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