So we got an entire week of school for Toussaint's (all Saint's) break. With the time, I had prearranged to meet my parents for a weeklong vacation in Italy. So, here is how it all went down:
Getting from Luxembourg to Florence
So, I had to get from Luxembourg to Florence. Ryanair doesn't fly there, at least not from Frankfurt-Hahn, so I decided to take an overnight train, no matter how long, and even if I had to do it alone. No one else was going on the exact same route as me, so I knew I would likely have to travel the long journey sans company. Now, you have to make reservations, so I went to the international tickets desk at the train station in Esch, which is serviced by the Luxembourgish national train company, the Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeouis (sp?) also known as the CFL.
So here's my tirade against the CFL lady who "booked" me my reservations. First of all, on my way down to Florence, I had quite a long route, capped by the overnight train from Munich to Florence. I left the Differdange train station at 12:30 on Friday afternoon, and so when I got to Munich at 8:30 that Friday night, I was already very tired from having run to several train connections, as I had already had 4 stops where I had had to change trains. Madness, I tell you. So, the train was late getting into Munich, but that was ok, because I ran into some fellow MUDECers who would be on the same train, but not in any car near mine, so when we boarded the train, I bid them adieu and went to find my assigned bed. Yeah, you don't really have a seat, so much as a bed in like a small room where there are two stacks of beds, bunked three high. So it's necessary to cram six people into a very small space.
As it turns out, the CFL tried to take me down for the first time by double-booking the bed that I supposedly had reserved. Here's how it went down: I walked into the cabin where my bed was (bed number 81), and I noticed that a family of six German people were already getting set up there. I then said to the father of the family, "Ich habe einundachtzig" which means "I have 81." He then just said to me, "Nein, ich habe einundachtzig." At this point, I did not panic, but I did know that I was in trouble (Das ist nicht so gut). Myself and the father of this family walked down the narrow aisle to the train conductor, and they spoke in german to each other, explaining the situation. Turns out, the CFL had just made a mistake, so I didn't have a place to sleep. They got a conductor guy who spoke english to come chat with me, and he told me, "Looks like the train is booked full, but someone might miss it, so just hang tight here, and I'll come find you if we have a bed for you." I was not looking forward to standing on the train or sleeping on the aisle floor for the next 8 hours. Luckily, about an hour and a half later, he came back and foundme. Turns out some lady missed the train, so I got to sleep in the bed that she reserved. Interesting cultural note: I was really nice and friendly to the train conductor, and he really appreciated that, even saying that "I can tell you're not German, because the Germans would bitch if they were in your place." Now, I've found the German people to be among the friendliest in Europe, but apparently, he had a different opinion. All the other people on the train were having a big time though - even the crowd of older Germans were just partying in their couchette, drinking straight out of bottles of wine, and having the time of their lives.
I slept in the "couchette" on a bed which was actually quite comfortable, and long enough for me to actually lie flat. I was only woken up a couple of times from the noises of the train, and managed to get about 5 hours of sleep before the conductor woke me up at 6:00 am. Oh, important note, on these overnight trains, the conductors will collect your passport and train tickets before you go to sleep (to handle all the border crossings and such), and they give them back to you in the morning - so don't worry about handing yours over.
Got to Florence (Firenze, in Italian) at 6:18 am. I did not have a map, and just had written down the google walking directions from the train station to the hotel my parents and grandparents were staying at. Big mistake. I got real turned around at the station, and ended up taking a nice little hour and half walk around the city in the morning. Eventually, I found the river, and then walked up and down the river until I found the right street. I still couldn't find the hotel, because it wasn't labeled well, and the street numbers were all wrong - like on the north side of the street the numbers went from 2 to 4 to 11 to 44 all in a row. Confusing, to say the least. Luckily for me, as I was walking by, my grandpa just happened to walk out of the hotel and said, "Bout time you got here."
So I met my parents and grandparents, who seemed to be handling jet lag fine (they had flown in the night before). After my mom told me the story of how she almost left her camera in a cab in Pisa, we went to breakfast at our hotel. It was a real nice hotel, much better than the hostels we usually stay at. Tip for future study-abroad students: get your parents to come visit you, it's awesome to see family and to have a nice shower with hot water.
First Day in Florence
The first big thing we decided to do was to go see David, the famous sculpture. So we walked to the Academia, past the famous Duomo (cathedral). So we walked in, browsed some of the lesser known works of art, and went straight to the David. So turns out, you're not allowed to take pictures of anything in there. Bump that. I had a small camera, so I think I was discreet enough. Though the image is slightly blurry, I got a good shot of it (I apologize if any of you are offended by the nudity):
They also had a ton of plaster sculptures in the Academia. From there, we walked to San Lorenzo, another of the famous churches in Florence. There, we didn't go into the church, but walked around the large flea market outside the church. It was insane. Apparently, though there are signs everywhere saying how it is "illegal to purchase fake purses or watches" it is not illegal to sell them, since about 4 out of every 5 people on the street were hawking fake crap. But there were also some legit vendors, and Mom and Dad ended up buying this really nice ceramic olive oil holder or something like that.
Then we met my Dad's friend Vince and his new wife Christine at a pizzeria nearby. Let me explain Vince: when my dad was a kid, he and Vince were exchange students together - so Vince came and lived with my dad and his family for a while, and then my dad went and stayed with Vince and his family for a while. Vince and my dad have been friends for almost 40 years now, and all of Vince's kids (and his nephew) have come and stayed with our family for a couple of weeks over the years. Vince is an incredibly kind, generous, and intelligent man - he's like one of the leading heart surgeons in France, where he lives in Marseilles. He lives life to the absolute fullest, and is an excellent example of how to do that right.
Lunch was pizza - italian pizza - which is legit. All of the pizza we had was so good, I loved Italy already. We also got to have red wine with lunch - which most students won't do (just because of cost effectiveness). From there we walked all the way down to the Ponte Vecchio (which I think literally translates into "old bridge") but is the really famous jewelry shopping part of the city. We then walked to another big church, Sante Croce, which is also apparently where all the best leather is sold in the city (my mother was on a mission to find a purse).
After chilling (read: napping) back at the hotel, we headed out to meet Vince and Christine again for our 7:30 dinner reservation. We ate at this place called Il Latini - and it was incredible. It was all like family style, no menus, and a lot of fun. We had a ton of wine, food, and fun. Here is a picture of Vince (left) and my Dad (right) with all of the night's beverages:
Needless to say, I slept well that night.
Second Day in Florence
It was raining all day. We went to the Palazzo Pitti, a giant palace and museum in the southern part of the city. They had an exhibit on Caravaggio, which was cool, since I remembered stuff about him from my art history class freshman year. Basically, we saw a ton of paintings, and then a ton of really fancy rooms where the rich people lived. Each room was extremely opulent, and had their own names. They also had a more modern exhibit about this guy Antonio Ligabue, who was really strange (he had been put in mental homes like 3 times throughout his life), and had some sort of obsession with tigers. Anyway, we left to go get lunch, and had our first gelato experience.
Now, I'm not really sure what the technical difference between ice cream and gelato is, but the practical difference is that gelato is much smoother, healthier, and better-tasting than ice cream. Also, gelato is pretty much Italy's thing, so they do a pretty good job with it. Grandpa loved chocolate gelato, and would get it everywhere we went. After we snagged some sweet gelato, we went back to the museum and visited the wine museum section of the palace. It was pretty cool, and had a bunch of egyptian stuff in it (I apologize for the vagueness - it's been over a week, and I've been letting my schooling get in the way of my education, which wears on the mind).
That night, we went to another restaurant for dinner with Vince and Christine again. It was another blast, and we had some really good pasta and veal. After lots of red wine and food, I had my first experience with the after dinner drink in Italy - limoncello. Note: though it comes in a small amount, you are NOT supposed to take it like a shot, it is meant to be sipped.
Day trip to Siena and San Gimignano
Monday we got up and got in a car to go to Siena and San Gimignano with our guide Rina. It was like an hour drive from Florence to Siena, and it probably would have been really pretty to see the drive through the italian countryside, but it was raining and I was tired, so I fell asleep. In Siena, we first went into this Church of St. Catarina. I don't know why, but for some reason, they decided to preserve St. Catarina's head, so it's still on display in the church, as is her thumb (which they also preserved for some strange reason). Oh, Rina taught me all about the classifications of italian wines: for a wine to be considered a true "Chianti Classico" it has to meet certain standards and consist of a blend with at least 80% sangiovese grapes. A "Brunello" is a wine that is made from 100% sangiovese grapes, and then a "Super Tuscan" is a wine with a blend of less than 80% sangiovese grapes.
More about Siena: it's made up of 17 contrade which are like neighborhoods. There is still a fierce rivalry between them, and each contrade has its own crest and animal mascot. One of the reasons there is still such a fierce rivalry is that twice a year, there is a famous horse race in Siena called the "Palio." Here is the main square in Siena where they hold this race:
So yeah, they cram 30,000 people into the center (where the red bricks are) and then 10 horses and jockeys race around the outside. It's a bareback horse race, and 10 of the contrade get to enter their horses. Apparently, it's just a crazy party, and people have actually been known to die! Also, I thought it was funny that Rina said it was a legit "horse race" meaning that even if the jockey falls off, the horse can still win the race.
SIDENOTE: for the first time this travel week, I carried around a little pocketbook to take notes, and I've been drawing most of my memories from it. I would recommend to all travelers to carry some small notebook with them at all times - you have no idea how many little things you'll pick up on and remember when you write them down.
My other notes from Siena are about history, mostly, which I don't really feel like writing about now, so I'm not going to. Interesting though was that the symbol of the city of Siena was a wolf (reminiscent of the she-wolf legend of Rome).
We then drove over to San Gimignano, a truly small town in the Italian countryside. It was raining still, but was beautiful nonetheless. Right when we got there, this was the view looking out away from the city:
Yeah, now that's more like it. We basically just walked around the city for a while, which was just one main shopping street inside the walled exterior of the city. Ok, cool little story about stuff in San Gimignano: there was always this struggle for power between the church and the state. So the official government built this big tower bigger than the church next to it, and declared that no one could build any taller buildings in the city. So, this really wealthy guy decides he wants to build a bigger tower, but knows it's illegal, so what does he do? He builds TWO freakin' towers, each one exactly the same, right next to each other, and each one individually just barely shorter than the government tower. His intention was to imply that his towers were actually meant to be stacked on top of each other, which would have made it clearly the largest in the city. As it turns out, these two towers are actually the models for what the Twin Towers in New York City were based on, design-wise. Here they are:
We then drove back to Florence, and said ciao to Rina. We then went to some really legit, small, and delicious italian trattoria. I had the best food I've had yet - home-made tortellini in a cream sauce. It was majestic. Also, I had grappa for the first time there. Grappa is an after dinner (alcoholic) drink, made from the leftovers of grapes that they use to make wine. They let the grape skins and other things ferment for a lot longer, so grappa is fairly strong, and as Vince described it, "like drinking fire." So I had some. It wasn't half bad, seriously. I don't know if I have weird tastes, but it really didn't taste "bad" to me, just strong and different.
Day trip to Lucca
The next morning, we got up, walked to the train station in Florence, and rode a train to Lucca. It was an absolutely beautiful town, out in the country, still surrounded by its protective wall. It was also the first really nice day, weather-wise, that we had. We just strolled through the city, and saw probably a thousand (ok, maybe not a thousand) churches. There were some examples of really beautiful architecture throughout. Here are some examples of the churches we saw:
We then had a picnic-style lunch in the amphitheater (little open square) in the center of the city. We had some delicious italian cheese, scrumptious italian sausage, crunchy italian bread, and terrible italian beer. All in all, a lovely picnic. We then took a nice leisurely stroll around the wall which encircles the city. This was one of the most lovely, beautiful walks I've taken in Europe. Here are some pictures from that walk:
We got back on a train to Florence, and then chilled (read: slept) for a while. Since we were all exhausted, we decided to just have a nice little chillax dinner on the rooftop patio of our hotel. It was another awesome time, complete with red wine, pasta, antipasto, and grappa.
Welcome to Rome!
We took an early train from Florence to Rome, and arrived in the Eternal City around noon. After taking a cab to our hotel, which was also real nice, we hit the streets. Rome is almost overwhelmingly beautiful and historic. Tthe presence of thousands of years of history visually assaults you around every corner. So much beauty, so much splendor, so much gelato.
We walked around in the sun for a while, before deciding on a place to go for dinner. We went to a small place called Le Grotto, which had excellent pasta. It also had a very cool ceiling, which Grandpa appreciated. In short, we walked back to our hotel, and slept wonderfully.
Touring Day of Rome
Our day started with a trip to the Cripta dei Cappucinni - it was crazy. So these Franciscan monks had to move their church a long time ago, and they also had to move their cemetery where all the dead monks were buried. So they decided to use all of the bones and bodies from the cemetery to make five separate chapels in their new place. So the Cripta dei Cappucinni is a collection of these five small chapels, each one made up fully of human bones. It was crazy. The one chapel was decorated entirely of pelvic bones. Also, I think the creepiest part of the experience was that they had fully robed skeletons placed in the chapels, standing around. They also still had people buried into the floors of each of the chapels, and you could see the rises in the ground level. In total, they used over 4,000 bodies and took 150 years to complete the project. One of the main messages they seemed to be sending was that life is temporal, and to enjoy your (limited) time on earth.
We continued our tour of creepy places with lots of dead people by going to the catacombs of St. Sebastian. There, christians buried over 68,000 people during ancient times. It was all underground, and we walked through some pretty spooky tunnels and passageways. We also saw above the catacombs the supposed original footprints of Jesus (I think that's right, but it might have been Peter) when he was wandering away from the city before he was turned around. I don't know the story very well - you can probably look it up for a better description.
We then went to the Coliseum, and just walked around. I learned that it only took 8 years to build the Coliseum - well, 8 years for 200,000 people working 24 hours a day. I also learned that the word "arena" actually just means sand - as it was in the Coliseum, where they used red sand so that it wouldn't be stained by the blood of the gladiators.
We had lunch at this sweet little restaurant over by the Vatican. There was no menu, they just served us a ton of antipasto and pasta. We got stuffed real fast. From there, we headed over to the Vatican museums. I found it interesting that there wasn't exactly any huge distinction between Rome and Vatican City - I thought there would be some sort of like, wall or checkpoint, but no such barrier existed. There is a big wall around Vatican city, but you could just walk through it, which seemed odd to me.
Our tour of the Vatican museums was awesome. We got to see some of the most famous works by Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Perugino. All in all, it was incredible. I was actually able to appreciate a lot of it, due to my freshman ART 188 class - so much so that I sent my former professor an e-mail thanking him for the quality lessons. [Writer's Note: I'm having a hard time recalling all this, since it occurred over a week before now, so I'm going to just list some of the things I wrote down in my notebook] Here are my notes and explanations for them:
- There have been 265 Popes
- In the Sistine Chapel, there are parallel stories from the Old and New Testaments on the left and right walls, which is cool
- Noah = 1st recorded drunk [apparently some guy painted a picture of Noah (the ark guy), and it was the first painting of a drunk guy]
- Michelangelo says, "F%#& You!" to church [basically, Michelangelo did not like working for the church, and was kind of forced to. So, he did such things as paint hidden signals to the church in his paintings, like the old-school equivalent to the middle finger at the entrance to the Sistine Chapel, or the portrait of some cardinal who called his work bad as a guy stuck in hell.]
- Nike = Greek god of victory [the Nike Swoosh is based off of one of the god's wings]
Basically, the Vatican museums were the best cultural experience I've had so far in Europe. I would highly recommend it. From there, we went to St. Peter's basilica, which was by far the most impressive church I've been in in Europe. It it absolutely massive. There are not so much columns that flank the aisles as there are massive walls. Also, there is the famous baldacchino that Bernini made for the Barberini popes. Behind that is the famous altar made by Bernini. It's all pretty incredible. Also, the sun was coming through the windows, and allowed me to get some very cool pictures of inside, like this one:
It was awesome. St. Peter's square is also a beautiful place, and my mom and dad walked around for a while. We walked back to our hotel, on the way grabbing the best gelato I had all week: at a place called Old Bridge (if you're in Rome, go there, you will not be disappointed; and it's cheap!). After we got back to our hotel, we decided to just have a light dinner - which consisted of just some pizza, always a good bet in Italy. After that though, my dad got my mom and I to rally, and we went to some bar and had some beer from the Czech Republic (???). It was fun, and the bar got to be pretty happening as we stayed there. We walked home, and may or may not have harassed a chestnut salesman on the way home. For some reason unknown to me, there was like a roast chestnut salesman on every street corner in Rome. I don't know why they're so obsessed with chestnuts. It's odd.
Last Day with my Parents and Grandparents
On Friday, we were a little slow getting up (see the comments above about beer from the Czech Republic), and began our day with a nice leisurely stroll to the Trevi Fountain. The fountains are much bigger than I expected, and very pretty. Somebody told us that the whole thing was carved right out of the rock that was in place. We took lots of pictures, like this one:
So from there, we walked over to the Parthenon. Like many things in Rome, it was much bigger than I expected, and it has a rather cavernous interior. Also, like many things in Europe, it was under a ton of reconstruction, so scaffolding was present in full force. We then went to another gellateria - called Della Palma. This was, I believe, my grandpa's favorite place - probably due to the fact that they had 115 different kinds of gelato. We decided that we would come back and sample all of them some day.
From there, we went back to our hotel, and my parents and grandparents got all packed since they were leaving the next morning. After that, we went out to eat for our last supper together. It was yet again, delicious - I had spaghetti carbonara, and as usual, we had plenty of chianti. Then, we went back home to sleep.
Back on my Own
Since my parents and grandparent's flight left at 8:45 am on Saturday, they had to leave really early from our hotel. So, I woke up and said goodbye to them at around 6:00 am, and then went back to sleep. I woke up at 9, showered, had breakfast in our hotel, and left right around 11. I walked myself down to another gellateria called Giolitti's, which is supposedly really good. I had some pistachio gelato there and it was in fact, taste-tacular (as in good). After that, I walked over to the Piazza Navona, because I had heard it's really pretty, but we hadn't made it there yet. So I strolled up and parked myself on this bench. All of a sudden, there was a band there. Turns out the municipal police band was performing a little concert, accompanied by an American band, The Infernos, and some old italian crooner who sang some Frank Sinatra songs. So I just hung out and listened to that for like an hour, it was really awesome - one of those little random experiences - and turned me on to Frank Sinatra.
I then met some friends of mine from MUDEC at the Spanish Steps, and we walked around the city for a while before heading out to their apartment which was in the Roman suburbs. After two metro rides and a suburban train ride, we got back to their place, which was really nice - just far from downtown Rome. We then headed back into the city later, got some pizza, and completed the Rick Steve's walk of Rome at night. It was nice, and cool to see everything lit up at night.
Getting home was little bit of an adventure, since there were train complications, and we ended up taking a nice little stroll late Saturday night.
Getting Home
Sunday was an early morning. I got up at 4:30 to shower, and get ready to roll. We left the apartment at 5:30 am, and walked 45 minutes to get to the subway station (b/c the suburban trains weren't running that early), so that we could make it to the main train station by 7:15 for our train out of Rome. It was a day that consisted of excessive train travel. We took a 3 and a 1/2 hour train to Milan first, and then got on a 4 hour train to Basel (in Switzerland), and then got on a 3 and a 1/2 hour train to Luxembourg. Not an easy day by any means.
Epilogue
Writing a blog about these events over a week after they occurred is a challenge. So much random stuff happens here that you want to remember, it becomes difficult to recall details or feelings about specific things. It is very easy to experience a cultural overdose, so pace yourself. Hence, even I feel like my writing has become repetitive and dull at times - I will try to make it more exciting in the future. Thanks for reading, as always.
Touring Day of Rome
Our day started with a trip to the Cripta dei Cappucinni - it was crazy. So these Franciscan monks had to move their church a long time ago, and they also had to move their cemetery where all the dead monks were buried. So they decided to use all of the bones and bodies from the cemetery to make five separate chapels in their new place. So the Cripta dei Cappucinni is a collection of these five small chapels, each one made up fully of human bones. It was crazy. The one chapel was decorated entirely of pelvic bones. Also, I think the creepiest part of the experience was that they had fully robed skeletons placed in the chapels, standing around. They also still had people buried into the floors of each of the chapels, and you could see the rises in the ground level. In total, they used over 4,000 bodies and took 150 years to complete the project. One of the main messages they seemed to be sending was that life is temporal, and to enjoy your (limited) time on earth.
We continued our tour of creepy places with lots of dead people by going to the catacombs of St. Sebastian. There, christians buried over 68,000 people during ancient times. It was all underground, and we walked through some pretty spooky tunnels and passageways. We also saw above the catacombs the supposed original footprints of Jesus (I think that's right, but it might have been Peter) when he was wandering away from the city before he was turned around. I don't know the story very well - you can probably look it up for a better description.
We then went to the Coliseum, and just walked around. I learned that it only took 8 years to build the Coliseum - well, 8 years for 200,000 people working 24 hours a day. I also learned that the word "arena" actually just means sand - as it was in the Coliseum, where they used red sand so that it wouldn't be stained by the blood of the gladiators.
We had lunch at this sweet little restaurant over by the Vatican. There was no menu, they just served us a ton of antipasto and pasta. We got stuffed real fast. From there, we headed over to the Vatican museums. I found it interesting that there wasn't exactly any huge distinction between Rome and Vatican City - I thought there would be some sort of like, wall or checkpoint, but no such barrier existed. There is a big wall around Vatican city, but you could just walk through it, which seemed odd to me.
Our tour of the Vatican museums was awesome. We got to see some of the most famous works by Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Perugino. All in all, it was incredible. I was actually able to appreciate a lot of it, due to my freshman ART 188 class - so much so that I sent my former professor an e-mail thanking him for the quality lessons. [Writer's Note: I'm having a hard time recalling all this, since it occurred over a week before now, so I'm going to just list some of the things I wrote down in my notebook] Here are my notes and explanations for them:
- There have been 265 Popes
- In the Sistine Chapel, there are parallel stories from the Old and New Testaments on the left and right walls, which is cool
- Noah = 1st recorded drunk [apparently some guy painted a picture of Noah (the ark guy), and it was the first painting of a drunk guy]
- Michelangelo says, "F%#& You!" to church [basically, Michelangelo did not like working for the church, and was kind of forced to. So, he did such things as paint hidden signals to the church in his paintings, like the old-school equivalent to the middle finger at the entrance to the Sistine Chapel, or the portrait of some cardinal who called his work bad as a guy stuck in hell.]
- Nike = Greek god of victory [the Nike Swoosh is based off of one of the god's wings]
Basically, the Vatican museums were the best cultural experience I've had so far in Europe. I would highly recommend it. From there, we went to St. Peter's basilica, which was by far the most impressive church I've been in in Europe. It it absolutely massive. There are not so much columns that flank the aisles as there are massive walls. Also, there is the famous baldacchino that Bernini made for the Barberini popes. Behind that is the famous altar made by Bernini. It's all pretty incredible. Also, the sun was coming through the windows, and allowed me to get some very cool pictures of inside, like this one:
Last Day with my Parents and Grandparents
On Friday, we were a little slow getting up (see the comments above about beer from the Czech Republic), and began our day with a nice leisurely stroll to the Trevi Fountain. The fountains are much bigger than I expected, and very pretty. Somebody told us that the whole thing was carved right out of the rock that was in place. We took lots of pictures, like this one:
So from there, we walked over to the Parthenon. Like many things in Rome, it was much bigger than I expected, and it has a rather cavernous interior. Also, like many things in Europe, it was under a ton of reconstruction, so scaffolding was present in full force. We then went to another gellateria - called Della Palma. This was, I believe, my grandpa's favorite place - probably due to the fact that they had 115 different kinds of gelato. We decided that we would come back and sample all of them some day.
From there, we went back to our hotel, and my parents and grandparents got all packed since they were leaving the next morning. After that, we went out to eat for our last supper together. It was yet again, delicious - I had spaghetti carbonara, and as usual, we had plenty of chianti. Then, we went back home to sleep.
Back on my Own
Since my parents and grandparent's flight left at 8:45 am on Saturday, they had to leave really early from our hotel. So, I woke up and said goodbye to them at around 6:00 am, and then went back to sleep. I woke up at 9, showered, had breakfast in our hotel, and left right around 11. I walked myself down to another gellateria called Giolitti's, which is supposedly really good. I had some pistachio gelato there and it was in fact, taste-tacular (as in good). After that, I walked over to the Piazza Navona, because I had heard it's really pretty, but we hadn't made it there yet. So I strolled up and parked myself on this bench. All of a sudden, there was a band there. Turns out the municipal police band was performing a little concert, accompanied by an American band, The Infernos, and some old italian crooner who sang some Frank Sinatra songs. So I just hung out and listened to that for like an hour, it was really awesome - one of those little random experiences - and turned me on to Frank Sinatra.
I then met some friends of mine from MUDEC at the Spanish Steps, and we walked around the city for a while before heading out to their apartment which was in the Roman suburbs. After two metro rides and a suburban train ride, we got back to their place, which was really nice - just far from downtown Rome. We then headed back into the city later, got some pizza, and completed the Rick Steve's walk of Rome at night. It was nice, and cool to see everything lit up at night.
Getting home was little bit of an adventure, since there were train complications, and we ended up taking a nice little stroll late Saturday night.
Getting Home
Sunday was an early morning. I got up at 4:30 to shower, and get ready to roll. We left the apartment at 5:30 am, and walked 45 minutes to get to the subway station (b/c the suburban trains weren't running that early), so that we could make it to the main train station by 7:15 for our train out of Rome. It was a day that consisted of excessive train travel. We took a 3 and a 1/2 hour train to Milan first, and then got on a 4 hour train to Basel (in Switzerland), and then got on a 3 and a 1/2 hour train to Luxembourg. Not an easy day by any means.
Epilogue
Writing a blog about these events over a week after they occurred is a challenge. So much random stuff happens here that you want to remember, it becomes difficult to recall details or feelings about specific things. It is very easy to experience a cultural overdose, so pace yourself. Hence, even I feel like my writing has become repetitive and dull at times - I will try to make it more exciting in the future. Thanks for reading, as always.
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