Friday 28 December 2007

Italia and the Rest!

After Prague, we were tired. But we decided to run through [literally] the rest of Italy, for sake of completion. At this point in time we just wanted to get to Finland, and rest our heavy luggage in our rooms. Italy was a bit disappointing from here on.

Some of the factors that hindered our enjoyment of this end of the trip were:
  1. Our Heavy luggage which we had to drag around all day since we did not book a hostel in these cities. We ended up having to pay the train station baggage check to keep it. and in Venice it was way too expensive so we paid a Chinese guy who owned a hotel to keep them in his lobby. Unfortunately he could not speak English, Italian, Spanish or sign language so he communicated in sharp prehistoric grunts and expressions of pain and agony. It was quite entertaining.
  2. Trenitalia, the train system in Italy was the worst, stinkiest trains in the world! i will never travel in italy by train again. There were people in our seats, people on the floor, ticket problems with the conductor, bad smell throughout and a lot more. We did mange, however to sneak into first class and sleep on the beds. Once in our trip to Milan, we almost missed our connection train at Bologna and had to run from one end of the train to the next, hopping over people to ge tour luggage and exit before the train left again.
  3. Since we didn't book hostels, we not only had now where for our luggage, but also no where to shower. Our solution? McDonald's of course! We started off the trip hating McDonald's, but in the end we loved it! There were free toilets, and rooms to wash up, free wifi in some places, coffee, food, warmth, hott girls [check out the Romanian cashier in Florence], and great maps [better than those in the tourist office], there was even a free McDonald's Bus in Florence! Our entire trips, began to be modeled around McDonald's and finding a McDonald's branch.
First: Venice. Not the romantic city that everyone talks it up to be, it was totally touristic and we were bombarded by tourists, tourist shops and souvenir sellers. You could not move, there were so much tourists, and every "house" was not a house but a tourist shop. IT raped the romanticism out of the entire city. Of course it was a beautiful city, but it was masked with this cesspool of tourists. There were however the dark lanes and corners that were tres romantique, but of course the reason there were no tourists there was that it looked like a total area where you would get mugged, robbed and raped. At the end, we sat in a park with some whiskey waiting for the train, like two homeless people :).

Next:
Florence, more impressive and romantic than Venice, this town was quiet, peaceful, serene, lovely. Of course the works of the genius Micheal Angelo was there, including the intricate sculptures such as the naked David. Since Pisa was so close, just 1 hour away and cheap, we decided to visit the famous leaning tower while we were there and had so much time to kill. Pisa was a beautiful small town as well, and we had a wicked sizzling pizza in Pisa! After this, we began our final trip to Milan. Now this famous capital was utter disappointment as well, since we had some administrative problems with our hotel [no wifi access :(], but this was mainly because we were so tired from our travels and just needed to get to Finlandia!

Italy was ok, maybe it may have been enjoyed more with the woman-love of your life rather than with just a guy-friend.
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