Me encanta España

Sorry its been so long in getting this up.

And off to Spain! Erin and I took a plane from Rome to Seville. It was my first Ryanair flight and I was a little worried. Ryanair is an Irish company which provides really cheap (about 15 to 30 dollars) flights within Europe. I have heard they were really strict about carry-on baggage though and since I was only taking a backpack that was packed with all I was living off of for two weeks I thought maybe they would make me check it. We had no problems however and a short flight later we were across the Mediterranean! At the hostel we had a little bit of a surprise... the man at the front desk spoke no english at all! We had not run across that yet so we did the best we could using sign language and speaking what words we did know. I find it really interesting what people do to communicate when they speak none of the same languages. First you try using your native language or the language you know that is closest to their language in hopes that the word will be similar enough that there will be inter-comprehension. Then if that doesn't work a combination of gestures and facial expressions put with your language will have to suffice. After we got settled in I was waiting for Erin to drop something off in the room when my friend Brandon (who is studying in Seville for the semester) walked in looking for us. He then became our personal tour guide of the beautiful city.

Brandon took us on a tour of Seville that evening and into the night. This is the view of one of the old towers from a bridge crossing the river. There used to be an identical one on the other side and they would string a chain between them to keep out unwanted boats.

This is the Plaza de Espana where they filmed some of the scenes for Naboo in Star Wars. For anyone that is interested here is the link for a picture: http://www.sevillaonline.es/images/sevilla/monuments/plaza_de_espana/plaza_de_espana-sevilla14p.jpg

It was really cool they had tiles of the different areas of Spain surrounding the square. Tiles are one of the specialties of Seville and we peeked in on a tile shop.

Me in the Plaza de Espana. There is supposed to be water running under the bridge but they were doing some major construction.

Who can go to Spain and not have churros? I ordered some churros to be dipped in a hot chocolaty fudge sauce (thicker than hot chocolate but not as thick as fudge) They were really good but I'm not a huge fan of fried foods so it was far too much. This day we also met up with Erin's friend who is studying in Seville and went to the palace there.

This is my friend Brandon that who I saw there. He lived right upstairs from me in my dorm last semester. We made multiple plans to go and see each other:

Plan 1: we meet up in Andorra, a small country in between Spain and France

Plan 2: We meet up in Paris

Plan 3: We meet up in Ireland

Plan 4: I visit him in Seville

Well at least we got to meet up!

One of the neighborhoods of Seville is called Macarena and it is almost certain the band that wrote the song the Macarena based it off of this neighborhood. So look! I'm doing the Macarena in the Macarena!

After a few very relazing days in Seville (we were getting really tired after all the sight seeing and walking around) we took a Ryanair flight (again no problems) to Barcelona. I know a lot of people say that Barcelona is their favorite city in the world, but I wasn't that huge of a fan of it. Yes it was cool being right on the ocean and having all of the cool Gaudi architecture, but I thought it looked a lot like an American city. Apart from the gothic neighborhood all of the buildings looked the same, all of the streets looked the same. More than that though it was probably the fact that I was really tired by that point and was ready for this long vacation to be over, I had horrible allergies and the weather wasn't that great. Maybe if I go back someday I will like it better.

The market on la Rambla was really cool though and Erin and I went there a few times. Ham is a huge specialty in Spain so there were ham legs just hanging up everywhere! I really would like to know if that would be seen as a health hazard in the states...

For lunch we bought a HUGE bag of strawberries (1 kilo so about 2 pounds) for 1 euro ($1.30)! The bag doesn't look as big as it actually was here but we couldn't even eat all of them for lunch and ate the rest for dinner that night. I also had a really good fruit smoothie (coconut and dragonberry) for lunch.

La familia sangrada cathedral in Barcelona. It has been under construction for 125 years now and they say they won't finish for 25 years yet (although they still have such a long way to go that I doubt they will be finished by then) We decided not to pay the 12 euros it cost to get inside because we were told it was cool but not worth the money (and by the end of the trip our money was getting a little tight!)

This is the Park Guell which was designed by Gaudi. It is so cool and seems almost like a dream land with its strange buildings and structures.

La Ramblas, which is the main walk-way in Barcelona with all the street performers and a bunch of tourist shops. I was so scared my entire time in Barcelona that I was going to get robbed. One of the girls staying at our hostel got robbed and she lost her credit card, identity card, passport, money, camera, etc etc etc. I felt so bad for her! One of the girls my friend Brandon knows got robbed twice in one weekend when she went to Barcelona. I was always clutching bag. We even saw someone try to rob someone the day we went to the beach. We were laying... under the clouds... when we heard a commotion and a lady went up to a man carrying a bag. He had just taken the bag from another lady sleeping on the beach and she had seen him. All ended well and the one lady got her bag back but that made me even more scared.

Along the beach people would do anything for money. Some people built sand castles and had a bucket out front asking for money. Some man even brought his dog to the beach to give birth and claimed the money would go to raising the puppies. There were also people selling everything! We saw doughnuts, coconut, temporary tatoos, sarongs, water and massages. Someone would come up to us at least once every 2 minutes and ask if we wanted to buy whatever they were selling.

We saw a flamenco dancer in Seville and we saw another one on the beach in Barcelona.

Overall it was an awesome vacation! Two weeks was a little long to be constantly going but we saw a lot and I'm glad we did it!

Texas aint got nothing on Rome...

When in Rome... The immense size of the city pretty much made up for all the tourists and we had an awesome time! Our first day there we took a free walking tour which showed us a lot of the sights in the same part of the city as the Trevi Fountain and The Spanish Steps. I officially love free walking tours! They give you a foundation of the city and then really let you explore the parts that you like a little more without having to pay anything :)

This is Italy's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Yea... I think its a little bit bigger and a little more impressive than the one in the US... or France... or England... or Canada (I think thats all the ones I've seen...) Like we took to saying: Texas aint got nothing on Rome... everything is truly bigger in Rome! For a few days we didn't know what this big building was though so we just called it that big white thing.

On our free tour we went by the Trevi Fountain. I had never imagined it to be so immense! The history of everything in Rome is so interesting. Everything was basically built by the Romans or a pope. The Trevi Fountain was built by one of the popes yet it still has a Roman god: Oceanous standing front and center. It was packed. It would have taken forever to try to get up to the water to throw a coin in so we decided to come back later that night when hopefully there would be less people.
The Pantheon (and no thats not the Parthenon) is now a church and a really cool one at that! The dome is gigantic! It is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. Yea... those ancient Romans knew how to do things! Inside is the tomb of Raphael and two of Italy's kings among other famous and important Romans.
I thought the fact that it was open at the top of the dome was really cool. Even though it wasn't built originally as a church, it is fitting that it is one in my opinion. Because it can obviously rain in there are drains (ancient Roman drains not new ones) and the floor both tilts gently to those drains and towards the door so that if there was a lot of rain it could be let out the door. While our tour was really good and informative I learned a little too much about the different styles of architecture for my liking. What was very interesting however was all of the Egyptian obelisks all over the city. During the Roman empire they stole hundreds of these and placed them around their city with statues or symbols of their gods ontop. Then when the catholic church gained power they replaced some of the statues with crosses or statues of saints. The mixtures of the three very diffferent cultures and religions was very interesting.

And the Colosseum! I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting but this wasn't it. Maybe it was the fact that it was just seemed to be stuck in the middle of a city and it was hard to get the angle shown in all the books but either way it wasn't disappointing.

After a dinner of pasta (Erin and I got spaghetti and lasagna and went half and half) we wandered around Rome at night. I have decided that it is at night that I like the cities the best. Most of the tourists have retired to their hotel rooms and the ones that rest seem to be the tourists most like us: more interested in culture and beauty than cramming in as many touristy things as possible. We both got a pastry, looked over the city from the Spanish steps and met some very interesting Californians... A little before midnight we made our way to the Trevi Fountain where there were far less people than before. I made my wish.

Day 2 in Rome: The Vatican

We had tickets for a tour at the Vatican museum at 2 that day but we started out early because we had heard how long the line can get. Turns out we had no problem with the line (10 minutes) and got into St. Peters Basilica in no time.

St Peters Basilica was breathtaking. It was enormous and I do not use that word lightly at all. It is the biggest Catholic church in the world but the archetecture doesn't make it seem so big. There are two "rows" of statues around the church, one above the other. From the ground they look to be the same size but apparently the top ones are 10 feet taller to make them appear to be the same size. The alter is something like 7 stories high... everything was on massive scale but seemed so intimate at the same time. We spent hours just walking around (we took another Rick Steves tour) and sat for a while in a little chapel off the main church. Being there was so powerful. It is a church that Christians around the world (Catholic or not) look to as the center of their religion. The emotion that has taken place there, the powerfulness, it was awesome.

I have always thought the Swiss guards were really cool :) Being part Swiss I joked that I was going to go up to them and start calling them my cousins... but they wouldn't let anyone get close to take a picture with them :( I feel kind of bad for them having to wear those uniforms though... apparently Michelangelo designed them. I dont know about you but personally I dont think he had much of a hand at being a clothing designer. Chanel you have new competition... the Michelangelo line is vying for the position of the top clothing company.

After our very expensive tour of the Vatican museum on which I learned that some people really should not be tour guides (ours was so bad that by the end we had "lost" seven out of the 30 or so on the tour) we ended at the Sistine Chapel. Wow. It was covered in paintings! I spent so long just looking at the picture of God giving life to David my neck started hurting.

Day 3 in Roma

Again we got up early to try to beat the lines at the Coliseum which ended up being a whole 10 minutes again. It was cool to see something I had learned so much about back when we studied ancient Roman history in 6th grade (you would be proud of me Mr. Jeager) but it really was the kind of thing I would be fine doing once in my life time. We took another Rick Steves tour but there were so many people around us that I dont think I really enjoyed it as much as I could have. After the Coliseum we went to the Roman forum which is right across the street. Its basically a huge concentration of a bunch of ruins and even after Athens was pretty cool. We then decided that we had enough of tourist attractions for one day and crossed the river to a part of town called the Trastevere where we had heard there were less tourists. The less tourists was right... but there were still plenty. We found pizza and gelato however and sat by a statue to people watch. I had half nutella and half coconut gelato... oh my gosh amazing!

Day 4 in Roma

We wandered to a the city park to get some sun and just have a rather relaxing day. With all the walking we had been doing our feet were getting really sore. The park was so cool though! There were people riding bikes, on boats, performing rollerblading shows and just walking leisurely around.

Our hostel in Rome offered free dinners to people staying there (pasta and bread) but only for weekday nights so for our last night in Rome (a saturday) we decided to go out to a restaurant and splurge a little bit on some good pasta. I had cheese tortellini with ham in a cream sauce and it was soooo good! I was a little thrown off by there being ice in my coke though... apparently the Italians actually put ice in things unlike the French.

The Romans kept their tradition of almost worshiping water like their ancestors of the Roman Empire did. There are these little "fountains" all around the city and the water is perfectly safe to drink. Once I bought a water bottle there was no need to buy another one which was really nice.

Overall I loved Rome. I could have done without all the tourists but it was really cool to see all the things I have learned so much about. I had fun trying to picture Rome in its glory. Erin and I both would like to invent a time traveling device so we could travel to a time in history and really see it even if we could not interact with the people. Rome would definitely be a city I would return to given the chance.

No cars allowed... Venice, Italy (and pictures from Florence)

Here are pictures from Florence...

The Duomo with its white, pink and green marble. This church became my favorite but didn't stay my favorite for long. to the church (cut off from the picture) is the tower. Erin and I went up the tower instead of the dome because the dome was closed for the Easter weekend.

The inside of the church. Compared to the outside it was actually rather plain

On the free tour of the city we took they showed us a few gelato shops with homemade gelato and it was AMAZING!!! The first day I had chocolate fudge then the second I had half strawberry (so flavorful) and cheesecake (one of the most amazing things I have ever eaten). We ate gelato almost once a day :)

Erin and I eating our gelato

Me and the pont de vecchio

The view from the top of the tower. I love cities from above, especially european cities.

Santa Croche, one of the other churches in Florence and apparently where a bunch of famous people are buried like Michelangelo and Galileo.

A tripe sandwich :) it was actually pretty good! Tripe sandwiches of Lamprodatos are a Florantinian specialty.

The flag throwers Easter morning

All the people in front of the church Easter morning.

The cart from which they set off fireworks

The colored smoke.

A sampling of the fireworks

The inside of the gorgeous dome!

And on to Venice!

I have had such an idealized image of Venice for nearly my entire life (or at least since I read The Thief Lord about a dozen times). It seemed like a city that existed in a parallel universe, a city where cars didn't exist. Everything happened by water or walking and I thought that was so cool. The charm of a city so confusing one could get lost extremely easily somehow appealed to me. Anyways, because of this extremely idealized view Venice was both a city that must be on my travel list but was also in high danger of not living up to my extreme expectations. However it took the same amount of time as it took to mount the first bridge over the Grand Canal for me to fall in love with the city itself and not the literary renditions of it. Yes I know its touristy, yes I know it is a dying city (it looses 1000 inhabitants a year) but it has charm. It is different. We soon decided we needed an actual map to find our hostel and with that didn't have too much trouble. We were staying in an old palace on the Grand Canal (though on the other side of the building) and while it was rather run down it was easy to imagine the elegance that once existed there.
There wern't too many street performers in Venice but this guy was awesome! He was playing actually recognizable songs on crystal glasses near our hostel.

Who wouldn't fall in love with that? I especially loved the little bridges that crossed the small canals and the doors that opened directly to the water. They really do use the water to get around too. We saw plenty of actual residents using their boats. There are the gondolas yes but also garbage boats, police boats, delivery boats, mail boats and even UPS boats.

The Grand Canal. This is where most of the activity was. There are water taxis that go up and down the grand canal and also to the other islands. We took one of them down the canal and saw a lot of the sights from the water as they were meant to be seen. Rick Steves (that guy who writes the tour books) also produces a podcast (an audio file) of tours all around Europe and he was our friend on this trip. We took his tour of the Vatican, Florence, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, St. Marks Basilica and the Grand Canal. Its so interesting to listen to him and actually learn things about what you are seeing without having to pay for an actual tour. Some of the palaces along the Grand Canal are so pretty! The amount of wealth that used to be centered here is amazing.

Gondola, gondola, gondola!!! The gondola men kept on trying to get us to take a ride but well... a bit out of our price range. Some of their boats are so decked out its crazy. I loved their costume of the striped shirt and the hat though :)

sitting on the grand canal. I could have sat here for days on end! There was so much going on and well... I'm in love with this city!

St. Marks Square. There were so many tourists it was a bit crazy but it wasn't too hard to look past them all and see the true beauty of the square. There is St. Marks Basilica (which became my favorite church), the campanile (the tower) and the Doge's palace. For as much as they say the lines here are awful we had no problems whatsoever. It took us maybe 10 minutes to get into St. Marks Basilica (the final resting place of St. Mark after crusaders "rescued" his body from Muslims who were about to desecrate it) The inside is COVERED in gold (see next picture) which shows how amazingly rich Venice was at one time. There is also an alter to St. Mark at the front of the church which has so many jewels and gold it is almost gaudy. The tile floors were almost the most interesting (and sad) though because it wasn't flat. They have so many floods here and the ground is moving so much that I dont know how some of the buildings are still standing. Venice may be completely underwater in a hundred years... its sinking. :(

Another view of St. Marks Square. The campanile (the tower) fell about 100 years ago and they re-built it. We decided not to go up it because we were having so much fun just wondering around the city. The first day we attempted to get lost but ended up finding us again! It was easier to get lost when we were trying to find where we were going than when we were trying to get lost.

So many gondolas!!!

Can you see why I love this city?

While we didn't go on a real gondola ride we did go on what tourists like to call the "poor man's gondola" Basically it is an oversized gondola which ferries people back and forth across the canal.

This palace was across the canal from the palace we were staying in... and it was where Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were staying because she is shooting a movie in Venice. Cool right?

So overall take on Venice: it exceeded my expectations. We had so much fun just wandering the streets seeing all the little canals and getting lost in the tiny streets. We took a water taxi to Melano to see the glass blowers and walk around and that was so pretty! After our two nights there we really didn't want to leave but I suppose when Rome is the next city its not too bad...