Pictures!!

If you'd like to see some pictures from Siena head to http://www.flickr.com/gp/73156107@N00/kPE753
Hopefully I'll be able to upload some more later!

F*ing Italians...

August 17, 2007

Out of a dead sleep I am drug by the persistent sound of drums. WHAT. THE. HELL. I stumble out of bed and go over to the window. Opening it all I see is the grey light of pre-dawn. Holy hell, you HAVE to be kidding me! I shut it again and look at my phone. 5-friggin-am. All I can manage is “fucking Italians…” before tumbling back into bed to sleep for another four hours.

I woke again around 9, took a shower and headed down for breakfast with Danielle, and met Sophie, Kate, and Heidi there. After breakfast we all went back up to the room, woke up the stragglers, and started packing up for checkout at 11. We headed downstairs, where I got to argue about the room rate. In Italian. We didn’t learn that in class, but I think I handled myself rather well. Didn’t get anymore off, but since we had five people crammed into a room meant for two, I guess we didn’t have a LOT of room to complain. So, I pay, we drop all our bags off to go into our rooms later, Danielle heads off to the bus to Milan, and I head off to do laundry. Laundry is ridiculously expensive here apparently. 7 euros for washing and drying a load. That’s like $11. Stupid prices. So, I do one load with my jeans and other things that would be difficult to dry in the room, and leave the rest to be washed in the room later. While everything is washing and drying I work on the paper that’s due on the first day of class. After it’s finished and I folded it, headed to the Campo, parked myself in one of the cafés, ordered a glass of Chianti, some water, some antipasti, some gelato, and worked on my schoolwork some more. While there the drummers show up again, marching across the bottom of the Campo. Turns out it’s the winning contrada parading around the city with the palio, which, besides being the name of the race, is also the name for the banner of the Virgin Mary that they win. Fascinating stuff. About an hour and a half later I headed back to the hotel, checked into my new room, unpacked for the first time, settled in, and that brings us to the present! Oh! I also got a bit of video of the drummers since they came near the hotel again while I was unpacking. Tonight I, Sophie, Laura, Kate, and Heidi (and maybe Katie and Leslie once they arrive) are headed to a Queen tribute concert! I have come to the incredibly insightful conclusion that Europeans LOVE Queen. How did I do this, you ask? It MAY have something to do with the fact that EVERY SINGLE CITY WE’VE BEEN IN SO FAR HAS PLAYED QUEEN. Every single one. Anywho, HOPEFULLY they will have the internet fixed by tomorrow so I can POST all of these blogs!!!

(Which, by the way, they have not fixed the internet connection, but if I stand holding my laptop over this one window I can see another wireless connection, and that's how I'm finally posting!! They kinda do everything on their OWN time...)

Palio! (Abbiamo vinto!!!)

August 16, 2007

I wake up around 9 and head down to the breakfast. Wow. So, most places have a tendency to exaggerate their breakfasts on their websites. I.E. – Athens Backpackers. Great place, but seriously, only hardboiled eggs and toast for breakfast. This place did not exaggerate AT ALL. Delicious fruit juice, variety of Italian meats and cheese, rolls, some delicious, sweet croissant looking things, a variety of cakes, fruit cocktail, and cappuccinos or espressos on order. A-frickin-mazing. After breakfast, I head back up to the room, get Danielle up, who then runs downstairs quickly to grab something to eat and comes back up.

At this point, Sophie leaves with the other girls to go find a grocery store. Danielle and I read for a while longer, then decide to go do laundry. Problem. Sophie took both room keys. Ooops! So, we do what any sensible person would do. We decide to break open the bottle of wine and chocolate bar we bought last night! Sure, it’s only noon, but, what the hey, we’re in Europe!

About and hour and a half later Sophie wanders in, and once she realizes she had both keys, apologizes profusely. Charlie shows up and he, Danielle and I head out to grab something to eat. We grab sandwiches from a place down the street, then wander up and get some more gelato (Danielle is addicted now…Ron better figure out how to make some!). On our way back, we decide Charlie has to buy some wine, so we stop at this little shop with wine and cheese. They have this deal, bottle of red with a huge hunk of pecorino cheese for 10 euro. We start chatting with the lady that runs it, telling her we’ll be here for one month and she invites us into her basement which is part of the old Etruscan settlement that was there! SO cool! It was part of the water system of the city. Simply amazing. We come back up and she tells us the history of it all and then invites us back another time for wine and cheese tasting. Then we head back to the room to watch the Palio on TV (I realize it’s a once in a lifetime thing, but seriously, did NOT want to fight those crowds, and we wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway). When we arrive, Laura has also arrived, so then we have to talk to Roberto about the fact that he “never saw her”…SUCH a good man! So, we head upstairs and watch all the parades, then the horses come on the track. Everyone is going NUTS! The order that they are lining up in are read out, as each is announced, their contrada cheers. Then we wait. One horse does not want to get into line. So, we wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, it’s like a blur, the horse gets into line and BAM they’re off. There’s seven of us in our hotel room going CRAZY cheering for Unicorn. Once around and Unicorn is in the lead!! Holy crap! We’re going nuts… “come on Unicorn!!!” Two times around, uh oh, red and white team is gaining on him… “COME ON!!!!” Third time….man this is getting TENSE!!! We’re screaming…then suddenly, it’s over…WE WON!!! ABBIAMO VINTO!!! Completely giddy we run downstairs to go grab a seat at a restaurant before they fill up. While everyone grabs the table, Roberto is kind enough to let me use his computer to buy Danielle a ticket from Siena to Milan the next day. After this I join everyone for some dinner. I decided on something light, so only got some melon and prosciutto, but again, simply delicious. The fruit in Europe is amazing. Because they don’t ship it three thousand miles right after it’s picked, it’s actually picked right at the height of ripeness, so there is just SO much flavor. So, after endlessly irritating the staff at the restaurant with our indecisiveness and English, Danielle and I head back to the hotel while the rest of the young crew headed out to party the night away.

The day when I found where I belong...

August 15, 2007

We checked out early, and thus began our absolutely insane day of trying to get to Siena. First we go to the nearby metro stop where the ticket lady insisted on correcting my pronunciation of two (Florentine Italian, the kind that’s taught in the schools in the U.S. pronounces it “doo-ay”, apparently the Milanese pronounce it “doo-ah”…whatever…) then we got on the metro to head to Garibaldi square, the place on the Sena website where they say they stop in Milan. Once there we go up looking for the bus stop. Not being able to find it, we walk into a café where I start to order a cappuccino freddo, and ask the girl (in Italian) where the bus stop is. She starts rattling back at me in Italian the directions for getting to another metro stop. I just stare at her in horror and say “Vero??”. Turns out, the Sena bus stop has not been at Garibaldi for, I dunno, five months!?! So, she gives me the directions again, I ask how long it will take, she says she’s not sure, maybe 20 mins.? Holy crap, the bus is due to leave in 35….Sorry lady, don’t have time for that cappuccino, but thanks so much. And we’re off…

We rush back down to the green line, which we take to the red line (for which, we have to wait for what feels like forever) then we finally get to the stop we need, Lampugnano. We rush up the stairs towards the buses, just in time to see him closing the last luggage compartment. I’m running (as best I can with a 45lb. backpack on my back and a 20lb. computer bag banging against my side) shouting “Signore! Per favore!”. We get up there, and he, all disgusted, re-opens the door, lets us put our luggage in, and we’re on. Whew! On the way to Siena we watched Hot Fuzz (GREAT movie! SO funny!) and read a bit. I swear though, I knew it the minute we crossed into Tuscany. Good lord, the pictures and movies do not do it justice. It’s this sun-drenched, verdant countryside dotted with little picturesque towns made of ancient brick buildings and piazzas. Absolutely stunning. There’s something that rises out of the earth here that just speaks to my soul. I know it sounds cheesy, but there’s no other way to describe it.

So, I make (kind of) friends with the guy sitting across the aisle from me since he seemed to know where he was going (I think he had been to Siena before) and once we got off the bus we tailed after him up to near the city center. He pointed us in the direction of the Piazza del Campo and we started walking. And walking. And walking. I asked another Italian lady where the Campo was. She replied “in fondo”, which basically means “straight ahead”. So, we walked straight. And ran into a wall. Apparently when Italians say “in fondo” they don’t necessarily mean “straight down that street”, they mean “it straight ahead of you as a crow flies”. Unfortunately, not being a crow, I was flippin lost yet again. I grabbed another Italian and pointed at our map and asked where we were on it, he had no clue. Geez! So, we walked, found ANOTHER person (at the top of a very large flight of stairs, mind you) and asked. He said it was the way we just came from. Are you KIDDING me??!! So we walk back that way, and sure enough, there’s a sign! Ta da! We finally make it to the Campo, walk to our hotel from there, get checked in (of course, we’re on the FOURTH floor, thankfully Roberto, the front desk man, is EXTRAORDINARILY helpful and carried our computer bags for us) and settle into the room. We both take showers, then we head out to get something to eat. We stop at a café in the Campo, get some pasta, wine, and LOTS of water. Then we get gelato. Danielle didn’t believe me when I said the gelato was amazing here. We had some in Athens that was mediocre, and I tried to explain that the stuff in Italy and France was beyond compare. So, she orders banana gelato and I get lemon. We both take one bite and almost in unison just grroooaaaannn with delight. Danielle says “NOW I know what you were talking about.” Ahh…..sweet vindication :)

So, after eating we start wandering around looking for where our balcony is supposed to be, while also just checking the area out a little. Right about the time we find the place Sophie calls me to meet up with us. I run out to the Campo to grab her, and we all head up to the balcony. Our balcony was right above the dangerous Casato curve (only less dangerous than the San Martino curve). While waiting for the festivities to start we gazed in amazement at the huge mass of people gathered in the middle of the Campo and were treated to endless repetitions of each contrada’s theme song. We were right above the “Snails”, but we had decided that since the contrada we were staying in wasn’t running this year we would cheer for the contrada right across the street from us, the Unicorn. Soon enough they cleared the track of people and trash and some local dignitaries made a trip around the track. Then some horses with men dressed in black traditional medieval garb trotted around the track once, then to the delight of the crowd, rapidly cantered around it once, the man in the front leading the charge with his drawn sword. As soon as they left the track, out trotted the horses from the contrade. At this, the crowd went wild. As each horse passed the group from their contrada, they went wild, waving their flags in the air, singing their song, or just yelling. Finally, the horses start lining up at the starting line. Each horse begins jockeying for position, ramming into each other, kicking at each other, until, suddenly, BAM, they’re off. You can immediately see that this is just a “prova” or practice. They want to race and have fun, but they don’t want to get hurt. Several riders hang back while they race around. Almost as quickly as it begins, it’s over and the blue and white team has won (not sure which sign they are…). The blue and white contrada goes crazy, pouring onto the race track, quickly surrounding the horse and jockey, singing their song. We watch from the balcony for a while, until we get a call from Heidi saying that she arrived early. So, we leave to head back to the hotel. We get Heidi checked in, then head out to find something to eat. We walk around for a while, and realize that most restaurants are COMPLETELY packed, so Danielle and I, not as hungry as the rest, decide to head back to the hotel, where we quickly fall asleep.

Another travel day, and our first day in Italia!!

August 14, 2007

Our final day in Prague was relatively unremarkable. We gathered our things, checked out (or “czeched out” hahahaha…I know, REALLY bad sense of humor, but SOMEONE is bound to laugh! May be from pity, but why should I distinguish…) and headed down to a café to have some breakfast and SEVERAL pear vodka and tonics. Gotta love drinking in the morning! Then we started the arduous journey to Milan.

We arrived in Milan around 6:30, caught a bus to the central train station, and grabbed a taxi to our hotel. So, yeah, if we thought the hostel in Prague was scary, the Milanese equivalent to the Bronx may have taken the cake. The hotel was super cheap, but super sketchy. However, we checked in, dropped our stuff off and headed out to eat. We didn’t venture far though, since we figured, hey, if the hookers can eat at an Italo-Chinese restaurant that serves pizza, so can we! We ate some delicious pizza and headed back for a fitful night of sleep to be constantly interrupted by all the mosquitoes attacking us.

More Travels...

I'm trying to break these up into a few different posts so I don't overwhelm you all!

Friday, August 17, Siena time 2:30pm

So, it’s been a while since I’ve written. After writing last time, we were both so tired, we just went straight to sleep.

August 13, 2007

The next morning we headed out, looking for a café that had been recommended in the magazine on the flight to Prague, unfortunately, after wandering in crazily oriented streets, we decided to forgo that place, and just find somewhere to sit and grab a bite. We found a place called “Tower Café” which was actually located in an old tower, very cute, ate some delicious cheese, a sandwich and a couple baileys and coffee. Then we headed off to find the Florenc bus station. We got to walk through some relatively shady areas of Prague, before finally asking someone where it was (a lot of hand gestures and pointing at names). Turns out, we were only a ½ block away! Wahoo! We wander into the enormous station with dozens of busses, deal with a rather harried and irritated ticket lady who directed us inside the station to buy a ticket to Kutna Hora, finally purchase a ticket, and went to sit on the bench near the stop. Thankfully, we only had to wait for 45 mins. for the next bus (they only come every two hours) and during that time I got some reading done, and we met a nice guy from Australia. He was thrilled to meet us since he had not spoken to native English speakers in a week. We determined that we were all headed to the same place (which is actually, come to find out much later, the Sedlec Ossuary, and NOT St. Barbara’s Cathedral, suppose I should have read that Rick Steve’s page a *little* better).

So, we all head onto the bus when it arrives and settle in for an hour and a half ride. As we get off the bus at Kutna Hora, another guy approaches us, also looking for the same place, and he’s from New Zealand (though we found out later that he’s actually living in London for the time being). So, since none of us has ANY idea where this place is, we head over to this little magazine shop that has this tiny, little old lady running it, who, OF COURSE, knows NO English! We buy a little map, and again with the hand gestures and pointing at names, finally determine where St. Barbara’s is. She also points at some other spot on the map at the top left, but since *I* think that St. Barbara’s is the location we want to go to, I don’t pay attention.

BRILLIANT! We head up to St. Barbara’s, with me gladly relinquishing the navigator position to our new friends. Once up there we are greeted with this stunning, gothic church. Absolutely gorgeous, but very obviously NOT what we were looking for. So, we look in our Australian friend’s guide book again, and it says “Sedlec Ossuary”, and NOT St. Barbara’s. Ooops! We look on the map, and sure enough, up where she had pointed, and I had ignored, was “Sedlec”. On. the. other. side. of. town. Crap…

So we start walking rapidly, since the last bus leaves at 5pm, and it’s now 3:20. We make it by about 4pm and are stunned. It is AMAZING. Simply amazing. The entire inside is completely decorated with human bones. The current design was done in 1870, though the collection of bones began when part of the surrounding cemetery had to be demolished in the early 16^th century. The one funny thing was all the obviously “goth” types of people hanging out in this church, you know, the kind with the “Satan is my God” t-shirts. Ah, sweet irony…

So, we left there and headed back towards the city center to catch our bus home. However, we had some time, so we stopped and grabbed some beer and water (my treat since it had been my mistake leading us up to St. Barbara’s, thankfully it ended up being only 78 crowns, or around $3.54, for all four beers and two waters). We made it back in time to catch the bus, and headed back to Prague. Once there, we all decided to head out to dinner together since the New Zealander knew of this place with ginormous steaks. So, we wandered for a bit until we found it, then sat down and had some heavenly ribeyes and french fries. After this we all said goodbye and good luck, then headed our respective ways. Back, once again, to our hostel straight out of a horror movie, I took a shower and we both headed to bed.

Ok, maybe not THAT awful...

Here's my post after our first full day in Prague...maybe they're not WOEFULLY undersized and inadequate...

Sunday, August 12, 2007, 8:30pm Prague time

So, our arrival in Prague left something to be desired…to say the least...Today, however was much better. Our last night in Athens was…long…shall we say. We decided, what the hell, only in Athens once, everyone we met at the hostel wanted us to come out, and really, all we had to do the next day was fly, who cares if we flew hung over? BAD. IDEA. We did not go to bed that night, just out all night with people from the hostel. The next day I struggled to stay awake on the metro to the airport, then called to mind every cuss word I could think of, in every language, when the “lovely” people at the Athens airport (yes, that was snide) took for-freakin-ever to start boarding the plane. Finally, we boarded and I got a few hours sleep on the first plane, then I was too sick to be able to sleep on the second leg of the flight. Quick aside – our layover was in Brussels, which is where the money is. Flying in and out, the entire city looked like suburbia on crack. Perfect homes, perfect lawns, perfect pools. I mean, we’re talking “Pleasantville” in color.

Anywho, I go from seeing Disneyland translated in suburban neighborhoods to Prague. This city is a combination of neo-Gothic, Art Nouveau, and Communist. Some gorgeous spires, some interesting buildings, and some very functional, grey squares. We get begrudging directions in the airport to get to the train station we need to be at. As we exit we were *strongly* encouraged to get a ridiculously expensive “taxi” (not one of the official ones) but we passed them by to get on the bus. The bus was fine, though crowded. 25 mins. later we got to the metro stop, got on our first metro, then transferred to our second metro, to finally get to one of the largest metro stations in Prague. At this point we start wandering. We finally ask for directions, we are told “up two levels, to the right”. Of course, at this point we are on the train platform. Ok, so we think we are not in the right place. We go back in, start looking some more. Danielle tries to approach two waitresses, they walk past her as if she didn’t even exist. I try to ask one of the workers, he says he has no idea. The friggin hostel is IN the goddamn station, and he doesn’t KNOW?? Ok, Danielle tries to ask other people. No idea. We sit and rest for a few minutes since we’re both exhausted, in pain from walking and extraordinarily heavy bags, and soaking with sweat. We go back down and find another “info” booth and ask. He says it’s one level up. I say, “right above us now”, he says “yes”. Unfortunately, that would mean THE EXACT SAME PLACE WE CAME FROM. By this time I am almost in tears. We finally were able to use some logic and thought, hmmmm…maybe the entrance is OUTside the station…brilliant! We find the hostel finally and go up to check in. Hmm…she doesn’t seem to have a reservation, and since my Outlook took a crap a few months ago, I don’t have the confirmation to give her, only an informational thing, which she HELPFULLY points out is not a confirmation. Yes, lady, I realize this, however, I received one, I just don’t have it printed out. Finally, we are able to come to an “agreement”. She will give us a BIGGER room for only a few more dollars. Fine, I just want a shower. So, we manage to check in, have a six bed room all to ourselves. After we took a shower and drank some water we felt like new people…albeit very TIRED people, so we promptly fell asleep.

We slept for about 11 hours, then headed into downtown. We hit Wenceslas Square where we had breakfast at an Irish pub, then walked to the Old Town Square, wandering down to the bridges, crossing Charles Bridge, up to the Prague Castle, into Nárdoní Art Gallery, where I FINALLY met my first NICE Czech person, a very helpful guard, then wandered back down and had some lunch/dinner at one of the oldest bars in Prague (founded in 1435). While there we met some lovely people from Budapest that sat with us. We chatted about our travels and their travels, they, of course, insisted we needed to go to Budapest. Finally, after a few beers (SO cheap here! Only $1.45 for a half liter of Pilsner Urquell) we wandered back towards the hostel. While walking up Wenceslas Square we hear this faint chanting behind us. Suddenly, behind us, materializes this semi-militant, most-likely-sports-related, group of loud people chanting SOMETHING in a foreign language. We were trying to figure out if they were trying to start a new revolution (most start in Wenceslas Square, apparently), or if this is just a regular Sunday evening occurrence.

So, now we are back in our hostel, writing about our days, and going to head out for dinner and maybe a few drinks (not drinking tomorrow night, no drinking before flying again, learned our lesson there!). Tomorrow we are headed out to Kutna Hora (oh, yeah, so when we stopped to ask at one of the “tourist information” places how to get to Kutna Hora, there was an Italian couple in there trying to find information on a “night walk” through Prague and *I* had to translate for them!!! SO exciting!!! I know, I’m a nerd…but I have noticed that the universal language in Europe is English, and I just happened to know enough Italian to translate…interesting to me.).

So, will write more tomorrow!