(no subject)
Back from Italy. It was a good experience. I suppose the trip is worthy of an entire post.
My immediate family (mother, father, brother) and two of my cousins and my aunt and uncle were traveling together. We started in Rome, which is a very interesting city. I found the city layout of Italian cities to be immediately interesting, what with these winding alleys and one-way street labyrinths. Also, Rome is an interesting city because all the Roman ruins are right there in the city, as is the Vatican.
Anyways, we spent some time wandering around Rome, seeing the ruins, the Colosseum, etc. Likewise, we had one day devoted to seeing Vatican City, of which my most prominent memory is that it was hot and the line was ridiculously long. Anyways, it's not like you can wander around Vatican City, you're pretty much restricted to seeing the Vatican's collection of art and other such treasures. That was interesting, especially since my older cousin has some knowledge of art, especially Renaissance art. The only problem was that the heat basically made us all really tired by midday (my mother especially has a terrible heat tolerance). When we got around to seeing St. Peter's Basilica, we were too tired to actually look around. We also spent a day seeing some catacombs, which was interesting and the catacombs were cool (temperature-wise; this is important), but the catacombs tour was sadly very short, so we spent the rest of the day marching back into Rome from the outskirts.
We then went to Sorrento, with the primary purpose of seeing Pompei. Pompei was basically a bunch of ruins. It's huge, really, and of course they are preserved to a reasonable degree. The most interesting part of Pompei is that because Vesuvius erupted so suddenly, they've recovered and reconstructed human bodies, that were basically frozen in time upon their death due to lava and hot ash falling upon them. Creepy.
From there we drove up to Florence. We originally intended to stay at a rented villa for a week, but my mom and aunt found the air conditioning to be inadequate. We're still fighting with said villa over pre-paid money. That wasn't so fun, but we settled into a nice hotel and the rest of the week went by well, with all of us seeing a bunch of museums and churches in Florence.
We then went to Venice and spent two nights there. Venice strikes me as the most unlikely city ever. I doubt there's another city like that. The city itself is largely kept alive by its tourist trade now, although evidentally there's a significant vinyl industry there too (or something like that). I wouldn't deny it, Venice is a really cool place. Taking a water taxi into the city was very interesting (there are no roads in Venice, only footpaths and canals, so cars can't enter Venice). Likewise, in addition to the cool canals, there are some pretty awesome buildings too. In short, it was cool, and I'd like to have spent a few more days there.
Anyways, from Venice we drove up to Milan and spent a night there, then flew home. During our one night in Milan, we saw the opera Lucia di Lamamoor at the La Scala (bah, spelling), which is a rather famous opera house. I would actually not recommend anyone actually going to the La Scala, by the way, as it's impossible to get good seats there (before tickets go on sale, all prime seating and boxes are probably already taken by companies, season-holders, etc.). As such, we watched the opera from a side box. The opera house seating is curved so that all the boxes can see each other, and as my cousin explained, this is because going to the opera used to be a primarily social experience and therefore everyone wanted to see each other. What this meant for us in a side box, though, is that the seating's curve blocked half the stage. Meh. As for the opera, it was ok, although the staging was terrible. They just stand there and sing, for the most part. Mind you, they sing very very well.
And that's a summary of the trip. I got back yesterday night.
EDIT: Incidentally, seeing the World Cup in Italy was very interesting. For the game between Italy and Germany, my aunt insisted that we watch that in a restaurant with Italians, which was fun. The ride back from that restaurant wasn't so fun. After the game, all Italians took to the street, riding around and honking there horns and waving flags, so the ride took forever. When we hit a large piazza, we found it was swamped with people who, in there celebratory mood, decided to beat on the windows of any cars passing through and try to open the car doors and rock the car. -_-; I kind of would've liked to go out and see how the Italians celebrated winning the deciding game against France, since I was in a Venice at the time (would they have ridden around boats, honking horns?! That've been cool to see!), but we decided to stay in our hotel to watch the game just to be safe.
Oh yes, by the way, goal kicks are a retarded way to end a game. What a cruel thing to do to the goalie! I mean, I was happy Italy won (yay, no riots!), but goal kicks leave a sour taste.
My immediate family (mother, father, brother) and two of my cousins and my aunt and uncle were traveling together. We started in Rome, which is a very interesting city. I found the city layout of Italian cities to be immediately interesting, what with these winding alleys and one-way street labyrinths. Also, Rome is an interesting city because all the Roman ruins are right there in the city, as is the Vatican.
Anyways, we spent some time wandering around Rome, seeing the ruins, the Colosseum, etc. Likewise, we had one day devoted to seeing Vatican City, of which my most prominent memory is that it was hot and the line was ridiculously long. Anyways, it's not like you can wander around Vatican City, you're pretty much restricted to seeing the Vatican's collection of art and other such treasures. That was interesting, especially since my older cousin has some knowledge of art, especially Renaissance art. The only problem was that the heat basically made us all really tired by midday (my mother especially has a terrible heat tolerance). When we got around to seeing St. Peter's Basilica, we were too tired to actually look around. We also spent a day seeing some catacombs, which was interesting and the catacombs were cool (temperature-wise; this is important), but the catacombs tour was sadly very short, so we spent the rest of the day marching back into Rome from the outskirts.
We then went to Sorrento, with the primary purpose of seeing Pompei. Pompei was basically a bunch of ruins. It's huge, really, and of course they are preserved to a reasonable degree. The most interesting part of Pompei is that because Vesuvius erupted so suddenly, they've recovered and reconstructed human bodies, that were basically frozen in time upon their death due to lava and hot ash falling upon them. Creepy.
From there we drove up to Florence. We originally intended to stay at a rented villa for a week, but my mom and aunt found the air conditioning to be inadequate. We're still fighting with said villa over pre-paid money. That wasn't so fun, but we settled into a nice hotel and the rest of the week went by well, with all of us seeing a bunch of museums and churches in Florence.
We then went to Venice and spent two nights there. Venice strikes me as the most unlikely city ever. I doubt there's another city like that. The city itself is largely kept alive by its tourist trade now, although evidentally there's a significant vinyl industry there too (or something like that). I wouldn't deny it, Venice is a really cool place. Taking a water taxi into the city was very interesting (there are no roads in Venice, only footpaths and canals, so cars can't enter Venice). Likewise, in addition to the cool canals, there are some pretty awesome buildings too. In short, it was cool, and I'd like to have spent a few more days there.
Anyways, from Venice we drove up to Milan and spent a night there, then flew home. During our one night in Milan, we saw the opera Lucia di Lamamoor at the La Scala (bah, spelling), which is a rather famous opera house. I would actually not recommend anyone actually going to the La Scala, by the way, as it's impossible to get good seats there (before tickets go on sale, all prime seating and boxes are probably already taken by companies, season-holders, etc.). As such, we watched the opera from a side box. The opera house seating is curved so that all the boxes can see each other, and as my cousin explained, this is because going to the opera used to be a primarily social experience and therefore everyone wanted to see each other. What this meant for us in a side box, though, is that the seating's curve blocked half the stage. Meh. As for the opera, it was ok, although the staging was terrible. They just stand there and sing, for the most part. Mind you, they sing very very well.
And that's a summary of the trip. I got back yesterday night.
EDIT: Incidentally, seeing the World Cup in Italy was very interesting. For the game between Italy and Germany, my aunt insisted that we watch that in a restaurant with Italians, which was fun. The ride back from that restaurant wasn't so fun. After the game, all Italians took to the street, riding around and honking there horns and waving flags, so the ride took forever. When we hit a large piazza, we found it was swamped with people who, in there celebratory mood, decided to beat on the windows of any cars passing through and try to open the car doors and rock the car. -_-; I kind of would've liked to go out and see how the Italians celebrated winning the deciding game against France, since I was in a Venice at the time (would they have ridden around boats, honking horns?! That've been cool to see!), but we decided to stay in our hotel to watch the game just to be safe.
Oh yes, by the way, goal kicks are a retarded way to end a game. What a cruel thing to do to the goalie! I mean, I was happy Italy won (yay, no riots!), but goal kicks leave a sour taste.