Ah Paris!

Well everyone, I’ve made it to Paris! But there is not much to say about Paris yet since I haven’t done much here so far other than walk around a little bit. So I’ll fill you in on my last few weeks .

By the way, French keyboards are WAY worse than German ones and I am reduced to finger picking this entry becquse NOTHING is anywhere near what I’m used to . You better appreciate it!

After my last update from Florence I headed to the South of France and hit Nice as
my first stop. It is absolutely beautiful, and I used Nice as a jumping off point to go to Monaco and Cannes. Monaco is the second smallest country in the world after the Vatican at only 1.95 square kilometers, and home to the famous Grand Prix race that happened there a few days ago . When I was there, they were setting up for the race and had the big banners up and stands were being built too. I went to the famous casino and lost €2 in the slot machines there before heading to the other side of Monaco and seeing the palace where Prince Ranier and Princess Grace used to live. Otherwise there wasn’t much to see so I only spent a few hours there. Now I want to find out the third smallest country so I can go and say I’ve been to the three smallest countries in the world!


Monaco

The next day I spent wandering around Nice and checking out the beach and some museums. Ah the lovely Meditteranian Sea! I understand why the South of France is a popular vacation spot. The beach was beautiful and complete with cruise ships docked out in the water. Fancy cars drove around everwhere but there were also tons of people rollerblading along the water’s edge.


Beach in Nice

I thought I would get bothered a lot in Italy, but it was a lot worse in France. Within the first two days I was hit on twice by French guys. It is very obvious I can hardly speak French, so when it gets to the point that they are making hand motions to ask if I want to go for a drink, I have to wonder what would be the point? We can’t even talk to each other! Crazy French guys...

I met a few people in my hostel room and we had decided to go to Cannes the next day since the film festival was going on and we wanted to see that. We ended up having a guy in our room that worked in the business and was in town for the festival. He gave us some awesome tips on where to go for the red carpet and how to try and get tickets to a show. So we went and got a great spot for the Red Carpet just like he told us, and sat and waited. We had no clue who was going to be coming that night, but I was hoping for Sean Penn since he was the president of the jury for the festival this year. Long story short, he never came on the carpet, but we did see Jackie Chan and Natalie Portman. I guess Jackie Chan is pretty famous and cool but of course I was hoping for some bigger stars. Say, oh I don't know, Johnny Depp? Haha. And we saw a bunch of famous French and Italian stars but we didn't know who they were. When the carpet was over and we were leaving, we almost got into the second biggest movie of the night. We were offered reserved seating tickets for free as we were walking by, but formal dress was required and we weren't dressed up enough! Too bad, that would have been awesome! But all in all a good time.


By the Red Carpet!


Jackie Chan and Natalie Portman

After Nice I headed further down the coast to Marseilles, the second biggest city in France. If you know the story of the Count of Monte Cristo, then you also know that Marseilles is where the famous Chateau D'If prison is. (That novel itself is not true, but it was based on a true story.) I took a boat trip out and visited the prison, and it was a lot smaller than I expected! But the boat trip was very beautiful and relaxing even on it's own and it was a lovely day outside. I found a guy in the hostel from Victoria and he went back down to the Port with me at night so I didn't have to go by myself since it is not safe. I had heard that it was really pretty at night though so I wanted to go, and it was very nice! All the boats in the port are lit up, as well as the forts out at the entrance and the big church on the hill.


Small island with the Chateau D'If on it

The prison

Vieux Port at night with church on the hill lit up

From Marseilles I left for Switzerland, and after a long day and three different trains I got to Lucerne. Such a cute little town! Exactly what I pictured Switzerland to be like. I didn't do any trips through the Alps though because they are very expensive, but I could see the Alps fro, Lucerne. I spent my one day there taking pictures of the quaint covered bridges and feeding the swans that cluster around the edge of the lake and river. I had the worst two nights of my trip though as I was in a three bed room with two girls that both snored worse than lumberjacks all night. Got maybe three hours sleep a night, not exaggerating I swear.



Swans and bridges in Lucerne

So I was very happy to move onto Bern, the capital of Switzerland. I had a huge heart attack when I went to check into my hostel and saw the same two girls from my room in Lucerne checking in before me, but thankfully they were not in my room! I had two full days in Bern and they were very relaxing. I did some shopping (Yes, Switzerland is very expensive for most things, but not for clothes!) and checked out the famous bear pits. It was kind of sad to see the bears doing tricks to get food from the tourists, but no worse than a zoo I guess since they could go and hide if they wanted to. I was expecting them to be chained up in a cement viewing arena or something though so it was better than I thought.



Bern

And now, I'm in Paris! Today is my second day and I haven't done much yet. I did a walking tour yesterday but I only got to see the Eiffel Tower and Arch de Triomphe from far away, so I have to go back and do those still. Probably tomorrow. Today I am taking care of a bunch of online things, and then probably checking out the Luxembourg Gardens and Notre Dame. The Louvre is free from 6 to 10 tonight for youths so I am going to check that out as well. I am not deluded enought to think that I can see everything anyway, so I hope 4 hours is enough. If not it is free again on Sunday, but I was hoping to do some other museums then since they are all free that day. And then on Tuesday I am going to go to Disneyland Paris! Totally awesome!

After that it is Scotland, Ireland and then home! Hooray!
Miss you all.

Oh, and I've heard stories that you have to register to leave a comment now. That shouldn't be true, just click the anonymous option and type your name in at the end. Tootles!

Ciao Bella!

Buon giorno!

So, today is my last day in Italy, and I'm for sure going to miss the Gelato! Oh man is it ever amazing here, with soooo many awesome flavours. Like Kinder, Nutella, honey, cinnamon.... delicious. And the pizza and pasta... wow. Italians sure know how to eat I'll tell you that. I've never seem more shapes and sizes of pasta in my life. I wish I could send a bag of each kind home to try later.


Pasta!!

Anyway, I figured it was about time for an update, since I've done so much in the last week and a half. First off, Roma!

I had four full days in Rome, and I packed in a lot. On the first day I took to the streets (being very careful of pickpockets and scooter theives) and just walked around exploring. I found the Spanish steps (overrated I thought), the Trevi fountain and the Pantheon. I really liked the Trevi fountain, and even though I was there about noon, it wasn't as busy as I thought. I was able to get down to the front very easily, and there was tons of room for me to sit on the edge of it and just look at it for a while. Of course I did the whole coin over the shoulder and another for a wish thing, but I felt pretty stupid doing it even though everyone else was too. The pantheon was beautiful, and the tomb of Raphael is actually in there so that was neat.



In the hostel that night I met two guys from Edmonton who were going to be there for a few more days like me, so the next day we met up and went to the Colosseum. That was super cool! We were there early, before 9am so there was hardly any line and we breezed right in. It was pretty impressive! It is kind of hard to imagine what it looked like in its fully glory because time and weather have kind of eroded the seats and stands after over 1700 years, and a lot of the tunnels and stairways have been blocked off or covered in to make it more tourist accessible. The floor is not there so you can see all the tunnels and passageways that would have been underneath it, but there is a sample section at one end of what the floor would have looked like. It was way smaller than I thought though. After movies like Gladiator and stuff where they're riding around in horse drawn carts and all, it's hard to believe they had enough room to maneouver them around. The floor area was smaller than an ice rink. And I couldn't figure out how the trap doors in the floor worked, because I didn't see any ramps or anything from the area under the floor. I'll have to watch Gladiator again when I get home I guess. Haha.





After that we went to Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum and spent a few hours looking through the old Roman Ruins. I think Rome has more ruins than dog poop. Seriously. Even just walking down the street you can come across random huge fountains, amazing buildings, or big carved walls that aren't even marked on the travel maps. There is so much history here that it's hard to comprehend considering how young of a country Canada is.

The next day we decided to take a tour of the Vatican. The tour advertised that on Wednesdays you get to see the Pope, and that happened to be the next day so we were all for it. But we were late getting there and had to get through a security line and so we missed him riding around in his little Popemobile, which disappointed me greatly. So by the time we got in he was sitting under his little awning thing way up in front of St. Peter's, and there was no way to get closer because of all the pilgrims that were in the middle of the square. So I saw the Pope, but he was about the size of an ant. Boo.


Um, he's the one in the white near the middle of the photo.

That ceremony goes on for hours, so we only stayed for a few minutes before heading over to the Vatican Museums. We got there about 11am, and there was absolutely no line. Turns out that everyone has the impression that they have to go super early to "beat the line," but that actually creates the line because they all go early. Once all those people get in then there is hardly a line at all! So we only had to wait a few minutes. There was a lot to see in the museums and it was all super interesting, but you probably don't care about that. You just want to hear about the Sistine Chapel right? Probably.

It was so awesome! It's so hard to believe that Michaelangelo did that whole ceiling in just 2.5 years. It is the largest fresco in the world, and the next biggest is only 2/3 the size but it took the artist twice as long to do it. And Michaelangelo wasn't even a painter! He was a sculptor and actually hated painting. And contrary to popular belief, he didn't paint the ceiling while laying on his back. He actually did it standing up, head bent back and painting above him. And because frescos are actually paint mixed with plaster so that they become part of the actual wall or roof, he had to work in 12 hour shifts to still get enough work done but allow the plaster 12 hours to dry. Insane.

The Pope who asked him to do it absolutely loved it, and promised Michaelangelo he would never have to paint again. But not long after that he died, and the next pope comissioned Michaelangelo to paint the Last Judgement on the large head wall of the church. He hated people watching him paint or seeing his work in progress, but one day he let the Pope in to see how it was going, and he brought a few other important people with him. One was stupid enough to insult Michaelangelo's work, and so after that Michaelangelo painted him into the painting as the guardian of Hell, with donkey ears and man boobs. When the painting was unveiled everyone recognised him and he was the laughing stock of the city. Serves him right!

A long time after Michaelangelo died and quite a few Pope's later, one decided that all the naked men in the Last Judgement was not acceptable, and so he comissioned another painter to come in and cover all the private parts with cloths or fig leaves. That pope was also the one who was resposible for the cutting off of the penises of all the statues that were in the Vatican at that time. But they couldn't just throw them away, so believe it or not, someone is actually paid to sit and guard a room full of penises every day. Can you imagine telling that to someone who asked what your job was? Pretty funny.

Anyway, you're not allowed to take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel anymore, and you get hugely shamed and maybe even kicked out if they catch you. But I just hid behind the two guys and snapped away. So here for your enjoyment, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and the Last Judgement on the wall.



After we left the chapel we went over to St. Peter's Basillica and looked through there at all the huge statues paintings and stuff. The church is huge and gorgeous, with over 4 tons of gold used in the ceiling and on the altar. But the coolest thing in there was Michaelangelo's Pieta, which is absolutely beautiful. It is the only piece of art he ever did that has his signature on it, and that is only because when it was unveiled there was doubt that he actually did it. So he went back and carved "Michaelangelo did this" onto one of the folds of fabric across Mary's chest. In 1972 some crazy Australian managed to get right up to the statue and knock of Jesus's foot and Mary's nose, but they were able to restore it. Why would someone want to do that? I don't know. Next we went down underneath St. Peters to the Papal tombs, where we got to see Pope John Paul's tomb, as well as St. Peter's tomb. We weren't allowed to take pictures down there though.

Wow, okay, so that's a lot of stuff just on Rome. I should move on.

Next I headed out to Naples for 2 days, and had some lovely Pizza there, since that where it was invented. Heavenly! I stayed at a great hostel where the guy that owned it showed me everything there was to do in town and gave tons of great help and advice. He even took me and some other girls out rides on his motorbike around town. Holy crap, Italians are worse drivers than Indonesians... and that is saying a lot! They purposely double park and leave their cars in neutral so other people can push them around when they need to get their cars out. Scooters are everywhere, in the middle of roads, the wrong side of roads, and just zipping in and out all over. Everyone speeds up to over 60km for even the shortest stretch of road only to slam on the brakes 400 meters later at the next stoplight. Absolutely crazy. But the ride was still fun, and he took me up to a viewing area on a hill where I got a great view of the whole city with Mt. Vesuvius in the background.


Naples with Vesuvius in the background

Speaking of Vesuvius, I went out to Pompeii one of the days and spent a few hours walking around in there. That was a really weird experience, and seeing the bodies of people who died in their sleep or trying to flee the city was a little disturbing. They are so well preserved that you can see their faces twisted in agony, or their arms are up over their head trying to protect themselves. Some of them still even have their teeth and nails, and some hair too.


People that were sleeping during the eruption

Some ruins of the city with Mt. Vesuvius in the background

Next I actually went to Vesuvius and climbed up it. It gave great views of all of Naples, and the entire coast all the way down to Sorento. It was supposed to be possible to see Pompeii from up there, but I sure couldn't find it in the middle of the huge city around it.

After Naples I came up here to Florence, where tonight is my last night. I went to the Uffizi Gallery on my first day and saw the Birth of Venus painting, and a whole crapload of "Madonna and Child" paintings by about 50 different artists. After that though, I went and waited in line for the Gallerie d'Acadamia where the David statue by Michaelangelo is.

Wow. If I wasn't already impressed enough by Michaelangelo's painting on the Sistine Chapel, David blew my mind. It was his very first sculpture, made out of a chunk of marble that was going to be thrown away. I knew it was big, but I thought it was about 11 feet tall, when it is actually over 16, just the statue itself! It is brilliant, and absolutely perfect. The anatomy is impeccable, and it is so detailed that you can even see veins on the arms and everything. Just amazing. I didn't want to leave! You weren't allowed to take pictures in their either, but I just hid from the guards behind a column and snuck a few. Here you can see how huge it is because I left some people in the picture to give it scale. Just... wow.


Isn't it amazing?

I also went and did a quick half day trip out to Pisa, since the only thing to see there is the tower. It started raining when I got there too, so all I did was just take a few pictures and then head back to Florence. I took the mandatory "holding up the tower" photo, but the guy I asked to take it for me didn't guide me very well and it doesn't look right unfortunately. :( So here is just a normal shot of the tower.



So, that brings you all up to date on my recent adventures. Tomorrow I leave for Nice and Marseilles in the south of France, and then I'm off to Switzerland for a few days. Hope you all are doing well!

Oh, and I added a Traveller IQ quiz down at the very bottom of my blog. It's pretty fun and addictive! See if you can beat my score of 305,653!

Europe continues...

Well hello everyone!

This entry is going to take me a long time to write, because the German keyboards here are really messed up. Imagine that the Z and Y keys are reversed, and you're used to typing properly. I keep putting tons of Zs in my words every time there is a Y and I have to go back and fix it. Also, I have to use Shift and stretch my pinkie to the right two buttons just to make an apostrophe. It's a huge pain, so I hope you all appreciate the effort I'm putting in to make my entry proper and readable for you! And if a few mistakes slip in, just deal with it, OK?

So, I've been very surprised by Europe. I thought that it's this huge deal, such an amazing place and has so many visitors that it would be super easy to burn cd's, or even travel on the trains and everything. Boy was I kidding myself. This is the first time since I've been here that I have the chance to burn cd's. And I think I've been more stressed out here on my travel days than anywhere else. Trying to find the right train platform when everything is in a foreign language, getting on a train where I was told I didn't have to reserve a seat only to find they've all been reserved and I have to go on a wild goosechase to find a free one. Directions to hostels I've booked on the internet turn out to be extremely vague or completely inadequate and I find myself getting lost all the time. All this is compounding to make me SO freaking sick of travelling. I just want to be home, where I can DRIVE somewhere! And read signs in English if I get lost.

So some of you know already, some don't, that I am now really wishing I was home. I mean, I always was missing it, but now I'm so desperately homesick. I'm tired of crowds and having to fight my waz through them. I'm tired of having to share a room with snoring people. I miss cities that don't smell like sewage. I miss ALONE TIME! If I hadn't saved Paris and Ireland to last, I'd be on a plane home two weeks ago. But I'm sticking it out even though I want to be home so badly. Don't get me wrong, I am having fun still and loving seeing all these amazing places... it would just be cool if I could go home at the end of each day... So, just know that I miss all of you incredibly. Yeah, that's mz Europe rant. Sorry about that.

But I know all of you come hear to read about my amazing adventures, so I'll oblige you and fill you in on my last few weeks. After Amsterdam I went to Berlin for 3 days, then Prague for 5, and then Vienna for 2. Now I'm in Munich for 2 days before heading off to Italy. So, I'll go back to my time in Berlin as a start.

On my first day I went on a free walking tour around the city and took in the main sights, and got a big history lesson as well. We started our tour at the Brandenburg gate in Parizerplatz, which if you don't know it by name, it's the big columned thing that is in that famous picture of Hitler driving into Berlin with the big Nazi flags behind him hanging from the gate. I learned lots of history about it but I already forget it! It was so much to take in at once.


Brandenburg Gate

Famous Hitler picture

Next we went to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is a very interesting memorial. It is a series of 2700 concrete slabs of various heights all lined up like graves over a space of an entire city block. There are many interpretations of what it means, all of them too long for me to try and explain. If you really are interested, ask me when I get home. :P But I thought it was very fitting. The reason they made that memorial instead of offering free transport out to the Saschenhausen concentration camp was because people who wanted to see the concentration camp would go even if they had to pay for a bus. But people who wanted to forget about what happened will now be reminded every day when they pass this memorial right in the middle of the city. It's so we, as humans, always remember the tradgedy we caused to our own people and can make sure it never happens again. Very good idea I thought.


Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe

After a bunch of other stops we got to one of the three remaining sections of the Berlin wall. I was a little underimpressed to tell you the truth! It didn't look like much, but you have to remember that it wasn't necessarily the actual wall that stopped people from crossing, but the huge death strip you dropped down to on the other side, equivalent to the outer wall of a prison... Guards were paid extra money if they shot or killed people trying to get over. The actual wall was only about 11 feet high, and 6 inches thick. Ironically, the wall now needs a fence around it to protect it from people trying to chip off pieces to take home themselves.



We saw a bunch of other places of significance, like the site of the huge Nazi bookburning, and the famous Reichstag Parliament building with more history to it than I could even attempt to tell. The tour was really good, and so I decided to come back the next day and pay for another walking tour all about the Third Reich and Hitler's rise and fall from power. It seemed a fitting thing to do on April 20th! (Hitler's birthday if you didn't know.) If I thought the first tour was a lot of information, it was NOTHING compared to this one! I found it all so interesting though, and kicked myself for not caring about all this stuff in Socials in Grade 11. It was horrible to hear how through a huge serious of small events that the holocaust actually came to be. It may have been prevented if only Hitler had been promoted in the military after being a decorated soldier from WW1, only that never happened because his senior officers thought that he didn't have 'leadership qualities!' Can you believe that? I learned so much on that tour, including that gas chambers were actually developed to kill disabled people before WW2 even started, and were only introduced in concentration camps when it became too emotionally hard on the soldiers that were having to shoot Jews point blank in the back, maybe thousands of times a day. So sad, and it made me ashamed to be human almost.

Anyway, to get away from the sad stuff, after a hell of a day trying to get to my hostel in Prague (meaning all of the above travel stresses were present) I had an amazing five days there. The train ride itself was gorgeous, following a river most of the way with houses terraced onto the riverbank and castles on the hill like you'd think belonged in a fairy tale. I took in a classical music concert inside a church, went up to Prague castle and explored up there, and went out with a huge group from my hostel to experience beer where it originated. And get this, the first two nights in my room in that hostel, I was the only person in there! That was definitely a huge blessing and helped refresh my tired travelling soul. It was also nice to be able to settle in somewhere for 6 nights and feel like I had a little bit of a home base. The free internet was nice too! I met three girls from the US that are studying in Rome and will hopefully meet up with them again when I get there, and also two more girls from the US that are studying in Paris and will also gladly show me around when I get there too. They might even come to Euro Disney with me, which will be way better than going alone!

I feel like I should write more about Prague since I stayed there for so long, but it's really hard to convey the beauty of the place. It almost feels like walking down the old street in Disneyland only way cheaper. It's crowded and touristy like most other places, but it still has a charm to it that can make up for that. I don't know how to say how much I loved it. So I'll just make up for it with lots of picures. Deal?


Train on the way to Prague

Some famous building I forget the name of because I don't have my journal with me

A statue on Charles bridge with Prague Castle in the background

Isn't it just as fairy tale as Disneyland??

Stairs to the castle


The outside, then inside of St. Vitus's Cathedral, inside the castle itself

View from the top of one of the towers in the cathedral. City of Prague

Some of the AMAZING flowerbeds in the gardens of the castle


Wenceslas Square and statue

Ok, onto Vienna! I hit a big lazy spell in Vienna and didn't see much in my two days there, but I did see some cool stuff. I went to St. Peter's cathedral but, story of my trip, the top was covered in scaffolding so it didn't make great pictures. I loved the abundance of horse drawn carriages though, even if they were way too expensive for me to take a ride in one. I went to a big art gallery there where they had a big exhibit with lots of famous paintings, including Paul Signac, Monet and Van Gogh. So I really enojoyed that.



This picture is just for you Ryan. Wouldn't you be the coolest kid in Taiwan if you had THAT scooter?? Haha.

I went out to the summer residence of someone... (again, no journal sorry!) which is a huge mansion thingy with MASSIVE gardens out the back. So big it includes a zoo and hedge maze, and that doesn't even fill the grounds one tenth. There was a huge Neptune fountain, old greek ruins, lots of other fountains, and amazing tree lined paths. I wanted to go into the zoo because they had Giant Pandas in there, but they only called youths under 18, and I couldn't afford the adult entry price. :( So no pandas for me...


Some random church by my hostel

Photos from the gardens of that mansion




Neptune fountain front

And view through it from the back.

After another insanely stressful travel day, I got into Munich, passing by Salzburg while on the train. (That's where they filmed Sound of Music, and I can see why!) So, I'm here in Munich now and today I did another free walking tour (gotta love those on a traveller's budget!) and tomorrow I'm going to go out to the Dachau concentration camp. We'll see how that goes, but I'm looking forward to it as an educational experience. Especially after going to Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam, which really got to me.

So, that's about all I have to say. I'm excited about going to Italy though. I'm NOT looking forward to the massive crowds I'll likely encounter everywhere, and the abundance of pickpockets, but I can't wait to see the sights. After 4 days there I go to Naples for Pizza and Pompeii, and then up to Florence for leaning towers and naked David's. Sounds fun huh? Haha. I had to switch around the order after that though because of hostel availability. I now go to the south of France first, and THEN to Switzerland before Paris. Whatever works I guess.

Miss you all! How about everyone give me some news from home? I would really love to hear what you're all up to.

Until next time!
Julie