So! We’re in Croatia, finally, in Dubrovnik. And now that Sonja, Cindy, and Kasey are all gone, I’ve got some time to write this thing. I think I left off in Singapore, so that puts us at Hong Kong. We flew into China on Cathay-Pacific, our first experience with the airline . Since our fourteen hour flight to Rome would be on a similar plane we were pretty disappointed with the overall shabbiness of the plane and the lack of comfort in the seats, but you know... Had to get over that one real fast (excuse my incorrect phrasing :) ) So anyway, we reached Hong Kong and we hustled through the airport down quite a few ramps and past quite a few strangely placed directional signs. This was made more interesting for me by the trolleys, which were designed perfectly for cruising with my feet up down those ramps. I got going pretty fast but had to stop myself a few times when I got some disapproving looks. Not that I cared... But anyway, we very nearly got hustled on a shuttle ride, but eventually made it to the Peninsula hotel by nine or so. It was a beautiful room, enhanced by the present waiting for us from Steve and Gary, who had helped to set us up there. The next day we explored a little using the metro and eventually took the tram up the mountain, which I think would have been much more fun if there hadn’t been a hugely thick layer of fog, which, of course, was there for our arrival. So we couldn’t really see anything. Afterwards we took a cab all of the way down the mountain (very twisty) to the Stanley Markets, where we found some major deals in the way of silk and pretty much everything else. Next we hopped on a double decker bus to get back into town, which was an adventure in itself. For those of you who know Harry Potter, I was feeling exactly as I imagine they would have in the Knight Bus. Excessive speed, a front row seat, and lots of other buses our size did not help with the nerves. Lots of fun though, eventually! That night we took a harbor cruise on a decommissioned ferry, where we met a pair of Queenslanders, Toni and Krista, who were very friendly and which we ended up having dinner with back at the hotel. The next day wasn’t quite as active, but when we got on the plane at around midnight we still managed to be exhausted. I, at least, slept the full night in Hong Kong time, so by the time I woke up there were about five hours left in the flight, which I filled eating Haagen Daz and watching Forrest Gump. I don’t understand why exactly that one was playing, but I hadn’t seen it in quite a while so it was worth watching. And then, Roma! I believe it was around five in the morning when we got there, but after luggage pickups and customs we ended up at the hotel around seven, before their breakfast service began. On the way there we passed families making their way to school on their scooters, which was extremely entertaining to watch. I think I might have seen one with four kids and their dad. Not too safe, but it looked like loads of fun. That day our sole event was a walk all of the way around the Vatican following the wall, which, I forgot to mention, was where the hotel was, right next to the entrance to the Musei Vaticani. I don’t recommend trying to follow the wall around, because there are quite a few sidewalk-less stretches and blind turns where it would be really easy to get clipped by a speeding scooter. We did it, though, and now we can all say that we’ve walked the full border of a country! The day’s petty exertions and the fact that we’d been up since 2:30 am Rome time caused us to crash at about 5 pm, which meant that I was up again the next day at 4:30. For me this was particularly annoying because Sonja’s plane wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 1 pm, so the wait time was greatly increased. Later that day, after she’d arrived and we’d gone to St. Peter’s square to look around, we all went to the Vatican Museum to see the Sistine Chapel and everything else that comes with it. I was able to identify quite a few things from that fifty pound thing we’re calling a textbook, which I was very pleased with. It’s amazing how much more entertaining a museum can be when you actually know something about what you’re looking at. Actually, for me it was a little like seeing a minor celebrity. I got a little too excited at seeing the Column of Antonius Pius, and I think I unnerved a few guards when I started jumping up and down at what turned out to be a copy of Michelangelo’s Pieta. Fun for me, maybe not so much for Sonja. Anyway, the next few days we visited all of the typical tourist haunts, and took at least two hundred pictures between the two of us. I would give individual descriptions of each day, but there were too many of them and I have too much catching up to do. So on to the next place, Florence.
We caught a Eurail train from Rome and went immediately to the apartment that we would call home for the next week. It was right on the Arno, with all but one window looking out over it. Within the first half hour we spotted what was first thought to be an immense sewer rat, but luckily turned out to be a muskrat, a little less scary. Less threatening my foot. It was still a huge dirty rodent.
Our first days in Florence were spent browsing the markets and making stew, walking around the town. Later in the week we took a few smaller commuter trains to Cinque Terre, a group of five coastal towns that were until recently only linked by a series of goat trails winding through the cliffs. Breathtakingly beautiful, hot, and popular with the tourists in the summer, it was perfect for us now. Still gorgeous, but with balmy temperatures and few visitors. We spent two days in the park (it was made a national park when the country put in a railway system in order to control the number of people on the trails), the first starting in the second town of Manarola. We walked the relatively easy 45 minute trail to Corniglia, where we had a cold drink and took pictures of the 389 stairs we’d taken to get up to the town itself. We thought that they were painful, but the real hell was still to come. That evening we made the 2.5 hour hike to Vernazza, the 4th town, where we were planning to spend the night. The entire trip was spent going up hundreds of crude, extremely steep rock stairs, the being tricked by a short and also steep downhill trek, only to end up going back up again. Over and over again for over two hours. Luckily all of this was taking place on the coast of Italy, in one of the most naturally beautiful places in the world. Sonja and I finally made it into the outskirts of Vernazza almost 40 minutes before my parents, and we spent the waiting time guzzling sparkling water tempered by flat coke in a restaurant on one of the terraces.
that night we stayed in a rented room with three single beds , two pushed together, and on foldout cot. Guess who got the cot? Actually it was the same size as the beds and got more bedding than theirs so it was all good. The only negative to the room was the lack of windows and the fact that our bathroom could double as a 1940’s bomb shelter. Low, round ceilings, no windows, and a florescent light that wouldn’t turn off. Also, there was a humidifier that, like the light, refused to turn off and shut up. The next day we went to the bar that we’d eaten dinner at for some breakfast, eggs, and then set off on the next leg of our journey, the path to Monterrosa. It was said to be the toughest of them all, and whoever it was saying that was definitely right. More stairs than ever before, cloudy weather, and sections of the path less than a foot wide with no handrail looking down over a gully. It may have been the most hazardous of all, but it also managed to be the most fun. Also, our efforts were rewarded when we saw what the people coming from the opposite direction had had to deal. More stairs than we had even thought possible, all even steeper than any of those we had experienced. Even going downhill it was tough. Needless to say, the elderly’s knees weren’t doing very well the next day. We spent less than an hour there once we finally arrived, as our train managed to show up 45 minutes before we were expecting it. We ran to get onto that one, then spent the next three hours or so dealing with the subsequent trains. The days after in Florence we spent with more street market shopping, a visit to the Uffize Galleries and the Accadamia to visit the David, and the purchasing of my new leather jacket, and both Sonja and my pretty leather boots. I’ve failed to mention so far the other main aspect of our time in Italy: eating as much gelato possible in three weeks. It is awesome there. Actually, awesome isn’t nearly an impressive enough word to describe this stuff. I can’t even think of one. Just know that Italy is worth visiting just for the ice cream. So eventually we had to return to Rome, which we did in a few hours, then visited the catacombs of Priscilla as a last hurrah for Sonja. A few bones, a panic attack, and lots of creepy underground tunnels later, we were back at the hotel. The next morning at 6 in the morning, Sonja was through security and things were back to what we are forced to call normal in this strange situation.
Luckily for me and my nerves, Kasey and Cindy arrived the next morning, and we’ve spent the last few days re-touring the major sites in Rome with them. Nothing too exciting happened, except that we think that the Prime Minister of Italy was staying in a hotel about a block away from ours for a day or so. There were cops covering every corner and swarming around the Marriot. So that was cool. But the next day they were gone, and so were we, by six in the evening. That was last night, and the rest of it was spent on various small planes eating Croatian airplane food. Very interesting, actually. Lots of feta and nice rolls. Cherry juice too.
