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A couple of days ago we arrived in Rome.

Rome is an incredible place - they’ve managed to build a city around runes and monuments that are thousands of years old.  Most of the roads are cobble-stone which make for a very bumpy bus ride from site-to-site and it doesn’t matter where you go, it’s impossible not to see something that is at least 10 times the age of anything we have in Australia.

Although the beauty of the city is only found within the main CBD (if you can call it that as it’s probably more accurately described as the Central Monument District as opposed to Business District).  We are staying about 8k’s outside town (at Rebibia which is the last stop on the Metro train line).

Out here, it’s hard to find a wall, seat, tree, bin, train (or anything else that can be grafittied) that isn’t graced with some form of urban artwork.  The locals look a lot more like the type of people you would find in the Ipswich (back at home, not over here in the UK) mall and when we went to a local pizzeria for dinner it was quite a cultural experience (and I don’t mean in a Gregory Peck / Audrey Hepburn ‘Roman Holiday’ way).

Yesterday we checked-out the Colosseum, the Roman Forums, the Pantheon (which took us a while to get to since we jumped on the right bus number, just going in the wrong direction, so we took the scenic route through via the outer suburbs and back again) and then we legged it over to the Trevi Fountain.

Today we got-up early to enjoy the breakfast provided by our dodgy hotel which consists of sweet rolls (basically supermarket packet croissants with lemon custard), or a small selection of other little cheap packet cakes and stale bread.  I’m convinced our room shouldn’t even be a room and prior to us arriving they cleared-out a storage area and pushed a couple of single mattresses together to make a double-bed… but it’s still tidy and cheap, so I can’t complain too much.

Then we headed into Vatican City and saw St Peter’s Basilica, enjoyed the tail-end of a church service being conducted by the Pope himself (due to the crowds of people we couldn’t get inside the chruch, buy the whole thing was televised on huge monitors just outside, so we could see and hear everything that was going on) and then we headed into the Vatican Museum that leads onto the Sistine Chapel.

The Sistine Chapel is beatiful but you cannot see it unless you go through the whole museum first and the museum is rather large, has lots of stairs and takes a lot of winding through various coridors of old artwork (that in most cases is quite beautiful) but after a while looking at random pieces of religous art by artists I’m not familiar with gets a little tedious.  That being said, there are some absolutely amazing corridors that lead to the chapel and some of the work is incredible… it’s just sad that there is so much (in my untrained artistic point-of-view) other boring stuff surrounding it.

We then cruised down to the EUR, Mussolini’s Fascist architecture suburb of Rome.  The only problem was that I have no idea what Fascist architecture looks like, so we wandered around for a while and then came home again.  Since being online back at the hotel, I’ve Googled ‘Fascist Architecture’ and found a few examples of what we should have seen, but must not have ventured far enough into the EUR, but no great loss… we’ve seen so many amazing things in the last couple of weeks that on Fascist building doesn’t even come close

Tomorrow night we’re catching the night train back up to Paris and will stay there for one night and catch-up on a few of the sites we missed the first time.  Then it’s up to Calais to catch a ferry across to the Cliffs of Dover.

Will hopefully get a chance to do another update from France (most likely via the mobile phone on a train somewhere), but if not, you’ll hear from me again when I’m back in the UK.

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So glad we decided to do the day trip to Pisa as it was great.

On the train ride there we were entertained by a lady from Madrid who didn’t know much English but insisted on telling us about her travels and drama’s for most of the hour-and-a-half trip. Even though we only understood half of her stories, we did manage to decipher that a Roma Card is a good public transport cost-cutting measure when in Rome.

When we arrived, we walked from station to the tower. There is a bit of grafitti around the station and en route to the Leaning Tower, but there was still a very warm and pleasant aura about the place.

The Leaning Tower wasn’t as tall as I was expecting (at least when viewing from the ground) but once you start clmbing the stairs and walk out onto the first platform, it seems much higher.

The first landing is about half-way up the tower and is roughly a metre and a half wide with a temporary railing (not unlike what you would see at a music festival surrounding a mosh-pit… or what the council sometimes use to surround a manhole that they are working on). They prettied it up a bit, but effectively the temporary railing and a metre and a bit of marble were all that separated you from a 4 storey drop.

What made things even scarier was the fact that when walking around the tower, you really notice the lean and it feels as though you’re walking down a slight slope (which usually wouldn’t bother me if I were walking down a hill, but when you’re that high and there isn’t much between you and the birds, it’s pretty terrifying).

Since I find myself uncomfortable on a 3-foot step-ladder, I was shitting myself and couldn’t go any higher. Even though I didn’t reach the top I was still really pleased that I can say that I’ve stood on one of the biggest architecural cock-ups of all time. It was awesome.

Not long after reaching the bottom we jumped on a bus back to the station and came back to Florence.

Tomorrow we head off to Rome for 3 days then will most likely head back to Paris for a day before returning to the UK for the final days of our holiday.

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Most books, people and websites that talk about Florence go on about how beautiful the city is.

It is the home to one of some of the most noted pieces of artwork ever created and architecturally it can hold its own with structures such as the Duomo… but as far as a city goes, it doesn’t seem to have any charisma left.

In its day I’m certain it would have been a place of awe and inspiration, but now with the hustle-and-bustle; the commercialism; pretentios fashion and dreary, dirty, run-down facades of every other building that isn’t the Duomo… it has certainly been a let-down.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m so glad I’ve come here and experienced this first-hand, it’s simply not quite how I imagined it.

So instead of exloring Florence further, we’ve decided to do a day-trip to Pisa to see a building that should have fallen-over years ago.

Kristy isn’t too keen to climb the leaning tower… Not sure if it s because it’s currently over 4m off its original axis or the fact that to get to the top you have to climb something like 400 stairs. But if we can squeeze it in, I’ll definitely be going to the top (even though I am scared shitless of heights).

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We’re just about to leave Venice and I have to say that this has been one of the highlights of our whole journey so far.

Venice is one of the most beautiful cities i’ve ever seen. It has a personality and charisma like no other. The streets are a maze which we got lost in (more than once) but each turn brings an enchanting new surprise that makes you forget the fact you are still no closer to your destintion.

The market areas are bustling but it’s not an uncomfortable clostrophobic experience navigating your way through people and the market owners are polite and let you decide instead of putting the ‘hard sell’ on you.

We booked our accomodation online and selectd an appartment instead of a hotel as it was cheaper due to the last minute booking website we used. Normally the place would have cost a little over 350 Euro a night but it only cost us about 70 Euro a night… and it was incdible.

The place looked like an Ikea showroom with funky modern furniture, a super comfy bed, awesome shower, air conditioning, a fully functioning kitchen stocked with all utensils needed to prepare gourmet meals… All of which is a God-sent after some of the crappier places we’ve stayed.

So with a sad sigh, we now leave Venice and head to Florence.

On other observations… The trollies at the train stations have a break which is pemanently on unless to press down on the trolley handle to release it. This took us a good 5 seconds to figure out, but while sitting her at the station I’m amazed at how few people have accomlished this. Two girls struggled for at least 5 minutes before taking their luggage off the cart and carrying it because they couldn’t work it.

As far as I’m concerned, travelling is a challenging experience and when things don’t go according to plan, you need some smarts and patience - if you can’t figure out how to use a trolley, you’re not going to handle all that international trave throws at you.

I also don’t think I’ve mentioned how long the days are over this side of the world. The sun usually goes down at 10pm and is back up again at 4am. This is good for sightseeing but also screws with your head.

They also have siesta’s and shops close at about 1 or 2pm and re-open at 3pm and then remain open til about 8pm. During the siesta period, the streets are dead except for tourists.

Pizza slices here are bigger than my head.

You can drink beer anywhere and the beers are bigger and cheaper than at home.

The late night TV and commercials in general are a lot more risque than ours.

Frsh produce has amazing rich flavours as does the ice cream and gelato’s. Last night I tried what I think is a common dessert - crepes with Nutella. Not as good as the icecream but still an experince.

That’s it for now. Will hopefully send through another update from Florence or at Rome where we’ll be heading after that.

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Over the past few days things havent quite gone according to plan and the one common denominator has been no planning = potentially crappy time.

Fortunately we have been able to turn each of these incidents to positive adventures, but we thought it was finally time we made some official plans.  So here we are sitting in an internet cafe in Milan booking our accomodation for Venice and Florence.  Since the bookings have been last minute, we have scored some good deals which is very exciting.  Also, the room we stayed in last night was the best we have had the whole trip (other than Con & Gerards of course ;)).

When we arrived in Milan it was fairly quiet and no one we asked knew where our Hotel (Albergo) was (even a couple of cops that we asked) but a taxi driver managed to get us to our destination which was about 15 minutes from the station - thats the last time I trust anyone from France… sorry all you Frenchies, but we were not overly impressed with our brief time in Paris and no one was particularly helpful no matter how hard we tried to talk in French (although perhaps my gruff HAW HAW HAW laughs as I wandered around saying Croissant and Sacred Bleu probably didnt help).

But all is looking good now.  We are about to check out the Duomo and then we will be off to Venice.     

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Let’s try this again… It looks like my previous post on Paris didn’t work, so here’s another try…

Arrived in Paris yesterday.

Had a little trouble getting our bearings (street signs are hard to understand and not simply due to the language differences).

From the small amount of Paris that we’ve seen, streets seem to be labeled on the sides of buildings instead of using sign posts. The sign posts seem to identify further destinations (ie. go down that road to get to such-and-such street). This may not apply everywhere, but it’s one small observation.

Another observation is smoking. EVERYONE smokes here. On the topic of observations, I think I forgot to mention an interesting Brittish observation… Everyone reads the paper. School kids to businss people - if your at a Tube stop, train station (trains that run underground are called the underground or tube. Trains that run above ground are called overlands or simply are referred to as ‘trains’) you’ll be hard pressed not to see someone without a newspaper in hand.

Anyways… Back to Paris.

We got lost trying to find a hostel, then after wandering around in Queensland temperatures for about an hour we finally found the place… and it was fully booked, so we wandered around a bit more before deciding it would be far easier phoning a few places mentioned in our Lonely Planet guide instead of wandering around any further.

As it turned-out, most places had no rooms available, so we walked into the first dodgy looking hotel we could find and luckily they had a room for us.

The room was small, very basic - bed, shower (which was a huge bonus) a small table and a window with a beautiful view of the back of the building in front of us. But it was still a room and it was on par with hostel prices and ample for our needs.

After settling-in we went for a walk down to the Moulin Rouge (through the red light district) and organised tickets to the 11pm show later that evening.

The show was spectacular spectacular and worth every cent.

Today we’ll check-out the other major sights like the Eiffel Tower etc. and then hopefully we’ll jump on a night train down to Nice.

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In the last blog post earlier today we were planning on having a relaxing day of sightseeing around Paris and then catching the night train to Nice.
But that didn’t quite happen. We purchased the train tickets only to double-check them to discover it wasn’t the train trip we had planned. Turns-out the night train (which has sleeping booths and leaves about 11pm and arrives at your destination the following morning) was fully booked, so the guy had put us on the train departing a little earlier and would have arrived in Nice around midnight.
Since we have no accomodation organised in Nice, we would have been screwed because a lot of places don’t allow late check-in.
So we managed to get them to change the tickets to Milan instead.
This wasn’t our first preference, but it gets us closer to Florence, Vennice and Rome so that’s always a good thing. And what’s even better is that the train lady who helped us change the tickets hooked us up with some accomodation in Milan which is apparently nice and close to the station.
This only left us a couple of hours to see the major sites in Paris.
So we frantically planned a couple of metro train routes that should have encompassed a few of the things we wanted to see.
As it turns out, we got majorly lost and we didn’t see a thing. Luckily we’ll be heading back this way en route to the UK for our flight home, so if we’re more organised we should be able to make-up for lost time.
One good thing is that by wandering around lost, stuffing-up tickets and being forced to reorganise at the last minute, we’ve trully had a great taste of what France (and French people) are like.
When we get to Milan I think we’ll acually plan a few things ahead of time so we can avoid little mix-ups like this over the coming weeks.
Other than some of these little detours and diversions, we’re having a great time!

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Due to sightseeing and socialising, I haven’t had a chance to do a proper recap of our short time in the UK.
But over the past few days it feels like we’ve done a hell of a lot and we have lots of photos to prove it We’re now sitting on the EuroStar and will arrive in Paris in a couple of hours.
Will keep you posted once we arrive and settle-in… But for now I can’t stop giggling about the conductor’s voice on the overhead speaker - he sounds just like the police officer from Allo Allo “Good Moaning…”

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Arrived in London two days ago.

Everything went fairly smoothly - passed through customs, claimed our bags, picked-up a bottle of duty-free scotch for Con since we made him wait at the airport for 4 hours unnecessarily the day before.

Caught the Tube from the airport to Hammersmith where Con met us so we could jump on a bus to Putney where we would be staying with friends. After the bus had been twisting its way through the London streets for a while, Con realised that the bus didn’t appear to be going where he thought it should be… so he checked with the driver and as it turns-out we had been on the wrong bus the whole time.

We jumped-out, Con got his bearings and he decided the best route would be to navigate our way to the nearest Over Ground train station, catch the train to the next stop (which is roughly where we should have ended-up in the first place if we had of been on the correct bus) and then walk the rest of the way to Chris and Gerard’s place.

In theory this sounded fine, until we had been walking for about 15 - 20 minutes (with our 15kg backpacks and little-to-no sleep for 48 hours) just to get to the train station and then once we arrived at Putney station, we had to continue walking for a while before we reached our destination.

We can all look back and laugh at this now (and to be honest, if you rely on Con for navigation, you usually will never take a direct route… even if you start-out with one). And then later that night when we were chatting with Chris and Gerard, they rubbed further salt in the wound by saying that where we had jumped off the bus originally, was only a couple of blocks away on the other side of the park (or ‘Common’ as I believe they are called over here) across the road from their house.

So effectively we were within 5 minutes of their house, but instead we walked in the opposite direction to a totally different suburb to catch a train to the other end of the suburb we were already in before, only to get to a location that was less than (approx) 250m of where we started from in the first place.

At least we got to see what a majority of the Putney area of London looks like.

We then had a shower, a coffee, a couple of alcoholic beverages and we were ready to explore again.

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