Yay spring break! (part two)

I slept almost the entire time on the ferry back, said my goodbyes to everyone, and then got on my train to Venice. I realized pretty quickly that "Camping Fusina" was no where near Venice after the 20 minute bus ride to get there, but it was a nice camp site (I stayed in a cabin). I met up with Megan and Genevieve and had dinner at the campsite restaurant which was really good. The next day we went into Venice and we attended Easter Sunday services at St. Mark's basilica which was absolutely beautiful. We then walked around St. Mark's square, went to the top of the Campanile tower and then visited the Doge`s Palace, including the prisons and the bridge of sighs. Included in the armory room was a chastity belt, and wow it was vicious. I wish I could have taken a picture of it, but it was completely metal in the outline of underwear with sharp teeth-like bits around the private parts. We waited around to meet up with our friend Jessica, and then went to dinner at this place with over 90 types of pizza.

We spent the next day at 3 major islands - Murano, famous for it's glass, Burano, famous for it's lace, and Torcello, famous for being basically deserted except for a Monastary. We saw some glass making in a factory at Murano and went to the glass museum which was nice but not exactly what we had expected. Burano had the most brightly colored buildings I've ever seen and we had a good time drinking some wine and eating some strawberries by the water, though our ghetto corkscrew couldn't open our ghetto 2 euro wine so we had to ask a restaurant to open it for us. The monastary on Torcello had just closed when we got there but it was a good place to see anyway. We went to a crazy expensive seafood place that night, with an appetizer that included snails and octupus. My main dish was, of course, fish but it was still whole. After watching me try to pick at it without eating bones the waiter cleaned it for me crazy fast and I felt very uncultured.

Megan, Genevieve and I wanted to go to the Dolomites the next day, but trying to figure out the train was ridiculous. The information desk said to get on one train and the conductor said to get on another. We got to the station where we had to switch trains and found out that there was only train back from the Dolomites and it left too late for me to make my train to Interlaken and possibly too late for them to get back to the campsite. So instead we spent the day in Conegliano. It was actually really great - there was a castle on the top of the hill so we walked up there and up to the top of the castle which had an amazing view. We then wandered around to try to find a field to play in and we had gymnastics lessons in a church yard. We had dinner once again at the campsite and then I left for my overnight train to Interlaken.

I was supposed to go to Lake Como that day before going to Interlaken, and I had my ticket to Como, but when I asked several days ahead of my trip to get a train from Como to Interlaken I found out that there weren't any. My two options were to either stay in Como for the night, which I remember was going to be very expensive, or take a train directly from Venice to Interlaken. I went with option two, and the only thing available was a very expensive sleeper train that left at 22:52. The bus from the campsite got into the station at 22:25, and there was supposed to be a train from that station to my station of departure at 22:35, and I knew the train only takes about 5-10 minutes so I waited for it. Then a tragedy occured: the train was 10 minutes late, and on the way there it stopped half way and then took 3 years to pull into the station. I got in at 22:56 - I had missed my crazy expensive train. I got my luggage out of storage and headed back to the campsite to see if I could stay on the floor of Megan and Genvieve's cabin for the night. I freaked them out a bit, but they were nice enough to let me stay, and headed out the station first thing in the morning to see what I could do about my ticket. After much arguing, misdirection (ticket office sent me to information which sent me back to the ticket office), and waiting, they agreed to get me the next available train without any extra charge - THANK GOD.

The train ride into Interlaken was soooo beautiful. Switzerland is the most beautiful country I've ever seen and I'm in love with it. I want to marry Switzerland and have it's children that's how great it is. Interlaken is an outdoor center of the country with tons of cool activities. I decided to go with paragliding and it was AMAZING. Very chill, no rush of adrenaline, although you do have to start by running off the side of a mountain but you have an instructor with you so it's not scary. The closest to flying I think you can get, I highly reccommend it. I wanted to also do canyon jumping - like bungy jumping but you go down feet first and instead of bouncing back up you swing out and back along the canyon 10 feet off the ground. However, it was too expensive and I couldn't get together a group of 5 to go. I also went on a pretty serious hike up to the top of Harder Kulm - 4365 feet! The Canadian girl I went with was in such good shape - I was stopping every 10 minutes and she wasn't even tired. At least now I'm all serious about getting in shape. The hostel was so cool and the bar was good - my first time ever having beer that I liked. I did the waterfall hike the next day and saw about 15 1,000 foot waterfalls - so great. I hated leaving but I had to get back to Paris that night. It was a great trip though and that's all the travelling I get to do since I am now out of money = (. Also, I miss real italian gelato...

Yay spring break! (part one)

Since I was gone for 2.5 weeks and did tons of stuff I probably need to split it into two parts.
I left April 5th on a sleeper train for Rome, which was fun though I didn't sleep very well. After arriving at my slightly sketchy looking hostel the owner tells us that it's not ready for us yet (he booked people for a room that is not prepared) and he bought us (me and 5 other guys) coffee and booked at as a different hostel which was ok but not great. After a much needed shower I texted my friends who were already there so we could meet up and did not hear back from them (until 9 pm that night), so I went out on my own to explore Rome, starting with the colossium. It was culture week that week in Italy, so entrance into major monuments and museums was free, much to my delight. I walked for at least 8 hours that day and saw all the major sites except for the Vatican.

I met two cool Canadian girls that night in the hostel so we decided to meet up at the Vatican the next day. We were supposed to meet in the Piazza but once I got there I realized that wasn't going to happen and decided to just go into St. Peter's Basilica. Low and behold I found them inside, and we toured the basilica and it's dome together. Then we were on our way to the Sistine Chapel when we found out it had already closed for the day. I could still go the next day, but that was there last day so they were pretty upset. We got dinner by the Pantheon (as well as some really great gelato) and tried to see the truth telling mask before they had to leave, which was also closed.

The next day I got up somewhat early to get to the Sistine Chapel. After the hour long walk through the Vatican Museum, which had some of the most famous frescos of Raphael, I got into the very tiny chapel. Once again my ability to find people in crowded places worked to my advantage, and I found my two travelling companions IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL. It was amazing considering how insanely crowded that room was and the chances that we would be there at the same time on the same day. We split up for lunch but were supposed to meet up later, which became impossible once I ran out of cell phone minutes and text messages. It's widely said that the water from the fountains in Rome is drinkable, though I think my stomach disagreed with that, or perhaps with lunch. In either case, the afternoon wasn't too much fun but I did see the beautiful park around the Medici residence.

I met up with Allison and Stephanie for our train to Florence. I waited at the door of the hostel forever but it was worth it, it was a really great place with the nicest breakfast I've had in a long time. I got through the line for the Academia museum (where Michaelangelo's David is kept) in about 5 minutes which was amazing. The market place in Florence was great - good products for relatively cheap. The only problem is how much they hassel you to buy things, but I got used to it pretty quickly. I went to the Bobbolini gardens and had to come back half way through to use the bathroom. On my way back out they were closing the gates (an hour early) and I was pretty upset, although it was the last free day of culture week so at least I hadn't paid for it. I met up with friends for dinner and we watched a clown show for awhile. It was pretty funny from what I could tell, though I couldn't see much due to the crowd.

The next day I did the top of the duomo - 470 steps later I got to the top and it was definitely worth it. I did two other pretty famous churches and then went to Pisa. Besides the tower, a church, and a few museums all in the same square there's nothing to do there. It was 15 euro to go up the tower, so I decided to just admire it from the ground instead. On Tuesday I went to the Uffizi, the most famous museum in Florence. I was very glad to have made reservations the day before and only waited maybe 5 minutes to get in instead of 3 hours. The museum was nice, but the best part was the special exhibit on DaVinci's works. I met some more cool Canadians in the Piazza Michaelangelo and they told me all about this church and the Gregorian chant that was about to happen, so I stayed for it. It was nice, though the lady next to me decided that she wanted to sing along so after a few minutes I had to move. That night we went to a really great restaurant and I had one of the greatest fillets of all time.

My ability struck again when I happened to walk into the car that Stephanie and Allison were in on our train to Livorno to get on our ferry to Corsica. Then our friend Becca just happened to see us as we were getting on the busy to get to the ferry. The ferry was great - 7 floors with a restaurant, cafe, and even a small swimming pool. We wanted to do a hike called the cap corse, but since that involved getting on a bus at 5:45 am we decided we would find our own place to hike instead and ended up hiking through some private property (the guy kinda gave us a lecture on our way back). We came back to Bastia to find a beach and went to the one the tourist office recommended. Apparently "beach" in Corsica means any place where the water meets the land because it was pretty much just a rocky coastline but we went all the same. We at least got a little sun, had a picnic, and saw some dolphins thanks to Becca. She alerted us to a whale, and when we looked she realized it was the wrong word and was like, "no, those other animals that are like a whale". The didn't come too close but it was nice to see.

The next day we decided to ask for a beach with sand and found a train to get there. We spend 30 minutes on the train trying to get everyone on (boyscouts with big packs) and then get moved to a different train. Our stop was only 5 minutes away and you have to ask them to stop, which we did not know. One of the guys there noticed that our ticket was for an earlier stop and got the train to stop for us but unfortunately the only way to get back to where we wanted to go was to walk down the tracks, so that's what we did. It wasn't too long of a walk, and once we got there we spent the entire day just lying out in the sun and eating our picnic lunch, that is until Becca yelled out "Elephants!". At first we thought she was just crazy or saying the wrong animal again, but it was true, there were 3 elephants walkking onto the beach and into the water. The circus was in town and apparently right next to our beach and they were taking the elephants out for a bath in the Mediterranean. We all got tons of photos of them of course. That night I spent 1 hour in line waiting to get more cell phone minutes and text messages and then we got a nice seafood dinner. I of course got somewhat burnt in the places that I forgot about, but other than that it was great.