J'aime Voyager: Italy

Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Ravenna, Italy & Olympia, Greece (Days 46 & 47)

Ravenna: Dante's tomb

On Sunday morning we left our hotel in Venice and drove to Ravenna, Italy. Hm. Not so much to see there! I think it’s on the tour itinerary because they need some sort of filler to not waste the entire day. In Ravenna, we found Dante’s tomb and several churches decorated with mosaics. I didn’t go into the first church because I was wearing shorts and wasn’t sure if I was allowed, so I sat outside while my mom, aunt and cousin went inside. Then once we finally walked to the last two, we found out we had to have tickets (and the ticket was for a museum and the two churches) and we only had a few minutes left in the town so it wasn’t worth it.

Ravenna: sunflower field

From there we went to Ristorante Sant Apollinare for lunch where we had what is said to be the best hand-made lasagna in Italy! It was definitely the best meal we had; I had actually been kind of disappointed by the bit of Italian food we’d had up to that point. It was a great lunch to end our time in the country.

Ravenna: sunflower field

After lunch, we took some pictures of a nearby sunflower field (we passed many sunflower fields while riding in the tour bus this week), and then got back on for the ride to the ferry that would take us to Greece.

Ravenna: us with our bus driver, Luigi

We sat on the bus for a while at the port before hauling all of our luggage onto the ferry. It was more like a miniature cruise ship than a ferry! It was part of the Minoan Lines out of Greece. Our room on the boat was small as expected, but had a nice window.

our room on the ship

Venturing outside of our room was quite the experience. When we went out to look around after the ship started moving, we felt like we were on some sort of refugee ship! It was crazy, there were people setting up sleeping bags and TENTS all over the place! Apparently, they sell room-less tickets to people (LOTS of them); it was the sketchiest thing ever!

The next morning (Monday), we had breakfast on the ship. After a few hours, they stopped at a port in Albania and after that, the ship was really nice! All of the people without rooms had packed up and left, and it wasn’t so crowded anymore. But then a few hours before we arrived at our port in Patras, Greece, they kicked us out of our rooms! We had to pack up and take all of our luggage to either the lounge or the deck to sit and wait. Ugh.

sunset on the ship

people camping out on the ship

When we got off of the boat, we all loaded our stuff into a new tour bus with a new driver and drove a couple of hours to our hotel in Olympia where we had the best dinner we’ve had on this trip! I was talking to some of the other people on the tour at dinner and we all agreed that Italy had been a pretty big letdown food-wise, and that our first Greek dinner was way better than anything else we’d had! It really smelled and tasted great.

Greek, Italian and English

our room in Olympia

After dinner, most of the group wandered down the main street; even though it was 10 at night, all of the stores were open. It was really nice since everything in Europe up to that point seemed to be closed by at least 7. We could tell they had been expecting the tour bus, they all would ask if we were with Cosmos and then say “oh special price” when we said yes. The people were SO nice and SO friendly, too! We went into a few of the stores and I got a little silver bracelet from one, and a column charm (for my charm bracelet) from another. The place where I bought my charm was called “Apollo,” and it was owned by a family who had a member who had been in the Olympics. They were all so excited to tell about him, show us the torch, and give everyone a postcard with a picture of him and others running with it!

Adriatic Sea, view from the ship

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Venice, Italy (Day 45)

gondola ride

our troubadour

typical gondola seats

Today our tour group went to Venice for the day. Gorgeous! It really looks just like it does in the movies, unlike so much of the other stuff I've gotten to see in person. We started off our day with a gondola ride! Mom, Nancy, Jennifer and I shared a gondola with two other people from our group and the ride began at the Grand Canal and then went through smaller areas. It was a lot of fun, we had maybe five gondolas of people who had signed up for the excursion, and one of the gondolas had a singer and an accordion player who "serenaded" the group for the whole trip! SO much fun. I took a video during one of the songs: Venice Gondola Ride 2011

glassblowing demonstration

After our gondola ride was finished, we got some gelato before meting our tour director to be taken to a glassblowing business to watch a demonstration. The demonstration was neat, I've always thought it would be fun to blow glass, but it's WAY too hot for that in Texas! They had some incredible pieces for sale, some that were 20,000 euros!

Once we were done looking at the glass, we got in line to go inside of St. Mark's Basilica. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but it was pretty different from others that I've been inside of. The ceiling was just COVERED in tiny gold tiles. They also were pretty smart with their (common) rule about not allowing people with shoulders or above-knee skin showing; they sold pieces of paper (kind of like a giant napkin) that people could tie around their waist or shoulders so they could still come in!

From there, we made our way through the winding little streets to Rialto Bridge, a must-see according to our tour director. We saw a ton of masks for sale on our way there; they're for sale all over Venice, just like the Venetian (and fake Venetian) glass. It was SO HOT. There weren't any clouds and it was in the 90s; I know I'm from Texas, but we have AC, most places here don't! Plus being outside walking in the heat (and much of the time full sun) all day long is pretty rough even if it's only 90 something!

Around 1:00, we met our tourguide and got back on the boat for an excursion that included a tour of the lagoon and trip to the nearby island, Burano. Unfortunately I fell asleep for the whole 40 minute ride to Burano so I didn't hear anything the tourguide told us. I'm staying up pretty late trying to keep up with this blog and figure out some things that will be changing when I get home, and then getting up at 6 or 7 every day. Blegh. Anyway, in Burano we had a little lace-making demonstration in a family-owned store. Our tour director told us Elton John (who owns a house facing the lagoon in Venice, by the way) is a customer and that Giorgio Armani tried to buy the business!

Burano

After that, we walked around the town for a little bit (we only had one hour there) and tried to find a house where Maria Callas and her husband had lived. Mom was very excited about seeing it, but our tour director had given us directions before going inside of the lace store along with directions to at least two other places. He does that a lot. By the time we tried to find it, none of us really remembered what he had said, and we weren't sure we had ever understood, anyway. Overload of info in an unorganized order as usual.

Burano was so much more quiet than the main area of Venice where we had been earlier in the day. All of the houses were so cute and brightly painted! Our hour went by quickly and at the end of it, we met everyone back at the boat and went back to pick up the others from the main part of Venice before heading back to the hotel.

Verona & Venice, Italy (Day 44)

Verona

Verona: Juliet's house

Verona: Dante's house

Verona: Juliet's house

Verona: Romeo's house

Verona: Lyle Lovett poster

Arena Verona

Whew! On Friday, our tour group moved out of our hotel and got on the road to Verona, Italy. In Verona, we had a walking tour led by a local tour guide. She was a fast talker and got a lot of good information in while we went, I liked her!

Venice: St. Mark's Basilica

Venice

Venice: St. Mark's Square

She showed us another statue of Dante Alighieri and told us that he is considered the father of Italian because he was the first to write in it (it was just a spoken language) instead of in writing Latin. We also learned that the Lion is the symbol for Verona and saw that symbol on the house Dante lived in. We saw some more Roman ruins and learned that they are commonly found 2-4 meters below the ground! She told us that Verona is somewhat dependant on agriculture and that they produce wine and olive oil.

Venice

We also saw the homes of the Montagues and the Capulets. I know. I thought it was all made up, but she said Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet pulled from other stories and that the families really did live in Verona.

From Verona we went to our hotel in ("new") Venice, the Hotel Poppi, changed, and got back onto the bus and rode it to the docks to take a boat to the restaurant where we would have dinner. We had a fun four-course meal at a restaurant called Ristorante Antico Pignolo and then got to walk around and listen to some music in St. Mark's Square.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Pisa & Florence, Italy (Days 42 & 43)

The cathedral and Leaning Tower of Pisa

On Wednesday morning, our tour group left the hotel and drove for several hours to Pisa so we could see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. What a beautiful building! Truly, it was so beautifully bright and just so interesting looking, even without the leaning! The tower is actually the bell tower for a big cathedral that stands next to it. We only had an hour there and had to eat lunch, so we didn't get to go inside of anything.

Oh how many times this pose has been held!

From there, we continued our journey to our hotel in Signa, a town outside of Florence, Italy. When we arrived at the hotel, Jennifer and Nancy went to their room for a nap and mom started taking notes about the day while I ventured out to find a grocery store to buy water since you can't drink from the tap here. Whew! What a hike! And when I got to the store, I couldn't figure out which water bottles to buy! Hah! My plan had been to look for anything that DIDN'T say something that resembled "mineral water," and anything that didn't have a nutritional breakdown on the bottle; I figured that was a safe bet. But go figure, that wasn't an option once I looked at every huge bottle they were selling! After staring at the water for probably ten minutes and not knowing what I was going to do, I decided to watch people. I saw two different people come in and fill their baskets with packages of one of the brands of water, so I crossed my fingers that it was normal and grabbed three bottles, bought them, and walked about seven blocks home carrying six liters of water! Hah.

After checking out at the store, I started to remember how far I've come. It's funny, just a little over a month ago, I was terrified any time I got up to the cashier at the grocery store, hoping they wouldn't say anything to me. Any time I had to buy something, a ticket, groceries, dinner, I'd be so nervous or would have a phrase in the appropriate language all ready to go and then blank as soon as I needed it. Seriously, I had some sort of deer-in-the-headlights complex. I would repeat a phrase at LEAST 10 times to myself and as soon as it was time for me to use it, I'd just stand with my eyes big and mouth open and no words would come! And now I'm walking around Italy and finding myself saying "oui" instead of "yes" or the correct language, "si," saying "pardon" to get by people and I've have accidentally said "merci" instead of "grazie" a few times. It's a lot of fun though. It's a nice little brain workout! The most important thing to know is how to ask "do you speak English," because from there they'll either say yes and you'll talk or you can play a quick game of Charades.

Anyway, that night, we went to dinner at a place up the street from our hotel called Foffo's. Mom and I had a little bit of pasta and then went back to the hotel.

Peruzzi Leather store

On Thursday morning, we took the bus into Florence (about a 1.5 hour ride). When we got there, we had a tour of a leather store. They showed us how they put gold on the leather (they had leather waste baskets!!), and then they used mom as a model for one of their leather jackets! Hah! After that, we had a walking tour of Florence. I took lots of pictures, but without a tour book or a good map, I honestly can't really tell you what anything is, so sorry in advance!

There was a man (from Poland, mom had to ask him) playing the guitar while we were eating lunch and mom just absolutely loved it, so I got his CDs for her and I took a picture of mom, Nancy and Jennifer with him.

That night, we had dinner at the hotel.