Airplane Food

A quick post of the food on the airplanes to and from Italy. We traveled there on KLM, which had some of the best service ever. I actually had to turn away water since they kept hydrating us so much. The entertainment system was also quite nice and the staff were super friendly. They even gave us a (delicious) sandwich and two drink services on the short hop to Italy from our transfer in Amsterdam.

Also European airlines are awesome because they had small size cans of pop and beer.

The short flight back to Amsterdam from Rome was through Altalia and was probably the worst experience I've ever had on a plane ever. The air attendants and ground staff were rude and unfriendly. They forced us to check our luggage even though we arrived in Italy through a similarly sized KLM plane, and messed up the final destination of our baggage. If not for being overly cautious and checking the baggage carrousel at Amsterdam, I would have probably lost my suitcase. Thankfully it was soon back to KLM for the flight back home.

SPQR

The second day in Rome started off with the Coliseum! Click on the photo above for a larger size.

The sheer scale and mass of the coliseum is imposing in person, a massive edifice of stone and masonry, with walls several feet in thickness.

It was amazing to realize that the stones underneath my feet and the bricks I leaned against were from almost two millennia ago. 

Next stop was Palatine Hill, a site saturated with ruins from the Bronze ages to the Roman Empire. During the Roman Republic, the affluent and noble families of Rome located their estates on the hills.

It's a huge complex and the ticket is only one-time entrance. Bring a bottle of water and you can refill with spring water at fountain locations. Fountains with clean drinking water are scattered throughout the city of Rome. Also bring along a light snack as there are no food vendors inside.

I didn't take pictures of all the ruins but there is an impressive variety of left-over structures in layers from underneath the ground to the very top of the hill. It was like a mini adventure ducking and weaving through the arched passage ways below.

Rome can be very hot during the daytime under the sun. Palatine Hills are best visited either first thing in the morning or a little later in the afternoon. Also for those people who like taking pictures, Rome doesn't start to develop nice looking clouds until the afternoon.

You can see the remains of Circus Maximus and on-going excavation work from the ruins of the bath built by Septimius Severus.

You can get a great view of the the coliseum and other landmarks from the top of Palatine Hill.  You'll find yourself in the Roman Forum once you've passed the arch of Septimius Severus.

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The photo above ranks among my favourites for this trip.

The Altare della Patria is just a few steps away from the exit near the Forum. We had a quick pasta  lunch at a small cafe nearby. No pictures as we were all starving by that point, having entered Palatine Hill in the morning and not leaving until well past noon.

I bought a treat from a refreshment cart near Trajan's Column.

Found some tourists taking an interesting mode of transportation to see the sights of Rome. Also I took a picture of a horse's butt. Not sure why... And two old policemen, one tiny and one larger.

As it was Good Friday, many of the tourist sites were closing early to prepare for the night's ceremonies. Roads were blocked off and armored vehicles with paramilitary police and emergency vehicles could be seen everywhere.

Eating in Rome consisted of lots of pasta and pizza. A short ways away from Palatine Hills, we found a nice little place with outdoor tables that served super thin and crispy pizzas. And since I was in the land of cured meats: prosciutto appetizer and more prosciutto on the pizza! The one in the background had anchovies.

After dinner we went back to the coliseum to check out the festivities, but didn't stay long. There was a humongous crowd of people there and more walking towards the coliseum every minute. We caught the live broadcast of the Stations of the Cross later that night at the hotel.

The Holy See

The first day after arriving in Rome was spent at the Vatican museums and St. Peter's Basilica.

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However I feel compelled to first mention that the hotel I stayed at, Best Western Franklin Feel the Sound, had a disco ball in the washroom. And upside-down snare drums as bedside tables. And a sound system in each room, speakers in the bathroom and a library of CDs you can borrow from in the lobby.

So back to the Vatican, we woke up bright and early to make a beeline for the Vatican museum. The line was still fairly decent when we arrived there around 9 am. There were tons of peddlers around trying to sell everything from tour packages, fast lane tickets and postcards.

Once again I spent way too long inside, but there's really so many things to see inside. The popes used their wealth to collect a staggering amount of Classical sculptures and Renaissance art.

What really amazed me were all the repairs made to classical marble sculptures by Renaissance artists, sometimes replacing entire limbs that had been destroyed, and the amount of mosaic that popes had moved to the Vatican. How do you just up and move an entire mosaic wall or floor, and have it incorporated into an existing building?!

The hallways were also richly decorated with various paintings on the walls and elaborate decorations on the coffer ceilings. One of my favourite hallways had large maps of various kingdoms and countries as understood at the time.

I also spent quite a bit of time while in Rome surreptitiously taking pictures of nuns and priests.

Lunch was simply a quick sandwich inside the museum cafe. We finally made it out, through the famous spiral stairs, in the afternoon. Then it was onto Castel Sant'Angelo and Piazza San Pietro.

It was pretty difficult trying to get a good picture of the Swiss Guard on account of them being an actual active force. I did manage to find a pretty good angle by a side door after you pass through the security check into St. Peter's Basilica.

The inside of the cathedral was gorgeous and richly decorated in marbles and scultures, including Michelangelo's famous Pietà. St. Peter's features perhaps the best use of light I've seen so far. I wasn't able to capture most of it in photos, but the windows around St. Peter's are all designed such that rays of light, at different times of the day, shine down to illuminate sculptures or instill a sense of awe.

As it was around Easter, the Catholic Church was busy with a variety of special ceremonies and events. We were there during Maudy Thursday, and caught the tail end of, what I believe was, the evening mass.

The plaza was rather empty of tourists by the time we left the church. The sun started setting, casting a glow on the tip of the obelisk as the plaza fell into shadows.

Dinner that night was a simple and authentic spread of roast vegetables, salads, cheese and baked bread.

The Seven(ty) Bridges of Venice

My second day in Venice was spent walking around the island, seeing the sights of the city and occasionally poking my head into one of the numerous (free) churches. (It's nice to see the age old tradition of fleecing pilgrims continuing well to this day.) 

I spent most of the day taking slightly random pictures of whatever caught my eye.

Above is the famous gondola manufacturer Tramontin & Figli. The boatyard was found in 1884 and still painstakingly crafts each gondola by hand.

We stopped for a small lunch by a seafood market. Some seagulls were fighting over discarded fish carcass by a drain.

Soon though, it was time to say "adio" to Venice. A parting shot of the buildings perched by the waters edge, and of a collared priest, heralding our arrival in Rome and the approaching Easter festivities.

Once on the train, a quick cold dinner of calamari and sandwiches, topped off with Italian sweets bought from a small shop while wandering the many narrow streets of Venice.

Venice, City of Boats

To start off, everything in Venice is a boat. It shouldn't have surprised me as much - Venice is intrinsically connected with gondolas and canals in my mind - but I never thought out the reasonable conclusion: all transportation is by boats. No land vehicles are allowed into Venice past Piazzale Roma, near the train station.

Other than the bus-boats, gondolas (essentially limo-boats) and taxi-boats ferrying tourists, they had refrigerated delivery-boats, garbage-boats, construction-boats; and of course ambulance-, fire- and police-boats. One particularly amusing moment was seeing a policeman holding a radar gun just behind a corner and a police-boat waiting to turn on it's siren and pull over the offending boat. (Of course there would be speed limits. My logic just apparently fails when it encounters boats.)

My first sight of Venice in the daylight were was from an outdoor seat on the bow of a rather bumpy bus. I don't generally have issues with moving vehicles, but I was about ready to throw up after the first boat ride. The beautiful views of Venice was of some consolation, but it took another two trips on a boat for me to gain my "sea legs".  

First stop was Piazza San Marco. The sky had annoying decided to be bereft of clouds in the space directly behind the angle I was shooting from. We went up the Campanile first. There was no climbing involved as the bell tower had been outfitted with an elevator during it's almost complete reconstruction in the early 1900's after it collapsed.

As with any tower, the top of the Campanile offered wonderful views of Venice from above, the red roofing vibrant in the sunlight.

St. Mark's Basilica had a really long wait and required you to check any large backpacks or other large bags. The cathedral is wonderfully Byzantine and famous for its mosaic lunettes depicting, among others, the story of how the corpse of St. Mark was stolen from Alexandria.

There were no photos allowed inside the church. You can also take the climb to see the four bronze horses.

Next stop was the Venetian Arsenal, and lunch!

Lunch started with a wonderful seafood appetizer with octopus, marinated fish, squid eggs and a delicious fish paste/mousse with milk. Then it was squid ink pasta and vongole.

After that it was back to the boats and off to Burano, or the "colourful island". There were wooden piles sticking a few meters above the water surface that marked out a sort of highway for the boats as we moved out to the open waters.

I found some more wisteria on the way to the famous island of colourful houses. The colours here were vibrant to the point of cacophony.

All that walking eventually made me hungry, so I bought some spumigile (meringue) from a rather adorable little bake shop run by a friendly old man. (I've since come to the conclusion that all the best sweet shops are run by old Italian men.)

It was slightly early by Italian standards for dinner yet, so I was temporarily sated with some fried seafood before stepping back onto the boat.

After some more wandering, the skies clouded over and the wind began to pick up. The night was spend in the hotel room with some prosecco from a corner store and take out seafood risotto from a restaurant nearby, listening to the howling of the wind and the rain pounding against the solid wood shutters.