We found out that in Greece
you can smoke anywhere indoors unless there is a sign. Every restaurant we were in smelled of smoke and it was really disgusting. After experiencing this it seems like a no brainer that it was made illegal in Minnesota. It is also illegal to smoke indoors in Sweden and barely anybody smokes (they prefer snus - smokeless tobacco).
Patras was a very strange city at the time. A lot of the buildings close to the port were in poor shape, apparently from rioting. There was graffiti everywhere. There were hundreds of teenagers loitering, in groups of 15-30. They weren't talking at all, just standing and sitting. Many were sitting on the railroad tracks and the trains had to honk at them to get out of the way. Others were climbing over fences. Because of this there was a lot of police trying to break up the ruffians. There felt like a lot of tension there and we were glad to get out of there. Emily thought that they were trying to prove a point that there is no work for them, so there is nothing else for them to do but stand around.
We caught a bus to
View from atop
Cathedral dome. - Florence Delphi. It took a couple of hours to get to the city. According to legend Zeus released to eagles (or doves or something) in two directions to find the center (bellybutton) of the earth. They converged at Delphi, and it became an important religious location ever since. Delphi lies high on a mountain. When Emily and I arrived it was dark so we walked to find our hotel and then went to find some dinner. The meal was very delicious. In the morning we walked about 15 minutes to the ruins. We checked out the museum and then spent a couple of hours walking around the remains of temples.
We took a $15 bus to Athens that afternoon, it was a beautiful drive through the mountainous towns of central greece. The ride was about three hours and we arrived in Athens with no idea where we were. This is the only time in our vacation where we decided it would be in our bests interest to take a taxi. During our ride the driver picked up another passenger with no reduction in fare. First time I've ever experienced that.
Athens was about 5ºC below average january temperatures. Our
Street art
a much better way to make money than all the beggars. - Florence hotel was really cheap...but it didn't have heat. Luckily they gave us plenty of blankets. Our hotel was right next to Plaka street which is the oldest part of the city. The street was lined with stores and restaurants which were fun to browse in. Zeus' temple was two blocks away and the Acropolis could be seen from the backyard of our hotel.
Every city has there quirks. Athens was its abundance of stray dogs. Apparently there is no animal control or pounds or anything, so they just roam free in the streets. Sometimes it was kind of sad to see them on the ground with skin diseases, but they were all very friendly.
We spent our first day in Athens walking around the city. We walked up the tallest peak that provided a great view of the 2-3 million person city. We went to this peak to watch the fireworks on new years too.
Day two was spent seeing as many of the ancient ruins as we could. We went to the top of the Acropolis to see the Parthenon, Temple of Athena Nike, the Eriechtheion, and the Propylea. There was a lot of remodeling going
on to the ruins and the scaffolding associated with it took away from the experience a little bit. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, poor rehabilitation methods were used on the ruins. Today they are working to reverse what had been restored then using the correct materials and placing them in the correct spots. There was a lot of work done to pillars and other parts of the ruins which made it look better from a distance but was obviously recent when viewed up close due to the color difference. It seems that in a few decades the ruins will look brand new again at this pace.
After the acropolis we made our way to the Athens National Archaeological Museum. It was a giant museum (and free for students). We were pretty tired of walking so I don't think we saw the whole thing but all of the artifacts were well displayed. The items there dated from 4000-3000BC. The exhibits included roman statues, early medical devices of Hippocrates ("the father of medicine"), and Egyptian artifacts, among others. One could easily spend a few hours in this museum. But we had some more ruins to see!
Cortona abode
The main room of the beautiful Villa. - Cortona Walking through the area of town near the Archaeological Museum was interesting. There was
a lot of anarchist graffiti and some burned buildings. I don't know how safe I would have felt walking around there at night, but during the day it was no problem. We took the subway back to see some more archaeological sites (only 1€). After seeing ruins in Rome, Delphi, and then Athens, they were beginning to get a little boring...in the end they're just rocks piled on top of each other.
As I mentioned earlier, for new years eve Emily and I walked to the top of the mountain to see the fireworks. We brought up a bottle of champagne and the view was great. Because we were so high up we could see all the fireworks being lit around the city. The main Athens fireworks were not as impressive as I would have hoped. But I realized that this was the first year in memory that I saw the fireworks in person and not on TV (its always too cold in Minnesota). There were police all over the city ready with riot gear in case things got out of control with the youth.
Villa
Outside view of half the building. - Cortona At the main square I counted 11 on a corner (and there were about 8 corners!). The evening was tame though, after talking to an American who lives there it turns out they called a rest to the violence just for the holidays. Her friend works for a hotel and apparently 60% of people cancelled their bookings due to the violence. I'm really glad we didn't do that, it wasn't a problem at all.
The next morning we woke up quite early for new years day (6 or 7 or 8) because we had to catch a train to Thessaloniki (thought of as Greece's second capital). The train ride was long (5 hours) but very beautiful. We passed through the the mountain ranges of mainland greece, which at this time of year were snow capped. Greece just received a large grant from the EU to build a faster train between the two cities. There were a lot of new bridges and tunnels being built along the sides of our track as evidence. I would definitely recommend taking the train just for the view, especially on the faster new one.
In Thessaloniki we checked into our hotel and then
Olive trees
garden of the villa, the owners produce their own olive oil. - Cortona walked down the street to this little hole in the wall restaurant for some of the most delicious gyros i've ever had. They only cost about 2€ each, and they were full of different sauces. The gyro place was just across the street from some pretty boring roman ruins, not even worth the picture. The next day we walked around Thessaloniki. We went to the oldest turkish bath house from the Byzantine era. It is no longer in use of course but it was nice to see the inside. We then walked to the White Tower (aka Ivory Tower, Red Tower, Bloody Tower). Constructed by the Ottoman Empire, it was once Thessaloniki's version of the Tower of London, acting as a prison and execution venue. We were hoping for a tour but it was closed for the holiday period.
On our way back to our hotel we stopped again for the same delicious gyros. The owner charged us 0.20€ more for each one then the day before. Not the best way to treat returning customers, but its easy to take advantage of tourists. I wasn't going to complain, it was still among the cheapest meals of the trip.
Poolside view
It would be a nice summer visit. - Cortona We then packed up our bags and caught the bus to the airport. Next stop - Budapest.
Getting to our hostel from the airport in Budapest was a little tricky. We had to take a bus into the city, then the metro, another bus, and then we had to walk about 4 blocks. When we found it we were pleasantly surprised. The hostel was an apartment in really good condition with only 3 rentable rooms. It was like having our own house for two nights...equipped with a washer and dryer. There were four Malaysian girls staying in one of the rooms while we were there. Emily and I had our own room. We had dinner with the girls one night, they cooked a good soup for us. It was one of the cheapest places we stayed the whole trip and I would recommend it to anyone that wants to travel cheap in Budapest. I can find the name for you so just ask me.
Our first night in Budapest we wanted to take easy, so we decided to see a movie (its a 3rd of the price than in Sweden). We saw
Burn Before Reading which I thought
Cat in town
View of a street of the inner square of the city. - Cortona was pretty entertaining. We didn't realize that the metro would be closed when we got out so we had to walk all the way home (45minutes) in some really cold weather.
Our hostel was right below the Buda Castle, so we spent the next morning walking to it and getting a great view of the city. Budapest used to be two cities, Buda and Pest. We walked across the bridge to Pest after the castle and went inside a cathedral. It was really nice inside, gold everywhere. In the back room was a relic, the hand of the first Hungarian Christian king Saint Stephen I who died in 1083. I looked hard in the glass box where the hand was supposed to be in. They kept the room dark and the glass box far away, I couldn't see the hand at all. There were pictures of it though and it looked like it was in pretty good shape, expecially after being stolen during conquests a few times.
We then walked around Budapest the rest of the day, seeing some monuments and parks. We decided to buy our train tickets for the next day and ended up waiting in
Church in the upper valley
This is the high side of the valley looking from the city, our villa was somewhere in the trees in the top left. - Cortona line for about and hour. But its good we did because the train was leaving fairly early in the morning and we wouldn't of thought to come so early.
That night we went to a pub called Old Man's Music. It was a really cool atmosphere with a blues band playing when we first arrived. It was too crowded to watch them up close, so we sat down ordered a pizza, and had a few drinks.
The next morning we slept in, packed up, and went to catch our train to Prague. This was our longest trip (7 hours) and there was absolutely no pleasant scenery. We were on the train so long that four different people checked our tickets. At last we arrived in Prague, and took the subway to our hostel. We went out for a quick bite to eat and then rested to wake up early for our only day in Prague.
Emily had been to Prague with two of her friends a few months before, so it was nice having a guide around the city. We saved our money to do some shopping there (since it was one of the cheapest cities we
Colonna Traiana
Our first night- Rome were going to) so we looked in a bunch of stores but didn't really buy anything. It was snowing the whole day, which made the city really beautiful. We walked to the main square and checked out the really cool astronomical clock on the side of a church. We noticed that there was a Dali exhibit going on in a small museum on the square, so we spontaneously decided to see that. He was quite out there.
We then walked to the Vltava river and caught a glimpse of the Prague castle through the snowy sky. We then walked across the famous Charles Bridge, lined with statues, to the castle side of the river. We stopped there for some Czech lunch, and then walked back to try and do a little more shopping. We didn't have much luck with shopping and it was getting to be the time we had to leave and catch our plane back to Sweden.
It was really nice to walk back into my room after the 18 day trip. Traveling takes a lot of energy and it was nice to be in a familiar place again. The trip was amazing though
and I will never forget it. My favorite cities were Venice, Cortona, Rome and Prague. I decided that visiting the Greek islands during the summer is something I have to do eventually. I want to thank everybody who helped me out for christmas with funding this trip! I am really thankful for your support and I really never could have done it without any of you, I love all of you. I hope you enjoy the pictures and I look forward to seeing everyone again when I get home. I hope everybody had a great 2008 holiday season! Happy 2009!
Kai
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