Back then I was 17 so my parents didn’t allow me to travel on my own, so my aunt Silvia kindly came with me. I just finished school and she just graduated as an Accountant, so this was OUR trip. She is awesome, even though she is my mum eldest sister and she was in her 40’s, she strapped on her backpack, put her boots on and backpacked through Europe with me.
Our first destination was Rome, in my opinion, the best city I’ve been so far. We arrived to a big airport and followed the instructions from the hostel of how to get there. I remember buying a train ticket and running to catch the train to the city. We didn’t sit together because the train was full, so I was there checking this tickets when I read, “this ticket needs to be validated”. I didn’t know that, we don’t have this system back home, so during the whole ride I kept thinking of what to say if someone stopped me to check it. But luckily no one did and nothing happened, but I definitely learnt my lesson.
The hostel was just 2 blocks away from the train station, so we thought everything was going to be fine. It was winter so by 5 pm, it was dark already. We walked and walked trying to find the street. We found it but we couldn’t find the building number, in Argentina each block goes from 1 to 100 then 101 to 200 and so on and so on; we weren’t aware that we just needed to keep walking down the street until we reached the number we were looking for. Finally, after over an hour of going round in circles, we got to our hostel. A nice little hostel where we could finally rest.
The next morning we woke up early and hit the streets, we actually took the underground. We went to the Colosseum station. I got out and there it was, one of my dreams just came true. I was standing in front of the Colosseum, it’s just WOW, breathtaking. We got inside and just walked around, touched those walls with so much history, sat on the steps, it was just amazing. I think that if I was alive when it was still a working amphitheatre, I wouldn’t be one of those people watching, no, no I would be a gladiator, I know, I’m crazy.
These are the moments that I remember vividly. We also went to the Roman Forum ( the ruins of ancient goverment buildings), to the Il Vittoriano (a monument for the first Italian king), the Palatine Hill (a hill with ruins of different palaces). We spent a whole day just going to see the fountains and Piazzas. To be honest, I was disappointed with the Fontana di Trevi, yes it is impressive and it’s beautiful but it wasn’t what I expected. We visited a lot of churches, never been in so many before.
We visited the Vatican city, of course, one the smallest independent state in the world. The museum is really interesting and the Sistine Chapel is beautiful. Saint Peter’s Basilica is incredible, the size of it, it’s just massive . One of the things I remember the most were size of the columns around the Saint Peter’s Square, they are enormous, it makes people look so tiny.
We stayed in Rome for 5 or 6 days. Because of this, we decided to do a day trip to Pompeii, the city buried by the volcano. We had to take a train to Napoli and from there we had to get another one to Pompeii. When we arrived to Napoli we realised we were going to miss our connection, so we had to run. We got to the top of the platform, a sign said platform 15 and the other said platform 16, and under each sign you had two escalators, one going down and one going up. We had to go to platform 16 but the escalator going down was under the platform 15 so I walked towards it and my aunt kept screaming at me “It’s number 16, it’s number 16”, so I stand on the step, going down and I see her running in the same place, trying and trying to get down (she was in the escalator going up). Until eventually, she stops trying and the escalator takes her back to the top. She cracked up laughing and then got to the platform the right way, it was one of the funniest moments of our trip.
We then arrived to Pompeii. Here you can see how organised and clever people were back then. Everything had a sign that identified what was going on inside, for example a big fish would represent the fish market, as you could imagine. But not only that, along the road they had this stones called cat eyes, that when it gets dark they reflect the moonlight, that’s how they had light at night . I’m very lucky, because I studied so many languages, I used to just stand next to a tour group and listened to what the guide tells them, free tours for me 😉
Next stop was Florence. I was disappointed with the Ponte Vecchio, it always looked so amazing on the pictures, but when you actually cross the bridge you find random shops selling you things, not what I had in mind. On the other hand, I found an ice cream place and had a nutella ice cream, that was great. The most remarkable thing in this city, is the Cathedral or Il Duomo, as Italian call it. It’s magnificent, made of 3 different types of marble, green, pink and white, it’s just beautiful. One day we started walking looking for I don’t remember what and we ended up, high on a hill with a perfect view of the roof tops, typical picture of Florence.
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| Ponte Vecchio |
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| Il Duomo |
We also did a day trip, to little Pisa. I wasn’t expecting it to be so busy, considering it’s a small town. We went to check the Leaning Tower, it was really cool, we arrived during sunset so it was just perfect. Unfortunately I didn’t have a digital camera back then so, as it sometimes happened before, I lost my picture :(. But I recommend everyone to visit this place.
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| Pisa |
It was the beginning of February, and we made it to a our final Italian destination, Venice. What we didn’t realise was that it was Carnival so finding a hostel wasn’t easy. We manage to get the last 2 beds on a church that had some rooms. The atmosphere was magical, everybody dressed up, wearing masks, wearing capes (Oh capes <3), it felt like time travelling. The small canals, the gondolas, the little streets in which we always got lost, no cars, how great is that? I ticked something else from my list, a gondola ride, with our gondolier as a tour guide, telling in s stories of Marco Polo and Casanova. Piazza San Marco, it’s gorgeous and the Piazza full of pigeons is fun, until one poops on your bag. For me, this is a great place to spend a couple of days.
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| Gondola ride |
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| Crazy Aunt Silvia with an awesome old man |
Italia is one of my favourite countries, food is great (love pizza and pasta), you have nutella, gelato, loud friendly people and all this places with so much history. It’s not as clean as other European countries, but that’s what makes it special, it’s not prefect, it’s just real. I had an amazing time, and I couldn’t have asked for a better travel buddy than my Auntie Silvia =).
I would also like to give a big thank to my mum, she scanned all the pictures for me. As I said before I didn’t have a digital camera, so all my pictures of this trip are back in Argentina. Thank you mum for helping me share this with all my dear followers.
After Italy we took an overnight train to Paris, the trip is not over yet. So don’t miss next week’s post for more adventures and funny stories ;).