july 12 - aisling awoke at 5am and went to the airport. getting there was a battle in itself as chiltern railways kindly messed up my ticket and i had to buy another one and it was a disaster but EVENTUALLY i got there, left rainy england behind and hit florence where it was 2pm and 40 degrees! i somehow navigated the city to the hostel where i met georgie and rose - and then we set off to explore. the hostel was very cool, like a large apartment with separate rooms and we were very glad to have paid for a private room as it seemed quite noisy.
first on our list was visiting the accademia; home to michelangelo's david, and then some dinner.
florence is absolutely beautiful, my favourite part of italy that i saw and i wish i had more time there (a constant refrain over the next few weeks as you will see). we spent our second day in pisa, visited the famous leaning tower and in the evening bought tickets to the first screening of harry potter and the deathly hallows part 2 - in english!! an amazing night, i cried my eyes out and swore "i will never be happy again" as we walked home afterwards around 1am. florence was incredibly hot, 40 degrees with no shade or breeze in the slightest and we found it difficult to even sleep at night. my first night i was so tired, having only slept 2 hours the previous night, but we still didn't fall asleep until past 1am because of the heat. i'm sure i drove georgie and rose mad by constantly quoting "facts" from my renaissance history lessons last year - it was amazing seeing il duomo in person, wandering through the piazza della signoria on our way to the cinema.
the next next day we headed for rome, boarding a train and spending 2 hours watching the beautiful italian countryside. that day (once we reached rome and found our hostel) was spent getting to know the city and buying food. oh and watching as much dubbed-in-italian MTV as our hearts could handle. this hostel was again, like a strange apartment although this one was very small and in a separate building to the reception! it was here that we had our first taste of dodgy european lifts and hostels being placed in beautiful huge old houses.
we had an early night that night as we were to be up and out early the next day to visit the vatican city. it was a good thing that we were early in the end, the doors to the vatican palace open at 9am and by 7.30 the queue was building steadily! upon first arriving we viisted the basilica where rose was told her dress was too short, but due to my incredible skill as a fashion dresser (and the skirt i had brought with me just in case), got in. the vatican palace was beautiful - predictably - as was seeing the sistine chapel. at least, it was incredible the first time but by the time we had found our way through the palace and out the other side, we had taken a detour through the chapel at least 4 or 5 times, so the novelty wore off somewhat. after that we went to see the trevi fountain and made our wishes. we had planned on finding the spanish steps too but somehow got distracted, probably by the heat and our exhaustion.
that evening janet arrived and we went to visit the colusseum before deciding to see harry potter again.
we took a long walk up...somewhere (that's the problem with being a tourist, i don't know where anything is!) to a park because i was DYING for the loo, and then walked back to the cinema - stopping off for a gelati from the shop across the street.
the next morning (we're now up to the 16th of july for anyone who is wondering), janet and georgie left to join their topdeck tour while rose and i packed our bags and moved hostel's to the misleadingly named "hotel beautiful 2". there was nothing WRONG with it, but it was certainly no more than basic. we spent a good few hours debating what to do before settling on visiting the pantheon. we navigated the metro and accidentally found the spanish steps (hurray for touristing!) before heading off down via del corso - one of the better known shopping streets in rome - stopping at the disney store along the way. as we wandered a winding laneway leading us to the pantheon i got over-excited by a fortune tellers table set out on the street, but rose wouldn't let me get my fortune told so i guess we'll never know what could have happened. outside the pantheon we were waylaid by a beautiful possibly-italian-but-possibly-something-else boy, who worked for a pub crawl company and smiled and complimented his way in to us almost promising to take part in a pubcrawl that night. once we had departed his company however, we saw sense and rose told me that i had to have an early night.
like a good girl, i was in my bed at 7.30, reading my book but we got silly (as we often do when left alone together) and before we knew it, it was almost midnight and we'd been sitting in bed singing and exchanging family stories for 4 hours.
the following morning we arose early and took a train to naples, or the "slum" of italy as we have since named it. naples was wonderful, and really cheap but definitely recognisable as the poorer part of italy. unfortunately we were only there on a sunday and monday - sunday everything was shut and we had dedicated monday to visiting the ruins of pompeii so we didn't actually get to see a lot of naples but what i saw made me really want to go back. our hostel was AMAZING, tucked away down a laneway next to an old church or something. the view from our room was of vespas, people hanging out their clothes on balconies and barefoot children playing near stone buildings and shouting at each other in italian. definitely a "cultural" experience.
seeing pompeii was mindblowing, after studying it and learning all about it for so long - to see the preserved remains of objects, people and even animals really took me aback. unfortunately i had hurt my foot somehow during the night before - doing something that felt like bruising it internally and hurting it so much i was worried it was broken - so i was more than a little grumpy after a few hours of walking. still, rose was patient and the promise of 3 euro pizza for dinner got me through it.
after 2 nights in naples it was back to rome for one more night before going to nice! back at the good ol' "hotel beautiful 2" rose and i were (we think) upgraded to a much nicer room...possibly due to her looking roughly 14 years old and the guy at reception being a little bit pervy. our roommates were nice, a girl who didn't speak much english and a really fabulous guy called jack from chicago who was in italy to brush up on his italian before starting work as a "theatre lackey" as he titled himself.
after a somewhat disturbed nights sleep we headed early morning to the airport to take our flight to nice. of course, we hadn't considered the fact that some airports just dont' cater to people who eat food and so only have one cafe available at any given time. but then, we got on the plane and we chilled for an hour and before we knew it - we were in nice!
sorry guys i'm so tired it's just after 10pm and i'm going to be in bed in 2 minutes. i'll fill in more detail soon - tomorrow or the weekend for sure! xx
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