Castles, Cobblestones and Crepes: October 2012

Upon arriving home from Morocco, I was off again a week later onto my next adventure. This time again I was traveling with Shanon and then also her boyfriend Phillipe. So lucky me, I was the third wheel! No it wasn't as bad as I'm making it sound! This time we spent a week in Italy and a week in Greece with about 3-4 days in each city, this too was also back in March, so I cannot fully remember the small details, bad me. Anyways once again we were on a flight just a short little ride away to a new country.
We began our trip in Venice. Before arriving to Venice, I didn't know much about the city, just something along the lines of many gondolas, canals and "supposably" built on water. Well the first thing I noticed right at the airport, this place stunk, like seriously, fish and just plain nastiness. I wanted to turn around and get back on the plane. There are two options into getting into the mainland of Venice, water taxi or water bus. Both essentially the same thing, just the taxi was for personal and straight forward boat ride to your designation and the bus was for the general public and a lot of cheaper, but took a little longer. Our hotel was not on the mainland of Venice but on one of the littler islands called Lido. Venice consists of ten or so main smaller islands surrounding it and water transportation is the only route to all of these. So my first impression of this was city was Wow, it really is built upon water, I envisioned it like Amsterdam with some canals here and there, nope, this was not the case. For the water bus was fun and exhilarating, I have finally been accustomed to public transportation in Germany, but now I get to do it by boat! We spent the next three days wondering around and over and through the city of Venice, we also made it over to the island Murano, where all the original venetian glass is from. For those of you who don't know what that looks like, I'm sure you have seen the really pretty glass necklaces or rings, or little figures and stuff, out of thicker , colorful glass, essentially just glass jewelry.
After Venice we flew to Rome. Now we were starting to get into that warmer climate, which was at no problem to me! That was part of the reason of coming to Italy! We got into Rome rather quite late, but we knew our "bed and breakfast" was near the train station, so we set out for it. At first we walked past it, then past it again until finally finding it. At first they didn't answer the doorbell, "cool," we thought. We get to sleep outside tonight. But eventually the lady showed up and let us inside to get some sleep and not join homeless outside the train station. Compared to Venice, we did not use public transportation in Rome, we walked, and walked and walked. I wanted to die by the end, because I am stupid and did not bring walking shoes. FML. But it was so worth it. We stumbled upon the Trevi fountain, where I threw in a Deutsche Mark, in hopes of bringing myself good luck in finding a German husband :P We did make it over to the Vatican, but on the way back we took the subway. Here I got to wander around by myself and do some exploring. I did go back the next day and search all the shops until I found the perfect St. Christopher for Brittney, it had to be gold and have the Vatican engraving on the back. Which I later sent her in the mail and ended up taking four months to get there, I thought it was a goner for sure. For some reason I didn't have much cash while in Rome, so I ate a lot of dollar cheeseburgers. McDonalds has been my go to place in all my travels when either I was a)short on cash or b)just needed a cheeseburger. McDonalds has never failed me in time of need! Except one time when they were out of ice cream. We found a cheap train ride down to Naples, so Shanon and I couldn't pass that up! On the train ride there, we met the Danish family next to us, they asked if we were going to Pompeii, we said "No, where is that?" Turns out it was only another 30 minutes away, in Naples we changed trains and was on our way to Pompeii, which was the probably the best decision, hence later we found out Naples was pretty boring. I really enjoyed Pompeii, that's not something you can just go and see in any old town. I would've like to have visited the museum there too, but we did not have enough time. There at the museum I believe is where the actual artifacts and preserved bodies laid. Rome was a very large city with a lot going on. We did not get to experience any of the night life in Italy, because by nightfall we were exhausted. I would say though, the food was not as great as I expected it to be. Maybe because we ate cheaply and not at the expensive and fancy restaurants where the really good chefs were hiding. Italy is place I definitely will have to go back and travel, there is so much more of Italy to be explored!!!!!