Amy’s Adventurous Adventures in Europe: Italy

Europe Arts Tour: Days 9 - 14

Maybe in an alternate universe I wouldn’t have been excessively lazy and would have actually completed my series of blogs on my travels around Europe within a month of when I got back…

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.

Amy's Adventurous Adventures in Vienna

Europe Arts Tour: Days 7 to 8

Ahh, Vienna… You inspired me to become a better musician… for about two hours until I realised it would require dedication and hard work towards my instruments.

The Blue(ish) Danube

Seriously, though, think about it. Mozart – born in Vienna – performed for the Empress at the age of five – FIVE – and soon began composing his own masterpieces. All it took was a little (a LOT) of practice and dedication to his instrument, and here I am blogging when I could be practicing piano like a madwoman for my exam (which is on Friday the 13^th… I doubt it’s a coincidence) in order to become a musical genius who is appreciated for her talent worldwide.

But that would require me to get up… and… practice piano… *shivers*

Anyway, Vienna was truly inspiring and stunning. Not unlike Prague, it has the perfect mixture of modern and ancient architecture and culture – making it a truly disorientating yet fascinating city to observe. Of course, this was where the real “musical” part of our trip began, and we were lucky enough to attend the Philharmonic Orchestra Concert at Schonbrunn Palace. It was phenomenal (obviously).

Original score for 'Der Zauberflote' ('The Magic
Flute') by W. A. Mozart (*cue internal screaming*)
 in Haus der Musik (The Museum of Music)

But that’s not all. To my absolute and utter delight, we visited the Museum of Music (Haus der Musik) the following day. I was in awe. Six floors, filled to the brim with historical artifacts belonging to the great German and Austrian composers, as well as fun activities where you could conduct a virtual orchestra or “compose” your own melody with the throw of a die. Oh, and there was this dark room where you could sit and listen to remixes of classical compositions – where I stayed for about half an hour because it was so incredible.

You think classical music from composers like Mozart and Beethoven is lame? Well, here’s some dub step thrown in with their compositions, a bit of synthesized harmonies and a dance beat to spice it up for you. IT IS EPIC. I then spent a great deal of money on the ‘Beethoven Reloaded’ CD – featuring all of the remixed Beethoven tracks – in the gift shop… Yeah, telling my parents what I spent my ‘gift money’ on earned me the best “YOU-DID-WHAT-NOW?” look from my father and a bit of a lecture on why we should rather buy Taylor Swift CDs off of iTunes – but it was totally worth it.

The shame… Oh, the shame...

Apart from the epic-ness from the musical side of Vienna, I also had an afternoon of free time to spend shopping with my friends, in which we went all-out “Common White Girl” and bought vanilla frappuccinos from Starbucks. And then took pictures of our names on the cups. BUT WAIT – it gets worse: we also went shopping at Forever 21… and Zara… and H&M. I am ashamed. *hangs head and sobs loudly*

I know. I am a failure at life.

I paid for my sins on the train ride to Venice though… Have you ever slept in a train? It’s almost as bad as an airplane, except dirtier and with only slightly more legroom (if you aren’t sharing a cabin-thing with five other teenage girls, which means that you’re sharing a two-meter-by-three-meter space with five teenage girls AND their 35kg bags… Not fun). Oh, and a piece of advice: always, ALWAYS, use the toilet before you get on the train, and then don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t do anything, so that you don’t have to go NEAR that bathroom. It’s disgusting. Thank goodness I took hand sanitizer – although it was almost finished by the time I got off that train. Gross.

Next stop: Venice

(Okay, so just note that this is the point in my travels where I was evidently running on auto-pilot because of lack of sleep, and had gotten extremely lazy in terms of writing in my travel journal. From here on out, my entries consist of sentences like, "We went shopping. I bought this. It was fun," so let's just appreciate that my memory has not faded yet, and I still have countless photographs of meaningless buildings to kind of decipher what I did in each city. So bear with me… things may not be too accurate or detailed depending on whether my past self was conscious enough to be writing actual sentences, or whether she was half asleep and trying not to throw the travel journal out the window at the head of an innocent tourist.)

Amy's Adventurous Adventures in Prague

Europe Arts Tour: Days 4 to 6

I. Love. Prague.

I can’t even put into words how much I love it, because wow. It’s stunning. Plus, the Czech Krona is weaker than the South African Rand (I had no idea that was even possible, but anyway) so everything there is pretty cheap, considering it’s a European country.

View of Prague from Petrin Gardens

My adventures in Prague officially started on Saturday morning, even though we arrived in the city on Friday evening after an extremely long two-hour flight from Paris. Dinner was Mac Donald’s from the shopping centre across the street from our hotel (it was the only thing open – I’m not usually the type of person who travels halfway across the world just to eat the same things we have at home, but a girl has got to eat, ya feel me?). So anyway, on Saturday morning I wandered downstairs sleepily into the breakfast area, and found myself in Bouwer family heaven.

A note: our family takes breakfast VERY seriously. We don’t care if we don’t eat for the rest of the day, so long as there’s a decent breakfast wherever we are. And our hotel in Prague wins the prize for best breakfasts – hands down. There was everything you could ever possibly want in a breakfast, ranging from cereals to chocolate croissants to bacon to fruit salad to homemade granola. They had SIXTEEN different types of tea to choose from. If we had stayed in Prague any longer, and not have had to endure the extreme amount of walking that we did, you probably would’ve had to roll me home.

The Astronomical Clock

Speaking of walking, there was a LOT of it. We took the tram into the old part of Prague, where all the real tourist attractions are – as opposed to Forever 21 and H&M in the shopping centre right by our hotel, where I’m pretty sure about 90% of our tour group would have preferred to spend the day. But despite the fact that my feet were about to fall off once we had finished the touring part of the day, Prague was enchanting, with its little cobblestone streets and century-old buildings all over the place. The Astronomical Clock and Prague Castle were definitely highlights, and we spent about an hour watching the clock just to, you know, double check that it did really work after hundreds of years and that the tour guide hadn’t been lying to us (you never know these days).

That night was spent running through the torrential rain to the Prague Opera House. The evening’s performance of ‘Swan Lake’ was somewhat dulled by the fact that we were all sitting shivering in our seats due to our soaked – and probably ruined – dresses and expensive shoes. We got several glares at our (apparently horrifying) disheveled appearances that we had spent so long on in the sanctuary of our hotel (obviously before we had known that we had to walk three or so kilometers in the rain to the Opera House). Oh well, it was an experience, even though we didn’t get to act like princesses for the night. (We must’ve resembled Cinderella BEFORE all the spell casting, rather than after she was transformed by the fairy godmother…)

The next day was probably one of my favourites over the course of the whole trip. We began with a meander through the beautiful Petrin Gardens, chatting and laughing and probably disturbing the entire city – thirty teenage girls make a LOT of noise when they aren’t gossiping. Once we’d made it down the hill on which the gardens were situated, we went on a short boat cruise and then visited yet another stunning Art Museum. Of course, what with our feet still aching from the previous day, the last fifteen minutes of the visit were spent sitting on the floor in the foyer, much to the dismay of the receptionist, and hacking into the next-door hotel’s free Wi-Fi. (Over the course of the trip, we became EXTREMELY good at hacking Wi-Fi codes.)

Morning stroll through Petrin Gardens

After a late lunch, we started the five-hour bus trip to Austria, where we had plenty of time to catch up on sleep, or just stare out the windows at the beautiful countryside.

Next stop: Vienna, Austria.

Amy's Adventurous Adventures in France

Europe Arts Tour: Days 1 to 3

Before I begin the tales of my wondrous excursions to the faraway lands of fairy tales, I think we all need to take a moment to appreciate the fact that I survived two whole weeks without my laptop, or YouTube, or my own bed, or my own shower, and that I also spent TWO WHOLE WEEKS in the company of people. Let me emphasize the fact that I spent one whole holiday OUTSIDE with actual PEOPLE, and did not read a single book. I think that is quite the accomplishment.

Anyway, I don’t think it is difficult for you to believe that while in the “City of Love”, I indulged only in my relationship with my long-term boyfriend: food. In fact, we began our visit to Paris by stopping for (a very early) breakfast in an adorable little café for a “French Continental Breakfast” – i.e. croissants, French baguettes, jam, cheese and cold meats. (Let’s also take note that because of my kidney problems, I am not allowed to eat a single item from the list above… that doesn’t necessarily imply that I didn’t.)

We were all absolutely exhausted from the long overnight plane flight, which was – obviously – spent watching movies and attempting to find a decent sleeping position before giving up on sleep altogether and watching more movies. Thankfully, the rest of the morning was spent driving around Paris in a bus and seeing all the monuments and tourist attractions we would visit later on our tour. Everything was so incredibly beautiful that we sat silently (for once), staring openmouthed at the tall buildings and classic cobblestone streets. A lunchtime ferry cruise along the Seine river allowed us to fall in love with even more of the city, as did the decadent chocolate crepes we bought and devoured just before scrambling back onto the bus once again to check into the hotel for some much needed rest.

That night, we wrapped ourselves in scarves, beanies and warm coats – despite the fact that it was the middle of spring – to make our way up the Eiffel Tower. I must say that if we found it ever so slightly disappointing during the day, our opinions of it were quickly heightened as it sparkled in the moonlight. No, really. It sparkled. Every so often, it lights up like Edward Cullen when he steps into direct sunlight.

Eiffel Tower - Before and After vampirism kicks in

And you thought I was joking…

We then began the exhausting climb up to the second floor (we took the elevator, actually, but it sounds much more romantic to say that we climbed up all those hundreds of stairs, doesn’t it?). The view was stunning… despite the fact that it was pitch dark and the only thing we could see was twinkling lights. But, hey, why not use this opportunity to tap into the power of imagination, right?

Palace of Versailles from the Palace Gardens

Day Two was spent complaining about how sore our feet were and how exhausted we were while we wandered around the Palace of Versailles and later the Paris Opera House. (You take thirty teenage girls halfway across the world to the most beautiful cities in history and you think you’ll get away with a whole day of no complaints? Don’t kid yourself.) Versailles was even more elaborate and exquisite than I had expected, and believe me, as a History student who has studied the French Revolution in GREAT detail, I expected a lot from it. It. Is. Massive. I don’t even want to say I wish I lived there, because I think I would get lost on a daily basis. I mean, look at it.

But if I thought Versailles would be my favourite place in France, I was sorely mistaken. The Paris Opera House almost too quickly replaced Versailles as the most exquisite and dreamy place on earth. Hell, that opera house is like music nerd heaven. I would’ve killed to have heard a live orchestra perform in there – although I probably would’ve had to sell all of my internal organs (twice) to buy a ticket to the least popular opera performed there. And then I would’ve died because it was so beautiful. (I’m pretty sure it would still be worth it.)

Staircase in the Paris Opera House

Day three was filled with even more complaints about sore feet, seeing as we visited Notre Dame and the Louvre. Notre Dame was stunning, although most of my time there was spent trying to explain to a few fellow classmates that no, I did not attend a church like that, yes, even though my dad is a pastor, and no I could not ‘pull a few strings and allow us to climb the tower’ because I had ‘connections’ with ‘priests and stuff’. But it was beautiful all the same.

Notre Dame

The Louvre was… wow. The visit was long, and I think I nearly died halfway through from utter exhaustion, but it was so worth it. I have to say, though, that I really don’t understand how the Mona Lisa is the most famous work of art on the planet. It’s basically just famous for being famous. I blame human nature’s obsession with all things vaguely mysterious, paired with our messed up society that only likes things because people have liked those same things for centuries. But I’m not an artist, so what do I know, right?

The Louvre

Our love affair with Paris ended abruptly when we flew to Prague later that day, and the air was filled with oaths to return and buy “all the shoes in sight,” to quote one classmate. None of us seemed to believe that the cities ahead of us could ever hold even more excitement.

Note: Yes, all of these photos are my own if you were wondering why they were blurred/skew/weird/ugly… Let's just say I get a little trigger happy every time you put a camera in my hands. (Reminder that this blog site is a NO JUDGMENT ZONE, okay.)