Venice is a beautiful city, and I can’t wait to come back! Unfortunately I wasn’t really able to spend much time here at all. I took an overnight train from Florence and got in around 8:00 am. The night before I’d checked with the hostel association, and found that all the hostels were full…no big deal I figured; I’d heard that the Venice hostels were nearly impossible to get into at the last minute. Well, what I didn’t know was that this was the weekend of the Venice marathon. For the first time in this trip, I wasn’t able to find a decently priced hostel or hotel anywhere! I did find several rooms over a hundred euros a night, but I just really didn’t want to pay that. Instead I figured I’d just take in as much of the city as I could before catching an overnight train to Vienna.

Right outside of the train station there is a water taxi service that runs the length of the Grand Canal. I grabbed a cheap tourist day pass, and proceeded to get lost. I hadn’t really done any research into Venice, so I figured I’d just wander around. I was amazed when I turned a corner and found myself in front of St. Mark’s square. The square is one those places that I’ve seen a million times on movies and magazines, but the sight of it in person was still amazing. The first thing that jumps out at you are all the pigeons. Thousands and thousands of them! Wandering around are feed vendors selling pigeon food for the tourists to use to tempt the birds just a little closer for that one perfect photograph with their kids. At the end of the square is St. Mark’s Cathedral. Next to that is the town bell tower that mysteriously collapsed in 1910 in the early morning with no warning. Luckily no one was hurt, and the town rebuilt it brick by brick over the next 10 years. I took the elevator to the top and the views from up there were amazing. After getting a few photos I wandered down and had dinner at one of the cafes lining the square. Finally, I wandered back to the train station watching the sun set over the canals. Amazing!

]]> http://theglobalguy.com/world-travels/europe/ahhvenice/feed 0 -90.0000000 1.0000000 http://theglobalguy.com/world-travels/europe/pisa-and-lucca http://theglobalguy.com/world-travels/europe/pisa-and-lucca#comments Fri, 24 Oct 2003 08:46:47 +0000 Henry Malmgren http://www.theglobalguy.com/europe/pisa-and-lucca/

I decided to take a day trip out of Florence to see the leaning tower of Pisa and the walled town of Lucca. The Italian train system is usually extremely efficient and it makes taking these type of quick trips a pleasure. However, I didn’t realize that every so often the workers tend to go on strike and totally stop the system for a day or so! So, my quick day trip ended up being a quick trip to Pisa and an overnight stop at Lucca. Pisa is a modern small university town that if it wasn’t for the famous tower really wouldn’t be much of a stop at all. However, the town really makes a big deal of the tower! It’s about a 15 minute walk from the train station, and when you see it for the first time it’s really special. One of my favorite things about Italy is the abundance of famous landmarks that I’ve been told about all my life. Seeing one of these in person really makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something by finally getting here.

After spending a couple of hours at Pisa, I hit the train again for Lucca. This town’s claim to fame is that it is the only Tuscan town to still have its original city walls. The city itself has outgrown the walls of course, but the are still there with proper gates that traffic and pedestrians still have to go thru to get to the historical area. It was here that I found out about the train strike, when I ran into all the transportation workers in the area protesting in the city center. They were waving signs and placards and seemed to be having a great time. It had more of the feel of a holiday type occasion rather than a highly charged labor dispute. 24 hours after the strike began, most trains were running late, but at least they were running. I was ready to head to Venice after another night in Florence to catch a connecting train.

The Tuscan region is fantastic. I’d heard that one of the things that you had to do was to take a bike ride around the area, so I hooked up with a local biking company. I was the only backpacker, which was kind of interesting. Two of the people on the trip were from the DC area, and it turns out that one of them will be in Warrenton for Christmas at the same time that I’ll be there.

Anyway, we spent the day cycling around the hills, checking out olive groves and vineyards. We stopped for a while in the town of Fiesole and then had lunch at a local vineyard. The scenery was so beautiful, and the green is a nice contrast to the dusty dryness of Africa.

After the bike ride, I was feeling pretty energetic so I topped off the day by climbing the 463 steps to the top of the main cathedral in Florence. Tomorrow I’m planning on getting an early train to Pisa and then on to Lucca.

One of my favorite things to do in this town is to wander around after the sun goes down. In the narrow winding streets, you really get the feeling that this is a true medieval town, and that you could be 600 years in the past. Of course even that can get old after a while, so I headed across the river to see some of the shops and outdoor art. After a while I found a building that looked amazingly familiar…it turns out that it was the setting for a scene in "Hannibal" where Hannibal Lechter kills an Italian cop by hanging him out of a window. Kinda cool!

I had forgotten how expensive Europe is! Luckily, I am only spending a few days here…I can’t believe I’ll be home in 9 more days.

After a long flight from Cape Town via London I arrived in Rome around 4ish. It took a while to find a room and it was getting dark by the time I got settled in. The hostel is right next to a subway station, and when I looked at the map it was obvious that I had to head to the Coliseum stop for dinner. The first sight of the Coliseum was breathtaking! I walked around it for an half hour or so just taking in the sense of antiquity. Right across from the building I found an outdoor restaurant with a perfect view of the whole area. I had a blast eating an amazing dinner, drinking cheap wine and just watching the tourists wander around.

I’ve spent the next day exploring the city proper. It was the perfect day to see everything except for Vatican City. Mother Theresa was being beatified which meant that the 300,000 tourists were all crowded into St. Peter’s square instead of the usual scenic spots. That evening I went on a night walking tour..it started raining half way through, but it was still a lot of fun. We ended up seeing a few sights that I hadn’t gotten around to yet like the Trevi fountain and the Pantheon.

The following day it was raining in Rome so I figured I head out of town to check out Pompeii. I think the rain decided to follow me because it was pouring when the train arrived! It was lousy for photography, but the rain really added to the atmosphere. Between the rain and the ceremony in Rome the previous day there were hardly any tourists. Wandering around the deserted streets, seeing the ruined homes, bath houses, and theaters was surreal. One day I’ll have to come back and spend some more time exploring here and around the whole region of Vesuvius

Finally the next day I wandered over to Vatican City and spent the day wandering around the museums and chapels. Photography isn’t really allowed, but most people have seen reproductions of the artworks anyway. You know, with all the money that the Vatican has tied up in art over there, it makes me wonder why the hell I had to give away part of my allowance every week as a kid to the local parish!

On our way to Amsterdam we stopped for a few hours in the town of Ulm.  We’d heard about its amazing Gothic cathedral that was open to people to climb to the top.  The cathedral is the 2nd largest in Germany and there are 768 steps to get to the top.  We were there for about four hours, and found it to be a lovely little town.

After seeing the castles in Fussen, we decided to move on to someplace a little bit off the beaten track.  We’d heard a lot about how much fun Prague was, so we pointed the van northeast and started out.  It took about 8 hours of driving to get there, and we were actually disappointed that they wouldn’t stamp our passports at the border.  Prague was an interesting city…lots of beautiful architecture, and friendly people.  We spent a couple of days wandering around the streets, and partying in the bars.  We found one bar in particular that we fell in love with…lots of backpackers on tour, situated in a dark concrete basement with cool statues on the walls.   It was here that we tried absinthe for the first time.  It did the job of any alcohol, but I couldn’t detect any other properties.  I’m assuming that it wasn’t the real thing, or if it was that we were too tipsy to notice.

Before we headed to Prague, we decided to go south to Fussen to see the trio of Ludwig II’s castles.  Fussen was a plesant little town, that very much catered to tourists.  Being typical tourists, we felt right at home!  We toured all three of the castles in the area, and spent the night in a lovely little hostel before heading off to the Czech Republic the next day.

Oktoberfest was fantastic!  The beer, the wine, the singing, and of course the women were all in your face kind of amazing.  We had planned on spending most of our time in Germany here, but changed our mind after we found out how hard it was to get accommodation, and also how early the beer tents closed because of terrorism fears (this was only about two weeks after 9/11).  Luckily the wine tents stayed open late for some reason, so we all developed a taste for Reisling.  Most of the evening is pretty fuzzy, which I’m sure is directly related to my getting separated from the group.

We had decided earlier that if we got split up, we’d all meet at a certain place at midnight.  Well, somehow I couldn’t quite located the meeting point, and at about 1 am, I realized that I might be in trouble.  I didn’t have any way of contacting the others, so I figured I should probably think about finding someplace to sleep.  I talked to a taxi driver, and he told me that every place in town was full and no place could help me at this time of the night.  Well, I remembered the hostel in the town of Dachau that we’d stayed in the previous night, and decided to go there.  It was about a 30 minute drive, and was about 2:30 am by the time we got there.  Of course it was shut tight, but in my drunken state I wandered around and finally found an unlocked window leading into the kitchen.  I figured at least it was safe and out of the elements, so I passed out on the floor.  Luckily I woke up early enough to get out of there before anyone found me.  When I was sober I realized that I had Christine’s cell phone number with me the whole time, so I called the guys and they headed over to pick me up.  We were all very relieved that we’d found each other, and proceeded to take advantage of the hostel’s showers.  It turns out that they had all slept in the van the previous night, and had a miserable time.  We decided at that point that one night in Munich was ok with us, and decided to head off to Prague that day.

This was the most sobering part of our entire trip.  I had very mixed feelings about going to this place, but I felt that I owed it to myself, and both the victims and the survivors to experience the horrors of this place first hand.   Of course I’d read about the Nazi atrocities in school, but until you actually see for yourself, you can never fully grasp the evil of what happened here. 

The camp is maintained by a society of survivors who have taken it upon themselves to remind the world what happened here, and to promote their slogan of "Never Again".  There is an excellent museum tracing the rise of the National Socialist party to power, and the beginnings of the crimes that were committed in the name of improving humanity.  Unfortunately this message has not reached everyone it needs to.  When we visited, there were signs on the buildings explaining that a week before we arrived, Neo-Nazis had snuck in at night, and vandalized several of the buildings with Anti Jewish slogans, and swastikas.  No leads had been found to the identity of the perpetrators.

I didn’t take many photos here; because of the atmosphere of the camp it feels very unnatural to take photos while you are there. One feels that they are intruding on someone’s private memorial.

As a going away to the South Pole party, what could be better than Oktoberfest in Munich?  Absolutely nothing I figured, so my housemates Mark, Raf and I all found ourselves on a plane headed for Frankfurt.  Mark had met a girl named Christine on the internet who said that she could get us a cheap van, and we could crash at her place. In exchange, we took her along with us and paid for her hostel beds.  It was a fantastic vacation.  We started out driving down to Stuttgart where Raf had some relatives.  We stayed there for a couple of nights, checking out their version of Oktoberfest called "Volksfest".  It was our first exposure to the food and the wonderful beer that was served in the huge steins.  We also visited a couple of the castles in the area, and toured a local winery.

It’s a day for cliched post titles. 

I think Paris may have been my favorite place that we visited during this trip.  Everything was amazing, from the food, to the wine, the art and even the people.  We’d expected to be treated rudely, but thankfully this stereotype proved to be quite false.  We arrived on the afternoon train from Amsterdam, and immediately got lost trying to find our hostel.  Luckily a smartly dressed elderly lady walking her dog was able to help us, with her speaking bad English, and Syd speaking bad French.   We’d arrived on a Sunday, and quickly realized that after 7pm it was going to be tough to find a place to eat.  Luckily we found a little bistro that didn’t mind staying open a little longer, and had one of the best first meals I’ve ever had in a country. 

The next day we started out doing the typical tourist stuff…the Louve, the Eiffel tower, Notre Dame the riverwalk.  Once again, nighttime proved to be when Paris was at its best, as we bar hopped from place to place snacking and drinking excellent French wine.

The next day I wanted to go explore the catacombs.  Paris is literally built upon the bones if its former citizens.  There are tours where you can be guided underneath the city and see the tunnels and final resting places of people long gone.  Some of the bones are stacked neatly, and others are arranged in decorative piles.  Finally we ended up going to the cemetary Père Lachaise and walked around looking for graves of famous people.  The most interesting was Jim Morrison’s, just because it was the only one that has a permanent police officer there to keep people from vandalizing the place. 

The next day we got up early, and caught a quick flight back to London and then onto home. 

Well, this town is nothing like what I expected!  We got into our hostel from the airport pretty late, but we wanted to go out and see a bit of the nightlife.  We were staying in the Leidseplein area, and there were tons of bars open at taht time of the night.  We were impressed with how friendly the locals were, and how well everyone spoke English.  We met a few people that were doing after work happy hours, and ended up talking till late in the evening.  The next day we wandered around looking at all the sights, including the sex museum, and basically waiting for night time.  Once it got dark it was time to have some fun Amsterdam style.  We headed to the red-light district, and wandered around checking out the wares in the windows, and finally decided to go see one of the live shows.  Very interesting….  Later on we decided to go check out one of the infamous coffee shops.  I’d never had coffee that made me that hungry before…lots of fun!

We slept late, and then the next day headed to the train station to head over to Paris.

This was my first trip out of North America.  I’d just heard about a great fair on US Airways between DFW and London, and decided that I couldn’t miss out.  I asked around my circle of friends to see if anyone wanted to go, but it was very last minute, and most people already had plans for Thanksgiving.  Thru one of these friends though, I met Syd and she decided to go with me.  We had a blast, and she eventually ended up being one of the four roommates in the Austin Party House days.  We knew it was going to be a rushed trip; looking back, we crammed way too much into a week, but we did get to see the major highlights of London, Paris and Amsterdam. 

We arrived at Heathrow on two different flights, very early in the morning.  We had reservations at a hostel, and headed over there to drop off our bags and start looking around.  We set ourselves up on one of those open bus tours of the city, and then wandered over to the main area to see the typical tourist sites.  Later we took a river cruise on the Thames, and then caught a showing of Les Miserables on the west end that night.  The next day we caught the changing of the guard and went shopping at Harrod’s and other neat little shops.

Finally we headed to the airport to catch our flight to Amsterdam.  The check-in counter had a sign that was asking for volunteers to be bumped.  We figured we didn’t have anything to lose, so we let them know we didn’t mind. It turned out that we weren’t needed, but to thank us, they gave us complimentary upgrades to first class.  It was only about an hour flight, but we discovered that you can drink a LOT of champagne in an hour.