Day 18. 2nd July. Rome.

Yet another early start for our pre booked Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel tickets. If you ever want to go to the Sistine Chapel PRE BOOK YOUR TICKETS ONLINE. DO NOT queue up for your tickets on site. By pre-booking you get to skip the queue. The queue is one of the more disgusting things I have ever seen. It very nearly loops the museum side of the Vatican.  In 30 plus degrees (at 9am), on the side busy roads, with many people selling – tours, scarves, trinkets.

We planned to have a quick look and only really look at the Sistine Chapel but got somewhat caught up in the museum. It is the biggest collection of Greek and Roman marble carvings. These are incredible. I am particularly fond of Greek and Roman history so this was very interesting. I also liked trying to pick who was who of the gods and goddesses. I did quite well I think. J

The Sistine Chapel itself was phenomenal. You could easily sit for hours and just look - though your neck would get a bit sore. Some parts are actually pretty disturbing though. Like in the judgment day piece on one of the walls, there is a man holding up a skin. A human skin of which you can see the face. Ewwwww

As you walk the streets of Rome there is a fairly unceasing barrage of people from all kinds of nationalities and ethnicities spruking and selling tickets for various attractions, souvenirs and things like sunglasses and hats. One group we walked past on our way to the Vatican started to talk to us, we replied “Sorry, got tickets.” And then he said (a Aussie) “All I wanted was a hug.” Best comeback ever. As we walked away I thought I heard an Italian voice ask my name, but though it may not be addressed at me so ignored it. As we were heading back from the Vatican four hours later a guy stopped me and said, he had seen me before. He – after asking my name again and chatting a bit- proceeded to propose to me. Lol. He kept looking to Raina and saying things like what do you say? "Mamma knows best". I think I ended up agreeing. :P Guess I am engaged then.

More coffee. Sooooooo good! Love. Will stay here forever, just drinking coffee. As was pre arranged Raina was made to sit at a café in Rome and drink an espresso shot. Raina is not a coffee drinker. She cannot even dip a tongue without her face going into spasms of rejection. This experience was most entertaining to me.

As a side effect I who normally drinks café lattes realised that Italian standard espresso shots are divine. So have now switched to espressos and machiatoes. Yum.

Then we went for our Colosseum tour. We did the newly opened underground tour, which takes you to the lower level where the slaves, animals and Gladiators were kept back in the day. You get to see the passageways, the plumbing into the Colosseum and the winch and pulley systems that they used to lift animals, fighters and scenery onto the main stage with. We also got to go to the very top level. These two levels are places the normally, guests can not go. Only the tour of about 15 people go there. If you go to Rome, ever. Do this tour. Raina was particularly moved and appreciated the honor of being admitted to these areas that no one has been allowed to go until a few weeks ago.

The atmosphere of the colosseum was epic. Though literally millions of people and animals were killed here in brutal and hideous ways it does not have an atmosphere like that. For example, Ground Zero in New York and Culloden Field in Scotland were the Jacobites were so brutally slain in Scotland, these places have an atmosphere of sorrow and tragedy. But the Coliseum does not, and I don’t think this comes down to the tourist infestation. I think it was something of cultural relativism. The circus games were a totally accepted (perhaps not by the slaves) activity of the time. And this is where I think the strange atmosphere lies. It is not for us to judge something so long ago maybe. Also it had many positive connotations for the pride of the Romans. 

It took only eight years to build, is astoundingly well build and was built by the Flavians after the depressing and disturbingly corrupted reign of the Augustine Caesars. That is, Tiberius, Claudius, Caligula and Nero all passionately hated by the Roman people. The Colosseum became something of a beacon of hope and community pride after this terrible period. And so I think a lot of this may do something to outweigh the horror of it. Not to excuse it, but to create this atmosphere that is not sad.  In the day, the stadium seated 100,000 people and people had assigned seating  It took only 15 minutes to empty after the festivities. Modern stadiums could lean from this.

We went for a big walk then down to the Circus Maximus. We didn't see it for a while because it was so obviously right there. An exhausting walk in this heat but worth it.

Then we went to go and buy a new suitcase because our damaged ones just aren't coping very well. Through the subway stations on the way home there were these ridiculously long escalators. I came up with the genius idea of sitting down on them to spare my feet. Seriously. Genius. 

We finally, finally got to do some washing. This is only the second time we have been able to do any. Yay, clothes. I was running very short.

Day 17. 1st July. Rome

This morning we set off at a not too disgustingly early time; Raina would refer to this as a sleep in however, I with the normal and sane standards of a university student would not agree.

We jumped on yet another HoHo bus (Hop on Hop off) to tour around Rome. Rome was amazing, unsurprisingly. However the tour was not. The commentary was barely audible, out of sync and quite sparse. Pretty bizarre that Rome, one of the places with the richest and greatest amount of history , was the one with the poor commentary with lots of silence. The bus also ran on a timetable, unlike all others we have been on, so if we were ahead of the schedule we had to sit at the stop for up to 20min.

Luckily though – this is Rome. And Rome has enough to offer to get away with sub standard ways of seeing it.

The first look at Colosseum was awe-inspiring. We rounded the corner and there it was, huge and looming. We got off the bus and walked around the outside and looked at the outer rim and Constantine’s Arch. We also got photos with the dorky guys dressed up as Gladiators. They are actually pretty fun, big personalities and the costumes are really good.

We left there (going back to do the full tour tomorrow) and headed down to Pompeii. We caught two trains here. We in fact, had our third experience of missing the train, of the many we have caught. The first miss was in Milan as our connecting train was late. The next was from Venice - it spontaneously changed the time and left early making us miss it by 2 seconds. We were running down the platform, got three paces from the door and the guy would not let us on. And the third was from Rome to Naples because the board listed the destination under a different name that was not on our ticked and the board did not display a number. As you may have guessed, catching trains in Europe is stressful, once you are on it is a great way to travel.

We used this time to go across the street to get a coffee and a prosciutto roll. The coffee here is so amazing, the best coffee I have ever ever had.

This train took us down the Amalfi Coast which is (supposedly) some of Europe’s best scenery. However 5 ks inland it is a slum. A dirty, shabby area of hundreds of graffiti riddled government apartment blocks and run down houses. It is not at all what I expected.

Pompeii was amazing, so interesting and really picturesque. A much larger city then I was expecting. One of the best parts was the brilliantly well preserved Brothel. On the walls were paintings and mosaics which appeared to be a sort of menu. Choose your type of girl, position, etc. Lol.

If you know me, you may know I have a mortal fear of volcanoes. Ever since I learnt about them when I was 7, I have been terrified. Pompeii upsets me a little having to go so close to a volcano and have to look at the damage it did but I was supported and assured the whole way by Raina that it is fine because Vesuvius is a long extinct volcano. To which I countered “yeah, the ancient Pomiians though that too.”

Anyway, as we made our way through the city listening to our downloaded audio tours I nearly died when I heard the sentence. “Vesuvius is today an active volcano.”

Raina swears she truly thought it was extinct. I am still not happy. In the past we have theorized that I had a past life cut short by the eruption that sealed Pompeii.

A long train trip back and we had late dinner at a charming and extreme delicious family pasta place.

Then slept.

Day 16. 30th June. Day in Venice, evening train to Roma

We started off wandering somewhat aimlessly and then went for a Gondola ride. An obscenely expensive activity but something of a must do in Venice. It was lovely. The boat was beautiful and the Gondolier (driver) sang as we passed through the canals. He was the Gondolier who toured the Pope around Venice.

We stopped and got a cup of fruit each. I got pineapple and Raina got Melon (each of favorite fruits), a good cupful that cost only 1 Euro. Nice.

We saw the markets that apparently appear in the movie the Tourist, and stock some amazing things. One fish stall, has a marlin (sword fish) head on display, sword sticking up, it was massive.

Again we marveled at how everything here is water based, like garbage disposal trucks, police, builders doing construction work. Everything- it all has to be transported by water.

.

Then the train trip to Rome, corn corn corn, then wheat wheat wheat, then wine wine wine, the sunflowers sunflowers sunflowers. All the crops appear to be very confined to a geographical area.

We arrived late in Rome and really only got to walk from the train station and crash out at the hotel. Lots of walking today, and also running to make trains.

Odd thing. In Italy, they don’t give you doonas to sleep, only an awful scratchy blanket and the beds are rock hard. Both hotels were pretty identical in this respect. 

Day 15. 29th June. Zurich to Venice

We set off again from Zurich to Venice via Milan. This was a fantastic train ride right through the Swiss Alps. Amazingly stunning country with mountains so big they are hard to describe. They erupt out the otherwise flat land in the most dramatic rise I have seen. Raina said it made her respect the Von Trap family a bit more for running from the Nazis and hiding in the mountains. We even saw some snow, in summer. Awesome. The colour of the rivers and lakes is incredible, a translucent pale greenish blue. It is clearly glacial rivers and looks incredibly cold.

All over the place there were highways through the mountains and instead of making a road 'S' bend up and back down a mountain they tend to build tunnels straight through the mountains. And where they don’t do that, they build a bridge across a valley. These bridges hundreds of meters high cut across from one hill (at the foot of the giant mountains) to the other.

So much corn. Once we passed through the Alps into Italy we started seeing a monstrous amount of corn crops.

The train trip was pretty nice, comfy, and spacious and we had space to ourselves. Although we do believe that we got ripped off by the drink and snack server. Because we found out later that each passenger gets one free drink and snack. When I went to track him down I asked him how much and he told me the price, so I played. As one usually does in this situation. This happened again when Raina asked the price of water and he said 4:80 Swiss Francs. For a bottle of water? So we think he was pocketing the cash and giving us the free drink we were owed. Pig man.

We had a stop over and train change in Milan. Our train from Zurich got held up for all of 10 minutes. We don’t know why, the announcement was in German. :P But this led to us missing our connection by mere minutes.

So we used our unexpected layover well (struggling with aching feet, copious amounts of luggage and sweat dripping – it is so damn hot). We eventually got one seat so Raina sat with all the luggage and I wandered around looking at shops and stuff. We purchased a bangle and a scarf; it is necessary to by fashion items in this fashion capital.

We finally made it to Venice. Now I was always aware that Venice is a canal city, that the people use the water as a usual means of transportation. What I did not realize till I arrived is that there are no other vehicles in Venice. At all. No cars, no scooters, no bikes, nothing. It is boats or walking. And in many case walking alone is impossible, as you can’t cross the canals. There are many bridges, but boats are necessary.

The city is absolutely stunning, gorgeous and pretty in every direction. We used the Vaperetto to get around. This is the equivalent of a bus I guess, but a boat. The first time we caught this, burdened with all our luggage we were rather chuffed with ourselves to have sorted out the route to take and arrived so early to secure good seats near a window. It was later we realized we were in fact sitting on the pontoon, the waiting lounge. Oops, we did however manage to get onto the boat and navigate our way. Though we walked about twice the distance from the dock to our hotel in the wrong direction, over several bridges with many stairs, with our ridiculous freaking heavy bags. And it was so hot. 

However we did find the hotel and from there it was wonderful – a very old monestry.

I cannot get over the complete and utter lack or roads, grass and vehicles. To think that there may well be people who have lived in and never left Venice in all their life and as such have never seen a car. Or, a dog born in Venice who may never have seen grass. By the way, there are heaps of dogs. They get taken for walks around the streets.

We wandered around, looked at shops and the picturesque canals. Then had dinner at a not too bad pasta place. To our shock though we were charged a cover charge at this restaurant. Apparently that is not so uncommon in Europe. I get it for clubs but not restaurants. It was a gorgeous little place on a canal where the tourist gondola rides leave from, so there was lots to look at. 

Day 14. 28th June. Dublin to Zurich

Just going to put this out there. Dublin’s traffic system is STUPID!!!!! It has massively wide, multi lane streets. Some are one way, some are two way. Some streets swap between one and two way. There is no semblance of a grid. AND THEY HAVE NO STREET SIGNS. Well that is a lie, they have them BUT YOU CANT READ THEM. Actually that is a lie too, they have SOME. But the majority of streets do not have signage. Now throw in Trams and many many angry drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. And also some blind corners. On one occasion when forced to block a tiny portion of the road in order to inch across and change lanes on a one-way street, a passing cyclist while yelling at us actually punched the car. Like, my god, we caused him to have to steer a whole metre out of his most direct path. I’m not very pleased with the nature of Dubliners from what I have seen. But oh well.

Also to hinder us Elizabeth Wooten-Basset’s ongoing disorder is still affecting her to an extent. This morning she was able to help us however clearly not on the most direct route. But she also did not start working till we were a decent way from the hotel. Fun times. But we did make it.

While at the airport, we decided we had had enough of Elizabeth Wootan-Bassett’s treason (well, crimes against us). A quick trial was held and she was found guilty. This meant that she could not be re-homed and she certainly was not going to be transported to the colony in Australia and given a second chance on our next trip. Her punishment? Maybe we had been influenced by two weeks in the UK, but she was sentenced as a traitor. Hung, Drawn and Quartered. Once this was done, her parts were scattered to the four corners of the kingdom, well the airport. A small part was kept for London Bridge. William Wallace would be proud.

A short flight and we were in Switzerland. The airport and train station was an interesting experience. We eventually found a ticket machine that half spoke English and got our tickets. Crossed our fingers and jumped on a train. We got it right, by some miracle. A taxi to the hotel, which turned out to be obscenely expensive then we set out to explore Zurich.

We caught the trams up the city and explored. We looked at some shops, the old town, St. Peters with the largest clock face in Europe. Know what? It is pretty big.

Zurich is beautiful, I love it, a great vibe is going on here and the people are all very friendly and try to help. The English speaking is amazing here, most have had a pretty good grasp of it, and anyone else has spoken it very well. It always shocks me how easy travel is for English speakers. We are so lucky, almost anywhere people will speak English (in the main cities anyway) even when it is not the national language. Incredible.

On the river that runs through the city we saw some sort of women's swim club. It is a floating pontoon with two pools surrounded by decks for longing on, change rooms, showers and massage rooms and of course a bar. It was full of women swimming and relaxing. I so wanted to swim, it was so stinking hot.

Apparently we have managed to catch a heat wave, it is never this hot here, but is for our arrival. Lame. Actually it wasn’t so bad once we got changed at the hotel. Coming home from the airport was shocking being dressed for Ireland.

We went for a fondue dinner, something Switzerland is famous for. It was delicious, so very very yummy. Oh and a cracking good glass of local red for me. (French bubbles for Raina) And the waiters were fantastic colorful Swiss folk. Really nice and funny. :D

Totally loving Switzerland.