After more than a week of trips and walkings I’m finally (or not?) back home; it has been a pleasant – even with some issues – trip around Italy with my georgian friend Anni: tiresome, but really nice. Our destinations were three of the most beautiful cities in Italy: Venice, with its water-roads, Florence and its art and the wonderful Rome; having one day free before the trip begun, we also decided to visit Pavia and Milan.
Pavia is a small but nice city in Lombardy: counting aroung 70.000 inhabitants, it was the capital of the Kingdom of the Lombards between 568 and 774; if you ask anyone who visited it what was the first thing they saw, the answer can be various: the Visconti Castle, built on 1360 as a fortress, the Certosa Monastry, the towers, the bridge. But if you ask Anni, she will tell the cemetery (and don’t ask me why she had such wish).
After this must-see place, we had a walk around the city ’till midday, when we met my friend Elisa to go to Milano – where another friend of me, Marco, would have met us as well. Before going there, we decided to visit the Certosa monastry: parked the car (for 2,50 €) we discovered the place was closed. Wishing to kill the parking attendant, I had at least saved some other tourists that were going to pay as well by informing them that the place would have staied closed for other 2 hours.
Marco met us there and together we went to Milan – with a stop at his place to get some home-made chocolates. I am not a big fan of Milan (both city and football team), but I guess there are much better places than Spizzico – an italian style fast food – to see; but we are different kind of hungry tourists and that was our first choice. After lunch it was already quite late, so the only thing we saw was the Sforza Castle with its evening light-show.
Running was our favorite word these days: after Milan, in fact, we had to run as fast as possible because we had planned a dinner near Piacenza with some of my colleagues; we arrived there just half an hour late, which is a great result for a georgian and we had really great food in a restaurant that opened just for us. Time to sleep came and we went back home, ready to leave for Venice the day after.
Swimming in Venice
The adventure begun on December 30th: my father took us to Pavia’s train station, where we got the train to Milan and then the one to Venice. Frecciabianca; that’s the name of the train (white arrow): brand new, looking nice both outside and inside and giving you the idea of speed, it just lacked water in the toilets and space for suitcases. And of course, it was more than half an hour late.
We were still on the train when I got a phone call from a strange number: it was our Venice hotel, saying me they did some mistakes and our room was not available; I was going jump out of the train, when the woman informed me that they already solved the issue by booking another room in the hotel next to them, for the same price and explained me how to get there. When we arrived, the first impression of Venice was quite normal: instead of the bus, out of the station there was a boat waiting for us to go to the Lido island where our hotel was; just the ticket price – 22 euro for 3 days – was quite impressive.
The hotel was very nice, even though quite far from the city; put down our baggage we got ready to go back to Venice. Once there, we discovered that it is not such a normal place as it seemed at first: narrow roads along the canals, no cars and most of all water. Everywhere. We felt like prisoners trying to escape from the police that was blocking all the roads. After few minutes we realized that without rubber boots it would have been impossible to walk around: pity that the boots shop was under 30cm of water. Without listening one old man’s suggestion to take off shoes and walk barefoot in the water, we found another little shop and we finally got our precious footwear.
From that moment, everything became different: Venice is simply amazing, a totally different world. We visited the city only walking – except using the boat to go from/to the hotel; in the evening we decided to go to a restaurant: the woman working at the hotel said us there was one about 5 minutes far from the hotel – by bus – so we decided to walk there; after an hour, we realized that maybe her idea of 5 minutes was different from ours, so we took a bus and finally got our dinner after a very long day.
Quite strange fact happened in the hotel in the evening: we were back, Anni got a shower as soon as we arrived and I got a rest meanwhile; when she came out, she turned on TV and in the exact same time someone knocked at our door: a man told us not to make noise, because they were going to sleep in the room over ours. Puzzled, we informed him that we didn’t even talked yet, since we just came, and the answer was quite extravagant: “Oh really? Well, it was just an advice, we are going to sleep so don’t make noise.„ We agreed, still perplexed.
Visiting Venice doesn’t need any particular map: we have been there three days, saw many things and spent the New Year’s night “swimming” in San Marco square, where the water was high exactly at midnight. Weather was nothing really amazing, with clouds and some soft rain time by time, but we anyway had fun and enjoyed the place a lot; it was January 2nd (and happy New Year to anyone reading) when we left the raining Venice to go to the sunny Florence. Useless to say that the train was again late.
A little day in Florence
Florence is a very beautiful city; unfortunately, after seeing Venice, it looks much less cool than it is. We spent there just a day and an half, this time using a map not to get lost around museums, bridges and nice churches. We spent the evening walking and the day after we begun the real visit. The famous Uffizi didn’t impress me that much – but I am not such a big art lover, but the city is really nice. A must see is Piazza Michelangelo, on top of an hill, where the view of the whole city is really worthy; we also met my another georgian friend – again Ana – and we spent a nice sunny day in the city of art. However, one day to visit Florence is enough; the morning later we took the train to Rome; once again, under rain. Once again, late.
The Rome of Julius Caes… no, Biagio Antonacci
Just before leaving Florence I decided that it was better to buy a new suitcase: considering we would have came back by plane and the maximum weight allowed was 15kg. This however made some more issues on the train, since again there were not much space for the suitcases. However, we arrived safe and Rome is always Rome; the hotel was nice and the temperature about 10 degrees more than Milan.
We met strange people during the three days there: the first morning, during the breakfast, we couldn’t find any place to sit, so we decided to ask someone if we could stay at their table; I was going to sit when I heard “yes”, but I had to stop when the man looked horrified at the ham in my plate adding “but we are vegetarians”. Ok, nevermind, let’s find another place: the old French couple (they said ouì when we asked to sit) in a near table seemed perfect; although they were not French, but Spanish, and it seemeed that the man knew Russian and was very worried about the health condition of the first Georgian president Shevardnadze.
Despite these strange situations, we walked a lot in the capital: for the first time I went up to St.Peter’s cupola, after an agony 551 stair-steps long; despite I was almost dying, it really worths: the view from the top of the Vatican Basilica is really impressive. We’ve also been inside the Colosseum – but unfortunately we didn’t see any gladiator killed by lions there: maybe next time.
The last day in Rome was sunny: after visiting the Colosseum we were quite hungry and we stopped in the first pizzeria we saw along the road; it was full, but they found a table for us, so we ordered our lunch. It was clear that something was happening there: it looked like everyone knew each others – and sometimes they also thought we were in their group, asking us if we wanted coffee or stopping at our table. The first thing I thought was that they were celebrating a birthday or the Epiphany, but the truth was much more terrible: the man sit next to our table suddently weared a mask and everyone clapped; then someone else made everything clear: they were members of Biagio Antonacci’s fan club. It was in that moment that we decided it was better to go.
Time to go home
We left Rome after 3 days and at the airport we had to open all our suitcases because one bag was more than 15 kg: putting as more things as possible in our hand baggages, that looked like camping bags then, we managed to go on the plane, which landed also 10 minutes early. We were very tired, but not as much to refuse my granny’s invite for a dinner: after delicious ravioli, meat and potatoes – and chocolates, but only for Anni, and already finished – it was time to go back home and sleep. Time to go back home for Anni the day after.
Ok, I forgot to talk about our fights, if we call them so, and the thoughts about killing each others during these days, but it will be in the next episode. At last, the trip was very nice, full of adventures and crazy moments. An advice for anyone who will ever want to have a vacation with Anni: keep some chocolates always ready with you and she will be happy and with a great smile - and let’s hope she won’t read these last lines.
