Italy, Day 6, Rome

Today we were up early again, ready to head to the Colosseum. It is about a 20min walk from the hotel, so it was quite pleasant to walk there.
Before we set out, we had to have our usual coffee and something to eat, and were recognized as being South African by the owner of the coffee shop. He had a strong South African accent, but turns out he is from Rome and went to SA for 7 years, and picked up the accent while he was there.

The Colosseum is really impressive, and when you look at the building and the architecture that went into that a few thousand years ago, it really is quite extraordinary. We walked around and listened to the history on one of the headsets that you can hire. It sounds quite brutal with all the gladiator fights and the “hunts” that took place, but you have to wonder if you lived in those times would you have attended the games, as it was a normal thing to do?

After the Colosseum we headed to Palantine Hill where you could see the ruins of some of the Roman buildings, overlook the Circo Massimo where all the chariot races took place and a myriad of other sites that are around there. It is quite impressive how advanced the society was at that time and also how all of that could then disappear.

With all this walking, we had to stop and have a pizza.

At one of the ruin sites, we noticed a lot of cats around, just lying in amongst the ruins or sunning themselves on the top. It turned out there was a cat sanctuary there, and the cats enjoy the life in the ruins.

We headed back to the hotel for a while and then went out again to walk the area and find some new Piazza’s to look at, there are always some new ones around that you haven’t seen with some kind of a pyramid, statue or fountain to keep you entertained.

Italy, Day 5, Florence / Rome

Trevi Fountain

This morning the weather was a lot better, and with over 12 hours of sleep, we were both quite refreshed. As normal we started our morning the same way as the locals, by finding a small coffee shop and having some coffee and something to eat.

As it was our last morning in Florence, and the weather was a lot better, we walked around the area. Today everything seemed much nicer, we walked quite a distance and stopped for a few coffees along the way before heading back to the hotel to check out and head to the train station.

The trip to Rome was only 1h40, and was really nice to see the countryside. We found our hotel called Hotel Panda, which is right near the Spanish Steps. Carla found it in the Lonely Planet guide and it looks really nice.
The Pantheon

After checking in we walked around and saw some of the sights, the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, The Pantheon, Piazza Navona, and a few others that we are not sure of.

We had an early dinner and my first pizza in Italy that I have not really enjoyed. I was considering giving the place a second chance, but Carla said that if a pizza place in Italy cannot make a pizza properly, then they don’t deserve a second chance, maybe she is right.

The Spanish Steps

Italy, Day 4, Florence

We woke up early again, this trip the jetlag seems to be taking it’s time to disappear. It was raining again, and we had planned to catch the hop-on-hop-off bus. We are not really good at finding out about all the sights, so this would help us to understand what we were looking at and maybe appreciate it a little more.

The tour was pretty good, but the rain stayed the whole day and really started to get cold. I brought only one jacket, and this was a summery jacket so I was cold and wet. Actually starting to shiver continually which was making the day not so pleasant. Carla was only slightly better off.

We had seen a nice pizzeria earlier and decided to go back and try and warm up a little. After another excellent pizza and lasagna we were feeling a little better, but still a bit wet and cold. We had passed a market selling clothes, so I had to go buy a warm top to try and stop the shivering.

It is a really pitty about the weather, as I think it makes such a difference to your feeling of a place. Here in Florence it has been raining all the time, and we have been cold and wet.
We went back to the hotel and decided to warm up a bit before we headed out for dinner. I went for a shower and then jumped into bed to keep warm and close my eyes for 5 minutes… Carla then woke me up at 22:00 and asked if we were still going for dinner… it never happened.

Italy, Day 3 Venice / Florence

We only have a week here, so there is not a lot of time to spend in each place. We booked ourselves a train ticket at 10.45 to go to Florence. So after breakfast and after finishing off the pizza, we walked back to the station.

Oh, I nearly forgot, we are already hooked on the coffee. There is a wonderful tradition here, every morning people on their way to work stop by a coffee shop and have an espresso or macchiato, cappuciano etc and a fresh croissant. Everyone just stands at the counter and has their coffee. Carla and I have adopted this, and the coffee is fantastic. The only problem is that now we are having quite a few really strong coffees a day.

Unfortunately it started to rain as we got to the station and stayed pretty much the whole day. The hotel In Florence was called Hotel Merlini and was close to the station. It was the only hotel we could get into, but I would not recommend it to anyone else. It was clean, but had no character, and the owners were always cooking something that left a smell lingering permanently which was not very pleasant.
We walked around the little streets and went to a few Cathedrals in the area. For dinner we found a small Trattoria ( Mamma Toscana’s) and had gnocchi and lasagna.

Italy, Day 2, Venice

We were up early due to the jetlag, and I went out for a walk around the area. It was misty when I got up but soon lifted into a really beautiful day.

We were changing hotels and moving into Venice itself, to a place called Hotel Bernardi. The hotel was small, but was really nice with a stunning room. All tucked away in a back alley of Venice.

To get to Venice, we caught a bus to the main station and then caught a river bus to our hotel, it was a nice way to get around, except when we had to get off, we were on the wrong side of the boat and had to work our way through all the people to get to the exit.

We decided to explore and walk around the whole of Venice in a big circle. It is probably only about 4 or 5km, but with all the side alleys, you can get lost quite easily.

We really enjoyed the place, it had a really nice feel to it, like you were really back in some other time. I think it was also because there were no cars about that adds to the ambiance.
Of course I had been dying to have some good Italian pizza, so for lunch and dinner pizza was on the menu ( together with some Gorgonzola gnocchi, yum…) The pizza’s must have been the best I have ever had, we couldn’t finish them, so took nearly a full pizza back to the hotel…cold pizza in the morning…nothing better.

Italy, 19th April, Day 1

We had a busy morning trying to get ready for our flight today. Our flight was at 13:55 leaving from Incheon to Frankfurt. So we had to be there around 12:00 and it is an hour and a bit away, so we had to leave by 11:00.

We still had to get Storm into the kennel, which is on the American military base and can be a bit of an issue, but this time was not so bad. Carla and I are really softies and we felt bad for Storm, so we took her for a walk before the kennel.

The flight was okay, 11 hours in those small seats is not the most pleasant, but we survived by watching 3 movies each.

From Frankfurt we flew into Venice’s Marco Polo airport and caught a taxi to our hotel. We arrived at 23:10, and were really tired, our hotel was only about 1km away from the airport, but the taxi driver charged us 14 Euro. If we weren’t so tired, we would have found another solution, but we just wanted to get there and into bed, so we agreed to pay (suckers).
It was a then a quick shower and off to bed.