Thursday, September 30, 2010

Venice, Italy

Well I made it to my latest random destination today and if you can believe it, this was actually the less crazy option. I was originally looking to fly to Spain for a few days but I waited too long and the cost of flights skyrocketed out of my price range. Instead I 'settled' for a train ride to Venice. Every so often in life you end up in a destination you hadn't planned on and it turns out better than the place you had wanted to go to.

Venice is a beautiful little city that is helping me satisfy a few of my favorite things: getting lost, running in beautiful places, and narrow winding streets. Unfortunately for me I jumped the gun on the getting lost part. I arrived via train today and realized that I hadn't received the confirmation email on my iPod. I also could not remember the name of the place I was staying. Didn't have a map. Couldn't find wifi. Already got the 'your battery is low' warning in my iPod. Things were a little dire for a bit but I found a map, the name of my guesthouse, and eventually where I was going. The bonus to getting lost was that I got to take a great 1 hour walking tour of city. Too bad I had to carry all my bags the entire time.

Anyways, I took it easy with the camera today in advance of what I expect to be an epic photo day (come on sunshine). I also went for a run today and managed to find the longest deadens pedestrian path I've ever seen (2km each way). I'll post photos when I'm not blogging from the side of the street. Cheers.

On my iPod

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Rome, Lazio, Italy

Fasten your seat belts, we have got a bit of a backlog to deal with today.

First off, I will start out with Switzerland. I traveled with my parents to the very remote town of Murren which was located at aroun 6.000 feet on the side of a cliff. Town has 500 residents and 2000 hotel beds which gives a bit of an idea of how spectacular Murren is. We spent 3 days traveling throughout the nearby mountains on the various forms of public transportation which include trains, cog trains, cable cars and gondolas. The highlight was going to the top of Jungfraujoch then hiking across a glacier at 12,000 feet. It's amazing how much you can be affected by a lack of oxygen. I think the photos and videos of Switzerland will do a better job of exhibiting the spectacular landscape.


















The downside about the place we were in Switzerland is that if the weather goes bad, there is next to nothing to do. And unfortunately for us, the weather went bad after day three so we decided to pack up and head for a random destination in Italy. We found a place to stay in Genoa which was a half way point for my parents to their destination in France and for me getting to Rome. After some (already documented) struggles we made it to the city and was pleasantly surprised by how vibrant the seaside city was. I only had a few hours to take photos but enjoyed every minute.




The next day I woke up and caught the first train to Rome to reach the last place on my 'to-do' list for this trip. I got into the city in the afternoon and decided that I was going to go for a quick walk just to get orientated in the city. By the time I got home at 9pm I had seen pretty much every major site in the city. The second ay I did a more indepth job of experiencing the city. Now for day three, I have no idea what to do so I thought I'd take the opportunity to do a proper update on my blog.










Hope you enjoyed the three country post (Switzerland, Italy, Vatican). Going to a random unplanned destination tomrorow. Stay tuned.