When In Rome

Real Romans! Ty in front of the Colosseum before our tour.
Wow, Rome has been AMAZING!! We started our sightseeing at the Colosseum, of course. We took a tour of the ruins, with a guide that we could call "Maximus". Unfortunately, the Romans are famous for reusing materials for new building projects, so only 30% of the Colosseum is original. The rest was used to help build St. Peters Basilica for the Pope. Then the Pope felt bad and rebuilt some of it with brick.

We loved the building and have many pictures of it from all angles, this is the view from the main road that drives right past it, built by Mussolini so that his army would look good as they marched by.

If you have ever seen the movie Gladiator, (which we watched in our hostel the day after being toured through the colosseum and told all about the gladiators) it apparently does an amazing job of recreating what it would have looked and felt like during its hieght. You may remember that tigers come out of the wooden floor in the movie for the gladiators to content with. Well, as you can see in this picture, there was actually 2 stories of passageways, elevators and rooms or cages under the arena floor. It was ingeneous design, especially for the time. We also found out that gladiators were the sports heroes of the time and that not that many died. At least not as many as the movies would have us believe. It was very expensive to have the fights, the emperor had to foot the bill and would have to pay the trainer for everyone of his dead gladiators, so there was only about 10 fights a year. I should clarify that not many of the GOOD gladiators died, quite a few slaves did, as they were worth less money. As you can see, we were pretty interested in the Colosseum and the gladiators.

We went to the Vatican city on Wed. for the Pope's address. It was quite the experience! First we were there early to get good seats, and we found them. We were 2 rows back from where the Pope passes in his little jeep twice on his way to the front. Then the Pope gave a Latin, French, English, German, Spanish, Russian and Italian address. One of the most interesting things was that there were special groups there and they would be mentioned to the Pope. At each groups mention, they would stand and cheer and wave things, some would sing, some had flags and signs, it was crazy.

These are the Pope's personal guards. They are Swiss guards and although they look like circus performers they are actually highly trained soilders. I wonder what they think the first time they put that uniform on and head out on duty.

We also went for tours of Palatine Hill, where the Emperors palace was and of the Roman forum, the "cradle of Western civilization". Both were very interesting.

This is a picture of the forum. It is a jumbled mess. First of all, after a fire, earthquake or other disaster, the Romans would just build over the rubble. So, you have layer upon layer of buildings, temples and roads. Also, they often build their new buildings with materials stolen from old ones, so sometimes it is hard to tell where the ruins or artifacts belong. On top of it all, it has been randomly excavated to different depths depending on who is doing the digging and why. SO, this site is a bif puzzle of artifacts and historical stories that are hard to make sense of, especially without a tour guide.

Two stories to end this post.
1. Kelsey has been striking out as far as food in Italy. She was SO excited to come to Italy, as she loves pasta and pizza. Unfortunately she has been disappointed time and time again. Tonight is our last night in Italy so we tried one last time. Everything was looking promising until we realized that they don't accept cards and we don't have that much cash on us. So Kelsey makes a last minute choice to save some money for dessert. Alas, a big mistake, as she read artichoke on the menu instead or Anchovie and hated her fish boney pizza!! All for the sake of saving 2 Euros.
2. We were in what is considered the mother church of Catholisism, San Giovanni. Some people come to this holy place and will walk on their knees up to the front, as it is so religiously special for them. One lady was in the midst of walking the aisle on her knees when we hear, tweetatweet as her cell phone goes off. She pauses on her knees and answers it!! It was hilarious, to see the special moment ruined again!!
Love,
K

A photo journal from Paris To Pisa

Wow, it's been an adventure since the last post. Not including how difficult it's been to find an internet point that let's us upload photos, we've also managed to rail/fly/hostel our way through a french transportation strike, through the canals of Venice, through the tourist trap of the tower of Pisa, and all the way to Rome!

We didn't quite finish with describing our amazing experience in Paris last time, so we wanted to start this post with it as well. The French love to strike! We'd like to announce, that Tyrn and Kelsey have officially had the true French pleasure of navigating through Paris on "strike day". Not only did we make our way across the city for free, but we also managed to do a full guided tour of the Louvre Museum. You can go ahead and tell your friends that you know the pros, when it comes to smart eurotravel.

The above photo is of the famous Venus de Milo, which is an ancient Greek statue. It was found by a farmer in his field in Greece, and was bought by a French General and brought back to France as a gift to the King. One of the big mysteries about her is that we don't know who she is (much like the Mona Lisa). We learned that Greek statues were often identifiable by the arms and what they're holding. Since her arms were never found, experts guess that the statue is of Venus.

The painting below is a section of a famous painting of the crowning of Napoleon. The guide explained a lot of the details of the painting, including how it was made as propaganda for Napoleon. Notice that it looks like he's crowning Josephine, but he actually crowned himself as well. Not a very suave gesture. There were really a million amazing things to see in the Louvre, not to mention the Louvre itself. Ty was not prepared for the magnitude of the whole thing and had his jaw on the ground for most of our time in Paris.
Now, onward to Venice! Sparing you the long story of how we made our way to the Beauvais airport outside of Paris, there is a silver lining to the grey cloud of the strike. Because of the strike, two friendly neighbourhood Canadians from Halifax had to book emergency flights to Venice since there train was cancelled. SO, on our way through the skies, we met Mike and Anita.
We ended up staying at the same hostel for a night and going out for supper in Venice with them. It was so nice to hang out with those cool cats.

Venice is truly more picturesque than our amateur photo skills can convey. We payed a heap of money for our transit passes, so we spent a lot of time riding the canals on the water "buses". It was such a surreal experience to wait on a bobbing platform for your boat/bus and then touring past the gondoliers and the waterside cafes. Ty was keeping an eye out for celebrities the whole time but unfortunately struck out. Here is a small sample of the photos we took.






Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square)
Travelling in Europe in November does have it's drawbacks. Although the crowds are fairly minimal, the construction is everywhere. In the off season they give all the iconic landmarks a face lift, hence the scaffolding. St. Mark's Square is also very famous for the pigeons. People can pay 1€ for a bag of pigeon food, which they then pour all over themselves so that they are swarmed by the little pooping birds in hopes of a smart photo. BUT, after the picture has been taken, people often have trouble shaking the pigeons loose. We could have taken a whole photo montage of people's reactions to the persistent pecking machines. These are a couple of our favourites:
Click on this one to see the expression up close!
One of our least favourite things about Europe is that you have to pay for everything. That includes using the washroom. In this one, Kelsey is not impressed to have to pay a whole Euro to use a seatless toilet with cold water taps in Venice. Venice is the most expensive place we've peed in.
It finally happened. We are chronically having to run to catch our trains and barely making them. This time it bit us in the butt. The water buses were much slower today than we remembered them being, and we ended up at our platform 5 minutes late. After paying the difference for the fancy train leaving an hour later, we learned our lesson. We'll tell you the story in person sometime of how Tyrn "helped" Kelsey with her bag on the run to the station.

A Piece of Pisa

We ended up arriving in Pisa late, and wandered around nervous about finding a place to stay for the night. Of course, our prayers were answered yet again and we found a great hotel close to the tower for an affordable price. When we woke up and went for a walk, we found this around the corner:

The tower is the major source of industry for this town. Even in low season, there are throngs of people gazing up and taking funny posed photos amongst the souvenir vendors. Having said that, we did enjoy it and did end up taking some funny posed photos ourselves. Unfortunately, the 15€ admisson fee kept us from going inside the tower.

Sorry, we can't rotate our photos, but we wanted to show one of the classic Leaning Tower poses.

Sometimes it seems like the tower is peaking out at you. It reminds us of Kelsey's Mom, who's always popping into rooms wondering what's going on. We call this one the Louising Tower of Pisa.
Yesterday we took a day trip from Pisa to a small town named Lucca. Lucca is walled, but not menacing. It has a gorgeous walkway around the old town and a circular "square" in the middle. It was our first time eating gelato in Italy. Mmmmm.
We are now in Rome. We have 4 days of touring here before we fly to Cairo.

K & T