Venezia

I love Venezia (Venice), for its’ canals, bridges, old buildings, and particularly for its’ quirky maze-like narrow streets. I also like that there are no traffic lights, no motor vehicles, and no bicycles. We had the most relaxing three days in Venezia, which felt like a holiday from our holiday.

The only way to get around in Venezia is either by foot or by boat. One can never be in a rush to get to anywhere in Venezia. The water buses, Venezia’s only form of public transport, travels at such cruising speed that you can’t help but wonder if it would have been faster if you walk instead. That provided if you don’t get lost.

Even with a map, getting lost in Venezia is inevitable. Most of the streets have no street signs! Our iphone with the google map app comes in handy as it has a GPS function which indicates our current position on the map, which helped us navigate our way through.

We visited the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Place) and Galleria dell’Accademia. The Galleria dell’s Accademia is a little of a disappointment. Lucky for us, entry was free on that day for some reason. Apparently, the gallery kept some of their more famous artworks (including Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man) away and only bring them out during special occasions or upon request! We didn’t get to see the Vitruyian Man!

Rome

Rome, or Roma as the Italians call it here, seems to be sustained entirely on tourism. I’m guessing 60% of the people here are tourists, and a lot of them seem to be Americans.

We had a great time here in Rome. The weather was near to perfect, except for the sudden downpour in the afternoon on Monday, following by 15 minutes of hail. The bad weather only lasted for an hour, and it was back to sunshine and blue skies for the rest of the day.

The food is good, as you would expect it here in Italy, with mouth watering pizza and pasta. Although the one thing to note is that the bread that they bring out with every meal are not complimentary, and have costed us about 2 Euro to 4 Euro per meal each. The bread is often stale. We are going to try to say no to these “un-complimentary” breads for the rest of our time in Italy.

The highlights of our time in Rome are the Colosseo and Vatican City. Foro Romano is also worth a visit, if you got the time. Highly recommend a guided tour to go through these places, as I believe we need to understand the meaning/reason before the buildings, structures and artworks to fully appreciate them.

We were approached by a young 20-ish blonde American girl who asked if we are interested to go on a guided tour through the Colosseo. We were a little hesitant at first because it seems a little dodgy, but as it costed only 10 Euro for the tour plus a complimentary tour in Foro Romano, we decided to give it a go. Because it was culture week, entry to the Colosseo was free.

It turned out to be the best impulsive decision. We were guided through the Colosseo and Foro Romano by professional licence guides. We were so happy with them that, the next day, we went on another guided tour at the Vatican City with the same tour operator.

Colosseo


On the hop-on-hop-off bus.



Fontana Di Trevi


Vatican



Pantheon

Au Revoir Paris, Ciao Rome

We say “Au Revoir” to Paris yesterday, and arrived in Rome last night at 8.40pm, after a long 12 hours train journey which involved train transfers at Basel Switzerland and Milan Italy. (Note: apparently, ciao also means hello in Italian.)

I believe you probably heard about the volcano eruption in Iceland that has caused major disruption to all the major airports in Europe. Thank goodness we have decided to take the trains and have purchased our tickets and reserved all our seats while we were in Australia. We are also glad that we have pre-booked all our accommodations.

There are long queues of people trying to get on trains because the planes are cancelled. It was chaotic! When we checked into our hotel last night, we were behind a guy who was trying to find accommodations and was advised that most of the hotels are fully booked because a lot of people are stranded due to the flights cancellation.

Anyway, here are some more photos of the glamorous Paris. The weather has been beautiful the whole time we were in Paris. Highly recommend Musee Du Louvre, Hotel Des Invalides, and Chateau de Versailles which deserve a full day each in order to explore everything properly.

Musee Du Louvre



The famous Laduree macarons. Yum!



Petite Palais- Check out the spectacular gold door




Grand Palais- Reflection of the gold door from Petit Palais across the road on the glass window of Grand Palais


Gold dome of Hotel Des Invalides

Sacre-Coeur

The overrated Moulin Rouge


Inside the palace of Chateau de Versailles

Some random homeless snowman. Awww...


Arc De Triomphe at night


Paris Statue of Liberty

This must be the 100th photo I took of the Eiffel Tower. Do you know that the Eiffel Tower "sparkles" every hour.


The last photo I took at Paris.

Paris, Day 1

Bonjour from Paris! We arrived at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport this morning at 6am, after a 17 hours flight, not including the 5 hours stop over at Singapore. We took a shuttle bus from the airport, which stopped at Arc de Triomphe. From there, with our backpacks on our back and luggages dragging behind us, we strolled through the street of Paris for 20 minutes before we reached our hotel. The hotel looks deceptively closer on the map...

When we alighted from the shuttle bus and onto the streets around Arc de Triomphe, we noticed that we were surrounded by a huge mob of people wearing something that looked like garbage bag, running everywhere. We thought it was rather strange, and it took us a while before we realised that we are standing in the midst of a marathon. The event is sort of similar to the City to Surf in Perth.

After we checked into our hotel, we headed back to Arc de Triomphe for a closer look. From there we strolled through the famous Des Champs Elysees, went past Grand Palais, Petit Palais, Eiffel Tower and Palais de Chaillot.

Below some photos from our walk.