29th October, 2011
So it’s been ages since our last blog, sorry about that! Might be a bit of a long one so go make a coffee! :p
Where did we leave you.. Interlaken! Switzerland in it’s entirety is a beautiful country, not just parts of it but the WHOLE lot. Interlaken was no different. The town is nestled between 2 great lakes (hence the name) in a massive valley. We stayed in a guesthouse, our room at the top of a very uneven 4 flights of stairs. It was nice with a great view, the owners extremely helpful and the breakfasts beautiful! The room included a fridge, the fridge being the nice wide window sill outside in a chilly 2°c! Hah.
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| LAKE THUN |
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| LAKE BRIENZ |
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| OUR FRIDGE |
On our first full day in Interlaken we took off up Harder Kulm which is on the north side of town. Our guesthouse had discount cards so we managed to get tickets for €10 each! It has a similar sort of train going up the mountain as Pilatus but it’s pulled via a cable instead, seemed just as steep though. At the top it’s a short walk to the restaurant/view which was awesome, overlooking Interlaken, the 2 lakes and the alps behind. They had this cool deck you could walk out of which put you over the mountain side. After the view we found out that it was the last day of the season that Harder Kulm was going to be open (which accounted for it being so damn busy) and it turned out that there was free lunch!! It only consisted of snags, bread and potato salad but it was yum… and did I mention FREE! The beer was nice and cold and the old dude sitting next to us even gave me his beer to finish, it would have been rude of me not to accept, right?! (He couldn’t speak English and I had no idea what he was saying as he was reaching over with his beer, I thought he wanted to cheers, aha.. but he just filled up my glass!)
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| HARDER KULM PLATFORM |
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| INTERLAKEN AND ALPS FROM HARDER KULM |
That was about it for that day.
The next day we took a short train trip to Bern for the day. Bern is the capital of Switzerland and it’s not that big of a city, good lookin’ tho! We took a self-guided tour through the city courtesy of google and got to see most of the sights. We had coffee under Einstein’s old crib (where he worked on the theory of relativity) and I tried an “Einsten Cofee” which consisted of black coffee and brandy… well there’s no denying he was one smart dude but that’s no accounting for his taste buds man… it was gross. I forced it down considering I forked out €7 while Amy enjoyed her hot chocolate. After that we checked out the bear pits! The bear is pretty sacred to the Bernese/Bernites (?) and they have kept bears in these pits for hundreds of years. I thought we were out of luck when we were getting close as the sanctuaries down near the river was crawling with people doing it up, but to my relief they had 3 bears in a pit up top. We were fascinated and took plenty of pics of bears playing, play-fighting, standing up and yes.. pooing.
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| BERN |
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| EINSTEIN'S HOUSE |
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| RANDOM STREET IN BERN |
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| RANDOM HOUSE IN BERN |
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| BERNIE BEAR BREATHING STEAM |
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| BEAR DANCE |
Oh yeah, somewhere in there we had a nice spaghetti lunch (little did we know that Italy being next, spaghetti and pasta was to come out of our ears. There is really nothing else on the menu).
We were back in Interlaken in no time, enjoying the nice Swiss train trips as much as anything else.
After a week in Switzerland we were ready to move on again, to Italy!
We arrived in Milan about noon in miserable weather, the Milan train station is crappy and dirty with a lot of undesirables hanging around. Our hotel was not far from the station and we realised as we starting moving away from the station that, unfortunately, Milan was not much different. Not the glamourous town full of fashionistas Amy had anticipated.
We dumped our bags at the hotel as our room wasn’t quite ready and headed back to the Metro. We had a coffee (which I must admit, was excellent) and took the metro to a few of the sights including the city square which was ok, the main attraction had scaffolding over it which we’ve actually found a lot of. There were thousands of pigeons and seedy guys coming up us with handfuls of corn kernels thrusted in our face expecting some money for us to feed the birds, we ended up being quite rude to some of them and they got the point.
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| TOWN SQUARE MILAN - PFFT |
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| DUOMO IN THE TOWN SQUARE MILAN |
Well, we were standing in a filthy square in miserable weather among people who thought it was fine to be entirely covered (no joke) by disease infested pigeons while we were longing for home. A culmination which resulted in us getting the shits and going back to the hotel.
That night we ventured out again to a restaurant not far from the hotel on a suggestion from reception. Well it was crap again. It didn’t open until 7.30pm, the service was bad and it is the only place so far that didn’t at least attempt an English menu and no one bothered to help us so we ended up with very average vegetarian pasta.
Trudge back in the rain. Bed.
The next morning we took off for Rome but wanted to drop into Pisa on the way. As Pisa was off the beaten track somewhat we had to get a connection from Florence. Well I tell you what, I’m convinced that the small towns and areas between Florence and Pisa is the Italian ghetto.. It was nothing but an overgrown, overrun, dilapidated, utter CRAP poor excuses for a dump. One such place had rocks on top of a partly demolished roof to stop it from wafting away with the wind.. I was surprised the “house” supported the weight. Picture Woorabinda, yep.
The people that got on these stops were also as you can imagine and I won’t go into too much detail but I’ll say I didn’t feel particularly comfortable or safe, which hasn’t happened so far.
We arrived in Pisa and it was better but not by much. We had a few hours here so we humped our packs towards the leaning tower, which was actually pretty cool to see, it’s on a lean you see. We had some lunch, browsed some markets and headed back to our 3pm to Rome.
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| PISA |
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| AMY KNOCKING IT DOWN INSTEAD OF HOLDING IT UP LIKE EVERY OTHER JOE |
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| EVERY OTHER JOE |
There are heaps of black dudes (the types getting on the train at the ghetto) selling ‘Rolex’s’ and ‘Prada’ everywhere, who insist they’re genuine and bother you when passing. “Rolex! Real!”
Well we got back to the station and our train outta this place was delayed by an hour or so. We noticed the same service on the same line at 11am cancelled so we decided to head back through the ghetto (shudder) to Florence to get a train to Rome on the main-line.
Turns out it was the best thing we could have done as the line between Pisa and Rome had been washed away with all the crazy flooding they’ve had.
*Talking about trains I just want to add that at the moment, we are stuck on a broken down train between Rome and Ancona, GREAT!*
I wasn’t so sure about Italy at all at this point, somewhat demoralized.
Well we got a connection to Rome without much hassle at all and were on our way, glad to be back among the living. It was even almost a welcome to have a snooty lady look down on us backpackers being in first class to Rome!
You must be wary at Rome Termini and probably Rome in general as there are a lot of people out there who take advantage of tourists in a bad way, from pick pockets to offering fake taxi rides.
Anyway, we scored a wotif mystery 4 star hotel deal for peanuts which turned out to be a little ways out of Rome not too far on the other side of Vatican City, which turned out great but it meant a Metro trip, another train, and a 15min walk up a hill with our packs. The hotel was nice and after that day I decided I needed a beer so we spent some time down at the bar for drinks and food before turning in.
Drivers in Rome are insane. They have a system, and that system is to do whatever you want whenever you want!! There are scooters everywhere who duck, weave and get through tiny spaces at an incredible rate. As a pedestrian, you are literally risking your life crossing (at a crosswalk!!) the road. The drivers literally believe and as far as I can tell, actually do have right of way. At a designated crosswalk, even when the little walking light is green you cannot just walk out, you still must be incredibly wary and even then sometimes you have to be bold and step out in a decent size gap and hold your hand out hoping that the guy pulls up.
Anyway, amid all this Rome definitely saved Italy for us!!
The hotel offered a courtesy bus to Vatican City so we decided to spend the first day down there.
St Peter’s square and Basilica are pretty amazing. We climbed to the top of the cupola which is the dome above the basilica (funnily enough partially made out of stolen bits of the Colosseum). It was a crazy tiny cramped climb with tight leaning corridors and extremely tight spiral stair cases, but it boasted a nice view of the city once we managed to get up.
And you guessed it, we had spaghetti for lunch, mmmmm!
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| ST PETER'S SQUARE |
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| ST PETER'S SQUARE FROM THE CUPOLA |
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| ST PETER'S BASILICA |
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| MMMM SPAAGHEETTIIO |
After that we found the Vatican museum for the purpose of making it to the Sistine Chapel, we passed all through the corridors with the famous statues with all their doodles snapped off (apparently some dude many years ago got a guilty conscience about public nudity and took it in to his own hands, so to speak :p) and made it to the Sistine Chapel. As you might already know the Sistine Chapel is famous for Michelangelo’s paintings everywhere in it, the roof etc. It was packed with people with the guards attempting to keep everyone quiet with a lot of SHHHHHHHHHHHH’s, which ironically was louder than anything else. Sorry, no photos allowed inside the chapel.
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| THE HALL OF PENIS SNAPIOFFIOUS |
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| EXIT FROM VATICAN MUSEAM |
All in all Vatican City was a pretty eye opening experience for even the unreligious. We had a bit of spare time after Vatican City so took a quick Metro trip down into the city to check out a market but unfortunately they were packing up, but we had a nice time poking around anyway.
The next day was Rome itself. The Metro in Rome is incredibly busy (the busiest Metro by far, so far) but is relatively easy to navigate it albeit via a maze of stairs and escalators.
Our first stop was the Colosseum, this thing hits you in the face. It is massive and we were in it’s shadow as we came out of the Metro, probably pissing off other people as we stood agape in the door!
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| 3 LAYERS OF THE COLISSEUM |
As usual there were the tourist predators offering tickets in to avoid the lines, claiming that the wait was at least an hour, but we joined the main queue and were in the Colosseum and doing a guided tour within 15 min. The tour was great, we learnt a lot of cool stuff even if the guide chick had a hard time with English. The history of this place is amazing.
After this we had a lot of cool sites to see and they are all in the same area of town which was walking distance from the Colosseum, great! As you walk around this part of Rome there is just cordoned off areas everywhere in the city with sites and ruins inside them that are thousands of years old, incredible. You don’t need to walk far in this part of the city to find something interesting.
Another lunch, this time… Lasagne!
One of the highlights for me, and in fact I found it more impressive than the Colosseum is the Pantheon which is this massive ancient domed temple. It’s giant pillared entrance realllly gives you a feel of how incredibly powerful the Roman empire was in it’s heyday.
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| PANTHEON |
Well we googled the best Gelato in Rome and it was unanimous, SAN CRISPINO!!! There were 2 google blips in Rome so we bee-lined for the closest one, a small inconspicuous shop where there are definitely no waffle cones allowed as they contaminate the taste!! Oh boy, we were not let down whatsoever, I had Chocolate meringue and it was easily the best icecream in the world, although Amy claimed her flavours as this also! (Mine was better. Amy.)
Well.. I managed to find another attraction which ‘coincidentally’ took us close the other San Crispino for another round!! It was the Trevi fountain which was pretty cool, but seriously busy.
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| TREVI FOUNTAIN |
Well we just wandered the streets and the markets after this until our tired little legs were about to fall off. Late in the arvo we made it back to the Hotel completely buggered!
This morning we got to Rome Termini again and got a train for Ancona, a coastal town on the East side. We are currently on the move again, passing some more dilapidated towns.
Cheers
Matt
