January 2, 2004
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Italy
I visited Italy back in either 1988 or 1989. It was one of those whirlwind high school tours, where you spend 80% of your time in a bus looking at stuff but not touching.
We landed in Milan, but didn’t get to see any of it.
In Firenze (Florence), we stayed at the Porta Rossa hotel, which I really liked. Hotels we stayed in were not like American hotels. It was sort of like a hostel in that the lobby had a library you could actually use and the rooms were dormitory style, which was a new thing to me, but which meant that the whole experience was kind of like a huge slumber party.
I liked Florence, but we saw mostly the touristy stuff. Museums and shops. I would have liked to have wandered more on my own than being shuttled to and fro like livestock.
There is a large metal pig somewhere in the city. If you toss a coin into this monument, you will guarantee a return to Florence. I don’t believe in those things, naturally, and perhaps that’s why I haven’t returned!
Even though a lot of time was spent on a bus, I really enjoyed that part of it because the views driving down from Florence to Rome were gorgeous. Yellow fields full of bright red poppies. I like that kind of thing.
There was a castle that we stopped at on the way. That was really beautiful.
Rome was also fun, but again, it would have been more fun to go where I wanted to.
Our group leader’s son did just that, and wandered off somewhere around the Coliseum for about 3 hours. His parents were livid, but I don’t blame him. It sucked though that we ended up sitting on some stone steps for hours while they went off to find him.
I got lost in Tivoli, which was kind of nice. Everyone was really helpful, and I got to practice my Italian in full immersion style for a whole 30 minutes before rejoining the herd again.
I am not going to describe everything I saw. What I saw was mostly beautiful.
Venice was terrific for a traffic-hater like me. I visited it just after Ronald Reagan had been there, so everyone told me that the canals had been cleaned up considerably. It was gorgeous and clean. We stayed in a small hotel just off St. Mark’s Plaza.
The street outside our hotel room was so narrow, I could almost reach out of the window and snag some coffee from the guy’s kitchen counter across the street. It was a great place for voyeurs.
Lots of pigeons. At least two of my companions got pooped on.
Comments (2)
If, no not “if”, WHEN I go to Europe, I hope I don’t end up on a thousand tours because I like to explore things on my own. I don’t want to be “shuttled to and fro like livestock” as you said. But that’s how it is in high school so I’m gonna do it AFTER all that’s over and done with.
I love Europe. My husband and I toured around England and France in 2001. That just so happens to be the trip he proposed on. =) I love the north of France. We have friends that live in Lille. There a cannon balls still lodged in the buildings from Napolean’s march. It’s such an old city and the people are wonderful. We’re going back to visit more of England and see Belgium and Scotland. I have a friend who lives in Milan. Maybe one day I’ll actually get to visit her. Everyone who’s gone has talked of what a great city it is.