From Switzerland we were excited to take a train trip through the Alps and see all of the beautiful mountains. Unfortunately there were not many mountains through the windows as the train had a nice efficient tunnel under the ground.
We arrived at Milan and went out at lunch for Italian pasta. It was okay. We went back to the train station, attempted the very slow and annoying train ticket purchasing machines. It took so long that we missed our train. It was pretty warm so we played cards in the train station until our train was ready.
Finally after a long day we got to our destination, Venice City. We weren’t staying in the Venice that you think about when you picture Venice. We were staying in the city on the mainland and had to train across to the canal island city. Our hostel had a bar included and we played some music bingo while we watched a Contiki bus party the night away. Luckily the hostel also had lots of cozy Mezzanines and nooks to tuck yourself away in if you wanted quiet.
The next morning we got on the train to sight see Venice itself. We walked around, enjoying taking photos by the water and exploring the winding alleyways. We took a Gondola trip and learnt all about the history of some of the oldest buildings in Venice. All the Gondola drivers had the traditional shirts and vaped. Unfortunately ours didn’t wear the straw hat.
We continued the attempt at eating traditional Italian food and had some Pizza and Gelato. The pizza was pretty good but I think we have pizza on the same level back in Australia personally. There were lots of gift shops as Venice currently only exists for tourism. Some of our favourites were the man who made tiny books and the lemon shop.
We tried stocking up on food so we went to the supermarket. I really wanted to make a curry for dinner. Nope no curry sauce, the international isle is just full of pasta sauce. As is the pasta aisle. And the ‘essentials’ aisle, and some other random aisle. Four aisles of pasta sauce but no curry paste, sauce or tablets in sight. Dear Italy, there is more to life than pasta.
The next day we continued to try Italian food, we tried pistachio canolis and Calzones. Again, they were just ‘okay’. I think we were going to the wrong stores.
I was really surprised about that I liked Venice as much as I did. I was expecting it to be an overhyped tourist destination, and yes there were stacks and hordes of tourists down the main streets and at the traditional touristy spots, but if you wandered down random alleyways the town faded away and you were suddenly alone. It was easy to appreciate the beauty and whimsy of the streets with nobody else around.
We also had fun looking for water. It was hot, we were doing a lot of walking and we didn’t want to buy bottles of water. We found a website that listed all the locations of drinking water and it was like a treasure hunt tracking them down. Each water fountain was different and was a part of the Venician architecture. Here’s a photo to add to our album “Amanda filling up water bottles in Europe”
One of our favourite places in Venice was the toy museum. This was a private collection of toys that was from the 60’s-80’s. Most of them were from just before our time, but it was still fascinating to see the collection, especially the star wars stuff. We had recently watched some of the TV series ‘The toys that made us’, which went into the background of a lot of the toys there and gave us some context to what we were seeing! The collection attendant was also up for a chat and gave us some good recommendations.
From Venice we took the train to Rome. We never originally planned on staying in Rome, we were looking at flights from Venice to Athens but they were all so expensive. Then we had a brainwave, why not just train to Rome and fly from there? A lot cheaper and we’ll get to see a bit of Rome. Because of this we only booked one night, so we only had two days to cram as much of Rome in as we could.
When we arrived at Rome we had a repeat of Cologne, it was bucketing with rain as we walked into our hostel. They directed us to our room in the apartmenty looking building opposite. Unfortunately due to the time we were staying there we missed all of the Hostel’s free walking tours, so we made our own.
We started off with the West side, catching the Tube out to Vatican City. The tube wasn’t nearly as efficient as London’s and looked like it was going to collapse, water dripping from the roof onto the escalators. Vatican City was… interesting. It was filled with tourists and all the buildings were opulent, too opulent. We continued on our tour, walking up a lookout, to the Spanish Steps and onto Trevi fountain. I thought it was quite cool how Trevi fountain merged the natural rocks with the sculpted figures to create one scene. But it was choc a block with tourists. We were one of them. People taking photos, scammers offering to take photos and more gelato shops than you could eat in a day. We chose one where they shaped the gelato to look like a rose, which Amanda loved. On the way back police cars with sirens raced down the street and were followed by a tour of Lamborghinis. Just Italy things? Of course as it was raining as we got in we wore rain jackets for the walk but it didn’t rain the whole time.
The next day we continued the tour at the Colosseum. We managed to get there early enough to beat most of the crowds and got some photos with just us in it! We passedst the Roman forum and parliament house. It was very interesting how they had ancient Roman ruins just sitting excavated in the middle of the city. Also there was scaffolding over everything, this seemed to be a constant on Europe. Maybe they went to repair everything over Covid but didn’t get it done in time?
We stopped to have some brunch at a very non-italian place. Instead we ordered a fairly Australian brunch of smashed avo, bacon and eggs, salmon and smoothies. A much needed break from pizza and pasta. Feeling like we had got some nutrients and non-carbs we went on to the Pantheon. I was excited to see the Pantheon because I wanted to see some memorials of ancient Roman gods. However when we got there I discovered that in 600AD they ‘Removed the Pagan filth and made it into a church of the holy virgin Mary’. Great, yet another Christian church.
We ticked off some of the final major sights on our Rome to-do map, some fountains before trying to google some sights to see off the beaten tourist track. We found the Owl House, hidden in the park Villa Torlonia. It is named as such because of recurring owl themed decorations throughout the house. It has a very different architectural style to the rest of Rome.
After 2 large days we had to get to the airport for our flight to Athens. We had some dinner at the airport but before we knew it our flight was calling. However we really wanted some Canoli, after the fairly disappointing Venice offering. We bought some and ran to make our plane, luckily we made it but the Canoli was also fairly disappointing. Maybe because it was squished and hot after our run?
Tune in to the Harps 