Epilogue – November, 2010

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Nov 062010
 

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Since this trip has been concluded, I have put the Posts in “normal chronological order”, so now the posts start at the beginning (earliest date posts), showing the planning posts first, followed by the actual trip posts, in the order of the places we visited.  This is “backwards” from normal blog posts, where the newest post is first, etc.  However, we believe the posts are easier to read and navigate through in this revised order once the trip is concluded. If you want to skip all of the  posts about the trip planning efforts, and just read about the trip itself, click on the Tab above titled “Trip Posts Only”, and it will take you to directly to the posts for the trip itself, starting with this final post.

We have also gone through and edited the pictures posted in the Photo Albums, selecting some of our favorites. There are now only about 680 pictures, far fewer than the original 1,800+ that were initially uploaded without editing for content. The size of the sideshow has also been modified, the images now fit the width of the page.  The Photo Album Section on the right side of the page lists all of the Photo Albums we have made for the places we visited.

On Our Way – Departure Day

 The Trip  2 Responses »
Sep 162010
 

Well, the big departure day is finally here, time to start the vacation!!

We left the house on-time at 8:45 AM for the ride to the airport.  Many thanks to Brant for taking us and then driving our car back home!!

The weather at home was really nice, and the ride to the airport was uneventful.  We had a little trouble checking in at the Airline Kiosk, it did not want to scan our passports correctly.  After getting all of the information loaded, we checked our two bags and received our boarding passes.  Off to security, and again, all went well, no problems or setting of any security alarms.  We got to experience the total body scanner for the first time, unfortunately, you can’t see your own ‘”body picture”.

We headed to our gate, and that was where we had a little problem with a broken zipper on my pants  after I made a visit to the rest room.  My zipper did not just break, the whole moving part of the zipper came off from the top.  We spent the next 15 minutes searching for a safety pin to help with the emergency, I guess we should now learn to pack them in the carry on bags.  We have a small sewing kit, but of course it is in the checked luggage.  Not the best way to start off the trip.  Stephanie kept asking if she could work on my zipper out in the waiting area, I could just picture her kneeling on the floor in front of me trying to work on my zipper, I can just imagine what people would think.

I pulled out my shirt to cover the situation and then it was time to get on the airplane.  Thinking about fighting a broken zipper for the next 12 hours of international travel was not making me a happy camper.  After we got to our seats, I tried desperately to re-start the zipper, but you just can’t do it from the top.  Stephanie asked the flight attendant if she had a safety pin, and lucky for us, she did.  I still had to fight with trying to make the zipper work when Stephanie suggested starting it from the top, but backwards so the zipper would close going downward.  That did work to a point, but there was not a way to keep the zipper from opening again at the top.  In went the safety pin, and we then began thinking about a contingency plan for zipper repair during the layover in Philadelphia.

After our flight landed, and we had departed the plane, we began to search for a men’s clothing store inside the airport, thinking we might be able to find another pair of pants to purchase.  We went into a Brooks Brothers store, and looked at a pair of $80 pants.  At this point, I was thinking that maybe a few more safety pins would do the job.  The salesman, Reggie, ended up knowing what to do to repair the zipper, had some scissors and thread, and he and Stephanie fixed the zipper while I waited in the dressing room, sans pants.  It is a neat trick to know, Reggie put a cut at the bottom of the zipper on one side, and re-threaded the escapee zipper closure portion back on from the bottom.  Then he stitched a couple of threads to keep the zipper from going back too far down, and also put a few at the top to replace the stops that had apparently come off .  It is delicate, but at least I do not have to worry about having an open fly while flying.  Many thanks to Reggie!

We still put the safety pin at the top as an additional safety measure, and now I just have to be really careful when I need to undo the zipper for potty breaks.  We can probably fix the pants better once we have our own sewing kit when we get our luggage.

After the trauma of the zipper incident, we were hungry, so we headed off to find a restaurant in the airport for some lunch, and then settling in for our 3.5 hour layover.  At least I have regained my peace of mind and my zipper.

We were able to get free wi-fi in the Philadelphia Airport to make this post.  We were also able to view the online radar for the Philadelphia area, which showed some rain approaching from the West.  Hopefully, it will either arrive after we leave, or be light enough not to cause any flight delays.  We have our fingers crossed, we need to make an on time departure in order to arrive in Frankfurt on-time, and make our fairly short layover connection to Milan.

Layover in Philadelphia

Arrival In Milan, Italy – On To Levanto.

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Sep 172010
 

Our flight from Philadelphia arrived at Frankfurt, Germany a little earlier than scheduled, at 6:05 AM local Frankfurt time. We were directed to a remote gate, which is one where everyone departed the plane by going down steps on the outside of the plne, there was no snorkel connected to the terminal. Everyone was bused to Terminal 1 to be processed through Immigration. That was a little slow because there were only three Immigration processors for non-European Union visitors. We knew we only had about 1.5 hours for our layover, and in the end, it took all of that to get through to our connecting flight.

First, we had to go through Immigration. Most of the passengers on the plane were non-European Union visitors like us, and there was a fairly long line of people to be processed through Immigration in that line. Then, for some reason, there were some visitors from China that had issues with their passports, and could not speak German or English. It took at least 15 minutes to process those 5 people. After that, the line progressed pretty quickly, but would have gone faster if there were more than the three lines open. We were lucky to be up near  the front, the line behind us got a lot longer while we were waiting. After about 30 minutes, we made it through Immigration and started what turned out to be a very long walk to Concourse A. We finally got to Concourse A after about 20 minutes of walking, and discovered we had to go through security again, waiting in another line, and then more waiting. After security, we headed for Gate 30, which again turned out to be a much longer walk than expected.

When we finally arrived at the gate for our flight, they were already boarding the plane. We had our boarding passes for this flight from when we initially departed Florida, but they had us assigned in two seats that were not located together on the plane. Our plan had been to try and get the seats changed, but we had been told we had to do it in Frankfurt, at the gate, since U.S. Air did not have access to the Lufthansa Airlines reservation system to change our seat assignments. However, since we were so late getting to the gate for this flight, we could no longer get them changed.  Then, as we were boarding the plane, we discovered that it was over-booked, and there were no empty seats where we might have been able to move to to be closer. Luckily, it was only a 55 minute flight to Milan, so we just went to our assigned seats in different rows and that was that.

We arrived in Milan to find cloudy and rainy skies. We departed the plane and went to baggage claim, hoping our bags had made it through unloading in Frankfurt and then on to our flight to Milan. We only had to wait about 10 minutes before we saw our bags come out onto the baggage carousel. We were thankful that they both made it and we were not going to have to go through the hassle of getting any lost luggage delivered to us all the way to our hotel in Levanto.

After claiming our bags, we purchased our tickets for the shuttle bus from the airport to the Milano Centrale Train Station, and headed to the shuttle bus pick-up point. We were surprised at the number of Asian tourists waiting for the shuttle. I have to add that they seemed to very pushy and rude trying to get their luggage and themselves onto the bus. I think that is how they have to be to survive in their country of origin. We could not tell exactly where they came from, but they were very aggressive in getting their way, but somewhat in a nice pushy way. That was what gave us the impression it was just the way they are used to dealing with those situations in their crowded country. We boarded the bus for the 50 minute ride to the train station in Milan.

Once we arrived at the station, we found the automated ticket machines, and began the interesting process of buying our train tickets to Levanto. It was a little complicated, but the only hard part was how the credit card was inserted for payment, you had to push it into the reader, and leave it there. If you just swiped it like a USA gas station card reader, it would not work. Of course, a lot of other people are waiting impatiently in the line behind you, and it seemed like everyone was trying to get on a train that was leaving in the next few minutes. The first time through the ticket purchase process, we were booted out at the credit card payment phase, and had to start over again from the beginning. The lady waiting behind us asked if she could go ahead and get her ticket before us since she needed to be on her train in 15 minutes. Since we had over an hour to wait anyway, we let her go ahead, and stood close by to watch her go through the process. After she was finished, we tried once again, and on the third time, we were successful in getting our tickets.

Milano Centrale Train Station

We then went to a sandwich shop and bought some Paninis for lunch. We headed for our train platform, and got onto our train to Levanto. It was different from any of the trains we had ever been on in Europe before, this one had  compartments on one side of the train car that had six seats in each compartment. We had purchased tickets for the two opposing window seats, and found the Number 6 coach and boarded. We were the only persons in the compartment right up until it was time to depart. Then, three more people came in and took their seats, it was a man and wife, and their daughter. They were only on the train for a few stops, and then we had the compartment to ourselves.

The train ride was uneventful.  There was not a lot of interesting scenery to see along the way initially, mainly farmland. As we approached the coastline, the scenery became more interesting, it was more mountainous, and we could get glimpses of the coastline every now and then. However, because of the mountains, we started to go through a lot of fairly long train tunnels, and of course, could not really see that much of the area, just a little every now and then between tunnels.  At one of the stops for Genoa, we got two more compartment mates. One of them was a young man from the area near Portofino, Italy, and he spoke very good English. He was very interesting to talk to, and was planning a trip to the USA to visit Las Vegas and Miami Beach. He had been to Las Vegas before, but never to Miami. He was only on the train for a few stops, and then once again, were were by ourselves. It was close to a three hour train ride from Milan to Levanto, and finally we arrived at the Levanto Station. By this time, it had started to rain fairly hard. We departed the train, and went into the station to put on our rain coats that we had pulled from our luggage. While we were in the station, we purchased our Cinque Terre Travel Cards, which give you unlimited access to the trains and walking trails for the period of time you purchase them for, in our case, we got 2-Day tickets for Saturday and Sunday.

We began the walk from the Station to the Hotel. It was supposed to be about 600 meters. We had a Google Map and some directions from the hotel, but it was still more difficult to find than we expected, partly due to the rain soaking our map, and partly due to us being so tired from the long travel day. We finally made to the hotel and checked in. The staff was very friendly, and the room was very nice. We were glad to get out of our now rain soaked clothes that we had been wearing since leaving home, and get hot showers. We felt a lot better after that.

Rainy Beach In Levanto

We ventured out to wander around the town of Levanto a couple of hours later. It was still showering a little, and was somewhat windy.

We picked out a place to eat dinner it was an enjoyable meal. We visited a couple of grocery stores, just to see what was available, and we purchased a couple of bottles of inexpensive red wine. We headed back to the hotel about 8:30 PM, and settled in for the evening. We were quite tired from our long overnight travel day.  Hopefully the weather will clear up tomorrow for our first day in Cinque Terre.

First Day in Cinque Terre

 The Trip  3 Responses »
Sep 182010
 

We had a little problem with Internet Access at out hotel in Levanto, so we are behind in our posts.  It is Sunday night as I wrote this, catching up for Saturday.  Sunday’s post will have to wait until tomorrow sometime.  The internet here has been frustrating, sometimes it works, sometimes it does not…….well it must be Italy.

Levanto Seen From The Upper Trail

We awoke to partly cloudy skies, and found out from the hotel staff during breakfast that it had been raining for three straight days.  The forecast was for clearing in the afternoon today.  We decided to go ahead and venture out to the walking trails, and planned to walk the trail from Levanto to Monterosso.  It is one of the longer upper trails, and supposedly is less crowded.  True to the information, the trail was not crowded, and it was long.  The time for the trail walk we were taking was advertised as 2.5 hours, well it took longer than that for us.  It was very scenic, a lot of climbing up and down hills, and not all of the trail was well maintained.  In some parts, it was very difficult to traverse, and was very steep.  However, we did see a lot of the coastline along the way, and it was very beautiful.  We were glad we took three bottles of water with us for the hike, it was hot and humid for most of the day.  We saw a total of about six other couples on the hike, some going our way, and passing us by,  and the others going in the opposite direction.  We only got a little bit lost one time, and had to backtrack a little before we figured out how the trail identification system worked.  This happened during the only portion of the trail which utilized a section of the local paved road for about 300 meters, which is what threw us off.  We were not expecting to be on a paved road at all.  However, after we figured out how the trails were marked, we found where to go, and had no other problems following the remainder of the route.

For trail markers, there are painted red and white stripes on the rocks along the trails, sometimes on the trees, just whatever it takes to help identify that you are on the right path.  Some of the signs are missing, so the stripes are the only clue you are still on the correct path.  The trail needs to be marked because some of the other “trails” you pass are really access points to some of the vineyards or for other parcels of land used for farming that is done on terraces on the sides of the mountains.  The paths for the trails are actually part of the old system used by the locals to get access around their farmland.  Some of the areas contain olive groves, but most are vineyards.

Stopping For a Break on the Upper Trail

We did make it safely to the end of the trail in about 3.5 hours .  Near the end of the trail, at the top of a ridge, there was a really nice view of the coastline where you could see most if not all five of the cities comprising “Cinque Terre”, Cinque meaning five, Terre meaning lands.  There was also an old church on the trail at the top of the ridge, it was only partially intact, but still nice to visit and see.

When we finally made it into Monterosso, the city where this particular trail ended, we were beat.  It was a lot harder walk than we had anticipated, but we were glad we had done it.  We walked around a little in Monterosso and ate some lunch.  By this time, it was fairly sunny, and there were a few people out on the beach.  However, the sunshine was short lived, as it started to get cloudy again as we finished our lunch.

Rougher Section of the Upper Trail to Monterroso

We took a train to the last, or southern most  of the five cities, Riomaggiore.  We did not actually go into the city itself, we opted to go on what is called the Via del’  Amore’, which is the shortest and most “civilized” portion of the trails connecting the cities of Cinque Terre.  This trail is all paved and really set up to be accessible to everyone, for all ages and all abilities.  It takes about 20 minutes to walk this trail, and this is the portion of the trail system where all of the tourist groups visit since it is the most accessibility friendly.

Cinque Terre From The Upper Trail

By this time in the day, it had begun to get cloudy again, and then actually started to rain once more, just a steady drizzle, but enough to make it messy.

The short trail ended at another of the cities of Cinque Terre called Manarola.  We did not visit there, we just took the train to yet another one of the cities called Vernazza.  It was really nice there despite the rain.  It is probably the easiest of the cities to get to from the train station, most all of the city is downhill toward the sea.  We walked around a few stores, and visited the local Catholic church.  We noticed that they had a Mass on Saturday evening at 6:30 PM, so we decided to hang around there until that time, and go to Mass there instead of going to the Catholic Church tomorrow, on Sunday, that we had found in Levanto.

Vernazza Harbor After the Rain

After a while, the rain stopped, and we had a few peeks at  some sunshine.  We stopped off at a local outside bar and had a glass of wine.    We looked in a few more stores, and then headed to the church for Mass.  Of course all of the Mass was in Italian, but they handed us a bulletin that had most of the readings and prayers on it so we could at least try to follow and speak them in Italian.  After the Mass,  we went down to the waterfront area to watch the sun set over the Mediterranean Sea,  and enjoy a bottle of wine we had purchased earlier.   After the sun set, we headed back to the train station to catch our train back to Levanto.

Sunset From Vernazza

Once we arrived back in Levanto, we headed to a restaurant recommended by the hotel staff for its pizza.  We ordered two different pizzas, which were very good.  The place was popular with the locals, it was packed.  By the time we finished eating, it was about 10:30 PM, so we headed back to the Hotel.  It had been a long day, and we were certainly tired from all of the hiking and walking around in the cities we visited.

Day Two in Cinque Terre

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Sep 192010
 

After a good nights sleep, only interrupted for a short period of some severe lightning and thunder, we awoke to a sunny day (finally!!).  We actually slept in a little more than we had planned, still just trying to catch up on the sleep we missed from the transatlantic flights.  We got ready and went to the buffet breakfast at the hotel, which is included in the price of the room.  They had various pastries, but would bring you cheese and ham if requested, or also make you any style of eggs.  Knowing we were going to do another hike today, we opted for some scrambled eggs for Stephanie, and fried eggs for me.  Of course, we also had to have some bacon.  It was all very good.

More Steps on the Monterosso to Vernazza Trail

Terraced Trails – Monterosso to Vernazza

Today, the planned hike was for the longest lower trail, which connects the cities of Monterosso and Vernazza.  We had read suggestions to walk the trail in this direction, from Monterosso to Vernazza since there are a total of about 700 steps at the first part of the trail.  They are not continuous, but there are only a few breaks in between long sections of steps.  Since it was Sunday, and since it was very nice and sunny weather after all of the rainy days, there were a lot of people doing this particular trail.  There were many places where you had to stop and let other hikers go by that were traveling in the opposite direction.

Sometimes, it was in the very narrow terraced areas for the farmland on the hillside.  In reality, that is the main purpose of these trails, they were originally made to go between the towns, but also to go to the various farming areas on the hillsides.  The farming is all done on large terraced areas, and some of the trails are actually at the base of the walls of the terraces.  Mostly, there are grapevines being grown, but some areas also have olive trees.  The grapes are interesting, there appeared to be both white grapes and red grapes growing together.  The grape harvest is sometime near the end of September or the beginning of October, so the grapes are very large and in large bunches on the vines.

Town of Vernazza From The Trail

It took us about 2.5 hours to complete this portion of the hike, there was a lot of stopping to let others pass by, both going in the same direction as us, but walking faster, and in the opposite direction.  We finally made it to Vernazza, and went into the town for some lunch.  After lunch, we actually started up the trail between Vernazza and the next city to the south, Corniglia.  We mainly went up the beginning of the trail for photos of the town.  We then headed back down to the Vernazza train station and took a train to Manarola, the fourth city in the line of cities as you head south.  Our plan was to walk the short trail between there and Riomaggiore again since it had be rainy on this part of the trail on the first day.  It was a lot less crowded by this time, most of the large tourist groups had already arrived and departed.  It was a nice walk without all of the people.  We took some nice photos, and then headed into Riomaggiore to walk around.  This was a nice town, similar to Vernazza, but a little more hilly and harder to walk in.  We headed down to the marina area to walk around and take pictures.  Each of the cities has a small protected harbor, but during storms, they pull out all of the normally moored  small fishing boats with an electric winch and lift, and keep them on land for protection.

Coastline at Riomaggiore

The boats are rolled on dollies and spread out in the main streets of the town.  Apparently, before we initially arrived in Cinque Terre, there had been some type of major storm in the area, and all of the boats had been pulled out of the water.  It was easy to see why this is done.  Even though there was no storm while we were here, there was some large surf, and it was still pretty rough even in the small protected area of the harbor, and by small, I am talking about 100′ by 50′, if that.

We visited another grocery store and bought a bottle of wine, the same wine that we had drank with our pizza the night before.  It was very good compared to some of the others we had tried, much smoother, and was actually made in the Levanto area..  In Riomaggiore, there was a nice area down near the water where we sat on some of the large boulders protecting the coastline to enjoy our wine and watch the sunset.  We did noticed that the walkway went on farther around the side of some large cliff areas, and we walked over to see where it ended.    On around to the side, there was a beach area that people were sitting on to watch the sunset.  We headed over to join them on the beach. The entire beachfront area was filled with very smooth, rounded stones from a few inches in diameter, to about a foot in diameter.  There was absolutely no sand on the beach at all.

After Sunset on the Rocky Shoreline of Riomaggiore

There were some large waves breaking, and it made a very strange noise as the water ran back out over the rocks and into the sea.  We waited about an hour for the sun to set, and it was very nice.

Afterward, we headed back up into the town and ate dinner.  We both had a seafood dish, Stephanie’s was seafood spaghetti that was served wrapped in foil.  It was full of mussels, small clams and some shrimp.  I had the seafood risotto, which had the same types of seafood in it, but mixed in with the risotto.  Of course, we had some wine with dinner, as well as fresh baked bread.  It was a very good dinner.  We headed back to the train station for the train back to Levanto, arriving back at the hotel after 10:00 PM, another long but fun day.

Town of Riomaggiore After Sunset

Tomorrow, we head over to Pisa, but we are planning to take a ferry boat ride along the coast to see Cinque Terre from the sea before we leave for Pisa in the afternoon.

Day Three in Cinque Terre – Moving on to Pisa

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Sep 202010
 

Our plan for today was was a simple one; to try and get up early, eat breakfast, pack our suitcases, check-out of the hotel, temporarily store our luggage at the hotel, walk to the Levanto train station,  take a train to Monterosso, buy a ferry boat ticket for the ride to Riomaggiore, ride the ferry boat, train back to Levanto, get our luggage from the hotel, walk back to the Levanto train station, take the train to La Spezia,  buy a ticket for the train to Pisa Centrale Station, ride an hour on the train to Pisa, walk to our hotel check in, and then walk to the Leaning Tower for pictures. Just wish we had a few more things to do so we were not so bored.

Cinque Terre Ferry Boat

Actually, it all went according to plan.  We had wanted to see some of the Cinque Terrre towns form the Mediterranean Sea, so we thought  the ferry ride would be nice, if the weather was good.  It turned out to be a beautiful day, and the ride along the coast was really nice.  If you want to see how adventurous the ferry can be, just do a search on U-Tube for Cinque Terre ferry boats.  It is amazing how they can get the boats up to the pier, and tie off at the bow of the boats.

Town of Manarola From The Ferry Boat

Everyone then takes a ramp from the boat to the dock, and it can be really amazing when the seas are rough.  Thankfully, it was a really calm day this morning, and we only had to get on once and off once. Overall, the ferry boat ride was about 40 minutes, and we stopped at all but one of the five towns.

Riomaggiore From The Ferry

We happened to make good train connections, and were on our way to Pisa by about 12:30 PM.  We arrived in Pisa at about 2:20 PM, after the ride and connection in La Spezia.  All we wanted to do in Pisa was visit the Leaning Tower, hoping that all of the scaffolding that was on it 2 years ago was gone.  Unfortunately, we had found out earlier today that there was still scaffolding near the top of the tower.  We found this out from an Australian couple that we chatted with at breakfast this morning at our hotel in Levanto.  They had been in Pisa the previous week and had visited the Leaning Tower.

We made it to the hotel in Pisa without incident, other than I now have a problem with one of the wheels on my rolling suitcase.  I attempted a small repair when we got to our hotel, we will see how it works out.  We will be shifting some of the item from my bag to Stephanie’s to make mine lighter, and hopefully, take  some of the load off of the bum wheel.  Our hotel in Pisa, the Hotel Bologna, was very nice.  The room was large, and the bathroom was also very spacious.  It almost had a full size shower, a rarity in Europe. There was also an adjoining small room with two twin beds, in addition to the main room.  I would guess this is for families with children, but it served as our baggage room for repacking the suitcases.

We walked over to the Leaning Tower, and it was very crowded.   As we had heard from the couple in Levanto, there was a section of scaffolding on the Tower near the top.  It is more visible up close, but tends to blend in a little from afar.  One day, we may actually see it without any scaffolding at all!   Our plan was to also visit the Cathedral and the Baptistery on this visit, two things we did not do last time we were here.  We were not going to climb up the tower again, that was done on our last trip to Pisa in 2008.

Cathedral In Pisa

Leaning Tower of Pisa – Scaffolding Near Top

There were still a lot of tour groups in the Cathedral when we finally went inside around 3:45 PM.  It was pretty inside,  but certainly not as fancy as some of the other churches in Italy.  We lit a votive candle like we did in Notre Dame on one of our previous trips.  We then visited the Baptistery, and were amazed when a lady did a demonstration on the acoustics, specifically the echo inside.  There was probably about a 3-4 second delay in the real voice and the echo voice, it was pretty amazing.

We ate a small snack, and drank a little wine while we were waiting for the sun to set so we could take some pictures of the Tower in the sunset lighting, and to see if there was any night lighting photo opportunities.     While we were waiting for the sun to set, we did find a nearby grocery store and decided to buy some cheese, ham, bread and of course, another bottle of wine for our dinner tonight.  It was a very large grocery store called PAM, and we found a lot of fresh items for our “picnic”.

The sunset pictures ended up to be pretty nice, but we were a little disappointed that the Tower is not really lighted at night.  We headed back to the hotel about 7:30 PM, and had our picnic dinner in the room.  It was very good, the bread and cheeses were some of the best we have had.

Cathedral and Tower in the Setting Sun

Leaning Tower of Pisa at Night

We went ahead and repacked the suitcases, trying to lighten mine as much as possible.  We have a 6:30 AM wake up call tomorrow morning, and we need to get ready, eat breakfast at the hotel, and walk about 20 minutes to the train station for our 8:00 AM train to Florence.  Our plan is to make a brief stop over in Florence to visit a couple of the nicer churches in Florence before boarding our 2:30 PM train to continue on to Venice, which is where we will stay for the next three nights.  Yeah, and we hope to rest a little there…….and post some pictures.

Pisa to Venice – With A Stopover In Florence

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Sep 212010
 

Yes, we had another early wake up call this morning at 6:15 AM. Stephanie and I thought we were on vacation, oh yeah, we are. Today, we are traveling from Pisa to Venice, with about a five hour stopover in Florence to see a couple of the sights.

We were trying to make a 8:00 AM regional train for the one hour ride into Florence. With a problematic piece of luggage, a 15 minute walk to the train station, and the possibility of fighting some crowds, we wanted to make sure we could get packed and eat breakfast with rushing too much.

We planned to give ourselves 30 minutes to get to the station from the hotel, and we actually made it out a little ahead of time. When we got to the station, we saw the train platform for the train we had planned to take. However, after going down the stairs to the “subway” that goes under the tracks, and then back up the stairs to that platform, we noticed on the electronic train monitors that there was an earlier train on another platform that was also going to Florence. So, we headed back down the stairs, then back up the stairs to Platform 1 and on to the early train. The only problem was that platform 1 is the one closest to the station, and had we noticed that earlier train was available on platform 1 when we forst got to the station, we could have avoided all the up/down stairs. Always fun when you have 45 lb. plus suitcases and a backpack. Great exercise at 7:30 AM in the morning, just what we needed!!

The Duomo in Florence

Once we got on the train, everything was fine, of course, but only after we cooled off.  It seemed warm to both of us on the train, I do not think there was much a/c. Some people had their windows slightly open, but we were sharing some seats with another man, and he was next to the window, so we did not get to open ours to cool off.

It took a little over an hour to get to Florence, and once we got off of the train, we headed to the luggage storage area inside the train station, and checked three of our bags. Seems like it is a little expensive at Euro 4 per bag for 5 hours, but that is the standard cost at all of the train stations.

Climbing Stairs Inside the Dome to the Top

We left the station and headed over to the Duomo, which is the main Cathedral in Florence to look around. The  Cathedral itself was not yet open, so we decided to go ahead and climb up to the top of the dome, which was open. It is supposed to be about 455 steps in total to the top. After paying Euro 8 apiece for the “exercise” and lugging up a backpack full of camera equipment, and some other stuff, we finally made it to the top. We were both sweating pretty good, it was a fairly warm morning, and a little humid, but really sunny and clear. We spent about 45 minutes walking around and taking pictures before heading down to the bottom.

Top of the Duomo Dome Overlooking Florence

We then walked around the outside of the Cathedral, which had opened while we were climbing up to the dome, and headed to the entrance. We went inside and looked around. It is not as beautiful inside as many of the churches in Italy, but it is fairly impressive due to its size.

After that, we headed over to Santa Maria Novella Cathedral, it contains a lot of artwork from the 15th century. Unfortunately, we could not take any pictures of the inside, it was not allowed. There were some really special construction techniques used inside the cathedral, the floor and ceiling get closer

Santa Maria Novella Cathedral

together as you go toward the front of the church, and the columns get closer together, front to back, as you go forward.  All of this was to give the church a perspective like you would expect to see in a painting, to give it a look of depth, which was the rage of paintings done during this period.

We got a bite to eat for lunch and afterward, it was time to head back to the train station and retrieve our luggage.  We had a 2:30 PM departure time for our ride to Venice.  We boarded our train, this time a Eurostar Train, which is a higher speed train that  the regional trains we had taken in Italy so far.  The biggest problem was finding space for our luggage.  We had to put it in the luggage racks on the next car since the ones on our designated car were already full when we boarded.  Luckily, the racks are on the ends of the car, so they were right next to each other.  The train was full, so some of the people had to put their smaller suitcases under the seats, but ours were too big to fit there.  The train was nice, each seat had a power outlet, so I was able to plug in the computer and work on the blog.

Our Train at the Venice Santa Lucia Station

It took a little over two hours to get to Venice.   Most of the people on the train departed before we got to the Venice Santa Lucia Station, which is the train station on the island of Venice.  The other station for Venice , Venice Mestre is on the mainland.

Once we got off the train, we exited the station and headed over to purchase multi-day Vaporetto tickets.   The Vaporetto is the local “water bus” in Venice.  We took the Number 1 Vaporetto to the San Silvestro stop, and then started our walk to the hotel.  We only had a little difficulty navigating to the hotel using the directions we had gotten off of the internet.  There just is not much signage on the building telling us it was the hotel.

We checked in, and headed to the room.  It was on the second floor, and has a view out onto a courtyard.  After doing a little unpacking, and washing some clothes in the sink, we headed out for dinner.  We asked for a recommendation from Marco, one of the hotel proprietors, and he directed us to an Osteria, which is the Venitian equivalent of an Italian  trattoria, or small restaurant.   It was called La Patina, and the food was very good.

Small Quartet Playing Music in St. Mark’s Square

After dinner, we wandered around the city, looking in some stores, and just trying to get our bearings.  We headed over to St. Marks Square, and listened to some of the small concert bands that play at night outside some of various restaurants around the square.  The various establishments set up tables outside, and then charge exorbitant prices for everything they serve.  For example, one bottle of just average wine is about Euro 49.  You can see the impact of the economy on these establishments.   From past trips, we know that there used to be at least  six or seven different bands set up around the square, now there are only three.  Several of the other places that used to be on the square are closed down and the buildings vacated.   We did like most people do there, just stood outside the designated seating area and listed to the music.  That way, you can alternate between the bands as they take thier breaks.

We headed back to the room for the night, and that is when we discovered the only issue with our room,  it appeared the air conditioner was not functioning.  It does not seem to blow any cold air.  Not having air conditioning is mostly a problem in the early evening, the room gets a little warm from the sun during the day since room faces to the west.  Also, there are no window screens, so there are some mosquitoes to deal with in most places in Venice after the sun goes down, and inside the room if we just leave the windows open.  The hotel is more like a bed and breakfast, and the owners are only here until about 8:00 PM each night, so we did not discover the a/c issue until after they had left.  We will ask about it tomorrow.  Everyone staying here just comes and goes using the front door key for access to the building.

Tomorrow, we plan to go and see some of the churches and parts of the city we had not visited before on our last trip here.

Venice – Day 2

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Sep 222010
 

We slept in a little bit this morning, we did not have to meet any scheduled train departure, or other time dependent activity.  We just made it to the breakfast, they only serve between 8-10 AM.  Breakfast is served on the same floor as the room, so it is easy to get to.   The breakfast menu is more limited than we had in Levanto, the choices are cereal, some sliced ham and cheese, rolls, yogurt and croissants.  Nothing is prepared to order, it is just a basic self serve buffet.

Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frarie

Our plan for the day is to visit about five different churches around Venice, starting with the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frarie, which is one of the largest in the city, and is close to our hotel. Of course, we  got a little bit lost getting there, the map of the city we have does not show a lot of the smaller street names.  Once there, we paid the admission price and went in.  Like most of the churches in Venice, they do not allow any type of photography inside at all, I guess to help preserve the art work from camera flashes by people who either can’t, or don’t know how to turn off the flash on their camera.  There were some pretty side chapel altars and artwork inside the church.

Looking Across the Grand Canal into St. Mark’s Square

We then headed around the corner to a building called Scuola San Rocco, supposedly famous for some paintings by Tintoretto.  We decided not to go inside, and so we headed to the Vaporetto stop to catch the water bus to go to see the Santa Maria della Salute Church.  When we got there, we found it was not going to reopen for the afternoon until 2:00 PM, so we went out to the tip of the island for pictures looking back across the Grand Canal to St. Mark’s Square.  There was a statue out on the very tip of the island that was of a young boy holding a frog.  We will have to look up on the internet to find out what the significance of that statue is, but it was guarded 24 hours a day by the police.

After the pictures, we headed to find some lunch, eating at a sandwich shop near the Vaporetto stop we needed to take across the waterway over to the Guidecca Area of Venice  We saw a discount grocery and decided to check out their wine prices.  It is amazing that you can go into a store and purchase bottles of wine for Euro 1.79, sometimes even lower.  Of course it is not the best wine we have ever had, but it was decent for the price.  We stopped off at a church called Chiesa delle Redentore, but it did not look very impressive inside, and the cost to enter was Euro 3.00 apiece.   We did not want to go broke paying to go into all of these smaller churches, so we did not enter.

Venice from the Bell Tower at the Church of San Giorgio

We headed back to the Vaporetto, and headed to the Church of San Giorgio.  It was free to enter, and they allowed no-flash photography,  There was a bell tower that was accessible by elevator, and, yes,  you guessed it, Euro 3.00 apiece.  We did pay and ride to the top of the bell tower so that we could get some good pictures across the water of St. Mark’s Square.  After coming back down from the bell tower, we toured the inside of the church.  There were some nice paintings inside, but the church was rather plain inside.

Altar in the Chiesa della Salute

Next, it was another Vaporetto ride back to the  Chiesa della Salute (chiesa meaning “church”) which had been closed earlier when we were in that area.  It was free to enter and you could take no-flash photos, which is how I think all churches should be.  It was fairly decorative inside, at least the main altar was very ornate.

Then we were off to do some shopping in the open air market area near the Rialto Bridge before heading back to the room to get ready for dinner.

Tonight, we just wandered around to a few restaurants near the hotel, we had forgotten to get another recommendation from the hotel staff before they left for the evening.  That makes it a little tougher to find a place that is not too touristy, with touristy prices to match.  We settled on a place that had tortellini on the menu, something Stephanie wanted to eat again in Italy ever since we were in Rome 2 years ago.  It was funny, the place was actually run by some people from India.  The food was good, but it was not as good of a dining experience as we had the first night.  When it is late, and you are tired and hungry, sometimes you just have to settle for something that you hope is good, which was what happened tonight.  We will make sure and ask about some more dining options from our hotel staff for `tomorrow.

After dinner, we wandered around and went over to St. Marks Square to listen to some more orchestra music.  This time, we had our own bottle of wine, so we sat on some of the stacked structures that are used as elevated walkways during flooding periods in Venice, drank wine, and enjoyed the music.  We talked with a group of four young people form California, they had just gotten to Venice yesterday, and were in Italy for about 10 days.  It was their fist time here, so we were trying to give them a few pointers.

Since it was getting late, about 11:00 PM, we headed back to the room.  Tomorrow, we are visiting the fresh seafood and vegetable market nearby, and then heading over to Murano to look at the glass artwork.

Venice – Day 3

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Sep 232010
 

Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Market in Venice

Today we are going to go to the local seafood market in the morning, and then taking the Vaporetto over to Murano to look at the glass artwork.  The weather was really nice again today, and after a late morning breakfast, we headed out around 10:00 AM.  The market was bristling with activity.  There are two sections, one is for the vendors selling vegetables, and the other is for vendors selling fresh seafood of all types.  It is really interesting to compare the seafood here to some of the item we normally may see at home, but there are a lot of other things here that we don’t normally see.   There are especially interesting varieties of squid, some that look like normal squid, others that have a lot of the squids ink on them.

We spent about an hour wondering around and watching the locals buy seafood, and watching the vendors clean the fish.  The vegetable market is also interesting, they have a lot of items there that we had never seen before.

Fresh Seafood Market

After leaving the market, we headed across the Grand Canal on a Traghetto, which is a gondola that is used to ferry people across the canal, just from one shore directly across to the other side.  It is bigger than a normal gondola, and has two oarsmen.  We went on it so we could take a shortcut by walking over to the side of the island closest to Murano, and avoid the one hour ride if we took the Vaporetto from this area near our hotel to the same place.

We rode the Vaporetto over to Murano and began looking around at all of the glass work.  It seemed to me that there was not the large, really pretty glass that I had seen on my first trip to Murano in 2004.  However, we think we found out why.   We were trying to go to the upstairs area of one of the manufacturers, and we were told we needed to have an escort (read “pushy salesman’), and could not go up there just to look.

Stephanie on the Traghetto

They wanted to know what were were looking for, be it a vase, or some other specifics.  Since we were “just looking”, we were not allowed to go.  I think it is a combination of them wanting to get you corralled upstairs, and give you the really hard sell, combined with them not wanting to waste their time just showing off their glass.  I also think that they do not want other competitors to see their glass since you are not allowed to take photos anywhere.  I also think they are trying to protect their specific art style from being copied by the Chinese glass blowers.  We saw lots of signs in the store proclaiming that there was “No Chinese Glass” in them, it was all hand made in Murano.

You can only look at glass so long, and most of the stores carry about the same items in the small glass pieces on display.  Stephanie was looking for a glass ring, so we spent some time doing that.  It was hard to fine a ring she liked, and for it also to be in her size since they are all just randomly made, and you have to keep trying various rings on to see if they fit.

Canal in Murano

We took a break for lunch, then bought a couple of other small items, and headed back to the Vaporetto stop to return to Venice.  Once again, we took the shortcut walk across the island, and took the Traghetto back across the canal to the area where our hotel is located.  We wondered around looking for places to eat near our hotel so we would have an idea of where we might want to go for dinner that night.

We headed back to the room to rest a little before going to dinner.   We did get a couple of recommendations from the hotel staff, but when we found the restaurants, we did not see anything on the menus that we wanted to get.  We did find another alternative, and sat down for our dinner.  It was pleasant, and the food was good.

After dinner, we spent some time over near the Rialto Bridge taking pictures of the two of us with the camera on the tripod, and the bridge in the background.

Rialto Bridge at Night

When we finished that, we headed back to the room for the night to complete our packing.  We will be checking out tomorrow morning, and then spending the remainder of the day in Venice, before heading out on the night train to Vienna, Austria.

Venice Day 4 – Moving On To Vienna, Austria

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Sep 242010
 

Today is our last day in Venice.  The weather has been beautiful for the entire time here, something that does not always happen.  It has been cooler at night, and first thing in the mornings, but warmer during the day, actually warm enough for shorts.  We have to check out of the hotel today by 10:30 am, so we had to pack up the suitcases again last night so we did not have to face that task in the morning.

After we ate our breakfast in the hotel, we took our suitcases downstairs and put them in the storage area.  The hotel was nice enough to give us a key to get in to the front door later on in the evening, just in case they were not there when we came back for our luggage.  Our night train to Vienna, Austria does not leave Venice until 9:05 PM, so we did not want to have to pay to keep our luggage stored at the train station.  After checking out, we headed to the Vaporetto to take it to St. Mark’s Square to look at the Bridge of Sighs.  Unfortunately, when we got there, we realized it was in an area that is under renovation next to the Doge’s Palace.  You could still see the small bridge, but it was completely surrounded by a painted landscape that is also part of some advertising  After seeing it again. we recalled that this same advertising  has been there since our trip to Venice two years ago.

Heading to Murano on the Vaporetto

We then decided just to take a nice long Vaporetto ride to Murano, and hopped on the next one.  We were able to ride in the stern and take pictures as we went.  Once we got to Murano, we decided to go ahead and take another Vaporetto from there over to Burano, famous for their lace and linen.  We had not gone over to Burano before, mainly because it is about an hours ride there by Vaporetto from Murano.

The boat ride was nice, but we had to stand the whole way since the Vaporetto was a little crowded.  We got off and walked into the small town area.  We were surprised to find that it was a very clean and brightly colored town, similar to Murano, but nicer.

Colorful Burano

All of the buildings are painted with very bright colors, and appeared to be well kept.  Since it was time for lunch, we stopped at a local eatery and split a pizza and a half liter of red wine.

We really enjoyed the lunch, we ate in a covered area outside, and the weather was just beautiful.  We walked around the town, most of it was on a single loop that we easily walked in about an hour, stopping every once and awhile for photos, and to look into a store or two.

We headed back to the Vaporetto stop to return to Venice.  There was a boat loading up so we ran to get on before it left, only to find out they are on a schedule, and were not going to leave for several more minutes.  That is different from most of the normal Vaporetto stops, you only have about 30 seconds to get on after they stop, let people off and on, and then depart.  If they are ready to go and you are no on the boat in time, they will leave with you standing right there on the platform.

Colorful Burano and a Leaning Bell Tower

The ride back took about an hour and fifteen minutes, we had to stop at three places along the route back.  We ended up departing in an area near St. Mark’s Square, but a little ways away from all of the crowds.  We took a shortcut around the really crowded areas, and found a grocery store that we had not seen before.  Stephanie went in and bought a large bottle of Diet Coke for later on.  We headed over to the area around our hotel and stopped off for a glass of wine.  We drank a really good Rosso wine, and we wrote down the name hoping we could find it in a grocery or wine store to take with us on the overnight train ride to Vienna.

We looked in several wine stores, and also in a couple of different grocery stores, but could not the wine.  Since we had some time to kill, we actually ended up walking back to the train station from

Catching a Nap on the Vaporetto Back From Burano

our area of Venice looking in various stores for that wine. We did find a much larger grocery store near the train station that we did not know was there, but alas, they too did not have our wine.  We purchased something different to have on the night train and headed back to the hotel to get our luggage.  By this time, it had started to rain, our first bad weather since arriving in Levanto last Friday.

Umbrellas in hand, we made it back to the hotel, retrieved our luggage, and headed to the Vaporetto stop for the ride to the train station.  It was a little after 7:00 PM.  The Vaporetto ride took about 30 minutes, and with a short walk from the Vaporetto stop to the train station, we arrived around 7:45 PM.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the station, and saw that our train was at the platform about 40 minutes before our departure time, so we headed over to board.  We found our car and our compartment without any difficulty, and boarded.

Engine for the Night Train to Vienna

The compartment was actually set up to accommodate 3 persons, it had three stacked bunk beds that folded out from the wall.  It was a little smaller than we had envisioned, but was set up with a small table, a sink area, a closet and a shelf for storing our luggage.

When we first got to the compartment, all of the beds were folded down, and there was only one seat in the compartment.  We discovered that the lower bunk made into two seats if it were folded up, so we folded it up, and also folded up the middle bunk.  We knew it was going to take some help from the car attendant to put the bunks back down because it required a large square key to release the locks.  However, we did not want to sit on the beds for the initial part of the journey.  Unfortunately, we did not take any pictures of the compartment set up with the bunks laid down.

Stephanie in our Night Train Compartment

The train left right on time at 9:05 PM.  We noticed it was not very cool in the compartment while we were at the station, and hoped the air conditioning would work better once were were moving. I do not think the cars had air conditioning, it never got much cooler even after we were underway.  The attendant came by and took our breakfast order, nothing special, some yogurt, coffee, juice, and rolls with ham and cheese. There was a window that would open, so that became our source of cooler air.  After getting everything situated, we put on some more comfortable sleeping clothes for the 11 hour journey to Vienna.  We sipped on some red wine, and watched the scenery go by until about 11:00 PM, when we got our bunks lowered, and went to sleep.

The train was quite loud, and a little rocky.  We did make a few stops during the night.  Both of us slept pretty well considering the motion and stops, but certainly not as good as we would have in a hotel.

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