2011.06.28 – Paris (FR) – Milan (IT)
As we had an early train to catch, we woke up at 5am and quickly packed up. We took a taxi to the Gare de Lyon and had some coffee before boarding our train. We enjoyed the train ride on our first regular train in Europe. We had a stop-over for a few hours in Geneva, Switzerland. We stored our luggage at the train station before exploring a bit of the town. We scrambled somewhat to exchange some Swiss euros. We had lunch at a cafe after making sure they would accept credit cards. We walked back to the train station along the waterfront promenade. We really enjoyed the beautiful views along the lake including the ducks paddling in the water. Back on the train, we made our way to Milan. Upon our arrival at the train station, we lined-up at the service counter in the hope of reserving our train tickets for our next itinerary destination – Florence. While waiting, we were informed by a local that we could make our seat reservations through the automatic ticket machines. We quickly reserved our tickets for Florence for the next afternoon. We took a taxi to our reserved hotel but we were surprised that they did not have our reservation. We realized that we had made our reservation for the following month. Fortunately, the hotel had a quadruple room available for us. Later, we took the metro to a popular restaurant area where we had our evening meal beside a canal. Unfortunately the mosquitoes appeared more famish than the tourists. After our meal, we took a stroll in the area with the hope of locating an ATM. Victoria and I had some Nutela and banana crepes similar to those we had in Thailand last December. We took the metro back to our hotel.
2011.06.29 – Milan – Florence (IT)
We left our luggage at the hotel lobby and headed out to explore a bit of Milan before our afternoon train. As we were reviewing our train ticket reservations for Florence, we realized that we had made a serious mistake on our departure time. Instead of reserving a departure at 4pm we had chosen 4am departure time. We headed out to the train ticket counter in the hope we could get a refund or and exchange but unfortunately there was no way. We lost 40 euros as a result of this reservation mistake. We finally got the correct reservations at the counter. We headed out to visit the Duomo (largest church) and a nearby Castello Sforzesco. Hopefully our luck had changed as we encountered an ATM (Barclay’s) linked to our local bank network along the way. We spent some time in the park enjoying some ice cream and a rest before returning to our hotel to pick up our luggage. We took the taxi to the train station. Once again, we enjoyed the 1h 45mins train ride that led us to Florence. Upon our arrival at the Firenze train station, we used the automated ticket machine to reserve our seat for our next itinerary segment – Rome. We took extra care in confirming the dates and hours of our reservations. We took the taxi to our reserved B&B Bel Counte. The room was nice but it appeared to have some unusual plumbing. We headed out for supper at the Yellow Bar recommended by the B&B owner. We really enjoyed our meal and wine in this very popular restaurant. Later, we explored the lively streets of Florence. As we started to hear musicians, Jenny and Victoria were quick to attend the last part of a free concert. Later, as the streets filled up with tourists, we attended a modern ballet presentation. We enjoyed walking along the cobbled narrow streets of Florence.
2011.06.30 – Florence (IT)
Due to some scheduling or overbooking conflict, our B&B owner moved us to a different accommodation for our 2nd night in Florence. After breakfast, we spent much of the day strolling the streets of Florence. We walked up a nearby hill which offered splendid views of the city. As we were tired, we jumped on a bus back to the city center. We wrapped up our relaxing day with a nice evening meal.
2011.07.01 – Florence – Rome (IT)
After waking up, we headed out for breakfast. We enjoyed wandered the small streets, stopping at a small street cafe, before returning to our hotel. It was not hard to believe that Florence was a popular tourist city as its streets were full of tour groups. Although we were very close to the train station, we opted to take taxi. We felt ripped off of 10 euro for such a short taxi ride.
The train ride to Rome took about 1h 30min and it was quite enjoyable in our first class seats. After arriving at Rome’s Termini train station, we walked with our luggage to our reserved nearby hotel – Euro Equis. The room was nice and clean but once again the owner requested payment in cash only. Hence, Jenny and I had to head out unexpectedly to withdraw some funds at an ATM. After getting a good overview of the tourist attractions and a map from our hotel owner, we walked out to start our exploration of Rome. We took the bus to get near our first destination – the Pantheon. We calmed our hunger along the way by stopping at a bakery. Shortly after entering the Pantheon, we hear loud screams from someone. It turned out that some tourist had their camera stolen by a gazelle-like thief. We realized that Rome was in fact living up to its reputation of pickpocketer’s capital.
We continued our visit with the Piazza Navona where we watched a few street entertainers. We made our way to the Trastevere district where we had supper at the Ivo Pizzeria. On our way back, we surveyed a stray cat refuge located in an archaeological site. We took the bus back to the Termini train station and walked to our nearby hotel.
2011.07.02 – Rome (IT)
Although we woke up at 9am, we did not leave our room before 10:30am. Unfortunately we skipped breakfast thinking that we might find something along the way – but we did not. We took the metro to the Coliseo where we queued at the Palentine Hill’s ticket booth. The ticket office line-up were much shorter than at the Coliseo. The area was overflowing with tourists and “modern day gladiators”. We took a few hours to visit the extensive Palentine Hill site. We had lunch at a nearby restaurant before visiting the Coliseo. Jenny discovered a place to buy cheap water bottles – reserved for staff only! The ruins were all quite impressive. We started walking towards the Trevi fountain while visiting the Vittorio Emmanuelle II and having some gelato along the way. The Trevi fountain area was also packed with tourists. We managed to find some seats and stay there for an hour while enjoying people watching and general views. We had supper at a nearby Chinese restaurant. After our meal, we walked some more towards a metro station and made our way back to the hotel.
At around midnight, Jenny and I were awaken by Jessica’s mooning from her severe headache. The pain was now extending to her right eye. We decided that it was worth going to the hospital emergency to see whether anything could be done. Jessica and I took the taxi to a nearby hospital where the emergency triage area was almost empty. We quickly got referred to ocular emergency room a few buildings down path. Again the triage room was empty and Jessica was quickly examined. She returned disappointed by the diagnostic and remedy – a simple prescription of eye drops. Within an hour, we were back at our hotel room to Jenny’s great relief as she started panicking about being locked in the room.
2011.07.03 – Rome (IT)
Today, we expected a few tourist attractions to be closed on a Sunday. We started with a nice breakfast (panini and coffee) at a nearby cafe. We explored a number of churches (Santa Maria Maggior), fountains (Fontane del Tritone), plazas (Piazza delia Republica) along our long walk to the Villa Borghese gardens. We rented a quad-bicycle for an hour and had a good workout cycling around the park. We enjoyed resting a bit longer in the park. We decided to head to see the Mouth of Truth housed at the Santa Maria Cosmedin church. We walked down the Spanish steps before taking the Metro to the church. Upon our arrival there, we queued again to have a chance to touch the Mouth of Truth. After a quick visit of the church, we walked towards the Trastevere district. We stopped for gelato along the way. We took a cruise on the Tiber River for one hour before having some pizza at Pizzeria “Dar Poeta”. We seemed to wait a long time for our bus “64” back to the Termini train station but it did eventually show up. Everyone was tired after the long but enjoyable day.
2011.07.04 – Rome (IT)
We had to change hotel room this morning as our quadruple room was not available as we had reserved it initially for only three nights. We moved into two separate rooms. We had breakfast (croissants and coffee) again at a nearby cafe. After waiting for the bus “64” for 15 minutes, we decided to use the metro to get to the Vatican City. The metro was very busy. The area around Vatican City abounded with tourists and touts for tours. We made our way to the St Peter’s basilica where we took an elevator ride and then climbed a narrow staircase up to the dome area. Along the staircase corridor we could smell everyone’s sweat. At the top, it was difficult to move around as there were simply too many visitors. Although the views at the top were not overly impressive, the route up and down was quite an adventure. After visiting St-Peter’s Square, we enjoyed some gelato which gave us a bit of energy to continue our visit of Vatican City. We faced a very long queue for the Vatican museum so we decided to skip it. We walked to the Castel Sant´Angelo but we ran out of luck as it was closed on Mondays. We hopped onto the same cruise boat as yesterday since our tickets were valid for a 24h period. It was a convenient way to return to the Trastevere district. We took the bus and metro back to our hotel area where we ate at a very good Chinese restaurant. We slept in separate rooms on our last night in Rome.
2011.07.05 – Rome – Venice (IT)
We woke up to the sound of rain this morning. We reminded ourselves that we had been quite lucky with the weather up to now – not too hot or too cold. We had breakfast at a different cafe closer to our hotel. The hotel’s tiny lift was not working this morning. Carrying Jessica’s suitcase down the five floors to the ground level was quite a haul. We walked to the Termini train station with our luggage. We waited for our train for another hour or so. We all looked forward to the four hour train ride to take a break from our recent walking days.
After arriving at the Venice train station, we looked into making a train reservation for our next itinerary destination – Salzbourg. We were informed that there was only one train a day that went to Salzbourg. Unfortunately, it was a night train that left Venice at 9pm and arrived in Salzbourg at 4am. This was not our preference but since we had an Eurail pass, we opted to get those tickets which were the only ones available in second class. We were a bit unclear on how to get to our hotel as water canals appeared everywhere. With an apparent simple Google map route to our hotel, we opted to walk there. After crossing a footbridge and walking a few minutes, we noticed our hotel located one level down from the roadway where we were walking on. A local resident from across the street gestured to us on the way to get to the lower level. We finally made it to our hotel San Andreas – an old monastery. We checked into our two bedroom family suite. We headed out afterwards to explore the streets or more like the waterways of Venice. Early on, we realized that navigating the walkways in Venice wouldn’t be easy. Our hotel map failed to provide us with the necessary details. We did finally find our restaurant for supper. After our meal, Jessica tried her hand at navigating the street of Venice and only managed to bring us back to our restaurant after a fifteen minute walk. What a revealing experience! We managed, with the help of Victoria, to make it to Venice’s central plaza, the San Marco Piazza. The Piazza was full of evening tourists. There were a small group of classic musicians at various restaurants around the piazza. We bought 24h water bus passes and headed back to our hotel using the water bus. It was a very nice ride with all the evening lights. From our hotel entrance, we could see a huge cruise ship docked.
2011.07.06 – Venice (IT)
We had a courtesy breakfast at our hotel before heading out on a water bus for the island of Murano which was known for its famous glass creations. We walked around the island and stopped at a grocery store for lunch supplies. We took the water bus back to a station at the far east of the island and started a long walk back towards our hotel. Having bought a Venice map in Murano, it had become much easier to navigate the streets of Venice. Along the way, the sun became quite warm and we decided to hop on a water bus to get back to our hotel After a rest of an hour, we took a slow water bus for more than 1.5h ride to the island of Lido. We walked the street of Lido which was known as the beach town of Venetians. We had supper in Lido and later headed back to our hotel with the water bus. Venice was really amazing. It was hard to fully grasp how this water city developed and had built up like that.
