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