The Italian Job

I cut out a lot to try to keep these on the shorter side. I apologize for the length, but it was an eventful trip.
Cheers.

October 5, 2004 – Milan

Our trip started off interestingly enough, the professor thought we were leaving an hour after we actually were and was not very happy with us leaving, but he understood. Traveling to Milan was not a problem, well not too much of one. Once we got to the Bergamo Airport we realized that Susan didn’t bring the paper with our hotel information on it. That minor issue was soon solved because the young women at the bus ticket counter not only spoke English (an apparent rarity in Italy), but also let us use her computer to look it all up. The bus got us into Milan at about 1 am and a 30 min walk put us at the hotel. “Us” by the way was myself, Amanda, Susan, Carolyn, Dap, and Elliot. The hotel is where our flexibility was first tested. It turns out that our reservation was canceled through a miscommunication in the hotel staff. So the manager gave us a little free food and we left. But at 1 am in Milan, where do you go? We decided to get the earliest train out in the morning (5am) and found a park bench we could sleep on. Dap and myself stayed awake during the four hour interlude to make sure nothing happened, and nothing did, with the exception of a drunk guy looking for a lighter.

October 6, 2004 – Rome

The train got us in about 11am and we went strait to the hostel. The room that we had for the 6 of us to stay in was very small and included an in-room shower. (Check out my photo site at www.toad.smugmug.com for a better idea. Look for the Italy gallery) After stopping at a small street side café, we walked to the Coliseum. I hate to say it, but I was mildly disappointed. It appears that they have decided to rebuild it, which was sad to me. The structure itself is HUGE, and very impressive, but after some 36 hours of no sleep, I was tired. We all sat down and rambled on for a while before we decided to go back to the hostel, take a nap, then go find food. Diner, sadly, wasn’t all that great. We went to a place suggested by the hostel and it was small portions, and didn’t taste right. Afterwards we roamed around for a while and had a little Gelato, the first of many Gelato stops over the next few days. After a shower in the room, using my bed sheet to dry off, I went to bed, and slept hard.

October 7, 2004 – Rome

Today was much better than yesterday. That whole sleep thing makes the day a whole lot more bearable. Got up at 9, checked out of the Hostel, and jumped on a bus for Vatican City. St. Peter’s Square is absolutely enormous. I felt so small and it was effective in humbling someone before they entered into God’s church. When we went into the Basilica, Dap and I were wearing shorts. After sending the other 4 of our group in without us, we met an American tour group. They had some pull over pants and offered to let us wear them if we joined their free tour. Good deal, so we joined them, but upon realization of the loquaciousness of our guide, we offered him †10 a piece for them and went off on our own. The Cathedral is incredibly massive and utterly beautiful. I simply cannot accurately describe it further, so I will let the pictures (which are not good enough) do the talking. We did meet up with out group and moved on to the Sistine Chapel. You have to wind trough the Vatican Museums to get there, but they were impressive in their own right. The Chapel is incredible in the same way as St. Peter’s and words, well at least my words, cannot do it justice. We went to lunch after that, and that was interesting. The place we went to was a few blocks away from all the touristy things and was quite authentic, for lack of a better term. We all got pizzas, which were fairly large. I got an Italian beer with mine, the Italians do a lot of foods well, beer is not one of them. But when the bill came we overpaid by like †3. In a country that doesn’t ever tip, that is apparently a big deal. Our waitress went inside saying something to “Pappa” and came back with a bottle of some lemon liquor and 6 shot glasses, explaining that it was for us, for free. We all had a shot, or two, or three, and left. After that we went to the Pantheon, Trevi fountain, and the Spanish Steps. All in all, it was a good day. We’re sleeping on a bus headed for Venice.

Octover 7, 2004 – Venice

Busy day today. We got into Venice about 5.30 and it took us three hours to find our hotel. Unsurprisingly, we were told that we couldn’t check in until noon, but that he would hold our bags for us. The first order of business was food. We walked around for a while but none of the girls could make up their minds. I gave up on them and went back to a little bakery we had seen and got a cheap loaf of fresh bread. After breakfast we decided to just sit on a bench in the plaza outside of the hotel and sleep until noon when we could check in. At about 11, we sent Susan in to see if we could check in a little early and were frustrated to hear that in fact we could not check in until 2. So, we walked around Venice for a while and went back to the hotel. There were more frustrations with the staff, but it all got worked out. Where we were staying was actually someone’s apartment that they were renting out, it was really nice. It had two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a full kitchen. Just walking around is one of the coolest things to do in Venice, it was a good day.

October 8, 2004 Venice, Milan

Today we went to San Marco’s. That is a palace/cathedral in Venice, and the home of the opening scene in the Italian Job. The Square in front of the cathedral had more pigeons then I have ever seen in one place in my entire life. There are people out there selling bags of feed for them and you can see more then one small child getting carried away by the dirty birds. I ran into Jennifer Hollingsworth while we were there. It was so good to see her. Once we left there, Dap and I ate lunch while the others took a Gondola ride. Then we took a train back to Milan. Once we got there, pretty much everything had closed except for a few restaurants. So we had diner and went back to our hotel. At the hotel, I met three girls who were staying there, doing a 10 day tour of Italy, on break from their American University, which has a program in London, a few blocks from our house. We were in basically the same position. I slept on the floor, and we had to get up at 5 am to catch our bus to the airport and get on our plane back to London.