Now for a few months solid travelling without coming back to London!
Last Wednesday we flew out to Rome (very) early morning on RyanAir. We'd heard its too easy to miss the early flights out of Stansted so thought it would be a bright idea to camp out at the airport overnight. We caught the last tube to Victoria and got the 12.30 bus to Stansted. We arrived at the airport at about 2am and what we saw slightly amused Hana and disgusted me. The floor of the airport was littered with bodies.. It was as if london had been hit by some natural disaster and the city was evacuated to stansted. It was barbaric.. and all so they could save £10..............
...............I spent mine on a slice of pizza when we arrived in Rome...
I really liked Rome - Hana wasn't so pleased. First of all we had awesome weather for all 4 days we were there. From when we arrived it was sunny and 26 degrees and accordingly I was in my shorts and jandles. There's so much stuff in Rome you just spend your days wandering around and even if you have no idea where you're going you're bound to eventually see something magnificent. Rome is the home of my new favourite building in the world... I can't remember what its called but if anyone's curious and is in the area its on the Piazza Venezia. I just saw it and said 'there's nothing like that in Melbourne'.. The problem with Rome is that the place is completely overrun by tourists. There's no point in sitting back and taking in the way of life because in the areas we were 90% of the people around us were foreign. We had a particularly awful experience at the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. The queue to get in went for about 2km back down to St Peters Square and then once we finally got in there was just a push to get into the Sistine Chapel. And now I can answer Robin Williams' question in Good Will Hunting: the sistine chapel smells like the underarms of the other 2000 people in there pointing their cameras at the roof. I guess its bound to happen with so many people in a cramped space but it was still funny watching some high strung american blow his top in the Vatican. He was dealt with promptly by the swiss guards. How much of a dick would you feel being dragged away by those guys in their puffy purple jester suits... I can't imagine what its like in summer.
After Rome we got the train to Siena in tuscany. The rain came on Sunday but we'd had a good look around town the night before so we passed the time in poor weather at a football game. We saw Siena v Chievo - a Serie A game - in a little stadium sunk into a valley in the Tuscan countryside. Very picturesque. The game was ordinary after about the 30 minute mark, but it was still good fun to be a part of a scathing home crowd. Men were yelling at the team 10 minutes after the players had left the pitch. It took me back to my days watching St Kilda when we were shit - specifically when we had Tony Brown, and before him Craig Davenport. That evening Amy, Hana's flatmate from Fitzroy arrived in town and we hung out with her till we left Siena for Perugia yesterday morning.
The bus ride through Tuscany into Umbria was very nice, and the sunshine came back briefly yesterday. Perugia is awesome. Its a university town perched on a hill between Rome and Florence. Hana's friend Jess is living here at the moment learning Italian so we're staying with her. There's such a good atmosphere here - we were out in the town square late last night and it was packed with people drinking cheap wine out of plastic cups (bought in a little store in the square). The scenery is amazing - the centre of town is basically the top of the hill and there are views in all directions. And best of all the place doesn't feel like one big tourist trap. The problem with Italy so far has been that you constantly feel as though prices have been jacked up no matter how far away from attractions you get. Perugia hasn't felt like that at all. We've been taken to nice cafes and restaurants and paid the same as we would have for shit take away in Rome.
We leave Perugia tomorrow morning for Florence where we'll spend a few days. Then we'll go across to Cinque Terre for a mini trek through five closely spaced towns before heading back across to Venice.
Hope everyone's going ok at home, etc. etc. etc. I'll be in touch.
Last Wednesday we flew out to Rome (very) early morning on RyanAir. We'd heard its too easy to miss the early flights out of Stansted so thought it would be a bright idea to camp out at the airport overnight. We caught the last tube to Victoria and got the 12.30 bus to Stansted. We arrived at the airport at about 2am and what we saw slightly amused Hana and disgusted me. The floor of the airport was littered with bodies.. It was as if london had been hit by some natural disaster and the city was evacuated to stansted. It was barbaric.. and all so they could save £10..............
...............I spent mine on a slice of pizza when we arrived in Rome...
I really liked Rome - Hana wasn't so pleased. First of all we had awesome weather for all 4 days we were there. From when we arrived it was sunny and 26 degrees and accordingly I was in my shorts and jandles. There's so much stuff in Rome you just spend your days wandering around and even if you have no idea where you're going you're bound to eventually see something magnificent. Rome is the home of my new favourite building in the world... I can't remember what its called but if anyone's curious and is in the area its on the Piazza Venezia. I just saw it and said 'there's nothing like that in Melbourne'.. The problem with Rome is that the place is completely overrun by tourists. There's no point in sitting back and taking in the way of life because in the areas we were 90% of the people around us were foreign. We had a particularly awful experience at the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. The queue to get in went for about 2km back down to St Peters Square and then once we finally got in there was just a push to get into the Sistine Chapel. And now I can answer Robin Williams' question in Good Will Hunting: the sistine chapel smells like the underarms of the other 2000 people in there pointing their cameras at the roof. I guess its bound to happen with so many people in a cramped space but it was still funny watching some high strung american blow his top in the Vatican. He was dealt with promptly by the swiss guards. How much of a dick would you feel being dragged away by those guys in their puffy purple jester suits... I can't imagine what its like in summer.
After Rome we got the train to Siena in tuscany. The rain came on Sunday but we'd had a good look around town the night before so we passed the time in poor weather at a football game. We saw Siena v Chievo - a Serie A game - in a little stadium sunk into a valley in the Tuscan countryside. Very picturesque. The game was ordinary after about the 30 minute mark, but it was still good fun to be a part of a scathing home crowd. Men were yelling at the team 10 minutes after the players had left the pitch. It took me back to my days watching St Kilda when we were shit - specifically when we had Tony Brown, and before him Craig Davenport. That evening Amy, Hana's flatmate from Fitzroy arrived in town and we hung out with her till we left Siena for Perugia yesterday morning.
The bus ride through Tuscany into Umbria was very nice, and the sunshine came back briefly yesterday. Perugia is awesome. Its a university town perched on a hill between Rome and Florence. Hana's friend Jess is living here at the moment learning Italian so we're staying with her. There's such a good atmosphere here - we were out in the town square late last night and it was packed with people drinking cheap wine out of plastic cups (bought in a little store in the square). The scenery is amazing - the centre of town is basically the top of the hill and there are views in all directions. And best of all the place doesn't feel like one big tourist trap. The problem with Italy so far has been that you constantly feel as though prices have been jacked up no matter how far away from attractions you get. Perugia hasn't felt like that at all. We've been taken to nice cafes and restaurants and paid the same as we would have for shit take away in Rome.
We leave Perugia tomorrow morning for Florence where we'll spend a few days. Then we'll go across to Cinque Terre for a mini trek through five closely spaced towns before heading back across to Venice.
Hope everyone's going ok at home, etc. etc. etc. I'll be in touch.
posted by YT at 5:09 pm
2 Comments:
Hi, Great to hear your'e enjoying Italy, I love it! Try to stop in at Verona on the way to Venice, gorgeous little spot. Have fun and look after yourself. Love MUM
They are called thongs, not jandles! Never forget where you come from, you havent been out of the country for that long!
And your Mums right, Verona is beautiful!
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