Bread and Nutella: Trial and Errors in the North

This past weekend consisted of our trip to Northern Italy. We took a night train to Venice Wednesday night to Thursday morning, spent the night at a budget hotel in Venice, Friday afternoon we took a train to Florence, spent two nights in Florence and took a train to Pisa Sunday morning. From Pisa we took a train to Rome, from Rome we took a train to Naples, and from Naples took the Circumvesuviana back to Sorrento, all on Sunday.
Let's start with the train ride to Venice.
The first half of the ride went rather smoothly, our ticket specified the wrong car number so we just assumed our seats were in the next car over, because they were in numerical order, then, at around 2:30am, a group of Italian guys start banging on our door (we were in one of those enclosed seating areas with six seats) saying that we are in their seats. We show them our ticket, but realize they have the same seats, they start harrassing us while we try to get the conductor (who NEVER came). The harrassing consisted of a constant bang on the windows, pointing and laughing at every little thing we did, and just overall rudeness. This continued on for the good part of 2 hours, after which they disappeared somewhere, never to be seen again. I hope. We arrived in Venice at approximately 5:30am, sleep deprived and hungry. The city was asleep and gorgeous. The view that greeted us as we stepped out from the train station was like a picture on a postcard. Bridges spanning over the Grand Canal and boats floating around. There were backpackers asleep on the steps, but that was cool, just gave me ideas on how to save money next. We sat on some steps and ate bread with Nutella before walking through a maze of alleyways to reach San Marcos Square. We got to see the quiet side of Venice. The Venice sans crowds of bumbling tourists and pushy souvenir hawkers was refreshing to say the least. St. Mark's Cathedral was beautiful with all the gold leaf and other religious art and the Guggenheim Art Collection was just cool. I got to be all artsy staring at Picasso's, Dali's, Pollock's, Kadinsky's, Brancusi's, and one Modigliani painting. Within the 24 hours we were there, I felt like we saw a good portion of Venice, enjoyed the atmosphere, RODE A GONDOLA, and had good sandwiches. A definite must see for those thinking about going to Italy. We wanted to explore the night life, but there was none! Everything closed at about 7:30pm, so we caught up on our lost sleep. The next day we shopped around a bit and got to the train station early. We people watched a bit while eating our pizzas and hopped on the train.
Train ride from hell to Florence.
Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad, but our train experienced engine failure and stopped in the middle of a tunnel for about an hour before dropping us off in the middle of nowhere (Grizzana??). We got on a train to Prato and changed trains to Florence from there, this whole train business took us most of our day and left us only time to watch all the shops close as we got into the city. We took a few buses (our train stop was not in the center of town) to our campsite and the bus dropped us off in Piazza Michelangelo. This piazza greeted us with a huge statue of Michelangelo's David and an incredible view of the entire city of Firenze. This campsite we stayed at, really was a campsite, we stayed in tents with beds, next to families camping out in for real tents and RVs. There were young people getting drunk in there bar/food area, so it was a lively atmosphere. We met this guy from New Zealand, who tried to get us to go out to the bars around there, but we decided we would just go the next night, as we were really tired by then. We got up later than I planned the next morning and set off for the center of town. First on our unplanned itinerary was the Uffizi Gallery. We had to wait about 2 hours to get into this art gallery, but it was worth the wait. I got to see Botticelli's Primavera and Birth of Venus in person! Both those paintings were huge, much bigger than I had imagined them to be. I saw a lot more Botticelli, lots of Carravaggios, some Da Vinci's, some Michelangelo's... basically every Renaissance artist you've learned about at some point in school. That took up most of the day and we left the gallery only to discover how incredibly hot the sun had become. We quickly made the decision to visit the Duomo, supposedly the most perfect Dome, ever. Before arriving at the Duomo, we stopped for some lunch at a kebab place, BEST food I've had since coming to Italy, really (I'm sick of bread, mozzarella, prosciutto, pasta, tomato sauce..) Anyhow, with stomachs full, we headed toward the Duomo. When we got there, we were sad to see that it had closed, but decided to go around to get some pictures. As we rounded the corner, we saw one of the guards signalling to some people to quickly come in. He let us into the cathedral! and we got to climb 463 stairs to the top of this thing. I only remembered my fear of heights when we stepped outside onto the terrace on the roof of the Duomo. Climbing up the stairs was no small feat and images of monks running up and down during the 14th century flashed in my mind's eye.. weird. We were treated to a magnificent 360 degree view of Florence and stayed until they kicked us out. It was peaceful up on the dome and I would go back if given a second chance. We shopped around a bit after that and walked around, passing many more chieses (churches), and the building containing the actual David statue. I didn't feel like shelling out 10 euro to see the thing, so I didn't. I used my haggling skills and bought a belt, as my pants were in danger of falling off (lack of dryer has stretched out my clothes).. I didn't buy too much more here and was pretty good about not buying random crap. yay. We discovered the 99 euro cent stores and bought some beer to drink back at the campsite and headed back after walking around for what felt like forever. We played King's cup back at the campsite and headed to bed early, in preparation for our 4am wake up call..
A hurried Sunday.
I awoke to find that it was already 5:30am and we were in danger of missing our train. We all grabbed our possessions and ran out the door without brushing our teeth or washing our faces. Took a long hike/run (just for me though) to a bus stop that took us to the central train station. Ended up that our train was late and we made the train, but it didn't leave so we had to take another train from Florence to Pisa. In my haste, I forgot to validate my ticket (get a time stamp on it or something) and after much arguing with the train man, got fined 40 euro (80 USD!!!!). I totally got gypped, as the people before me only got fined 10 euro (which I only found out later, thanks for the heads up [SARCASM]) and I was told by our prof's wife that people can also just write the date on the ticket. damn you Italy, you got me this time! I was really frusturated for the first half of the day, but reasoned that it was just a really expensive lesson in watching out for yourself first, because no one else will. Anyhow, after that little incident, we went to see the leaning tower of Pisa, a.k.a. the bell tower of Cathedral. This mistake in architectural engineering leans because someone forgot to take into consideration the looseness of the soil they built the tower on. In fact, most of the monuments in Pisa have a slight tilt because of this soil impediment, but they won't admit their shoddy planning.. Anyway, we took the picture that EVERYONE takes at the leaning tower and were finished with the place in under an hour. Really, the only thing to see there is all in one place. I bought some souvenirs and we headed toward the train station. We caught an earlier train back to Rome, during which I fell in and out of consciousness. We arrived in Rome and I took one step outside of the train station just so I could say I've been in Rome.. I bought some bread at the supermercato there and utilized my Nutella, again. Got on the train to Naples, got off, got on the train to Sorrento, and arrived back to our small town of Sorrento. The town of Sorrento has some new lighting additions, which makes me feel as if I'm in some sort of movie or something..
Anyhow, recap: Loved Venice, loved Florence, amused with Pisa, angry at Italian trains.
More about prices later...
Next: Pompeii, Capri, Ercolano, and Naples (again)