tent pictures make you look 100

From Dark City

From Dark City

where in the world are Carmen, Mike, and Andy?

on ferris wheels:

From France: First days in Paris

dancing on bars:

From France: First days in Paris

jamming out:

From France: First days in Paris

big and little venice

from Cinque Terre, we had a pretty ridiculous travel day, including 5 separate train trips and one bus connection. i don't know if too much of it was noteworthy, but here are a couple of the quicker stories (if you don't care for humorous traveling stories, skip to the pictures):
1. while still in Cinque Terre that morning at a train station, a blond american girl walks up to carmen and says "La Spezia??" is a very high-pitched, prolonged, "will-this-italian-person-understand-my-question" sort of way. (La Spezia is a nearby town/train station and she was clearly asking if this was the right train to get there."
carmen replies, "it's ok, i'm american.. i speak english."
the girl, not even giving this any time to sink in, again says, "La Spezia??"
carmen: "i speak english. no, this train is the opposite direction of La Spezia."
girl: "La Spezia??"
girl's friend (flabbergasted): "dude, she's speaking english.. it's the other train!"
girls run off.

2. during our day of travel, we had a one hour stop in Parma (home of cured ham), where we were supposed to take a bus to our next train station (ended up being a 5 minute bus ride). the bus got there at the beginning of the hour, but for some reason, the woman driving would not let people on because it wasn't time yet. (they LOVE to tell people no.) one of the people waiting was a guy with a tiny baby. about 10 minutes later, it started to totally downpour. the man with the baby approached the bus, but nope, no dice, even with a wet baby, you can't get on a bus early.

3. just as a random note: italian train service.. wow. we have been spoiled by german and swiss train service, which is all automated and when you buy tickets, a schedule is printed that tells you when and where to get off your train to connect to a new one, and even which platforms to go to. not at all in italy. you buy a ticket (and usually you're lucky if the worker at the desk doesn't try to sell you a ticket for 3 times what it should be, which happened to us until we called the woman out.) and then you just get a tiny stub that tells your end destination. there might be no transfers or there might be 5.. it's up to you to find that out (and train maps with all the stops on them are VERY rare) and determine where and when to make those transfers. fun.

anywho, that was all just an aside. at the end of the travel day, we reached Peschiera del Garda, on the Lago di Garda, where we found a great campsite right next to the lake. it seemed like a great town and the lake was beautiful, but we were in a hurry to get to Venice, so we didn't stay long. also, there was a bit of fog, so any pictures we took will not compare to these.

From Italy: Venice

after our crazy travel day, we got to venice, and holy balls, that place is completely nuts.

a fork in the river and bridge we could never find again. From Italy: Venice

this picture will always remind me of how crazy it is to get around venice. you can walk around, thinking you are keeping track of markers on the way, remembering bridges and canals, and then just never find your way to that spot again. we had a couple hilarious late-night walks, trying to find our way from a random spot back to the hotel, wandering around and constantly coming to dead-ends at canals or the same plaza again.

grand canal, thinking about squid ink spaguetti. From Italy: Venice

laundry alley/"fetch me brown pants!"From Italy: Venice

vaparetto. From Italy: Venice

if you go to venice, i definitely suggest the main vaparetto down the grand canal. it's really essentially a public bus, but it makes every stop down the canal and to a tourist, is a cheap hour-long boat ride and tour of the city. most of the time, i watched the guy working the ropes. since the boat doesn't slow to a stop, he has to lasso the dock, tie a quick figure 8 knot and get his hands out before the moment it tightens.. i thought every time he was going to lose a finger or two.

From Italy: Venice

Treviso:

little V. From Italy: Treviso

we flew out of Treviso, and decided to spend a day there. we had heard it was known as "Little Venice", which is just a blatant lie, but it is a pretty great river town and better than a lot we had been to. it has an old city wall-turned walking path that goes about half-way around the town and is a good place to sit and drink boxed wine. maybe we haven't talked about that yet, but italian boxed wine is so damn good. we became connoisseurs of the many brands of boxed red wines. three advantages to the box: it is easier for traveling since public drinking is 100% ok in italy; you can be sure they won't sneak in any bubbles, which they are very fond of; street cred.

notice the "fun-sized" wine boxes.. juice box sized! From Italy: Treviso

this is the fontana delle tette (literally Tits Fountain). when a new mayor was elected in treviso, for three days, red wine would be pumped through one of the breasts and white wine through the other. a totally amazing tradition which we assumed was over, but apparently it's not! i just found these pictures of a rebuilt tits fountain (1 and 2) which we never saw, but i guess they're keeping the tradition alive.

From Italy: Treviso

there is a pretty big university in town and a ton of bikers.. never a bad thing.

one of the most bad ass things you could build: water wheel. From Italy: Treviso

and now.. we feast! From Italy: Treviso

also in town, right when we were reaching near-starvation, we found the most incredible chinese take-out of all time. 3 euro for one of these heaps of chinese goodness.. if only it were in paris, i'd eat there bi-weekly at least.

From Italy: Treviso

as a fairwell to italy, we spent our last day roaming the city and getting pretty canned on boxed wine. amazing country!

five earths

trillion dollar views. From Italy: Cinque Terre

after some discussion, we decided that Cinque Terre was definitely our favorite place we've been in Europe and for each of us, in the top 5 places we've ever been. the hiking is amazing, there is so much to explore that we really only saw a bit of it in 2 days, and the views are unreal.

lemon groves and wine vines.. i think. From Italy: Cinque Terre

if you haven't heard of Cinque Terre (we hadn't before we met some people from italy), it is italian for "five earths". it's a series of 5 villages on the Mediterranean, with almost no cars (it's a national park), no chain restaurants of any kind.. just local stores, tons of hiking trails, and each of the towns is reachable by train, electric bus, or steep hiking trails that go up along the mountainside next to the sea and back down into town.

a lot of the trails were pretty heavily wooded. From Italy: Cinque Terre

From Italy: Cinque Terre

our personal crumbling trail. From Italy: Cinque Terre

the morning of our second day, we stumbled on a little wooden walkway attached to the cliff. it kind of looked closed, but we weren't sure, so we kept going. plus it was nice to be on a trail with no one else on it. as it went on, it seemed more and more questionable, with railings that were really loose, totally washed out areas, and occasionally a spot where a huge boulder had rolled down and taken out a whole section of the walkway.. at which point we had to lean against the cliff and shimmy across. of course, whenever we got to a part like that, we thought we had come too far to go back.

strictement interdit. From Italy: Cinque Terre

as usual on this trip, we got to a fence telling us there is no access, but after we already walked through the dangerous part. so we had to jump this spiky fence and after we got over, everyone was asking us how to get into the area we were just in. "no, no, you can't go in there."

From Italy: Cinque Terre

all along these walks, there are huge stalks from dead century plants.

From Italy: Cinque Terre

From Italy: Cinque Terre

all in all, this place was totally amazing. whether you like to hike, bike, sunbathe nude, eat, or get drunk on fizzy wines (both red and white), i'd recommend it.

they have a leaning tower and...

our next stop was real quick, also. we decide to hit up Pisa on the way to Cinque Terre and see what this leaning tower business was all about. we took the train straight from Florence, made our way to the campground and immediately could tell that...

yes, the tower is the ONLY reason that people come to Pisa. From Italy: Pisa

we kept discussing while in town where all of the Pisa tourist money must go, because while the little plaza that the leaning tower is in is meticulously well kept, the rest of the city is, to be honest, a complete dump. on our short walk to the plaza, we passed several piles of trash that (no exaggeration) had used hypodermic needles in them. i'm not one who generally cares about the cleanliness of a city, but wow.

these gates admit you not only to the wonder of a large leaning tower, but also the relative safety of a plaza free of heroine use. From Italy: Pisa

From Italy: Pisa

if you don't know anything about the Pisans, time to use some wiki. they were complete badasses that dominated sardinia, corsica, and a ton of the italian mainland, then conquered random cities in africa and the middle east just for the hell of it. then it all completely collapsed like their poorly designed tower.

yup, it's leanin'. From Italy: Pisa

market cornered on david statues

saw dome.. moved on. From Florence: Italy

so we had each heard from various people that florence was ok for a stop, but not really that great compared to other italian cities. so we decided to stop and take a look, since we needed to do a train connection there anyway, but to keep it brief. we had joked about making tourist books called "2 hours in ____" and, as it turned out, our visit would have been perfect for the first book/pamphlet "2 hours in Florence" and took almost exactly that long.

we have several postcards with a close-up of David's junk. if the USPS allows it, you just might get one. From Florence: Italy

fun fact: during the Renaissance era, a small penis was considered "fashionable". hence, the proportions of all of the statues you see.
(i'm sure someone will point out that this is actually the replica of the real david, but that is a lie.)

while we were at it, we decided to do the david-trifecta and see the other two (better) david statues:

Leonardo's gay David. From Florence: Italy

Verrocchio's bad ass David. From Florence: Italy

so this adds another thing to our list of things we really never need to see again: arcs, paintings of the crucifixion, statues of david.

just like the picture! From Florence: Italy

"come back in like... 3 hours"

after Perugia, we decided to head to a campground on Lake Trasimeno and chill for a couple nights. after quite a hike from the train station, we finally found it and checked in. after our few months in Europe, we had already learned to accept the typical laziness and extreme lack of customer service, but Camping Lido Trasimeno really took it to new levels.

for example, all the pictures you can find of the place on the internet look something like this, or maybe a picture of people partying around a bad ass pool or hot tub:

imported sand? From their website

but i can only imagine that those pictures were taken 5 years ago or more because even the simplest things to upkeep have not been done. it was sad really, seeing all their boats that didn't get covered over the winter, or even turned over, just totally ruined.. not to mention one of the pools didn't even get covered. all around us, things were falling apart and asking about any service that was allegedly open (restaurant, bicycles, sand on the beach, internet,...) always led to one of two responses: "sorry, we are still opening" or "we aren't open yet". granted, we were the only people staying there, but considering there were 6 or 7 people "working" and we were checked in, it was pretty reasonable to assume they were open.

anyway, we just like to be dramatic.. it was actually a really awesome site, if only because it was so remote, yet still on the shore of the lake and surrounded by medium sized mountains. also, that first night, we decided if the employees were so apathetic about their own site, why should we care? so rather than asking permission for anything so that they could say no without thinking about it (it's the european way), we started scavenging for wood around the campground, including some of their old palettes and pieces from their quickly collapsing dock. i also bought some "fire-starters" which were actually just little dense cubes soaked in gasoline. then we had a pretty monster fire at our site and got fall down drunk on some local Lemoncello knockoff. (and i only say fall down drunk because carmen actually fell into my chair and knocked me down, then almost fell into the fire)

Lemonce is the drink of kings. From Italy: Trasimeno

like at any great fire, we spent much of the time debating who got to hold the best fire poking stick. From Italy: Trasimeno

having the fire probably doesn't seem that unusual, but europeans don't understand wanting to start a fire when you're camping AT ALL. at one point in the night (a few other people had started to show up by then), another camper walks by and in a strong french accent says, "where are you from?" "america." "oh, of course.. bar-b-que, non?"

the next day, we decide to rent some bikes, so around noon we walk up to the front desk where 2 people are working, one guy just sitting with his head in his hands. i say slowly to the woman (who we found out speaks a bit of english):

"can we rent two of the bikes?"
she translates to the guy, who never budges from his head-in-hands position.
girl: "yes, but you need to wait until later in the afternoon."
me (confused):"ok.. when?"
after conferring with her friend: "after 3."
i looked at my watch and look back to her: "umm.. is there any way we can get them a little sooner than that?"
she translates to the guy, who lets out a long sigh, SLOWLY stands up and walks over to unlock the bike room. this was far from the end of the guy's problems though. every time there was a new problem, such as the tires, obviously flat after being left all winter, he would try to explain to me how there was nothing he could do, the bikes were broken.. i would explain i knew perfectly well how to pump up a tire, he would sigh a long sigh again and pump them up himself. repeat that whole description when the brakes needed adjusting and repeat again when one bike had dropped a chain. but, whatever, "you've gotta pay the troll toll if you want to get the boy's soul."

my muslim friend carmen watches the bikes. From Italy: Trasimeno

once we had those bikes though, the trail riding through the woods around the lake was really damn fun. we rode out to the town Castiglione del Lago, which has an awesome old walled pedestrian town on top of a big hill, with a castle at one end. we could hardly walk 50 feet without being offered tasters of wine, cheese, and cured pork cutlets from any of the shop-keepers (who all hilariously sold the exact same thing in the exact same packaging).

storming the castle. From Italy: Trasimeno

heading down from Castiglione. From Italy: Trasimeno

after the bike ridin' we spent the night exactly the same way, with fire and booze, then woke up, packed up, got a ride to the station from the extremely loud and annoying campsite owner (who spent most of his morning screaming at his employees (or family, we don't know) about how they were idiots and couldn't do anything right), and got ready for our next stop, a ridiculously short trip to Florence.

It's pronounced Per-roo-Gee-ya

Perugia is the capital city of Italy's Umbria region. My friend Lynda used to tell us about what great legs she had from climbing up and down the city's steep streets. This and all the pasta and pizza they would eat.

It's the only city I've been in that uses escalators not only to get people from one department floor to another, but to get pedestrians from one city elevation to another. The place is that steep.

Riding elevators from plaza to plaza. Italy: Perugia

Most of them that we were on were outside.

Up the escalator. Italy: Perugia

One particularly long one went underground for a ways before dumping us back out in the sunshine.

And down the escalator. Italy: Perugia

Lonely Planet directed us to Casa Spagnoli Bed and Breakfast, but instead of the promised cantankerous Spanish speaking grandmother, our host was a cute little woman from Spain who spoke english and had a beautiful spanish nose. I think she was the cantankerous grandmother's daughter. Our room was like a loft, with wood floors, sloped ceiling and a little window looking out to the patio.

If anyone has seen James Bond Quantum of Solace, and you remember the car chase at the beginning- that was in Siena Italy, which is nearby and very like Perugia.

The kind of views you can't really get enough of. Italy: Perugia

The hills were as steep as Lynda promised and the pizza just as good.

The pizza was much much better than the lighting. Italy: Perugia

We were only there one night, but after our crazy Roman holiday, the quiet, quaint streets of Perugia and amazing as-far-as-you-can-see views were awesome.

King of Perugia! Italy: Perugia

Roman Exidus Part Deux

So, Part I was pretty long for a blog post, so I'll wrap up. The short ending to a long story is this:

We made it to the airport just fine. About 35, 40 minutes by bus. Once we arrived, it was another 20 minutes to take the shuttle to the rental place. (Which, after we waited for the next shuttle to drive us to the rental place, we discovered it was a 10 minute walk, at most).

Anyways. We make it finally. Go to the counter, present ID. Asked for a credit card. We have our Visa Check cards. We're told that is not a credit card. It's a debit card. Not accepted. And that is it. Neither of us have a credit card on hand. No credit card, no car. There are 6 other car rental agencies there and only two will accept debit, one of which has no cars. The other charges about 4 times what our reservation was.

In short. After all that, no car for us. Back to the terminal, back on the bus we had spent our morning tracking down, and right back to Rome, exactly where we had started. It turned out we were taking a train out of Rome after all.

Roman Exidus Part I

What day is it? Thursday. It's been awhile since our last post... resting up after that week in Germany and Switzerland. Where were we. Rome.

Getting to Rome was a lot easier than getting out of Rome. After the burn of missing our ferry, not getting to see Mt. Etna and not having a car, we had decided in Cagliari to look instead into getting a car on the mainland. As it turned out, we found a rental for an entire week for like $200 euro or something. All we had to do was get to the airport and we were golden!

We will have you, automobile!

The day we were to leave, we got up early and headed for the main station. I think we got there around 10am. Our pick up was at noon. Plenty of time. All we had to do was catch a shuttle out to the airport. Once we got to the main station, we headed right to the tourist information desk to inquire where and how to embark upon this shuttle. It was the obvious place to ask for information, right? Well, the lady said there was a ticket place down the street, on the corner, and she waved in the general direction we were meant to take.

Easy peesy. We start walking. After about 10 minutes, we find a kiosk on a corner. "Avete bigliette de autobus?" we ask, which is singsong for, Do you have bus tickets. "Si," says the greasy Italian in the booth. "Per aeroporto?" we clarify. "No," says the greasy Italian in the booth. Uhhh... "Dove le bigliette for aeroporto?" I ask, which in retard Italian, means, "where are airport bus tickets?". The man just shrugs and goes back to his paper.

GD. We look at each other, and then just stand there, squinting in the sunlight and hoping that maybe the Italian lied and will change his mind. "Oh, aeroporto? Si si! I have-a tickets for aeroporto righta here-a!." But no. He sits deep in his paper stand, reading. If he is holding out on us, he gives no sign. We've no choice but to hoof it backto the tourist office to find out where we went wrong.

So, 10 sweaty minutes later, we are back where we started, but this time we espy another ticket window, just down from the tourist info window, that is selling airline tickets. So we get in that line, thinking that, if they sell airline tickets, they must be able to direct patrons to the airport as well. But apparently we were wrong to think that.

Fifteen minutes standing in line and it is finally our turn. "Can we buy shuttle tickets here?" Mike asks. No, she says. "Well, do you know where we can catch the airport shuttle?."

"I am sorry." she says. "We are a travel agency, not a tourist information service. You will have to ask at the tourist desk over there." She points it out, in case we can't read.

The tourist lady is not all that excited to see us again. After a few minutes of haggling with her, however, Mike somehow gets her to produce an actual printed schedule of shuttle services, along with the names, even, of these shuttles. This was our second lesson that in Europe, the locals are a little tight fisted with their tourist info. But, from her tight little fist to ours, we were making some progress.

So, Mike asks again. "Where do we buy tickets for these shuttles?" Again, the lady waves her hand around vaguely over her head. "Just there." she says. It has now been about an hour just getting a schedule for shuttles, so Mike is not giving up so easily this time. "Can you point exactly which direction?" he asks. Exasperated, she straightens her arm out, extends a pointer finger and lo and freaking behold, she is pointing directly to the newspaper and breath mints store in the Frakking station. We turn around and there it is. Biglietti, it says inside.

Now, don't laugh at us, cuz this one was not our fault. We go in and ask the lady for shuttle tickets. Si, si, she says, and hands over two tickets. Good lord, we think. Was it really that easy? But it wasn't. The schedule the tourist lady had given us had two shuttle lines, with shuttles leaving like every 30 minutes. The shuttle we had just paid for (which by the way, we still aren't sure where to actually catch this thing) didn't leave for another hour and a half. And now it's already after 1100, less than an hour to pick up time for our rental car.

Mike pulls out the schedule he had just wrested from the tourist information desk and shows it to the ticket lady. He asks if we can get an earlier shuttle and points to one of the departure times that is supposedly happening in half an hour. "That is for a different service." she says. "We sell only this service."

Mike just looks at her. He looks at me. Back at her. Shakes his head. Without a word, she opens the cash drawer and gives him his money back. He hands back the tickets and asks if she knows where these other lines depart from. And she actually has an answer. Apparently, we can find these shuttles over by Train Italia, just on the other side of the station. (It is a huge station).

So, out we go, once again. By now, we have pretty much given up on buying tickets from any kind of official ticket office. Those are like ROUS's in Rome. Now we are thinking we will focus all our energies on finding these shuttles. We have a piece of paper with a schedule printed on it, proving their existence. We walk up the sidewalk, sticking very close to the station, so as not to miss getting to the other side. We are able to get to this other side without a problem, but when we get there, we see no shuttles.

What I do see is a helpful looking stranger. Helpful, I hope, because they have suitcases and bags. Fellow travelers perhaps. I put on my best politely hopeful voice. "Bus de aeroport?" I ask. We show the paper and are rewarded with an affirmative. Si, si... the finger points further down the street. Encouraged, we head in the direction of the point.

After two or three more minutes walking, tho, there still are no shuttles in sight. We pass a nice fancy looking internet cafe, with a nice friendly looking counter/owner looking guy standing inside. Now, I usually do not like to talk to more than one stranger in any given day, but I really really wanted to get to that rental car. After that, I wouldn't have to talk to train people, or bus people, or ticket people for a whole entire week. Sacrifices could be made.

Me, politely hopeful: Bus de aeroporto?
Counter Guy, looking at schedule and speaking in, thank America, English: Yes! There are two shuttles, just that way. (His point matches that of the helpful stranger).
Me, relieved and encourage: Do you know if we can buy tickets on the bus?
Counter Guy, listening attentively: Yes, yes, no problem. Buy ticket on the bus.

This is seriously the most information we have gotten out of anybody all day, and with the least trouble. With a smile, even, wow! Not all Romans are lost, I say to Mike.

We keep walking, and after a minute, see a little wooden stand jutting onto the sidewalk. And lo, on it are big red letters on the stand reading: "AIRPORT SHUTTLE. BIGLIETTE." Finally. Shuttle tickets!!

We press our faces to the hole in the ticket window. Siting inside is a tiny white haired wrinkly little woman. She does not speak English. I don't think she could see very well, either. However, not to be discouraged, we show her our paper. "Dove le autobus de aeroporto?" We ask. (where is the bus?).

"Si, si", she creaks out. She lifts a bony arm and points back to where we had started. We frown and look back that way. We squint and stand on tiptoe. We step into the street, straining for a better view. We see no buses. We look at her. She smiles eagerly and wobbles her head in an affirmative motion. Then she points in another direction, completely different from what the helpful stranger and the internet guy had said.

Totally confused, we pause. Clearly, her stand says Shuttle tickets. Clearly, she is crazy and must not know what she is talking about. We decide to ignore her. We are not walking back to where we started, knowing there are absolutely no buses there. And we are definitely not walking off in some new direction. We are sticking with our route, and holding out that maybe what the internet guy says is true, and that we can buy tickets on the bus.

As it turns out, it is good we held true to the advice of strangers on the street instead of official employees of the ticket selling agencies. Just 100 feet or so beyond the crazy lady, we FINALLY see the shuttles with our very own eyes. Two giant tour buses are parked on the side of the road, seemingly at random, no station, no signs, no ticket booths anywhere in sight. Just lots of people with suitcases, milling around and putting their bags in the bus luggage bin. It looks like the place. We find the driver by his uniform and ask "Avete bigliette per aeroporto?" And hells yes, the answer is yes, he sells us two tickets on the spot and tells us the shuttle leaves in 10 minutes! We climb aboard and settle in, a mere two hours after our little adventure began at the center of tourist information.

We are on our way, but, as we find out, we ain't done yet.

I apologize for these long long wordy posts. But, traveling mishaps seem to keep finding me, and my friends seem to continue to be amused, so I hope you find these entertaining. I am glad to be able to do something for yous even though I am not back home with you guys! Tune in later for Part Two of Roman Exidus.