Roma, Sorento part two, Corfu, and Athens

HEre I am, sitting in an internet cafe, looking out at Hadrien's Arch, remembering my times in Italy...So wonderful!
Rome was a much better experience than Florence! For one, things weren't closed and we said money be dammed and went to wahtever attractions we wanted to go to regardless of the price. The city is dirty and seems to be crumbling before our eyes, but my gosh, some of those crumbles are beautiful. Frank was sorta sick so he styayed in the hostel for a day while Joe and I wandered in the rain through the Roman ruins. It was an absilute downpour but made the crowds smaller! We didn't want to do anything too exciting because Frank would miss it so we took it easy. The next day we stood in line for about two hours waiting for the Sistene Chapel and surroudning museum. I have officially broken Vatican law and took a picture of the ceiling. The room was smaller than I imagined and the ceiling was very low, but its hard to imagine how one man could have done so much work by himself. That same day we went into the Vatican (more lines), walked through the church, saw the catacombs, and hiked to the top of the cupola. We have now been to some of the largest and most impressive cathedrals in the world: The Vatican, Notre Dame, St. Peter's, St. Paul's, the BErliner Dom, the Cologne Dom...
We did some more things but I can't rememver what they were!
Sorrento was just like I remembered it from four months ago. We stayed at hostel but we were the only guests so it felt very private. There was a famr next door with goats, pigs, and a horse that poked their heads by our door in the day. We mostly wandered aroun d the town, looking at the water. One day we went to Mt Vesivius and climbed to the top. When we left it was hot and sunny so we wore t-shjirts (I wore a tank top) . When we got the the bottom of the mountain, though, it was raining and windy. NOt to be intimidated by the 'hill', we started the climb. People were giving us looks that were a combo of pity and disgust (mostly directed to me, the dumb girl in the skimpy clothes). We made it and it wasn't as cool as we had hoped. That evening Frank and Tarek got fed up with trying to find a restaurant that I could eat at and said that they were eating pizza at t pizza only place. JOe was sweet and stayed with me so we took my mom up on her offer of a nice dinner to be repayed to me (I guess I whined too much about bad food) and went to a place tht she nd I had tried to go to but it was losed in the off season. We had fresh salads and he had homemade pasta and I had risotta. It was wonderful. I left Italy with a good taste in my mouth. And Frank and Tarek feel bad for ditching us.
The next day was the day from hell\;
LEave at 7AM to take a train from Sorrento to Naples, catch train in Naples that tke sus to Tarnto, catch train there to take us to Brindisi, catch bus there to take us to port, take ferry to Corfu, take taxi to hotel and arrive there at about 8AM---the next day!
The ferry was strange. We slept in an airplane thing and there was a TV on all night. Didn't sleep well. When we woke up to get off at our port, the TV was playing soft core porn. Very strange.
Corfu was one of those beautiful places that you can't take enough photos of. Our hotel had a pool and we relaxed at it happily. Burned a bit, but not too bad. Would love to return to the same hotel with my family. Reminded me of a more exotic Hawaii.
Now we're in Athens, our last stop. Its very hot and there's a lot fo concrete around. Probably the last time i write on here, sorry its so full of misspellings, the backspace key is stuck.
Tomorrow mroning we will wake up super ear;ly and get to the Acropolis befpre it gets too hot. NOt sure what our plans are for tonight. Maybe the Archeological museum?

Towns on top of hills

After the disaster of Florence, Orvieto was a welcome breath of fresh air. Literally. I think it may be the only area in Italy that doesn't stink like sewage!
Its a tiny little town that was so sleepy and small we found our way around it in a matter of hours. Very pretty little streets. Its up on a hill so we had to take a furnicular to get to the town. We enjoyed our hotel where we lived a little like kings trying out the life of poor people. We at least had our own bathroom, even if it didn't have a shower or hot water.
The following day we went to Civita. This involved me racking my memory until I remembered the name of the town that Rick Steves and my mother reccomend visiting, buying bus tickets to a neighboring village (not as easy as it sounds), and then walking about 20 minutes to Civita. Its a town of seven people, including MAria, the old lady who invites you to see her garden and then charges you for it. It was very pretty, if only because it was so isolated and old. Can't figure out how to paste a photo on this computer so you'll justy have to google it yourself. Its the one that looks like a tiny town on top of a hill.
Now we're in Roma but have yet to explore. Tomorrow we meet Joe's friend, Tariq, who he went to Ecuador with. Tariq has been reporting in Iraq and other dangerous things like that. Will be intereting. Not sure how long he will stay with us as he has no plane tickets.

Nightmare

Florence was miserable. If there was potential for it to go wrong, it did. Don't want to recap the crappiness, but it rained every day we were there, May Day is a holiday in Italy so everything was closed, our hotel was a ceiling over our heads but nothing more, and we spent too much money on food. Since everything was closed, that means that I am now the only art history major to visit Florence for four days and not see the Uffizi nor the David. I am shamed.

A day at the lake

At the reccomendation of Let's Go and the guy at our hotel's reception, we took a short bus ride to Sirmione. The town was hopping with tourists and wealthy Italians out for a hot Saturday. There's really no beach to speak of, but we found ourselves a large rock and set up camp. We had our tiny BBQ that we quickly set to work. It cooked us delicous corn on the cob and hot dogs. We were the envy of our area. The boys went for a swim in the freezing water while I embraced the Italian bathing style and went topless. Directly in front of us was a couple who was far too friendly for a public place. That provided us with a lot of giggling.
Now we're back at the Euromotel. We went to the grocery store and bought soup to warm up in the microwave that the morning hotel reception man told us we could use. However, the evening man isn't as friendly and has not only refused us the use of the microwave, but (we think) has pretended to call someone to ask if we can use the private one and they said no. He's also making a lot of jokes about how he can't understand our funny English. We've decided that he doesn't like young travelers like ourselves who come into his hotel, use his free shampoo samples, do our laundry in his sink, and ask to use his microwave. Or maybe he hates Americans. Whichever, the boys have gone off on a McDonald's finding mission. I've put in an order for a large fry should they find one. It not, its a night of random pieces of food that we've collected.
Tomorrow we take a train to Florence where we will probably not have free internet as I have here!

In fair Verona where we lay our scene...

Verona is gorgoeus! Very green with blue skies and a kind of country feel to it. We did the brief walking tour of the cities sights and visited the arena, some churches, two castles, and Juliette's balcony. Juliette never lived there, but that's not the issue. Outside the balcony is a hallway called the love note area that's covered in love notes (including one for me from Joe).
None of the sights are overly impressive at this point, but it was all pretty and slowed down.
We ate our grocery store dinner sitting on a bench looking over the river. Tomorrow we have plans to take a picnic (including a disposable BBQ) to the lake and relax for the whole day.

Gondolas and gelato

The nine hour train ride was worth it. For a city that's sinking, it sure is grand. Its very strange to me that there are moss coered doorsteps to houses with opulent chandeliers in them. Our 'hotel' was pretty miserable. We had a private room, but the whole place smelled like morning breath and the enterance was on an ally that was used as the delivery door for the nice hotels across the way.
Venice is a beautiful place, filled with winding allies (there are house numbers but they don't work like they do in the US. Instead of each street getting a set of numbers, Veince uses 1-6000 and none are repeated.), and canal bridges. The Rialto Bridge and San Marco's are really well marked so we never got lost, but we sure lost out sense of direction. We slept like logs and woke up early to explore . Went back to the Rialto where Frank bought Tasha a gift (can't say where we went or I'd ruin the surprise!).
In the afternoon we took a water taxi to Murano and watched them do live glass slowing demonstrations. The guy made a unicorn and vase in a matter of moments. I was so impressed that I bought a Christmas ornament that I'm praying won't get broken. Murano was a very sleepy area with nothing to do but wander. Once we tired of that we taxied back to Veince where we walked by the Bridge of SIghs, Dodge's Palace (the line was about 4 hours long so we passed on that), and all of the other Venice buildings that you recognize but don't know the names of. We bought our lunch at a grocery store and ate it while dangling our legs over the water and looking up at the Rialto. Venice had me back on my fruit and nuts diet so it was the 'eat to live' instead of 'live to eat' that I'm so used to!
We siestaed for a while and then hit the town again. We wandered through the oldest Jewish ghetto in the world (ghetto means foundry) while Joe quietly sang the Adam Sandler Jewish song to us. When it was dark, we made our way over to San Marco's for the deuling string quartets who played amazing jmusic that made us clap our hands and try to dance. We noticed that we were the only people under 50 years old but that nearly everyone was American. We ate several portions of gelato.

What a cultured lot we are

Just 24 hours after seeing the ballet in Budapest, we went to the opea in Vienna. Standing room tickets are impossibly cheap so we saw Elektra for about $2. Crazy plot, forgotten by all of us until the play began (Frank thought he remembered but he really just combined about 4 stories into one). There were screens in front of us with English lyrics so we weren't totally lost.
Besides the opera, Vienna was kind of slow. Tim was with us so we had someon new to talk to. I really wanted to go see Gustave Klimt's work that is housed at the Upper Belvedere so Tim and Joe accomplanied me there. 'Judith' looks much different outside of a book. She's very gold. I think it must be the only Judith and Holofernes sceen without blood. We went to Vienna's clock (the numbers are all along the top in a horizontal line and the time marker moves in a line instead of a circle).
To leave Veinna, we had to take a nine hour train ride which was awful. We were in a cabin thing with three Italians and the whole train was pushing 90°. We survived.

Buda and Pest

In 1896, Hungary's 1000th birthday prompted the construction of most of its major sights. Pretty much everything that I talk about was built in 1896.
Budapest was much more like what I thought Eastern Europe would feel like. It was gray even when it was sunny, and everything seems worn.
We met Sara (Joe's friend from high school) at our hostel (very nice, we sleep up in a tree house loft thing) and she toured us around very well. She's teaching English in a nearby town so she speaks a little Hungarian which was helpful. We stolled along the major streets in Pest (BUdapest is divided in half by the Danube River), crossed a bridge, and climbed the many steps to the hill town of Buda. There we walked around the Castle Disctict (not very castley nor impressive) and admired the great views of Parliment in Pest. We also ate ice cream. Back in Pest, we walked past Parliment and the Opera House (the story goes that back when Austria and Hungary were ruled by the same guy, he gave permission for Budapest to built an opera house like the one in Vienna on the comdition that it was smaller than the one in Vienna. After it was built, he was reported to have said that he wished he had said that it had to be less beautiful than the one in Vienna because the new one in Budapest was so lovely.) We ate dinner at Sara's favorite drink place which Joe loved and descirbed as "dank." After dinner we met up with some of Sara's friend who took us on a tour of Budapest's back alleys that led us to two very Eastern feeling bars. Both were outdoors, had strange blue and red lanterns , and were visable only to those who knew where they were (unmarked doors). Sara bought us shots of some traditional alochol made from fermented peaches that she desribed as Hungarian moonshine.
Today we took it easy and walked up to City Park. There's a castle there called Vajdahunyad Castle that's a very strange mix of Baroque, Romanesque, and Gothic architecture. The park also has the Szechenyi baths which we thought might be cool, but after peaking in, decided that they were like swimming pools and not worth our money. We walked along a street lined with embassys until we came to the Great Synagogue which is the biggest in Europe, second in the world to one in NY. We ended the day by going to see the Romeo and Juliet ballet at the Opera House for $2. Our seats were so cheap that they made us enter from a seperate door that we had to exit the theater and walk to the rear to get to. We had terrible seats but the inside of the theter was pretty.
Tomorrow is Vienna and thank goodness we're back on the Euro! All of these money changes are so weird. Today I paid 150things for a bottle of water. SOunds like a lot, but it was about $0.50.

"I see a great city whose glory will touch the stars."

That's what Countess Libuse said about Prague. It was one of the only Eastern European cities not destoryed by WWII so it has tons of past. Our hostel is perfect. Its cheap, they give us free breakfast, and they have a black lab who makes me miss Rain even more.
Today we walked accross Charles Bridge. There was a statue on it that was rubbed shiny from people touching it so even though I didn't know what it was, I touched it. The bridge looks a lot like a mini-Paris. We saw the Prague castle (mostly just a big complex on buildings on a hill). We also went to the Old Town Square where they have a clock where Death rings in every hour by turning his hourglass and the apostles march by.

They have a TV towe in Prague, too, but they tried to hunaize it by putting sculptures of climbing babies on it. Large babies. Very weird.
Prague is much safer, brighter, and cheaper than I expected. We felt like kings and dined at a nice restaurant, had drinks, and it was all under 7Euro. Divine.

The Great Wall

Berlin was much more interesting than it was fun. So much recent history. The hostelboat was a lot like a tiny motionless cruise ship. It was located right behind the part of the old wall that is still standing. We shared our cabbin with two French guys who didn't speak English. We found a store with gluten-free things so I stocked up on much desried cookies and crackers. I'm loving them.
On our first day we went on a walking tour designed by one of the girls who worked at the hostelboat. She mostly put a bunch of lines and x's on a map and left us to figure out what they were. Even in two days we could tell there were massive differences between West and East Berlin. The East is covered in graffitti and looks like it is falling apart, while the West is clean and futuristic (kind of like the 5th Element).In the West we visited the Reichstag which has a huge glass dome that we walked up to see the views of the city. The West also has the Sony Center where we went to see The Good Shephard (cool because it showed London and Berlin in WWII times). In the East we went to the Berliner Dom and climbed to the top again. Seeing all of these cathedrals is tough, they all start to look like one big sotne and gold blob. The Fernsenturm , too, which measures in at 368m and Berlin's tallest structure. Its basically an ugly TV tower that the East built to show how technological they were. They needed the help of the Sweeds, though, and to play a joke on religous symbol hating East, they designed it so that when the sun shines on it, a crucifix appears (they call it the Pope's revenge). We went to the Jewish memorial where there are 2700 large stone slabs that are coated in an anti-graffitti material. Nice idea, but the anti-graffitti stuff was made by a company who manufactured the gas used in Nazi death camps. On our second day we went to the Olympic Stadium that was made by Hitler for the 1936 Olympics. Not pretty, but very powerful. That was kind of how I felt about the whole city-ugly, but with a lot of personality and made me think the most of all of our towns.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam was another very livable city. It was only about 700,000 people and we could bike accross the city in about 15 minutes. The first day there we rented bikes and Carly (our old roommate) showed us around the city. We went to lots of parks and absored the sun while we caught up with her. That day was the hottest day in April for Amsterdam's history. That evening we went over to her house for dinner...we sat around the table drinking wine and talking about the world, when did we grow up?
Everyone in Amsterdam has a bike, but they're all the sit up straight, country ride type. Frank described it best, "I feel like I should be going on a picnic in the park with a girl wearing a sundress." On our last day in town, we biked out of town (8km one way!) on a mission to see some tulips and windmills. We found one ugly windmill but decided that the country was still pretty. We thought the bikes would be 19.50 Euro but the guy mischarged us for only one day. We were feeling poor so we took advantage of it so they were only 9 Euro.
We walked through the Red Light District which actaully glows red at night. The girls were all wearing their underwear and not doing much in their windows. Some were even eating or checking their email.
The toilets in Amserdam are worth a sentence or two. They have these odd shelves that we dubbed the 'shit shelf' which is pretty much a raised part of the bowl that catches the poo and leaves it above water so that it stinks. Its supposed to be some water saving thing but we didn't appreciate it.
Now we're in Berlin and have spent one successful night on our hostel boat. Its actaully a boat that floats in the water near the old wall. We have no idea what we're doing today but since BErlin is 8 times as big as Paris, we won't be walking the city!