Thursday, May 27, 2010

Ciao



The last night of Florence was beautiful. We went to the Piazza Michelangelo and watched the sunset. Such a nice view...



Uffizi in the morning which didn't allow pictures unfortunately... but seeing all the Botticelli paintings was pretty rad. Plus Titian's Venus of Urbino and Parmagianino's Madonna of the Long Neck. Oh, plus a Caravaggio exhibit which had Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holoferenes.

Then Venice! Not too much to say other than it's very pretty and surprisingly cheap. We went to the beach today, on Lido.



Next is a night-train for 11 hours to Vienna. Apparently we won't have internet there so my next blog might not be for a while.

ttfn :)

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Duomo Arigato, Mr. Roboto


Another pun title. I write to you this time from Florence, or Firenze, which is more fun to say.

The city, overall, is pretty, hot, small and sort of pricey. Main activities have included eating, walking, eating, eating gelato and shopping at the street vendors. Seeing the Duomo everywhere you go is pretty cool, but the heaaaat. It killssss.

Anyway, so far we have been to the Bargello Gallery to see Donatello's David, The Accademia to see Michaelangelo's David, and the Palazzo Vecchio to see Cellini's Perseus and the Medici's Palace. I can't spell any of these Italian words, by the way. Most of the galleries don't allow pictures so I don't have a lot to blog about... but I'm eating my fruits and vegetables..."Big Cuppa Di Frutta" hahaha

Friday, May 21, 2010

Rome-ing Around




Rome has been pretty packed so I didn't get around to writing until tonight, the last night in the Eternal City. Anyway because of that, this is another long blog. No obligations to read, of course :)





So day one was basically dedicated to the Vatican. The museums, the chapels, etc. Their collection of art was impressively large, but almost to the point where it looked like a lot of it was just tons of statues in storage: too cluttered. Anyway, high points for me included seeing Raphael's School of Athens and the statue of the Augustus of Prima Porta. Oh, and this dog which looked like Annie :)






From there we went to the Trevi fountain where we threw in our coins.



After that, we went to the Pantheon. Kind of cool to see where Raphael is buried right after seeing his works at the Vatican, but overall the Pantheon was a bit of a letdown, mostly because of the scaffolding over half of the outside. Oh well...

So that night we got home and decided to go to a pub crawl which had been recommended to us by some girls we met on the train. We actually ended up seeing them there too, which was a lot of fun. Small continent! It was Rambo themed, if you'll believe that. So ridiculous but so much fun. We met on the Spanish steps and from there went all over Rome. Awesome.


The next day we went to the Borghese Gallery. We had reservations as they are mandatory. It's expensive for the size of the gallery, but the content made it so worth it to go. The highlights were the statues by Bernini of course... they just looked real, it was incredible. What surprised me was the BEATIFUL ceilings. Every single room had these amazing cielings painted with gods, and lined with statues, so when you looked up it was like you were looking through the roof to heaven. I loved it... probably partially due to the nerd in me trying to figure out which god was which based on their iconography. Lame I know :) Often the ceiling would feature a legend which was also the subject taken up by the main statue in the room too, which was rad. Anyway no pictures were allowed inside so I have no photodocumentation this time, and I'm starting to sound like a really big tool so MOVING ON...

Next we went to St. Peter's, because the line to get in was way too big on Vatican day. I'm so glad we went because it was really impressive inside. SO huge and SO much art. I wish we could have gone up the dome but we were tired and it was yet another expense. None of the pictures do justice to the sweetness of the building, so I won't even try. I'm sure googling it would give better results.





Our last day in Rome was the ancient day, and by far my favourite. The Colosseum was cool, but I'd say I prefered the Via Sacre. Just something about arches I love, especially the Arch of Titus :)




We were pretty tired, so we bused home from Trajan's Forum with the Column. There was also this incredibly huge building across the street from the Forum that I had NEVER heard of but it was spectacular. I'll figure out was it was called later.





Ciao,
Mayne

(get it? so funny. not.)

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Dear Lord.

What a traumatic experience. At time of writing, I am in the cabin of a rocky boat sailing the...Adriatic Sea? To Italy anyway. This ride in itself is disconcerting enough, but our last night in Athens is another story.

So we had to stay in Omonia. I'm not sure what you'd get if you googled that, but it would probably be something like crime rates because the place was definitely the downtown eastside equivalent. Drug dealers everywhere, prostitutes... It seemed like complete sacrilege that the street we were staying on was named after Aristotle.

Hoping that our hostel would at least be a friendly youth hostel, we got into the creepy elevator which could only fit two people at a time and had no door so you just saw all the floors going by and could touch the wall as it zipped by you. We get to the top and see the single most creepy looking guy on the planet. I think he had a scary black wig but it could have just been bizarre hair. He kept making us follow him and every time we were sure we were going to be murdered. And the lobby. Oh my god. There was like... A creepy red chandelier... I really don't know if I can convey how disturbing it all was. The room keys were skeleton keys too. We get shown to our room which had a LOVELY view of the disgusting area below. And the toilets. Gah. Enough said.

The only other residents of this hostel seemed to be these two girls who could have been on drugs or prostitutes or both, and an entire family of polish immigrants with babies, which was pretty depressing. In the terrifying lobby, mega-creep watched some kind of horror movie which we could hear while we went to the bathroom.

Follow up this hostel with a full 2 days of travel including metros in 2 different cities, 3 trains, a bus and a 17 hour boat ride and this equals 1 discombobulated Caitlin.

I'm sure my first blog from Rome will be a happier one :)
Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Myyyykonooossss


After a chilly and long ferry ride, we end up at the New Port of Mykonos. We are immediately swarmed by tons of people trying to get us to go to their hostels/hotels/resorts. We ended up picking this woman named Christina’s place. It was an insanely good deal, I still can't get over it.

Night one was super fun. You haven't partied until you dance in a Scandinavian Disco Bar in Greece with a New Zealander to Bryan Adams. ;) Had sooo much fun. We even met some guys from UBC! This club was particularly awesome because all the bartenders went around dancing and blowing whistles to the music. I have no idea how to make that sound not ridiculous... I guess it was. The music was pretty North American, but a lot of the songs were remixes that paused and went MYKOONOOOOSSSSS in the middle, at which point the dance floor would go nuts.



Then the next day, we had our first real day of relaxation on the trip: slept in, gyros for lunch, then a taxi across the island to Elia beach. We rented a set of loungechairs and umbrellas. The water was lovely and falling asleep under the Greek sun was even lovlier. I'm not a beach person as I'm sure everyone knows, but even I had an amazing time. I also had the best popsicle of my life. Some kind of Greek tropical thing I bought in a place that was playing Greece-ified remixed of U2 and ABBA.
That night we went out again - of course. You really can't walk two steps without tripping over a club in Mykonos! This time we checked out some of the gay clubs and we ended up meeting some fun people from Indiana.
We spent the last day and night just relaxing, and watching Greek Idol.



Also Pelican <3

Unfortunately, it's back to Athens for a day followed by some 15 hour ferry or something.
xoxo

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Athenz


Before you start, I'm just going to warn you that since I wrote this on a boat with nothing to do, it turned into a bit of an essay. My bad!!
Hello! I write to you from the ferry to Mykonos. We are pulling out of Athens and I can't say I'm horribly sad to see it go. While it's full of cool stuff, the city itself is, as we kind of expected, polluted and not very friendly. Anyway...




Needless to say when we got to our hostel we were exhausted and ended up having a power nap (becoming common on this trip!) before exploring. Our hostel was super nice. Friendly, spacious, with a balcony out our room! Great for drying laundry. (exciting, I know.) Did I mention cheap? After we rejuiced a bit we took a walk for some food. Literally 2 minutes from the hostel you get an amazing view of the Acropolis (where the Parthanon is), though that's not uncommon in Athens. We then went to Plaka, which is SUPER touristy... one of those places where everyone runs at you with their menus and make you insanely uncomfortable. Food was touristy, but alright. Finished with a glass of Retsina and basically went to sleep.



So day 2 was basically our only full Athens day. We did the Acropolis first, which was probably a mistake since it was INSANELY crowded and later on was not at all. Oh well. We were literally the only teenagers. There were about 4 trillion seniors in Tilley hats, and the occasional group of Greek schoolchildren. The temple of Athena Nike is completely covered in scaffolding, and the Parthanon is under quite a lot of construction as well. it's also missing all of its statues, though we did see them at the British Museum. The Erectheon, though, is really cool. Less crowds around it and it's a lot prettier and well-preserved. The view from up there is obviously pretty spectacular as well.





After the walk back down, we hit up the New Acropolis Museum. It's not the most exciting thing ever... in fact, it may be the least exciting thing ever. But it wasssss air conditioned. The 3 euro may have been worth it for that. The one cool thing about it was that it's built over the old city/ruins, and so the floors are glass in many parts so you can see it below. Once I looked down and saw a janitor. Fun.





Anyway, then we went to the Temple to Zeus and the Gate of Hadrian. Another ruin photo-op. They are pretty impressive and of course I am glad to have seen them, but to see the undersides blackened from pollution and juxtaposed with graffiti-covered buildings was a little depressing.



Finally we did the best-preserved temple in Athens... or maybe even Greece? It's pretty cool and very deserted. I believe it was called the Hephaesteon and it's by the Agora or marketplace.
That evening was pretty relaxing... power-naps and researching the ferries for the next day. We headed up to the rooftop bar, which was GORGEOUS and had a view of the Acropolis which is lit up at night. It closed less than an hour after we got there though, so we ended up sleeping relitively early for our 5am wakeup this morning.
I apologize again for the length of this entry... I promise Mykonos will be shorter as I think the plan is to basically lie on the beach.



PS!!! Funniest part. We went to see the crazy Greek Parliament. No signs of violence except some bullet holes in a window. No worries...but... Have you seen the Greek Guards? We went for changing of the guard and they do this walk in ULTRA slow-mo. It looks like it's something out of Monty Python. And they have pompoms on their shoes. I accosted them after.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Last UK entry...


Hello! My last entry from London. Lots of fun, but I'm pretty excited to move on to somewhere less chilly... I did not pack a lot in the way of warm clothing. Today Elliott was visiting family, so the rest of us had a girl's day. We first went to a really nice pub called The Nag's Head and met up with a friend of mine from Totem at UBC who was also in town. Bangers and mash and pints all round.

Then we hit up the ultra touristy areas. Can't miss seeing the London Eye, Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and obviously that bridge that the dementors in Harry Potter destroy. Parliament was kind of interesting because there was a lot of media around, I'm assuming due to the elections. Pictures were snapped, and then it was back to Oxford street for moooore shopping... it was girl's day, after all.



We went to Primark which is the most insane thing ever. I don't know what to even compare it to. Ikea for clothes? But even cheaper and more insane? A HUGE two floor store of very cheap clothing etc that's like Boxing Day x10. It's nuts. I spent less than 6 pounds and got 3 pairs of tights, silver bangles, gold bangles, facial cleanser... it was pretty nuts, you could easily fill bags and bags there. From there, I left Laraina and Paige to their own adventures and went to meet Elliott for WICKED. I can't say enough good stuff about it, it was such an amazing show. If you haven't heard of it, it's a musical about the witches from the Wizard of Oz, and it kind of ties in with the original story but is an entirely different plot. The actors were fantastic, I can't get over how great their voices were and the set looks like it cost an absolute fortune but it looked great.




Next, we head to Athens. We have decided to only do Mykanos as our island side trip since we found out that the ferry to Santorini is 9 hours. My phone doesn't work there, and we have no idea what our hostel will be like so I can't promise blogging from Greece, but knowing me I will be online at some point. ;)

Anyway I really appreciate everyone reading and sending me well-wishes, it's very sweet and means a lot :)



PS: Laraina is keeping a blog as well... larainalee.blogspot.com, so if you want to verify that I'm not totally making this up, or want a different perspective you should definitely read that as well.

PPS: Postcards are fun, so if you want one, send me your address and I will see what I can do :)

Sunday, May 9, 2010

The National Gallery



Today was the National Gallery day! Super exciting. There were so many pieces of art I've seen so many times that were so much more amazing in real life (Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, and Holbien's The Ambassadors) and also some new paintings that I fell in love with a little (Coreggio's School of Love, and Dirck van Delen's An Architectural Fantasy). We actually managed to see every room in the building as well. Mr. Benoy would be proud :)



Kind of getting the hang of the Underground, but its certainly not as pretty as the Canada Line... And it's weirdly super hot instead of icy cold like ours. Oohh cultural differences. Tomorrow I'm meeting for lunch with a friend from UBC and then while Elliott is off visiting family, Paige, Laraina and I will be hitting up the super English landmarks: Parliament, Big Ben, the London Eye. And then ohmygoddidimention Elliott and I are going to WICKED??! I'm very excited. If you don't know what it is, it's a musical about the witches from the Wizard of Oz and it's supposed to be amazing.

I think that's about it for now... Not sure when my next entry will be but the plan is to add another entry before we fly off to Athens on Tuesday. No texting or internet on phone there so I'm not entirely if I'll have any presence here that week. Don't miss me too much...

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Londontown

'Allo 'allo! We're here in London. The hostel is hardly luxurious but it's cheap and fairly central. Our roommates are these two Latvian girls who wear Juicy Couture sweatsuits, Ed Hardy tshirts, smoke strawberry cigarettes and go clubbing every night in matching satin pants. We rarely see them.


Today we started off touring the National Gallery. It's pretty impressive, but the appropriation of various cultural artifacts, especially the Parthenon sculptures abducted in the 1800s by Lord Elgin is a bit off-putting. I guess I can't complain though, since I get to see it all in one place. Afterwards, we had lunch in a pub and went shopping on Oxford street which was alright but pretty pricy. The crazy 4-level Urban Outfitters and the multiple H&Ms on the same block was all pretty overwhelming, but most of us managed to find a few things to buy. The style here is not that different to back home I suppose but there are more people very dressed up and everyone is in jeggings and leggings.

In the evening, Laraina, Elliott and I took a stroll to Buckingham Palace. Did not see the Queen. Quelle dommage. It was nice though. On the way home, Elliott and I drooled over the theatres with Billy Elliot and Wicked. Maybe we'll get a discount Wicked ticket for some evening? Would be nice...
Oh, and here are today's purchases. Bird necklace from UO, anchor shirt from H&M and a pretty frickin sweet Rosetta Stone water bottle.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Leaving on a jet plane!


I'm off to London! I'll try to get some stuff up as soon as I'm settled and whatnot. Miss you all!