Italy Adventures

Well hello again. Here I am writing an update on my adventures in Italy. Mostly because my mother has decided to nag me to do it. So here we go.

The first leg of my trip involved me going from Copenhagen to Stockholm on an overnight bus. The day after Midsummer. Fun fact about Sweden. The sun doesn't ever fully set around the Summer Solstice. This hampered my ability to sleep in the bus but on the plus side I got to see more of the Swedish countryside. It made me wish I'd done an exchange to Sweden rather than Denmark.

So I got to Stockholm around 6:30am and spent the morning wandering the city, taking random pictures and buying souvenirs. The moose is to Sweden what the Little Mermaid is to Denmark. Seriously, you name it, you can find it with a moose on it in Sweden. It's their big souvenir thing. I actually had no idea what kind of touristy thing there were in Stockholm so I wandered from one interesting building in the distance to another. I also had no idea that there was so much water in Stockholm. It's a gorgeous city.

Around 1pm I took a bus to the airport and at 5:30pm my flight left for Venice. I was actually quite lucky. When I got off the shuttle bus at the bus station I ended up meeting some girls who were heading to the same hostel as me so the four of us got talking. We also ended up meeting two other girls who were already at the hostel and they showed us the way. Which was good. I'm terrible at finding places and didn't want a repeat of London and me taking a bloody hour to find the hostel. I soon found that I had rented a three person tent-building. It was pretty nice. What I hadn't realized was that I had rented the whole thing out. But given it was still cheaper than any other place, I wasn't complaining.

Venice itself was quite nice but it's one of those cities that once you've seen, you've seen. So while I enjoyed my wanderings, I really have no intention of going back. I did get to see the Piazza San Marco along with the Lion which were the two things I was most interested in seeing. Thank you Shadow of the Lion. That book was the whole reason I wanted to see Venice. So I got see everything I wanted to in Venice. I sadly didn't get a gondola ride. Every time I asked, the gondoliers asked me if I was by myself, to which I replied yes. Three times this happened and three times they sent me to the water taxi. After the third time I just gave up and instead went to a museum. I had a lot of fun. It helped there was a lot of Ancient Roman relics there. I am truly a Classics nerd.

So the last place I visited was Rome. And it was in Rome that I stayed in the sketchiest hostel of all my travels. It was a tent. An actual tent. With gaps between the walls and the ground. And no lock. It was terrible. But given I was only paying about 10$ Canadian a night, I got what I paid for.

So day one of Rome involved me going all over the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. I swear there is not a rock in those two places that I did not photograph. I'm also pretty sure some of the other tourists thought I was insane given my habit of squealing like a little girl every time I saw something that I recognized from my classes. I had a lot of fun. I did however make the mistake of wearing flipflops. My feet were black from the ankle down at the end of the day but I didn't really care too much.

Day two of Rome involved me going to a museum. I spent the whole morning there and took pictures of nearly everything in there because I'd promised my fellow Classics major Merran that I would photograph all the Classics things I came across. The only things I didn't take a picture of were some of the funeral tablets. And that's because they all were fairly similar. Any of the cool ones I did take pictures of. So after the museum I wandered around, saw some fountains, finished up souvenir shopping and accidentally walked to the Vatican. I actually had no intention of going to the Vatican because it was free that day and the line was some 2-3 hours long (which is why I didn't go in), but I did take some pictures outside. I had though about going the next day, which was a Monday, but I found out eveything is apparently closed on Mondays in Rome. Except the Colosseum and Roman Forum. Had I known that I would have done those last. But at that point it was too late. So I actually spent my last day in Rome sleeping, reading and eating some delicious lime sorbet gelato and talking to my fellow travellers. It was a lot of fun.

The next morning I flew back to Stockholm, wandered a bit more there then took a bus back to Copenhagen and a few days later I flew back to Canada. So I'm home again.

Apparently my computer doesn't want me to upload photos if the way it's failed the last three times I've tried is any indication. I'll try again another day and post the pictures separately.