Europe Arts Tour: Days 9 - 14
The final three stops on our fabulous, magical escapade were
Venice, Florence and Rome, and seeing as they are all in the same country
(Italy for all you non-geographers who live under rocks in the Serengeti) I
have decided to combine them into one great big blog. Note that this is
entirely unrelated to the fact that at this point in the trip I was so lazy
that almost all of my entries into my travel journal were little more than: “We
did this. It was fun. I am tired.”
Anyway, one very
long, cramped and unsanitary train trip swept us into Venice. Of course, the
sightseeing was pretty much filled with every single teenage girl grumbling
about how hungry she was and how all she wanted was to have a long shower, but
even then the complaints were interrupted by sighs of amazement at the stunning
city. Eventually, we were taken to lunch and given a proper Italian welcome: A
full plate of lasagna for a starter and then a massive salad and then some
chicken and then tiramisu. You could’ve rolled me back to the hotel, I swear.
Although the Venetians are fantabulous at cooking, I have to
say that their drama – or at least the one play we had the unfortunate luck of
seeing – is… Terrible, to put it lightly. The only part of our trip that was
meant to satisfy the drama students was going to see a play on the history of
Venice – in English, thank goodness. While it was intended to be humorous, I
don’t think I heard one person laugh for the entire performance. You know when
a play is so bad it’s funny? Well this play was so much worse than bad that it
wasn’t even amusing any more; it was just plain bad. Luckily on the way home we
discovered a stall that sold ‘Pizza Wraps’ (which are basically just rolled up
pieces of pizza) and were immediately cheered up once again by the genius of
Italian cooking.
 |
| Me shamelessly posing by a river #swagalicious |
The next day consisted of even more sightseeing and another
art museum – the Peggy Guggenheim collection, which was phenomenal, even coming
from a person who does not understand art or the intention behind it
whatsoever. Then the highlight (after the food) of our stay in Venice: the
gondola ride. Our gondolier refused to serenade us, though, but it was
enchanting and stunning all the same.
At this point we had to take another train to reach
Florence, which I didn’t mind so much at first, because it was a fairly nice
train and my iPod was fully charged. It ended up being a nightmare when our
train came to a halt in the middle of the trip. We had to wait on the
stationary train for police to come and investigate the scene, because
apparently a woman had tried to commit suicide on the rails (it was truly awful
and saddening, but the bigger issue amongst the passengers seemed to be that we
were running out of food). And incredibly enough, the group of girls on the
train behind us (our group had to be separated – I’m not sure why) had a drunken
stowaway on board, so they too had to witness a police investigation. We
reached Florence just before midnight, over five hours later than we’d expected
to arrive.
The highlight of the Florence trip was definitely our bike
ride through Tuscany (technically not in Florence but whatever). Even though I
am even less coordinated on a bike than I am on foot, I would even go so far as
to say it was one of my favourite parts of the entire tour. Except for the part
where I almost rode into a – stationary – car and my music teacher almost
crashed her own bike because she was laughing so hard at me… The sights were
stunning though, and we stopped for lunch at a little restaurant right in
between all the hills for the best meal of the trip – but maybe that’s just
because we’d been riding bikes all day. Eventually, it started raining, but
that was good because it meant we didn’t have to ride up this huge hill to get
back to where we’d started – instead the tour leaders brought down trucks to
fetch us all. After that we toured this beautiful little castle where the
owners of a wine farm lived, and I’ve decided that when I’m a famous
multimillionaire I’m going to buy it. (HAH. Amy as a multimillionaire… Good
one…)
Second highlight of Florence: ice cream cone as big as my
head and the Disney store, because we are all secretly children at heart and
can’t resist a life-size Simba toy and ice cream no matter how much we say we
“like” salad and makeup.
 |
| Thank you, Pantheon, for being so photogenic |
And our final stop: Rome. Rome is absolutely incredible. Of
course we saw all the major things like the Coliseum, Trevi Fountain, Spanish
Steps and the Pantheon. We also ate a bucket load of ice cream because it was
so incredibly hot, and then pizza because when in Rome… (See what I did there?
Wow I am hilarious, good job, Amy.) If we thought Rome was busy, we were in for
a shock when we went to the Vattican. Oh. My. Word. After that trip I was
almost sure that I would be perfectly content if I never saw another human
being again in my entire life. (Okay so I was kind of like that before I went…
But after the trip I was even more convinced.) It was still pretty, but so, so
tiring.
I was almost relieved to get on the flight to Paris, and
then another flight home. Scratch that – I was REALLY relieved to get on the
flight home. Even though the trip was amazing, there’s only so much sightseeing
that you can take. Also, there’s only so much teenage girl you can take. (Yes I
realize I am also a teenage girl, but I like to think I am part of the elitist
group that prefers to listen to Green Day rather than One Direction and is more
concerned with their reading and internet habits than how much lipstick they
should wear to appear “sexy but not slutty, yah know?”) You won’t be surprised
to read that the last entry in my travel journal is: “I can’t wait to get home.
I just need some SPACE,” with “space” in huge bold letters and underlined
several times…
On the whole, though, it was a phenomenally magical trip and
I would just about cut off my finger to be able to go back to those places
(probably only with a small group of super duper close friends if I’m being
entirely honest). Yeah, the awesomeness of these places is really not expressed
very well in my blogs (as you can tell) but I highly recommend going there
anyway. Well, I recommend going everywhere. Keep travelling until you find
somewhere where there are no people or bugs or scary, weird animals, but lots
of food and free wifi and an abandoned bookstore nearby. Then you can call me
and send me a coded message with instructions on how to get there, and then you
can erase it from your memory. That would be really great.
Thanks for reading, if you got this far. (It was really long
but we all know how lazy I am so I probably won’t cut it down…)
I think the number one thing we’ve learned about this
experience is that I should never ever become a travel writer. Ever.
No comments:
Post a Comment