Wednesday, January 23, 2008

One more thing

My new favorite thing here: going to the library. The library in Heidenheim isn't that great, but they do have a fairly large selection of English books. I mean, most of them suck, but there are a few gems among the scum. And by gems I mean books I've been wanting to read but either could never bring myself to (read: classics that I always think will be boring) or books that I'd be too embarrassed to admit I'm reading except in a library where they don't speak English (read: chick-lit). Here are the books I read this week:

A Christmas Carol: How had I never read this before? How had I never read any Dickens before?? I really enjoyed it, although I think that if I were to tackle a longer Dickens novel I would get bored quickly. The writing is just so different from what I'm used to reading that I'd find I'd read an entire page and couldn't remember what had happened. I know, after that high praise, who wouldn't want to run out and read it? But seriously, you should. It's good. Also, I'm glad to finally know what the 84 different movie versions I've seen are based off of.

Summer Sisters: Um, I remember when people were reading this in, like, middle school. This book is NOT APPROPRIATE for middle schoolers!!! I guess some people thought the natural progression was from Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret to Summer Sisters, but I gotta say, I'm not letting my kid read this book that early. It was good, but there was a lot of sex. Like, a lot. Yeah, I liked it and all, but I wish someone had warned me.

And today I'm going back to the library so I can load up again. There's also a huge section of travel books, which I keep getting out and not reading. I got one out for Copenhagen and have dutifully not read it all week, except for one day when I slipped up and skimmed a few pages. I'll probably get one for Barcelona today, just to pretend that I'm planning for my trip.

Hopefully more together

Hm. I just re-read that last post. It wasn't very coherent. Let's just pretend that I was still sick...yeah. We'll go with that.

Travel update: I have a week off in May, and I'm going to London, Belfast, and Glasgow! I booked my ticket and everything! Now here's hoping that EasyJet is reliable...

Sunday, January 20, 2008

The month of sickness

Hmm, I guess I should get back into posting. How long has it been since the last one?

Well, not a ton has happened since I posted about my Italy trip. I was sick after I got back, but I got better pretty fast. Last Saturday was my last German class, which I'm glad about, but it was also kind of sad. The class had a really good group dynamic, and we were all on about the same level. On the other hand, I'm glad I don't have to get up early on Saturdays anymore! And this also means I can start traveling more. I enjoyed the German class, but honestly, I didn't learn that much. It was too easy for me, but it was still a good review. And on the last day the teacher "took requests" and went over some stuff that we all had questions about, like passive. I would say the best thing about the class was that I got to meet some other aupairs, plus I got to brush up on passive and subjunctive.

I went to Gegenwind on Saturday night, and it was nice to be able to go out and see other people. Now the kids are sick this week, so I've had to work a lot more (they have chicken pox, so they can't go to school at all). It's not that bad, it's just that I have to work more hours, plus since we can only stay inside we wore out all of the games and activities in about the first two days. Hopefully they'll be going back to school on Tuesday or Wednesday this week. I know they're both sick of being here!

Eveline (from Gegenwind) came over on Friday night and we watched "Message in a Bottle"--in English, which was nice! If you haven't seen it, I don't recommend it. We were both looking forward to watching a girly movie, but even for us it was disappointing. It's kind of boring, actually, and it was definitely too long.

I didn't get to go to Gegenwind last night because Stefan and Stephanie went to a Fasching party in Heuchlingen. Fasching is pretty much the German equivalent of Mardi Gras. There's a ton of parties and people drink lots of beer and wear crazy costumes. Stefan dressed up as a German woman, complete with dirndl, blond braids, and blow-up breasts. Stephanie dressed up as a German man with lederhosen and a painted-on beard. I have to say, they were disturbingly convincing.

Tabea is having a Tupperware party on Friday, so I'm going to that. I've never been to a Tupperware party, though--I thought people only had those in the '50s. I don't plan on buying any Tupperware, but it'll be nice to get out of the house. It's kind of unfortunate that my excitement threshold is so low. I'm actually looking forward to a party where someone will be selling Tupperware, all because it means I'll be able to get out of the house and interact with other people. The good thing is, I now expect everything to be more fun than sitting in Heuchlingen doing nothing, so I have fun pretty much everywhere I go. Hmm, maybe I've just discovered the secret to living an exciting life--have a low baseline, that way everything else vastly exceeds it in comparison.

I'm really looking forward to going to Barcelona in less than a month! I saw in the newspaper today that it's 17° C there today. If it's that warm in January, it'll be even better in February! Ahh, I can't wait to experience some warm weather! Although I have to admit, even though it's cold here, it's finally been sunny for the past few days, so it's beautiful. Everything is finally starting to look green again, instead of just brown. I guess because there aren't that many houses here and there's a lot of farms, but the sky looks so big here! It reminds me a little bit of Montana, but no sky will ever look as big as it did there. I love being able to see stars here at night, too! I mean, when it's not cloudy (which it usually is).

Just to prove I can actually speak German: Ich wünsche Euch alle eine schöne Woche! Liebe Grüße aus Deutschland!

Saturday, January 12, 2008

All men in Italy look like Rocky

Fine, not all of them, but definitely more than I was expecting. Luckily not too too many talked like him (if you've ever seen Rocky, it's a good movie, but he sounds like an idiot) (yeah, yeah, I know Sylvester Stallone talks like that because of a birth defect, but still!).

I realized that I wrote about the bare-bones of my trip (maybe a liiiittle bit more than that) but a lot of other crazy stuff happened too, so I'm trying to remember some of my good stories. Here's what I've come up with so far:

1. The very first day that I was actually going into Rome to do stuff, on my very first Metro ride (this makes me sound like I've never been on a Metro before, but I just mean in Rome), this crazy lady on the train stands up and starts singing opera. Everyone in the car gets really quiet and tries to pretend like they don't notice her...really effective, since obviously they'd all stopped talking. That went on for a little while, and then she walked around trying to collect money from people then moved on to the next car (aside: crazy people doing stuff like this on trains did not turn out to be an unusual occurrence, although even for the crazies she was quite odd). The craziest thing? I saw her two days later, on Christmas, just walking around the streets like a normal person! I mean, she looked a little nutty, but I probably wouldn't have noticed her if she hadn't been the opera-singing lady. In Naples a similar thing happened. On the train back to my hostel, some guy started playing--and singing--both "Happy birthday" and the Macarena on the saxophone.

2. In the hostel I stayed in in Florence, there were 4-bed rooms but for most of the time it was just me and 2 other girls. The second night we were there, this Italian lady comes in, who actually was really nice, and she was there for the night. From what we could discern from her limited English and our limited Italian, she had just had surgery on her back and had gotten out of the hospital that day...why she was staying in a hostel, who knows? I'm also not sure she really understood English that well, because at some point someone asked her where she was from and she said Romania, but she didn't look Romanian, didn't have a Romanian accent, didn't have a Romanian name, and didn't seem to speak Romanian. But she was clearly in a lot of pain, though, and the bed sucked (I had passed it over myself). She kept making these weird sounds of pain that were kind of half-groan, half-sigh. I went to take a shower, and after I got out of the shower I brushed my teeth/went to the bathroom, and I heard these really loud moans of pleasure that sounded like someone was having sex. I was like, dang, guys, keep it down! But when I got back to the room, I realized it had just been her, making her pain sounds...

3. On Christmas Day in Rome, all the metros stopped running at 1 PM, even though there were no signs informing anyone of this and no one really seemed to know that it would be happening (except, I would assume, the Metro employees). It took me forever to figure out how to get back to my hostel because none of the tourist information offices were open (OF COURSE) and none of the bus-ticket-sellers at any of the tabacco stands was willing or able to help me. I wound up having to call my hostel from my German cell phone, which I'm sure cost about 2 euros a minute, but eventually I found out what bus to take so that I could meet up with the second bus I'd have to take. Well, after this long adventure, I was relieved to be on the second bus, the one that would take me to the stop by the hostel. My relief was short-lived. Somehow, even though I'd never seen another accident (I'm not sure how--people are INSANE drivers in Italy) the bus got in an accident. It was a hit-and-run--the car merged into the bus and then took off (I have a feeling that car was pretty messed up after that). Luckily we were only stopped for about 15 minutes, but it was quite a frustrating end to Christmas. That isn't even the end of the story. I must attract accidents, because on the last day that I was in Italy, I woke up early to take the bus so I could get to the airport. I get to the bus stop, and what do I see? Another bus that had been involved in an accident. To the bus drivers' credit, it was neither of their fault either time. Moral of the story: never rent a car in Italy.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Opera in Milan, snow in Venice

Before I start part 2, let me take a second to tell you about the hostel in Florence. It was called Hostel Sette Santi, and it was right next to a church of the same name. In fact, it used to be a convent. Walking in the entrance it looked fairly modern, but the breakfast room was pretty awesome--it still had the long wooden tables with wooden chairs. The rooms were pretty normal too. My room had only four beds, which was really nice, and I got lucky having good roommates (Meghan and Victoria, the two girls in the picture). But, some odd things for an ex-convent: our overhead light didn't work; the one working light in the room only turned off when you unplugged it; the bathroom was disgusting; AND the bathroom was co-ed, even the showers. In general it was pretty quiet though, which was really nice. The worst part, though, was that on New Year's Day, two of the sinks in the bathroom were filled with puke. It was one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen, made even worse by the fact that the toilets were literally five feet away. Why couldn't you have stumbled just a little further, eh, drunky?

Now on to Milan and Venice.

Milan

Day 10


  • All three of us slept in, and then went to the train station together. I scrapped my plan to go to Cinque Terre because it would have taken too long to get there and I would have only had about two hours of sunlight to walk around, then a long train ride to Milan. We all ended up getting on the same train, and Meghan and Victoria got off to change trains and go to Venice, while I went on to Milan. It was nice to have some company, even if only for a little bit. In Milan I saw
  • The Cathedral (I didn't go inside because it was closed, but it was still pretty cool. The weird thing, though, was that the front was covered by an advertisement...)
  • Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (An old and nice, but rather small, shopping center. Most of the stores in there are big-name expensive ones, like Prada and Louis Vuitton. Apparently it's been used as a model for many other malls.)
  • Teatro alla Scala (I just saw it from the outside, and it's actually not that impressive. Still really exciting to see it though!!)

Day 11


  • Slept in a little bit, then went back to the cathedral to see if I could go in. I decided not to, since it cost money. After that I went back to La Scala to see if the ticket office there was open, so maybe I could get a ticket. It was closed, but it said the official ticket office was in the Metro station. When I got there, a woman told me that if I wanted to get a ticket for that night, I could go give my name back at the theater, because they were selling 140 partial-view gallery tickets for 12 euros. I hurried back there, and was really lucky to get on the list--I was number 120 of 140. The guy told me to come back at 1 PM. After that I walked to
  • Castello Sforzesco (Pretty ugly, actually. I had no desire to go inside, so I just walked around the courtyards for a little bit. I walked all the way through to the back, though, and happened upon this thing they were calling "Snow Park", where people could go tubing and skiing down these big ramps that look like those ones at fairs where you slide down on a burlap cloth. The ironic thing? It was actually snowing that day.)
  • After I ate lunch, I went back to La Scala to stand around and wait for my name to be called. While I was there, I ran into the woman I'd seen before, who thankfully spoke very good English, and told me what was going on. She said this round was just so they would call all of our names to see if we'd showed up. After that, we had to come back again at 4 PM, where they'd call our names again then give us vouchers for tickets. After that, we had to wait in line until 4:30 when we could finally buy tickets. She said she'd done this before and that usually you only have to come back at 1 PM, but since it was the last show of the first opera of the season, they were practically making people beg for the tickets.
  • The way they called the names was crazy! All 140 of us had to crowd around this old guy yelling out last names (in Italian, mind you) and somehow we all had to indicate that we were there. I feel like there are so many ways to make the process more efficient, but I think it was designed to see just how desperate we were. The best part: when I first gave my name I had to show ID (I guess to prove that's who I really was) and since it says Pennsylvania on the license, he wrote down "Laura Smith Pencilvania", and then called that out when he called my name. After that I walked down
  • Via Torino (supposedly a street where there are tons of big-name stores, but I hardly saw any. It was pretty much like any other shopping street I've seen in any other city.)
  • San Lorenzo Maggiore (I walked past this church and was going to go in, but decided not to because there was a crazy guy sitting on the steps singing opera at the top of his lungs.)
  • Navigli (My guidebook told me that this was a really nice section of Milan with canals running through, and that it looked like Venice, but it didn't. It was ugly.)
  • Sant'Ambrogio (This church was really cool. It had a ton of mosaics inside that were really nice, as well as the 1600-year-old body of S. Ambrogio...on display.)
  • After all that, I killed some more time until 4 PM and just walked around a little bit. At 4 I went back to La Scala to wait for my name to be called. This time it was a woman calling the names, and she just said my last name. It sounded like she was saying "Smeet!" But I got my voucher and then waited in line for 30 minutes, since of course they couldn't open the box office right after the vouchers had been given out. By the time I got my ticket it was 4:45 and the opera started at 6:30, so I pretty much had time to eat dinner and come back.
  • The opera!!! (The opera was good, but my seat was not. Where it was, I could not see one inch of the stage. I ended up walking around to the back of the theater where I could see the whole stage, but then of course I couldn't see a subtitle screen. I tried looking off a few other people's, but most of them had Italian. Eventually I was able to find a spot where I could see the opera and read English, but it involved standing up. I wasn't really looking forward to doing that for 4 hours. By the way, the total time of the opera was 5 hours and 20 minutes: 3 acts of 1 hr 20 mins and 2 intermissions of 40 minutes. Those Italians take their opera seriously. I had to leave after the second act because the metro stopped running at midnight and I would have missed it if I'd stayed for the whole thing. I'm really glad I went, but I would have enjoyed it a lot more from a seat that I could see the stage from. But how many people can say that they've seen "Tristan and Isolde" at one of the most famous opera houses in the world?)
Day 12


  • This day mostly involved getting to Venice. I got in around 2 PM, but then I had to get to my hostel. When I went to the tourist information office, I met a girl who asked me what hostel I was staying in. When I told her, she asked if she could come with me since her hostel was already horrible. She told me she was from Australia, traveling around Europe for a few months after her graduation. She ended up staying at my hostel, in the bed above me. She was really nice though. She seemed to be one of those rare Europe-travelers who actually cares about seeing stuff, rather than getting drunk every night. Once I got settled in, I went to
  • San Marco Basilica (Amazing inside! Unfortunately it was against the rules to take pictures and they seemed to be strictly enforcing it. It was covered in mosaics, but they had the lights dimmed really low so it was kind of hard to see them. I would have liked to spend more time in there looking around, but there were so many tourists that I kept getting pushed along.)
  • Ponte Accademia (I ended up here by accident. I was just wandering, trying to find a way to get to the church on the other side of the canal. While I was walking, I saw a bunch of cool stores. All the stores I'd hoped to see in Milan were in Venice instead. I window-shopped for a while, looking at the amazing clothes, and eventually just followed the line of tourists. There was a nice view from the bridge.)
  • Santa Maria della Salute (really cool from the outside, not that exciting on the inside. This seemed to be a trend in several Venice churches.)
Day 13


  • I woke up early to be able to cram stuff into the day. On the boat I met a girl who was also in my hostel, and she asked if I'd like some company for the day, so I said yes. The odd thing was, she didn't seem to like me very much. She seemed nice enough, but we never really seemed to click. It was fine walking around with her because we were both only really interested in wandering around. Some things we saw:
  • Ponte Rialto (bridge over the Grand Canal)
  • Fish Market (smelled extremely fishy)
  • Exhibition about Vivaldi (I'd briefly looked at it the day before, but this time I read all the info. I had no idea that Vivaldi had even lived in Venice. It actually had never really occurred to me that he was Italian. It said that he originally became a priest, but was never satisfied with it and was always trying to do stuff with music. It also said that even though he was an excellent composer, since he was born not very well-to-do, pretty much all of his music undertakings were so that he could earn money and live well. There were also a couple cool instruments there, but the instrument exhibit at the Accademia in Florence was better.)
  • The store that made the masks for Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" (the masks really were well-made, although I'm still not sure if I think they're cool or creepy.)
  • Murano Island (where the famous Venetian glass is made. Here I bought a necklace and a bracelet, both made out of glass beads.)
Rome

Day 14


  • My last full day in Italy *tear*. I got up super early to take the train to Rome. I even paid 15 euros for a seat reservation so that I could take a faster train and get to Rome two hours earlier. Of course it ended up being half an hour delayed. So glad I paid that extra money. It also ended up being the worst train ride. There was a group of American girls who confirmed every stereotype that everyone in Europe holds about Americans. They were college-age, probably traveling around after a college trip to Europe. I can tell you practically their whole life stories. They go to Hofstra, some of them are seniors, and according to them, there were people even more obnoxious than them on the trip. They also were cursing loudly, despite the fact that there were families who spoke English riding with small children. And since I had 4 hours to contemplate why they were so annoying, I finally figured it out. They never asked questions about each other. Their entire conversations consisted of trying to get a word in edgewise....to talk about themselves. I think that's what really gives Americans a bad rep. There are plenty of us out there who genuinely care about seeing a new place and experiencing the culture and language--but there are also Americans who think that everyone should speak English not because it's a common language, but because they speak it. They expect things to happen for them just because they're American. OK, end of complaining.
  • In Rome I visited:
  • The Baths of Caracalla (One of the most famous baths in Rome in its time. Many of the artifacts found there are some of the most highly prized of Ancient Rome. I was lucky to see many of them at the National Archeological Museum in Naples, which apparently has a better collection than I realized when I was there...)
  • The Capitoline Museum (Not gonna lie, kind of boring. I was exhausted after a long day of travel, plus this was about my 15th museum displaying ancient sculptures and pieces of broken stuff. There are only so many fragments of broken vases that I can be interested in. I did, however, see the famous statue of Romulus and Remus (which was kind of creepy) and a thousands-year-old statue of Marcus Aurelius.)
And thus ends my Italian odyssey. The next day I went back (which, let me tell you, was also an adventure: it involved a bus, a metro, a train, an airplane, another train, yet another train, then a car ride). I had a great time and I loved being able to travel around, but I'm also glad to be back. When I think about it, though, it's pretty cool that I was able to plan this trip completely on my own and actually execute the entire thing. I didn't even need anyone to drive me to the airport. I'm pretty proud of myself, especially since I speak very little Italian.

Enough patting myself on the back. Time to plan for my next adventures: Barcelona in February, Amsterdam, Paris, and Belgium in April (hopefully), and Madrid, Lisbon, and Sevilla in May! In between I hope to go snowboarding, take a weekend trip to Prague, another weekend trip to Vienna, and who knows what else? I need to see more German cities too! Otherwise what am I living here for?

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Christmas in Rome, trash in Naples, New Year's in Florence

December 22-January 6

I'm back from Italy! And what was the first thing I did when I got back? Got sick. Of course. I'm not too disappointed though, because I figured after spending 2 weeks living in youth hostels it was pretty much inevitable. I'm just glad it didn't happen while I was actually traveling around. I feel much better now, but yesterday was horrible. The last time I remember feeling that sick was when I got my wisdom teeth out, 6 1/2 years ago. It's nice to be back home though (despite the sickness) and it's especially nice to sleep in my own bed, with no one else sleeping in the room! Youth hostels are great for price, but no so great for privacy.

OK, if I tell every detail of my trip, I'll lose you all before you even start reading, so I'll condense it to short, bullet-itemized summaries of my trip. Let's start with Rome.

Rome

Day 1



  • Roman Forum (really cool, but they're not kidding when they call it a ruin)
  • Palatine Hill (freakin awesome to see where all the richest people in Rome used to live)
  • Colosseum (cool, but kind of a disappointment, I think because there wasn't much displayed historical information inside it)
  • Piazza Navona (nice, but would have been nicer without the INCREDIBLY TACKY Christmas market)
  • Palazzo Altemps (also nice, but focused more on the collection housed in it rather than the history of the people who lived there, which I would have liked to know more about)
  • Pantheon (HUGE--and, since it's Rome, now a Catholic church)
  • Temple of Minerva (also now a Catholic church)
  • Crypta Balbi (used to be a Roman theater, but of course is now in ruins--yet another collection of ancient Roman artifacts. The ruins in the basement were really cool, but hard to decipher since the tour was in Italian.)
Day 2


  • Piazza del Popolo (cool and really big plaza)
  • walked past the Justice Palace and the Castel Sant'Angelo
  • St. Peter's Basilica (huuuge and amazing inside)
  • Museo Storico Artistico in the Basilica (I thought this would be kind of a let-down, but it was amazing! It included an audioguide and had an amazing collection of rare and historical reliquaries and other religious artificats related to the Vatican)
  • climbed to the top of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica (551 steps is a looong trip, but it was a great view from the top)
  • Vatican Museum (probably the biggest museum I've ever been in. You really need an entire day to see the whole thing. I also, naturally, saw the Sistine Chapel, which was quite impressive.)
  • went to the Piazza Repubblica and saw the Baths of Diocletian (only from the outside; it was closed) and the church there



Day 3: Christmas!


  • San Paolo Basilica (the only major church in Rome located outside the former city walls)
  • Circus Maximus (cool to know what it is, but it's just a big sloped field now)
  • San Giovanni in Laterano (I was trying to hit the major churches today since it was Christmas) where I also saw the former Aurelian city wall
  • Santa Maria Maggiore
  • Trajan Forum (one of the forums that I missed on the first day)
  • It was right about now that I discovered that the Metro stopped running for the day at 1 PM, so I mildly started to freak out (I needed the Metro to get back to my hostel), but decided that since I couldn't do anything about it, I'd just keep seeing stuff. BTW, there were no signs or anything mentioning this. In fact, no one else in Rome seemed to know that this would be happening either. Everyone I asked told me that the Metro was open--although of course it wasn't.
  • Trevi Fountain (cool, but really really crowded)
  • Spanish steps (um, I had no idea how many steps there would be. It was a lot.)
  • Villa Medici (closed, but cool to see)
  • Long adventure trying to figure out how to get back to hostel
All in all, Rome was a good trip. I did a ton of stuff and had a lot of fun. Of all the places I went to, I think it was the best one to pick to be in for Christmas. It also had the best weather!

Naples

Day 4


  • By the time I got into Naples and had dropped my stuff off at my hostel, it was lunchtime, so I went back into the city, where I ate then went to
  • The National Archeological Museum (had a very impressive collection, but unfortunately many of the rooms were not open. Oddest thing I saw on my trip: the room containing erotic art from ancient Roman times. A lot of it was quite graphic.)
  • Since there was nothing open (the day after Christmas), that's pretty much all I did




Day 5



  • Pompeii (I spent the entire day here. It was huge and, with the audioguide, really interesting, but it all started to look the same after a while. Overall, though, really cool. Also, since I stupidly didn't bring food with me, I had to pay 10 euros for a small plate of pasta and a dry piece of cake. Weird story: When I was buying my food, the lady told me it was 7 for the pasta and 4.50 for the cake. I told her I didn't want the cake then, since it was too expensive and she says, "No, take it, I'll give you the whole thing for 10. Consider it a student discount." Since when do they negotiate in restaurants??) I have to say though, it seems like no one learned their lesson after Vesuvius, which is still an active volcano!, erupted and decimated several towns. There is practically no open space left around it because there are towns everywhere.
Day 6



  • I was pretty unimpressed by Naples in general, mostly because it was really really dirty and didn't seem very safe, so instead of going back into the city (my hostel was in Portici) I took the Circumvesuviana train down to
  • Sorrento (It was so nice. It's a town built high up on a cliff over the Gulf of Naples, and the town is beautiful. It's also famous for its inlaid wood artists, and all of the stuff was great. It was also CLEAN, which was a nice change from Naples and Portici. The view over the gulf was great, and even though it was a little foggy, I could see all the way across to Naples.)
  • Went back to Naples and tried to see the sunset over the gulf, but the Metro there is so confusing and illogical that somehow I ended up lost in a shady area (seems like all Naples has is shady areas).
I'm glad I went to Naples, just to see what it was like, but I definitely would not go back there again alone. Most of the time I was walking around, no matter where I was, I did not feel very safe. The Archeological Museum was good, but I had no desire to see much else of what Naples had to offer. Good thing there were easy day trips in the area.

Florence

Day 7



  • Since I didn't want to pay 20 euros for a seat reservation, I took a slower train up to Florence, meaning that the trip took 5 hours. Even with it leaving at 8:30, it still took up a good chunk of the day. It didn't help that the train didn't stop at the central train station and I had to find a way there once I got off. Once I got to the main station, I met up with Bonnie, a friend from high school who's teaching English in France, and her boyfriend Scott.
  • Cathedral (We went here first because they hadn't seen it yet and it's a short walk from the train station. I'm glad we went when we did because we waited in line about 3 minutes, and every other time I walked by there while I was in Florence, the line looked like it was about 30 minutes. The cathedral is amazing and huge from the outside, but rather uninteresting on the inside.)
  • Ponte Vecchio (In the course of wandering, we ended up by the Ponte Vecchio, and a really cool and really touristy bridge that goes over the Arno. Of course we took pictures.)
  • Piazza Michelangelo (After walking over the Ponte Vecchio, we walked up the Piazza Michelangelo, so named because it has a copy of the David in the center, where there was a great view of Florence. We got there just as the sun was setting, so it was an even better view.)
  • After all that, we ate dinner and I made the (confusing) trek to my hostel.
Day 8



  • I met up with Bonnie and Scott again and we went to the Medici Library, which interesting, but a lot less library-ish than I thought it would be. Also smaller.
  • After looking around the market outside the church/library/chapel, we ate lunch and then went our separate ways (they were headed to work on an organic farm outside of Florence for a week). And I went to:
  • Palazzo Medici-Riccardi (Small, but nice. Had an amazing chapel inside decorated floor to ceiling with huge frescoes. It also had a really interesting exhibit on restoration of antique and ancient objects.)
  • Afterwards I just wandered around for a while. I went to the Accademia to see if I could get in, and the line wasn't even that long, but I didn't feel like waiting.
Day 9 (New Year's Eve!)


  • Accademia (I went first thing in the morning, and I waited approx 30 seconds. I guess no one else thought to go at 10 AM on New Year's Eve day? A lot of interesting stuff, but obviously I was only there to see the David. It was totally worth it. The David is probably one of the most amazing pieces of art I've ever seen. It was much bigger than I expected, but also much more life-like. After seeing it, it's hard to not think less of other statues and sculptures.)
  • Casa Buonarotti (A disappointment. It's advertised as having a large collection of pieces by Michelangelo Buonarotti, but it really didn't. It had maybe 10 things by him. Most of the rest of the objects there were things collected by his relatives, who actually lived in the house.)
  • Pisa (The Leaning Tower and the Cathedral were really nice, but the rest of Pisa is a dump. It also didn't seem very safe. It's cool to see the leaning tower in person, but it's 15 euros to go up, which I was not willing to spend. I spent about 1 hour in Pisa, and that was enough.)
  • New Year's Eve (Insane. I met up with two girls I met in my hostel who are from Canada and were traveling around Italy during their winter break. It was definitely nice to have some company on New Year's Eve. Since everything was closed, we wandered around pretty much the entire night, until right before midnight we found where all the fireworks were being set off so we watched for a while. It was REALLY loud. Fortunately, I had earplugs (really!). I'm also glad that I had some people to walk around with, because 1) all the people were really creepy, and 2) for some reason the buses stopped running at 8 PM so we had to walk back to our hostel.
Overall, Florence was good. It wasn't as interesting to just walk around as in Rome, but there's a ton of stuff to do (mostly museums). And it was nice to see Bonnie again after all these years, and definitely a crazy place to spend New Year's!

This post is now getting really long with all these pictures, so I'll start a Part 2. Eventually.