London

London was the most disappointing city in my list, despite the fact that my expectation was not high in the first place. The city struck me as uninspiring and dull not only because of the weather, but the lack of soul and perceived personality. I should say that such opinion is highly subjective, and I bet a lot of people would beg to differ. The thing is, I was probably wrong since we didn’t really have the time, spirit and mood to have a good look at the city. We were so worn out and lazy that the only places we went were the Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, London Eye, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square and Windsor Castle. We didn’t even go to the Parliament House and the Tower Bridge.

On the side note, here I should extend my gratitude to Ren Jie’s aunt and family for their hospitality. Not only they took time to fetch us from the airport, they let us stay in their house and cooked meals for us. We were very well fed and taken care of. Each of us even got a Christmas present from them!!! Ren Jie’s aunt really reminded us about the warmth of home and family. Thanks a million!

Trafalgar Square

Big Ben

The London Eye

Poor guard in front of Prime Minister's residence

On our way to the Windsor Castle

Walls of Windsor Castle

Entrance to Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle!

Paris!!

Paris is another exciting metropolis saturated with cultural elements that make it one of the most romantic and happening city in the world. Although I do not like the fact that French has this inexplicable pride to their culture to the extent that they exude a sort of xenophobic aura, I do love the city of Paris. It is sufficiently big, it is well planned and organized, it is the hub of almost all aspects in Europe mainland, and it seems to have a vibrant pulse that pumps through the spiraling boroughs of the city. One can almost find everything here; iconic landmarks, awe inspiring cathedrals, important museums, major galleries, famous parks, interesting shows, operas and concerts, fine food, great universities, romantic rendezvous, uber-urban downtown, glamorous fashion and you name it, all packed in this magnificently beautiful city.

We live in Hotel Luxia, a small 3-star hotel just blocks away from the Sacre-Couer. We intended to spend our first night in the airport, but unfortunately the airport closes at midnight, so we resorted to find a small sketchy motel nearby and settled in before we checked out early next day. To make long story short (frankly don’t remember a lot about the details), we visited most of the attractions in Paris a la walk horse see flower.

We tried to be fancy too in terms of dining, wanting to experience the classy French-style dining experience. Hence one of our nights we walked around trying to look for a chic yet affordable restaurant. After much observing, we decided to go to this restaurant which offered a 20 euro dollars 3-course set. We were impressed when we read the menu; it was donned with indecipherable French words that seemed to be depicting posh and fine cuisines. Excitedly, we each picked our choices and waited with anticipation. We got a jug of white wine to go with the food too.

Disaster happened when the server, an old fat guy who was probably also the owner of the restaurant accidentally spilled some fish sauce on the right sleeve of Shermern’s favorite sweatshirt. In an attempt to make things right, the old man stopped Shermern from wiping it off himself. Instead, he grabbed a tablecloth and used it to clean Shermern’s sleeve. God knows how clean the tablecloth was. Shermern must have let out a muted scream; he was giving a look of horror mixed with disgust. As for me and Ren Jie, everything happened so fast that we could only suppress our laughs and watch the comedy unfolding itself.

That was not all. We got our wine, and due to the fact that Ren Jie doesn’t drink much, Shermern and I drank quite a bit and were soon getting tipsy. When Ren Jie reached over in attempt to take some food from Shermern, he accidentally knocked down Shermern’s wine glass and spilled the white wine all over Shermern’s left sleeve. At this point, I just lost control and laughed unstoppably. It must have been the wine laughing; because how would one laugh when these sort of unfortunate things occur? But well, Shermern didn’t mind and was actually laughing himself too. We must have looked like a bunch of drunkards losing control. Indeed that was one of the favorite moments of my Europe trip.

Okay, enough of anecdotes; let's look at the photos:

Entrance of Musée du Louvre

Paying homage to Mona Lisa

Arc de Triomphe

Paris! City of Lights!! Eiffel tower!!!

Sacre Coeur

The hunchback of Notre Dame...lol. Come to think of it I should hunch a bit to add some effect...(ok in case one doesn't realize, this is intended to be self-deprecating)

Interior of the great Gothic cathedral

Upper chapel of Sainte Chapelle, deemed to be the most beautiful chapel in Paris

Pantheon of Paris (Entrance built with the original Pantheon in mind)

Interior of Paris Pantheon

Macho guy beside the phallic structure

Pisa and Venice

Before leaving for Venice, we decided to go to Pisa to see the leaning tower of Pisa. Since Pisa is not exactly on the way from Florence to Venice, we had to buy an additional round trip ticket to go to Pisa before continuing to Venice. Our visit to the city of Pisa was a brief one, which lasted for merely an hour plus. Hence, we didn’t get the chance to enter the structure, and we did nothing but doing stupid poses outside the building (which took us quite a while).

We spent only one night in Venice, the city known for its canals (wiki time: Venice is built on an archipelago of 118 islands formed by about 150 canals in a shallow lagoon, and the islands on which the city is built are connected by about 400 bridges). Since the weather was cold and moods were not as high as they were during the first few days, we did not cover a lot of places. Among the places we covered in Venice are as followed: Piazza San Marco, St Mark's Basilica, Ponte dei Sospiri and a church which I don’t recall the name. Regrettably we did not go for the gondola experience, since it was too cold at that time. We did use the water taxi a lot though, since we paid for the pass :)

Amazing reflection (on our way to Pisa tower in Pisa)

Pisa tower

Doing the tourist thing....

Piazza San Marco from afar

Ponte dei Sospiri

Piazza San Marco (famous for the countless Venetian pigeons)

Florence

In Florence, after the fateful night having the ravioli, I did not feel very well for quite a while. In fact, that sickness last till the very last day of the trip, exacerbated by a French dinner in Paris (another story). Nevertheless I managed to have some fun immersing myself in Florence. Florence is small but extremely picturesque. We visited the monstrous Duomo (according to Wikipedia, 600 years after its completion, the dome is still the largest dome built in brick and mortar in the world), Piazza della Signoria, Accademia de’ll Arte del Disegno which houses the most renowned statue in the world, Michelangelo’s David (visited the same day as the Ravioli day), the unique Ponte Vecchio famous for having shops built along it, and Piazzale Michelangelo which offers an unparallel view of Florence due to its distance and elevation.

The monstrous Duomo

View from the overlook of duomo

Main entrance of the huge structure

Ponte Vecchio

View from the bridge

View from the bridge 2

Magnificent view from Piazzale Michelangelo

Arriving Florence

We left Rome early in the morning after checking out from the Roma Hostel. Due to reasons that I have already forgotten, we got on the train kind of last minute. To my pleasant surprise, the seats we got were those coach seats arranged in cubicles, not unlike those depicted in the Harry Potter series. The only disadvantage of this seating was that the ventilation was not good in those cubicles, and it was not even a detectable shortcoming until a passenger with the most nauseating body odor came in and join our cube. The unspeakable stench unfortunately reminded me of fish porridge, and that horrifying association stuck in my mind for quite a while for the rest of the day. I almost passed out there, and pitied Ren Jie a lot cause he was seated just right next to that guy. He demonstrated outstanding strength though, unflinching even as I thought I was going to die of suffocation.

When we reached Florence, it took us quite some time to find our hotel, the San Lorenzo Hotel. The owner was a friendly guy, but we were asked to wait for a while as the room was not ready yet. When it was finally ready, we were quite satisfied as after 4 days of sharing room with strangers, we finally got our own room. It was a small attic-like room though, but we couldn't care much.

We ventured out to the town center later, doing just some light walking and sight-seeings. The most famous landmark of the town, the Duomo left me speechless yet another time. It was not awe inspiring in the same way that the St Peter's Basilica did; it was in fact frightening as the monstrous eerie-looking structure practically blocked out the sky and cast ominous shadows over the whole town. I had that feeling probably because of the lighting of that day; it was then turning dark.

That night we decided to try some fine food, after days of shamelessly shoving cheap calories into our systems. We stopped at this cafe-like restaurant, and I treated myself a dish of ravioli with seafood and mushroom and a glass of red wine. For desert, I got myself another pistachio flavored gelato. The ravioli tasted excellent, but little did I know I was about to suffer for days because of that sinful treat. It was what I thought to be the cause of my few-days-lasting diarrhea. I went to bed that night feeling satisfied, oblivious of the trouble lying ahead me.
Tasty, and highly recommended for those who have severe constipation...

Rome (pt 2)

Day 4

As this is our last day in Rome, we tried to cover as many places as we could. Again, we took Linea A to our destination, which was a stop before Ottaviano. From there we walked to the Palazzo di Giustizia, which now houses the court houses. We then proceeded to Castel Sant’ Angelo, another famous spot in Rome featured in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. Due to time constraint, we did not go into the castle. Instead, we walked across the river to the other side of Rome using the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, a pedestrian bridge decorated with angels.

Our journey for the later of the day covers: Piazza Navona – Pantheon – S. Ignazio di Coyola – Piazza di Spagna – Piazza del Popolo – Santa Maria Maggiore – Isola – Colosseo. Yes, we went to the Colosseum again just to view it at night. By the end of the day, we were all exhausted but looking forward to continuing our journey to Pisa and Florence.

Castel Sant’ Angelo

Ponte Sant’ Angelo

Castel Sant’ Angelo from Ponte Sant’ Angelo

Pantheon

Spanish steps (the obelisk was under restoration work...)

Inside Santa Maria Maggiore

Colosseum at night

Vatican City

Day 3

We started the day off quite early,taking Linea A to the Ottaviano station from Termini. Our focus for the day’s trip is the Vatican City, basically a city state in Rome. The line to Museo Vaticano, which houses the famous Sistine Chapel was insanely long, so we figured we should do the St. Peter’s Basilica first. We entered from the left arm (as the columns that surrounded the elliptical center of piazza were deemed “the maternal arms of Mother Church”), and was immediately dumbstruck by the magnitude of the architectural site. The sky was crystal blue, and the whole Piazza San Pietro and the Basilica looked magnificent coated in the warm rays of the sun. Needless to say, we were thrilled to be in this center of the catholic universe.

The interior of the St Peter’s Basilica was simply breathtaking, and one could only imagine the amount of effort and resources that had been poured into building this wonder. From this point onwards, not many churches could solicit more “wows” from us, since we had already seen one of the greatest.

We proceeded to visit the Museo Vaticano, only to discover the line was not any shorter than what we had seen earlier. In fact, it was a whole lot longer than what we expected. We spent a good hour waiting in the line, doing nothing much but chatting and trying to fight the cold. When we finally entered the museum, we were dazzled by the seemingly never-ending halls saturated with artworks and treasures of inestimable value. As impressive as they were, they could only pale in comparison to the legendary ceiling by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel (at least that’s what we are made to believe, I don’t really see how much better that ceiling is compared to the others, since I’m no art major). It was strictly prohibited to take photos in the chapel, but well, those excited tourists did not quite have the mood to adhere to the rule; flashes can be seen frequently despite angry warnings from the officers there.

Once we emerged from the historic maze, we soon found ourselves back in St Peter’s Basilica, albeit in a different level. We decided to do the unthinkable – to climb the stairs up to the dome, with my stupid laptop bag which started to seem more and more like the Ring in Lord of the Rings. All our efforts were eventually paid off though, as we got the chance to view the entire Rome from the top of the dome.

We started heading back to our hostel, but not before visiting a couple more places: Fontana di Trevi (yes, again to see the night view)– Quirinale – San Cario Quattro Fontane. Needless to say, it was a tiring day, and I got my first gelato in Rome (pistachio flavor) to reward my heroic display for not passing out in the middle of the trip :P

Group photo in front of the basilica

San Pietro Piazza behind

Hallelujah!!!

Close up view (not of me, of the altar or whatever that is)

One of those insane ceilings

View of the square from the top of the dome

Rome (pt 1)

Day 1

We reached Rome Ciampiano Airport at about 5pm. After retrieving our checked in baggage, we boarded a bus which took us to Agnagnina, the nearest Metro subway station. From there we went to Termini, which is the transportation hub of Rome. The subway system in Rome is worse than New York’s; not only is it dirty, it actually stinks. Once we reached Termini, we followed the instructions given by the hostel’s website and boarded bus 310 to our hostel. Unfortunately for us, we alighted from the bus too early and ended up having to walk to our hostel in the dark. Luckily we managed to somehow find the hostel. To our relief, to receptionist speaks English, and we were promptly checked in even though we didn’t have enough cash to pay for our dues. We were assigned to a 6 bedroom room with a French couple already occupying two of the beds.

Once we had everything settled down, we headed out again to Termini for dinner. The food there was quite cheap, we had kebab for less than 3 euros. Since the night was still young, we went to Piazza de Repubblica, which is within walking distance from Termini. There is an impressive looking fountain right at the center of the piazza, and the Santa Maria degli Angeli is just right opposite the fountain. Since everything was already closed, we just took a couple of photos before going back to our hostel.

Day 2

We had breakfast provided by the hostel, which was really nothing much but bread and cereal. From Termini, we took Linea B to the Colosseo stop, which was right in front of the Colosseum. I was left without words when I first saw the colossal Colosseo; I actually could not believe that I was there, standing in front of the magnificent building that I’ve seen so many times in postcards or pictures. The line towards the entrance was long, but I couldn’t complain as I needed the time to let the fact set in: I’m in Rome!!!

After Colosseum, we went to the nearby Palatino and Forum Romanum, which was basically a vast site of what used to be the central area of ancient Rome. One could only imagine how majestic the ancient city would look like standing there surrounded by those gigantic slabs of marbles, huge columns and arcs, and ruins of once imposing structures.

We proceeded to the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, a monstrous monument dedicated to the first king who of a unified Italy. From there we went to the first grand church of many more to come – the Ara Coeli. Again I was awestruck as it was the first time that I observed such opulence in a catholic church; the interior was basically splattered with ornaments, paintings, and sculptures that could leave any casual observer dizzy and humbled. Since this was the first church of all in our trip, we were quite appreciative of the architecture and all, but eventually that feeling turned into a dreaded sense of déjà-vu. Ask Shermern about it, who in the end wouldn’t even want to enter anything vaguely resembling a catholic church.

As night falls, we made our way to probably the most famous fountain in the world: Fontana di Trevi. The fountain was so packed with tourists, presumably not to admire the art behind the fountain but to perform the famous coin-throwing ritual. I did my part to contribute to the estimated 3000 euros thrown into the fountain daily.

Places that we have visited the same day includes:

Palatino – Circo Massimo – Arco di Giano – Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II – Ara Coeli – Foro Traiano – Fontana di Trevi – Fontana del Tritone

Somebody said this looked fake :(

Overlooking the Colosseum from the Palatine Hill

The Roman Forum

What a waste....they're renovating the facade!!!

Fontana di Trevi

(More to come, stay tuned...)

Winter 2008

Suddenly it's already 2008, and as much as I do not like to believe it, I'm turning 23 is just a mere three months. Since my blogging has already halted for quite a while, let me start from where I left.

There was a winter storm in mid December which brought about a tremendous amount of snow accumulation. Since I was not in my mood to study for my finals (it was the finals study week), I took some photos of the surrounding of my apartment before the scene turned unsightly due to man-made disruptions (snowplower, snow-angle makers etc). This is one of the better photos:



Compare and contrast that to another photo which I've taken less than two months ago:

Interesting huh? Makes us appreciate the wonder and beauty of nature...