On the road, Day thirteen: Athina

Where am I? : Athens, Greece
How did I get here? : 5 hour train from Roma to Bari.
16 hour ferry ride across the Adriatic to Pátras, Greece.
4-5 hours of trains to Athens.

So. Lots to catch up on...

Firenze (Day 8 and 9):
Our first night train took us from Frankfurt to Milan, Italy, and after an annoying 6 hour wait in the uncomfortable, dirty, pigeon infested train station, a 3 hour train took us to beautiful Florence. The first hotel we asked at offered a decent price, so we stayed there. Terribly friendly people at the Hotel Rayan. Firenze was beautiful, friendly, and easy to navigate. In fact, the touristy area is so easily navigated that Mom and I ran out of things to look at about 3 hours before our train was supposed to leave. We did lots of walking, though we decided not to wait in line for 3 hours to see Michelangelo's David. The Duomo (big cathedral) was also very pretty, but again, we declined not to wait in line to go inside. Pizza and gelato (Italian ice cream) each day easily made Florence one of my favorite places to be. A 3 hour train and some metro rides later landed us in Beautiful Roma.


- One of Mom's favorite things from Firenze. The McCafe -



- Scooters in Florence. Did I mention that everyone rides scooters? -



- Yeah.. that..uh...famous bridge in Florence... Okay, I know nothing about it. -



- Mom and I on the next bridge down from that famous one. -



- Il Duomo. -


Roma (Days 9, 10, 11):
Roma, of course, is a gorgeous place. Our hostel was an amazing place: a combination of campground, cabins and bungalows, tucked in the wilderness of the main road along with a decent little restaurant and supermarket. Our little bungalow included a mini fridge, complete with a couple of beers, a couple of cokes, some pear juice, a couple other sparkling juices, and some water, all complimentary, two beds, a private bathroom, and a broken air conditioner, which acted just as a fan.

Our first day of Rome started out at the Colosseum. To date, this was the hardest day of sightseeing we've had. It was exhausting. We couldn't say "no" to the 21 euro tour that included entrance to the Colosseum and a free tour of the Roman forum and entrance to walk around Palatine hill. The Colosseum was amazing, though it's hard to mentally cope with something that big that you've seen in pictures so many times. Also, it's hard to believe that it was erected in 8 years, while it takes us more than that to complete a road construction project, and that it was so savagely pillaged that less than a third of the original stone remains. The Circus Maximus was slightly less impressive than I expected, since I didn't realize that none of the original structure remains. I also didn't realize that you can find dedicated Italian runners out on the field of the Circus Maximus in the heat of a June day. Many of the sidewalks around the Colosseum, Circus Maximus and the Forum are made of small and large, uneven stones that had our feet aching by the end of the day. Exhausted, we tromped the 3/4 of a mile back to our bungalow, had a short swim, some dinner, and slept well.



- From one of the arches of the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine in the background -



- The marble floor of the Roman Senate. -


When the alarm went off at 7:30 the next morning, we decided to trust the advice that one of the tour guides had given us. Choosing to believe that the line to the Sistine Chapel dies out around 1 in the afternoon, we decided that another 3 hours of sleep were more important. So we ended up in the Sistine Chapel that afternoon, only having to wait in line for about 5 minutes for tickets. This time would have been less if we hadn't been waiting in the student line for the discount. First off, the amount of art that the Vatican has (on display and off) is hard to comprehend. Just walking through rooms, trying to get to the end result of the chapel, I saw more art, in the form of paintings, sculptures, mosaics, etc, in just a few hours than I have in my entire life up to that point, not to mention that we skipped several of the side galleries. Second of all, seeing something as massive and impressive inside the Sistine Chapel was almost enough to drop me into tears. After the unbelievable amount of wealth and rare art ( I saw my first true Salvador Dali painting ) in the house of a religion that claims that it's true riches are in 'heaven', we were a bit discouraged with the church as a whole, a feeling that only increased as we walked to the Pantheon to discover that has been turned into a basilica for saint mary of something-or-other. We had another swim back at the hostel and some cheese, crackers and salami for dinner, and then tried to get some sleep as we had to get up early and catch our next train.



- Mom with a Sphinx in one of the Vatican Museums. -



- Beautiful Statue. Don't remember who it is now though... >


Bari, and the Adriatic:
Early morning landed us on the train to Bari where we caught the ferry to Pátras. The train ride was pleasant enough until they turned off the air conditioner with about 2 hours to go. We didn't get to see much of Bari, other than the train station, the bus station and the port. We managed to upgrade ourselves to some more comfortable seats on the ferry, which isn't saying much as we didn't get much sleep and came away with some seriously swollen ankles from being in a sitting position for probably more than 32 hours total in the time span of 2 days. The train ride from Pátras to Athina was confusing, hot, uncomfortable, long, and crowded. But in the end, we find ourselves in a nice hostel for the next three nights with, OMG! wireless internet for FREE. Dinner was amazing. Greek food in Greece. Yum!



- The port city of Patras -



- Mom and I on the ferry, coming into port -


We've decided to take it easy in Greece. Seeing the Acropolis tomorrow, which is only about 5 minutes away from the hostel, then the beach on Monday. Then we have 2 days of hard travel to get to Paris, and then, lastly, to Munich before we go back to Ilmenau.