Italy

Prologue

Hello, I’ve had this written for a few weeks now, and I was waiting on someone to send me some photos to include in this otherwise gigantic wall of text. He hasn’t sent them and thus I’m posting this without photos and hope they get sent and I can append them.

In other news, my last few weeks have been relatively uneventful, however this coming weekend (23/24 of April) is a long weekend so we’ll see how I go about writing next week.

The week before Easter is called Semana Santa, or Holy Week, in Spain and South America. The week is equivalent to Easter school holidays in Australia so I had the week off school. The other ELAs from Manresa were going to Italy for the week and I decided to go with them.

All up there were 7 of us on the trip; they were: me, Natalie, Dmitri, Joanna, Alvaro, Jenefer and Rachel. Alvaro is Jen’s 16 year old brother who was here for spring break.

Problems

OK so we had planned to leave early Saturday morning in a hire car. When we went to hire the car on Friday afternoon we ran into some troubles. According to the quote given during the reservation it was meant to be about 800€ for the car and insurance. Just as we were about to pay I noticed the card machine had over 1000€ on the screen. I asked about the price difference and they told us it was because the designated driver was under the age of 25. They then looked more closely at the insurance rules and discovered that drivers under 25 aren’t actually covered at all to drive big automatic vehicles on their policy. Because none of the people who had licenses here could drive manual, we had a problem. We went to a few different hire places and they more or less told us the same story.

To be honest, at this stage it looked like the trip wasn’t going to happen at all. Later that evening we decided to hire 2 cars. This looked like the only way to do the trip but would also increase the costs enormously. Obviously this wasn’t ideal but we wanted to do the trip. So we hired 2 cars.

Saturday

There were more problems with the cars on Saturday morning but eventually we had the cars and were ready to leave. I had caught the train to a station closer to Barcelona so the others could pick me up easily. I arrived at the station at 10:30, and they had just hired the cars and were about to leave. 2 hours later they had finally managed to 20 minute drive from the hire place to the station.

Because we left so late we had to cut out a town from the trip and drive straight to Venice, about a 12 hour drive from Barcelona. We only had 1 legal driver in our car, and obviously a person shouldn’t drive 12 hours without a break so I ended up driving about 6 hours without a license.

We got slightly lost just before arriving and after our few toilet and eating breaks the trip ended up taking about 15 hours and we arrived at 4 in the morning.

Sunday

The first real day of the trip we went to Venice. We caught a bus there at around 10:30, and went straight to a restaurant to find food because we hadn’t eaten breakfast or dinner the previous night. I got pasta carbonara and it was pretty good.

Then we decided to walk around a bit and with 2 others, Dmitri and Natalie, I lost the rest of the group while they were taking photos (this was to become a common trend throughout the trip). We went to St Mark’s square and looked around there, and to the palace and art gallery where we played “find the ugly baby” in the old paintings.

We had agreed to meet at 6 because we had to leave Venice for Rome that night. We ended up reaching the hostel at around 8 and leaving soon after. For dinner we stopped at a servo on the highway and had pasta which was surprisingly good.

I drove the last few hours to Rome but we switched just before arriving in the city. This turned out to be the best decision ever because we got pulled over at a random police stop where they checked the driver’s license and all our passports. Natalie was driving and packed her dacks when we were pulled over but I was sitting there grinning because I’d managed to avoid a fine. The cops took their time checking out passports but we were eventually sent on our way.

Monday

The first day in Rome we got up late because we had arrived late the night before. Some of the others had been to the shops and bought pasta so I sat in the kitchen and offered my professional cooking advice while Natalie was cooking.

When we left the house we walked to the train station and caught the train into the city. We had planned to go to the Roman Forum but we go off at the wrong station and had to catch a tram there instead.

We walked past the Colosseum but it was nearly closed for the day so we kept walking. We saw the Forum from the outside and a palace, and ate some gelato before going to the Pantheon and the fountain of Trevi. After this it was getting late so we ate and went home.

##Tuesday Got up at a more reasonable time today and left for the Forum. When we got there we saw there was a lookout so I went with Alvaro to find the top. It turns out the others were also trying to get there too but they got lost so Alvaro took some great videos of them while they were finding their way up to us.

After this we went to the Colosseum and then to eat.

After eating we went to Vatican City to to have a look around but it was nearly 6 by this stage so things were wrapping up.

Then we went to find dinner, bought some milk for breakfast the next day and went home.

Wednesday

The others went to see the Pope speak early in the morning but I stayed in bed and then took the opportunity to do some laundry while I had some spare time.

I decided to do most of the day by myself because I was getting a little sick of the others by this stage, so I planned the day and left.

The first place I went to was mostly closed when I got there so I went to a church instead.

Then I walked to a park that had a pretty good view over most of Rome and checked that out, and read about a Roman uprising in the 19th century when they were getting sick of the control of the Church.

By this stage I was quite close to the Vatican again and I wanted to have another look at that so I went there again.

The Vatican is absolutely enormous, and definitely awe inspiring, just as they designed it to be, but I was again reminded why I don’t agree with the Catholic Church when I saw people begging in St Pater’s square. I don’t understand how they can preach solidarity with the poor while being obscenely rich and not giving a shit about the poor.

Next I walked to another park and on the way I found a shop that only sells Lego. Most of it was really expensive but also really cool so I bought a Gandalf from Lord of the Rings.

Then I went to another park on a hill but it was really windy and cold so kinda lame. While I was there though, I was standing looking at the sunset and I stepped to the side to get a better view and some guy taking a photo with his girlfriend shepherded me out of the way so I wouldn’t get in the way of the photo. He apologised right away but I was struggling to comprehend what had just happened and his friends were trying not to laugh while giving him weird looks. It was weird.

After that I sat next to a fountain for a while before meeting up with Dmitri, Natalie and Rachel for dinner before catching a taxi home as we were leaving the next morning.

Thursday

We left Thursday morning and went to Florence.

In Florence we ate lunch, then went to see the statue of David which was impressive.

After, we tried to get into the cathedral but it was closed, so instead we then went to the Medici Palace. There wasn’t much to see there but it was interesting enough.

The really cool thing about Florence was how similar the buildings were to those in Assassins Creed II. Obviously the game was based on the buildings in real life but going to the Cathedral and the Medici Palace and seeing how similar they were was impressive.

We arrived in Pisa late Thursday night and checked into the hotel. Dmitri, Natalie and I went out to eat and found a pizza place. When we walked in all the staff were watching a game of soccer, so it must have been pretty quiet but that also meant we got our food quickly. We each ordered a ‘huge’ pizza, thinking it would be a reasonable size, but it turns out huge really means huge. They were each 40 cm in diameter so no one got close to finishing theirs.

Friday

Friday morning we went to the Tower of Pisa. It was cool to see in real life and we took some photos before leaving for Nice at about 2.

The rest of the day was mostly spent driving because traffic turned a 6.5 hour trip into an 8 hour trip and we arrived at what must have been 10PM.

Saturday

Saturday morning Natalie made crepes and then we went to the beach. It was a rocky beach so not the greatest but it was a good day so that made up for it.

We sat on the beach for a while, then Dmitri and I went looking for something to eat. All of the places close to the beach were obscenely expensive so we went back to sit on the beach. Eventually we decided to eat at some American style place which wasn’t too badly priced.

Then we walked to a hill overlooking the bay and took some cool photos.

By this time it was dark and we had to be back in Barcelona by 11AM to drop the cars off so we left Nice for Barcelona. For some reason it took us a whole hour to find where the car was parked, and we left at around 10PM.

The trip was expected to take around 6.5 hours but we eventually got to Barcelona close to 6AM. The car place opened at 8 so we found food and waited, before catching the train home and falling into a coma for the next 24 hours.

Conclusion

So that was it, my first trip to Italy. At the end of the day it cost more than I would have liked thanks to the problems with the car, but it was still a good trip and now I have a better idea of the things I want to see next time I’m there.