Pretty Things and Panic Attacks

So as the title implies the second half of my week, spent in Italy, while amazing, did not go quite as smoothly as the first half.

Wednesday March 5

Our story begins, once again, at the totally reasonable hour of 3:30 in the morning. The day before we had asked the front desk to order us a cab, which they did so at first it seemed like things were going fine. Problems began en route to the airport. Now obviously I'm no expert on the roads in and around Athens, but the cab driver took a different route to the airport than the one who brought us to the hotel did. Instead of taking the highway like a normal human being, while the one that brought us back to the airport took the sketchy badly lit back roads all the way there. And so begins panic attack number one. We made it to the airport fine, in one piece, and in time. But I spent the whole ride wondering if we were being kidnapped with my brain playing what-could-possibly-go-wrong. Unfortunately for me my brain is very good at this game. Regardless we made it to the airport.

Our flight was good, and I even managed to get some sleep and calm down after my internal freak out in the cab. (Maria and I were talking later and she said she had the same reaction to the creepy back roads so I know I'm not totally crazy, or if I am she it too.) We made our way through the airport and got a taxi with ease then we had a conversation that went something like this:

Me to taxi driver "We need to go to *insert address I don't remember here*"

Driver "Ok"

Maria "No we need to go to *insert a different address I don't remember here*"

Me to Maria, spoken in growing panic "That's not the address I have"

Maria to cab driver "Are the two addresses anywhere near each other? Is it possible the hotel's on a   corner and she has one street name and I have another?"

Drive "No"

Me, as I hit my read off the window repeatedly "*insert lots of words I can't use here since my parents read this* I'm such an idiot I booked the wrong hotel *insert more words I can't use here*"

Does this look like a hotel to anyone?

And so began my second panic attack in a cab that morning, this one did not take place fully in my head though since I knew there was a problem instead of just being worried there might be one. Approximately forty minutes later we arrived at the address Maria had and were met with an unexpected sight, a shoe store. Now we were all starting to panic, what is Maria had the wrong address for the right hotel? The cab driver asked us if we had a number for the hotel and called it for us, it turns out the B&B we were looking for was above the shoe store so we were at the right place. (Personally I think that would be useful information for them to give customers, just a little note in the confirmation email saying "hey by the way we are situated above a shoe store called Marco Marco and we don't have a sign, but if you ring the door bell we'll buzz you in" or something along those lines in case the people coming are for example tourists, like you quite often get at bargain hotels, who are unfamiliar with the area and may not have cell phone service in the country. But hey that's just me.)

We made our way upstairs to the check in desk where there were two very helpful young Indian men who spoke good English and were able to change Maria's booking from a double to a triple and lent me his phone so I could call the hotel I had made a reservation in (which was apparently across town) and cancel. We then dropped our bags, I cried for a minute to release the stress of the morning, grabbed the free map by the front desk and went off in search of the Spanish Steps, a near by monument where a tour company offered free tours in English twice a day (the guides make tips but there's no fee just to go on the tour). The morning tour covers the area leaden up to and surrounding the Vatican, while the afternoon tour goes in the other direction and ends at the Colosseum. We planned to to both our first day so we could get an overview of the whole city and then decide what we wanted to go back to over the next couple of days.

The tours were awesome, they guide spoke very good English and new a lot about all the monuments we stopped at. Apparently this company runs tours in most major European cities so if you're over here I highly recommend them, I think I'm going to see what tours they do in London for a fun way to kill a few hours. Each tour was about two hours long and gave an overview of all the important monument along the way.

Most of the stuff we saw we went back to in the next few days but here's a few interesting things that we got our fill of on the tour.

This is the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See (the Vatican) where Casanova worked for a while when he lived in Rome.

My first Italian meal

This is a apartment building from ancient times. There would have been shops on the first floor and families on the two or three upper floors. The picture looks like I'm looking down while taking a picture of the lower floors, and I am. That's because "street level" in Rome now is much higher than it used to be because the road have been repaved and buildings have been rebuilt on new foundation so many times over the centuries. 

This is the building Mussolini lived in while he ruled Italy and the balcony where he would make speeches to the public. When you stand under the balcony you can see all the way to the Colosseum, but that wasn't always the case. There used to be buildings and ruins in the way, but Mussolini didn't like that. He wanted to be able to see all the way to the Colosseum to inspire him when making his speeches so he ordered everything in his way to be leveled and a street to be built. (Doesn't he sound like a super nice reasonable person?) Nowadays there's talk of ripping up the street he built to rediscover the ruins he buried. 

Thursday March 6

Ever since I can remember I've wanted to visit Venice, the magical city that has canals and boats instead of roads and cars, Alicia wasn't interested in going but Maria and I decided to do a day trip. The plan was very simple we bought round trip train tickets (which we got at a very good promotional price) before we left England, looked up a few sights we wanted to see and how much entrance would cost, and we figured out how to get to the cities main train station via the metro. All in all we had things pretty well planned out, what could possibly go wrong? The fact that I asked the question should tell you that several things did.

The morning seemed to be going quite smoothly at first, we made it to the metro station and from there to the main train terminal with no problems and in plenty of time, or so we thought. When we arrived we looked at the departure boards searching for our train, after about 15-20 min of this we realized our train wasn't listed, 10 min later we realized why. It had left an hour before. We thought we had booked tickets for the 8:50 train when in fact we had tickets for the 7:50 train. The only possible explanation I can think of for making such a basic and incredibly stupid mistake is that we jumped so many times zones during the week that we were in the habit of looking at the times listed on things and adding or subtracting an hour to figure out what time we really needed to be there. Anyway that was when I began freaking out again.

 Thankfully Maria is much better at functioning in a crisis than I am so we made our way over to costumer assistance to see if it was possible to get a refund on our tickets. Remember how I mentioned that we got a very good promotional price on our train ticket? Apparently the fine print on said promotion stated that there were no refunds and while it was possible to change you ticket for a different train on the same day you had to request this BEFORE the train listed on your ticket departed. We also weren't able to get our money back for the return tickets.  Eventually we decided to bite the bullet and buy new tickets to Venice, which cost 80 Euro's, or approximately 100 American dollars, and switched our return tickets for a later time so we could have more time in the city. So we got tickets for the 9:50 train, and thanks to the long line at the ticket counter made it to the train with less than 5 minutes to spare.

The train ride was about 3.5 hours and uneventful (thank God) we got to the train station on the main land and got a bus to the main island about 10 min away.

After far too much stress, and much more money than I expected here is my first view of Venice

Upon our arrival we found a tourist office where we could get advice about where to go and how to get there. Since there aren't any roads in the city they have a system of city boats instead of busses so we bought day passes for those and headed down the Grand Canal to Saint Marks Basilica. The boat ride took about an hour and we took pictures pretty much the whole way because literally everything in the city is beautiful. 

See! It's all pretty

By the time we arrived at Saint marks we had two hours to spend before we would have to head back down the canal and get the bus in time to catch our train. We went for a tour of the inside of St. Mark's, no pictures allowed unfortunately, but it was break taking, and of the attached museum. We were allowed to take pictures from the second floor terrace though which came out really good.

 

Once we had seen the inside of the Basilica we grabbed some sandwiches at a near-by cafe and found a corner of St. Mark's square where we could sit, eat, and people watch for a while.

St. Mark's Bell tower

A pretty clock on a nearby building

St. Mark's (ignore the scaffolding) 

The Square. I think they must have had a Mardi Gras festival
the day before because there was confetti everywhere.

This is the walkway going around the square,
I bet it looks amazing when the lights are on.

After lunch we wandered around the general area of the square taking pictures and shopping before catching the boat back to the bus station. I got some amazing pictures of the sunset on the ride back.

Sadly we didn't have time for a gondola ride, but I got some picture of them

This is their version of a bus station, but for boats

IT'S SO PRETTY!

After watching the sunset we caught our train back to Rome and made it back to our hotel with no further problems. 

The End.

*Insert hysterical laughter* Yeah, if only. 

We managed to catch a bus back to the train station with no problems and got there with plenty of time to spare thanks to our newly developed fear of missing trains. And the train ride itself was perfectly fine, the trains are quite comfortable and I was able to nap most of the way back to Rome, it was when we arrived in Rome than new and exciting things to stress over emerged. In most European cities, I've discovered, the subway (or Metro as they call it) stops running from around 12:00 - 5:00 every day, our train got in at 11:30ish and we were able to catch one of the last Metro's back to our hotel. When we arrived at the hotel we were confronted with our final problem of the day. Because the hotel is on the upper floors of a building they can't leave the front door unlocked, when you check in you are given a key to said door, but you are only given one key per room. Since Alicia was staying in Rome that day she had our key, leaving me and Maria, you guessed it, locked out.

Next to the door there's a small panel, like most apartment buildings have, where you can press a button asking to be let in and someone on the inside can press a button to unlock the door so we pressed this assuming the man at the front desk would let us in. Then we pressed it again, and again, and again, all with no result. This is about the time when the homeless women sitting on the stoop decided to try and have a chat with us, while we began to panic about what we would do if we wouldn't get it. Fifteen to twenty minutes later after we have rung the bell more times than I can count we finally succeeded in waking up the man working at the front desk who had, understandably, dozed off and were allowed into our hotel. And that my friends concludes our interesting adventure to Venice. 

Friday March 7

Friday was dedicated to seeing incredibly ridiculously old stuff during the day, and slightly less old but still amazingly beautiful stuff lit up at night.

Because Maria and I got back so late the night before we took our time getting up in the boring and left the hotel a little past 10:00 instead of our usual a little past 9:00 and headed off to the Roman Forum, Palestine Hill, and the Colosseum. When we arrived we were confronted by some signs politely informing us that the monuments were closed to a a workers union meeting and would reopen at 11:30. Since we had an hour to kill we backtracked a bit to some other ruins we saw on the side of the road while we were walking over. (Yes ancient ruins are so common here that you casually pass them on your way to the better known ones.)

Cool ruins we passed

Me in font of cool ruins we passed (the reddish building behind
me is part of the ruins, it used to be a shopping center.)

After killing some time we headed back to the entrance for the Roman Forum and Palestine Hill to get in line for tickets. Thankfully the ticket we bought covers entry into these two sites and the Colosseum, which was right next to them, so we were able to skip the time when we went there. This was one of the many useful tips the tour guide on our free tour gave us about navigating the city. I took literally hundreds of pictures that day but while looking through them I realized that a majority really just look like piles of rocks on the ground so here are a few of my favorite piles of rocks.

An old stadium at Palestine Hill

An old Temple in the Roman Forum

 After a break for lunch we returned to the ruins to explore the Colosseum which is AMAZING! (Also on a side note it was such a nice sunny day that I got a bit of a sunburn, and I didn't even care because it was the first week of March and warm enough to get a sunburn!)

This open looking area used to be covered by the stage where the fights occurred, they've reconstructed part of it which you can see in a different picture but by leaving most of it uncovered you can see the complex beneath where the gladiators were kept.

You can see the reconstructed bit of the stage on the right

This was really taken on our first day, but I'm including it with
the other Colosseum pictures 

 After the ancient ruins we headed back to the area near our hotel to check out a near by square with some beautiful fountain, pictured below, and drop off the days purchases in our rooms.

We then grabbed some dinner and headed out to see different landmarks lit up for the night. First stop is the Fountain of Trevi, legend has it if you throw one coins into the fountain over your left shoulder with your right hand you'll find true love, hey it's worth a shot. Anyway we had seen the fountain in the day light during our walking tour but it's even more breathtaking at night and I got some great pictures.

By then it was getting fairly late so we headed back to our hotel with a quick detour along the way to see the Spanish Steps lit up, again absolutely beautiful, before calling it a night.  

Saturday March 8

Our last full day in Italy was dedicated to visiting the sort of old stuff in the city, namely the Vatican and Vatican Museum.

This is a picture of the Casa de St. Angelo and the bridge across the Tiber connected to it. We had to cross said bridge to get to the Vatican which is to the left. The castle is also the property of Vatican City and is connected to the Vatican via a secret (now not so secret) passageway that popes used to use to flee St. Peter's when it wasn't safe. For anyone who's read the Da Vinci series the final scene of Angels and Demons happens here. We didn't get to go inside since we were running low on time, energy, and money (all very important for tours) but this is one of my favorite pictures that I took over break.

Also here's a funny story from our first day that I forgot to share earlier. After the first walking tour that ended at the Vatican we headed back to the area near our hotel via this bridge, on the side closest to the castle there are a bunch of venders so we looked around a bit, not buying anything yet just seeing what the prices were. All of the sudden there was a shout and then all the venders without carts who just had their stuff on the street grabbed all there stuff and took off. I goes a cop car had driven by and, since they're all selling things illegally, they cleared out. It was scary/hilarious because out of no where all these guys were just yelling at each other and running, they all clear the area in less than 30 seconds. The legal vendors with carts were totally unfazed so I guess this is a fairly common occurrence. Then when we made our way back across the river a few minutes later they were all sitting on the opposite bank, I assume waiting for someone to signal them the all clear. 

Approaching Saint Peter's 

We timed our arrival so we would get there right as it was opening and thank goodness because we were in line for less than 5 min and but the time we left the line was going all the way around the square. Entrance into St. Peter's itself is free, and you're allowed to take pictures ( I took a ton) so we spent a while looking around inside the Basilica and the tombs beneath it (no photos allowed in the tombs).

I love painted ceilings 

The alter

I think this is really cool in a kinda gothic way

More pretty ceilings

After exploring for a while we made what is at the same time one of the best and worst decisions a person can make, we decided to climb to the top of the dome in St. Peter's. It costs about 8 euro's to do so, you have the option to pay 7 more to take an elevator half way but we're cheep college students so we figured we'd just climb all the way. When we informed the guide at the bottom of the stairs that we would be climbing the whole way his response was very reassuring, he laughed and told us "Good luck."

Did you know it's 551 steps to the top of St. Peter's Dome? 551 steps, mostly without railings to hold on to, at one point, because you're literally inside the dome, the walls begin to slant sideways on you, soon after that you reach the final section of the climb a small spiral staircase that's so steep instead of putting a railing on the wall they hang a really thick rope down the middle of the spiral for you to grab hold of. 

The camera isn't angled in this, the walls are

In the end though the view was totally worth it.

St. Peter's Square from above

We spent some time at the top taking ton's of pictures and then began our decent. About half way down there's a area where you can go out on the roof and see some of the statues up close, there's also a gift shop, a refreshment shop, bathrooms, and a mail box for the Vatican Post because hey why not?

I was on top of that dome!

Once we made it to the ground we made a quick stop at the post office to mail some post cards, took a few pictures of the Swiss guards, and headed off to the Vatican Museum just around the corner. 

As we were walking we were, as per usual in Rome, accosted by any number of sales people who all want to try and sell you the exact. same. thing. And no matter how many of them you say no to more will always appear suffering under the delusion that even though you said no to the last fifty of them, getting progressively more annoyed and less polite with each successive one, you might just say yes to them. Over all we did pretty good at dealing with them over the course of break but at this point we were going on eight days with not enough sleep or healthy food and way too much walking so Alicia and I (Maria is a much more patient person than the two of us) were about ready to punch the next person to jump in our face an exclaim "English yes? You like? Very good price just for you!"

We didn't spend more than two hours in the Museum because we were starving and everything, while beautiful, isn't well labeled so at everything you kinda end up thinking to yourself "This is a very pretty thing, I'm sure this thing has some form of historical significance, I wonder what it is? Oh well on to the next pretty thing." We did however make sure to see the Sistine Chapel which is just beautiful beyond words. Every single inch of the ceiling and the walls in painted in amazing detail and it's just breath taking, sadly you can't take pictures inside, but it's simply amazing. 

Here are some of the pretty things whose historical significance I don't know.

DON'T BLINK! 

 More pretty ceilings, I swear in every museum I go to in Europe I spend more time looking a the ceiling that the stuff on display. 

This is how you get out, I thought is looked cool.

At this point we were exhausted and starving so we went in search of food to give us a second wind. We got some lunch and then ate some gelato while sitting in the sun in St. Peter's square people watching, which was really fun actually and exactly what we needed to recharge. After lunch we went to visit another one of the many beautiful squares with fountain in the city, this one popular with artists, and to do some more shopping before dinner. After dinner we decided to pay a visit to the Pantheon. For anyone who doesn't know the Pantheon was once a pagan temple to the Roman gods but for the last several centuries as severed as a church, they actually still say mass there every Sunday. The building is perfectly round and there's a hole in the roof which is the only source of light. The roof is really amazing because it's made of concrete and was done in a single casting which would be difficult to do today, I can't imagine how they did it thousands of years ago.

Outside

Inside

Really cool roof

Sunday March 9

Sunday was our last day in Rome, and we had to catch a cab by 2:00 in order to make the plane back, that combined with how tiered we all were meant we took it easy that day. After packing in the morning we found a beautiful park behind the Spanish steps that we wandered around for a few hours and then got our final meal in Rome before going back to the hotel to meet our cab and say goodbye to the city.

Teeny tiny little truck we saw

These horses have fish tails, I don't understand

IT'S WARM ENOUGH FOR FLOWERS!

I thought this house looked like where
a witch would live in a fairy tale, but it's
really a place where you can rent bikes

When we arrived back at the hotel we grabbed our bags and went outside to meet the taxi the man at the front desk had called for us. Except it wasn't going to be quite that easy. It turned out instead of calling one of the official city cabs he had called what I can only assume was his buddy who happened to own a van and made some extra money driving people to and from the airport. Every single thing I have ever read about traveling states catagorically that you should only ever take official taxis when traveling, but while I stood frozen in the door way the other two were already loading their bags and getting in the car, so I took a deep breath, tried my best not to panic and got in. Needless to say we made it to the air port safety, even though I'm pretty sure he charged us more than a real taxi would have, but I spent the ride there once again holding off a panic attack in the back of a "cab". Once we got to the airport there were no problems, I managed to get an isle seat next to a very good looking Italian boy who unfortunately didn't speak much English, and we we back in London by 7:00. And that  ladies and gentlemen was my spring break while studying abroad.