Rome

When Shanna & I first moved over here, we had a list of various places we really wanted to visit while we were here.  Italy was on the list, but for me, it wasn't high up there.  I wanted to visit, but it wasn't something I was super excited about.  That was still the case until I booked my trip to Rome...then I got excited.  Our friends Jenny and Chris had a friend of theirs from Wisconsin, Heather, who was visiting for a few weeks, so they decided to do an 8 day tour of Italy.  They started in Venice, then went to Rome, and finished in Florence.  Shanna had been to Rome, but not Florence or Venice.  Since Shanna couldn't get the time off, I decided to fly down to meet Jenny, Chris, & Heather in Rome and then fly back home when they left for Florence.

I've heard from people that Rome is like any other major Metropolitan city...it has it's dirty parts, it's ritzy parts, etc...  I can definitely agree with that assessment...a lot of it reminded me of New York City.  The major difference, though, was in Rome you could walk down a street, turn a corner, and be looking at a building that has been there for 2,000 years.  Rome may not have been the cleanest or prettiest city I've ever been too, but the historical part of it was absolutely stunning.

I had no delays or problems on the flight to Rome, and got in around 7pm.  After collecting my bags, I hopped on the train, and rode for 30 minutes into the city.  While sitting I ended up talking with the couple next to me who were visiting from England.  Apparently there was a tennis match going on and they were in town visiting.  Finally we pulled into Roma Termini, the main train station in Rome.

That night was relatively uneventful...it had been a long day travelling and Jenny, Chris, and Heather didn't arrive until the next morning.  I found my hotel, checked in, grabbed some dinner, and went to bed.

The next morning at 8am I met the group in their hotel lobby.  It was only a 10 minute walk from my hotel, so I had breakfast first, then walked over.  They were all pretty beat since they had taken an overnight train from Venice, but since check in wasn't until 2pm, they dropped their luggage off and we hit the town.

First up was visiting the Tourist Information office in the train terminal.  They have something called a "Roma Pass".  It got you entrance into two museums or ruins of your choice, discounts on all the rest, and unlimited use of the Metro for 3 days.  The metro alone was worth the €24 we paid for it.  With that purchased, we headed to the Colosseum.

 

Even realizing that the Colosseum was smaller now then in it's heyday, it was still an impressive sight.  We initially walked around to see it from outside, then headed inside.  It was incredible to think of all the stories & movies I've seen that took place here, and now I was in the actual Colosseum.  I didn't realize that underneath where the main arena part was there was an intricate system of rooms and pathways where the gladiators prepped before their fight.

After the Colosseum we took out the guide book to see what was close by.  Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps were both close to each other, and only 1 metro stop up, so we headed there next.  I'd never heard of either one, so I had no idea what to expect.  We first got to the Spanish Steps, and I have to say...they were a little disappointing.  All it was was a set of...steps.  It's been there for a long time, but I didn't get what the hype was.  At this point we were hungry, so we stopped & got lunch.  I got an awesome 4 Formaggi pizza and we ordered a liter of the house wine to share.  It was pretty warm at that point, so the cold white wine tasted great.  Next up was Trevi Fountain.  Now THIS was impressive.  It was also crowded, so I couldn't get a real close shot, but what I got captured the size & scope of this fountain.

At this point it was around 2 o'clock, and Jenny, Chris, & Heather were really started to drag, so we headed back to their hotel so they could take a nap.  I was fine, and not much of a napper anyway, so I headed to a local cafe and had some Italian beer and people watched for 2 hours while they slept.

It wasn't the most complex or interesting beer I'd ever had, but after walking around for hours on a hot day, it sure hit the spot.  I even got to play translator for a group of Germans sitting next to me.  They were older, and didn't speak much English or any (as far as I could tell) Italian.  They ordered a beer, and when the bartender said "On tap"? they just stared at him.  He repeated it, and they still didn't get it, so I asked them "vom Fass"?, which they understood, and said yes.  They then tried to speak to me in German, and while I was able to speak a little with them, the conversation didn't last long.

Later on I headed back to their hotel, and they were ready to go out.  That night was a relatively quiet night.  We had dinner, sat & drank wine, then found a beer hall I had read about that had over 500 beers on tap.  They had some delicious beers there that I'd never heard of, including some strong ales from Denmark that were fantastic.

Wednesday we got up early because that was the day we were visiting the Vatican.  We got really lucky with the timing.  The Pope was doing Mass at St. Peter's, so we went to the Vatican Museum first.  With everyone at the Mass, there was no line for the museum and we got right in.  They had a large section of Egyptian treasure that I wasn't expecting, but made sense when you think of how closely intertwined Rome & Egypt were 2,000 years ago.  They even had the Sarcophagus of Imhotep.  The artwork and architecture on display was stunning to say the least.  It took us approximately 2 hours to walk through it and that's with only stopping occasionally to read the inscriptions.  If we'd read everything, we'd have been there all day.  At the end of the museum was the thing that everyone comes for...the Sistine Chapel, with the famous ceiling painting by Michaelangelo.  I have to admit it surprised me...I didn't know much about the painting, but had always seen the famous part of Man reaching out with this finger and there being a cloud with God on it, also reaching out with a finger.  I had thought that image was the entire ceiling, but it's actually just a really small part of a much larger painting.  Pictures weren't allowed in there, so I had to be discreet with this picture...that's why it's a little blurry.

After the museum, we headed over to Vatican City and St. Peter's Square.  I went to Catholic school from 2nd grade until 6th grade, and we were raised Catholic, so I've seen images of St. Peter's Square and the Basilica a million times, but I never imagined I'd actually be there.  Pictures don't do it justice, it's awe inspiring when you walk in to the square.

After taking some pictures, we got in line for the Basilica.  This had a bit of a line, but wasn't too bad.  Our timing couldn't have been better...after being in line for 5 minutes or so we looked behind us and the line stretched forever.  Once inside the Basilica, it was beautiful.  I didn't know that St. Peter was actually buried there.  His tomb was found long after he died, and they built the Basilica around it.  The sculptures and paintings inside were incredible.

Once we left the Basilica we walked around the square for a bit, then got lunch.  At this point it was 3pm and we'd been on our feet walking around since 9am and we were all beat.  We took a two hour break at our hotels, and met back up for dinner.  That night I decided to try something different and got the Gnocchi...it was DELICIOUS.

After dinner we started walking.  Remember how I said earlier that in Rome you can pick a direction, walk and stumble upon a building that was thousands of years old?  Well that happened to us here.  We left the place we had dinner at, walked in a random direction, and stumbled upon a huge building.  I looked at my tour guide on the phone and it said it was St. Mary's Basilica.  In 420 AD construction started on it, and legend says the location was picked after someone (the current Emperor I think) had a vision where Mary appeared to him and told him to build where ever he found snow the next day.  He went for a walk, found snow on this particular hill, and had the Basilica constructed.  We kept walking after taking pictures, and just picked random streets to walk down.  I had my GPS, so we weren't concerned about getting lost.  We eventually came to another huge building.  I went to the front of the building to read the inscription, and it said it was the Basilica of St. Mary...now I was really confused.  Later on, though, when walking back to our hotel, we figured out that we had first come to the back of the Basilica, then we discovered the front of it.  Due to it's massive size and the fact that we had walked down random streets after seeing the back, we hadn't realized that we had back tracked to the front of the building.  We also came upon something we called the "cat ruins".  It was a fenced off section of some sort of ruins with a park surrounding it.  We sat in the park to take a break and eventually noticed a cat walking around the ruins, behind the fence.  Then we noticed another cat...and another...and another.  Just sitting there we counted 5 cats.  We decided to walk the perimeter of the ruins, and counted over 20 cats walking through the ruins.

When it started to get dark, we headed back to their hotel and found a wine bar to sit at.  It was our last night in Rome, so we decided to just relax, kick back, and drink wine.

The next day we had some time to sight see.  I had to catch the 3pm train to the airport, so we had plenty of time.  We all agreed we were beat from walking around, and decided to sleep in instead of starting early like we had been.  At 10am I met them in the train station and we headed to the Pantheon.  The Pantheon wasn't near any metro stops, so we got off at the closest one then walked the rest of the way.  Once there, it was an impressive sight.

It's the largest unreinforced dome in the world.  It has a hole at the top that provides the only lighting inside, so you'd think it'd be really dark, yet amazingly it was very well lit.  It also had a big surprise...the tomb of Rafael.  I had no idea he was buried there.

We had time for one more place.  We all wanted to visit the Catacombs, but they were open until noon, then closed down until 2pm.  It was a bit out of the city, so there was no way I was going to be able to see the Catacombs and be back in time for my train, so we decided to visit the Roman Baths instead.  The Baths were, unfortunately, a major disappointment.  I'm sure it was an impressive accomplishment 2,000 years ago, but over the years it had been largely stripped for materials to be used for other things.  The result was just a shell of its former self.  It cost €6 to get in, but thankfully we were able to use the Roma Pass to get in without paying.

After that we headed back to the train station and said our goodbyes.  My trip home was uneventful, but I do want to point out the temperature shock I had in Amsterdam.  The entire time we were in Rome it was in the low 80's, so when I flew out I was in shorts and a t-shirt.  I had a layover in Amsterdam before heading to Stuttgart, and the plane that took us to Stuttgart was a small one, and we had to be bussed out to the plane.  In Amsterdam, at 9pm, it was 50 degrees out.  I couldn't get on that plane fast enough.  And yes, for those thinking about it, it was definitely ridiculous that to get to Stuttgart from Rome, the flight went through Amsterdam.  I went the same route on the way to Rome.  If you're not familiar with the geography, it's like being in D.C. and wanting to fly to Miami, Florida, but your layover is in Boston, MA.

Overall I had a great time, and after hearing how much Jenny, Chris, & Heather loved Venice & Florence, I can't wait to visit there.  The next trip is coming up next weekend for Memorial Day weekend when Shanna & I visit Vienna, Austria and Bratislava, Slovakia.  For the 4th of July weekend we are doing a blind booking with some friends.  The way that works is you pick a group of cities that you could potentially visit, you pay for it, then it tells you where you are going.  The prices are dirt cheap, and it's exactly the kind of spontaneous traveling we like to do.  The cities are narrowed down to Zagreb, Croatia, Budapest, Hungary, Barcelona, Spain, Istanbul, Turkey, or London, England.

Clicking here or the pictures above to go to the page with all the pictures.  Jenny & Chris took more pictures with me in it, so when I get it from them I'll post them.

Queens Day 2011

This past weekend Shanna & I drove to Maastricht, NL, to celebrate Queens Day.  We had been in Amsterdam a few years back for Queens Day, and figured Maastricht wouldn't be as wild but was within driving distance, so we decided to make a weekend out of it.

Friday morning we dropped the dogs off at the kennel and hit the road.  The drive up, with the exception of some traffic, was pretty uneventful.  When we got to the hotel we unpacked and hit the town. We've been to Maastricht three times over the past three years, and it's not a large town, so I'm starting to become somewhat familiar with the area.  There wasn't much going on Friday night, so we took the time to just walk around town.  We knew on Sunday we wanted to hit the Limestone caves outside of town, so we started off by heading to the tourist information center to get tickets.  While there I noticed a brochure for a Beer Specialty shop.  It was hard to tell if this was a store or a bar, so we decided to head across the river to take a look.

It didn't take long to find the place, and it turns out it was a bar.  We sat down, had a few drinks, and talked briefly with the bartender.  She made it a point to describe every beer we ordered, which was interesting...she definitely knew her beer.  After that we found a place nearby that had GREAT kebobs for dinner.  We wandered around for a bit, but it quickly became evident that Maastricht was going to be a lot more quiet on Queens Day then we anticipated.  We eventually made our way back to a bar right next to our hotel where they had live music playing that night.

The next morning we got up early for breakfast, and then hit the Vrijthof Square, which was right next to our hotel.  The Dutch have permits for EVERYTHING...including selling things on the street.  The one day a year they allow anyone to sell anything they want without a permit is on Queens Day, so the Vrijthof Square had every day citizens out there, and was basically one giant garage sale.

They also had some opening ceremonies, which included them firing off a HUGE cannon.  We were close to it, and on the pictures page there is a video of it, but it doesn't do it justice...it was so loud you literally felt the pressure of the cannon shot all over your body.  Once the opening ceremonies concluded, it became a giant fest for kids.  At that point we decided to walk around town to see what else we could find.  We came across   what appeared to be a small wine shop, but Shanna said she recognized it and that they were actually a tiny vineyard and they gave tours.  We walked inside and asked about the tours, but the guy said since it was Queens Day they weren't doing them.  Then he said, jokingly, if we promised to buy a bottle of wine he'd take us around himself for a short tour.  We said sure, and it ended up being fascinating.  They import their wine from France in plastic barrels so no flavor is passed to the wine, then they put them in wood barrels and age them.  They bottle it when it's ready, and sell in their stores.  In their backyard area they do have a tiny vineyard, but it only yields about 100 bottles a year.  He said it was more for hobby then anything else.  He showed us that part, where they bottle it, and took us down in the cellar area to see where they barreled the wine.  Apparently a lot of local businesses have them store their wine in their cellar since they don't have the space in their hotel.

Once the tour was over we bought a few bottles of wine, approx 40 Euros worth, and gave him a 50, telling him to keep the change because we appreciated the tour.  He was grateful, and told us to come back later that afternoon.  That's when they open their sampling room up.  Normally people pay to sample the wine, but he said he'd let us do it for free.

We left the wine store and headed over to the Market Square.  The Market Square area is where we stayed the last time we were in Maastricht, and it had shops all over the place.  We spent part of the afternoon walking around the shops, and stopped occasionally to try some local beer.  We eventually headed back to the wine shop for sampling.  The way it worked is they give you what appears to be a hotel key card with however much money you put on it stored on the card.  Then you walk up to the sampling machine, put your card in, put your glass in front of the bottle you want to sample, push the button, and it gives you a sample and deducts the cost from the card.  The sample prices ranged from 25-80 cents, and he gave us a card with 5 Euros worth on it.  It was really neat how it all worked and the wine was delicious.

After we were done there we found a place for dinner where we could watch some of the dance shows going on.  By this time it was starting to get dark, so we decided to head back to that specialty beer bar we had gone to the night before.  We had gone earlier in the day on Friday, so with us going a little later this time, it was a little busier.  We still were able to get a seat right at the bar, though, and ended up having a great time.  The bar was filled with regular locals who were in a talkative mood.  The bartenders turned out to be the owners Peet and Mery.  They were both extremely knowledgable about beer, so we would tell them what we liked and they'd surprise us.  Each one they brought was delicious.  We eventually called it a night and headed back to our hotel.

The next morning we checked out around 11, but our scheduled tour of the caves outside of town didn't start until 2pm.  The last time we visited Maastricht we'd accidentally stumbled upon a town nearby called Valkenburg.  We had seen the ruins of a destroyed castle there, but hadn't gone to it.  This time, since we had 3 hours to kill, we decided to check it out.  The castle was first built in 1160, and was destroyed in battle in 1670.  It is the only castle ever built in The Netherlands.  These days you can take a tour and walk around, with pictures posted everywhere of what the section you were in would have looked like before it was destroyed.  The city of Valkenburg was first settled by the Romans 2,000 years ago because of the large deposits of something called Mergel, which is a type of stone used back then in construction.  Mergel is extremely easy to carve and shape, so inside the ruins they had a workshop for kids to make things out of the Mergel.

As you'll see from the pictures page, they must have had small feet back then...the steps literally only came out to half my foot.  After we'd seen the ruins we walked into town a bit and found an area called Lourdesgrot.  It was the side of a large rock, and had statues of Mary, an altar, and seats in front.  We didn't know what it was at the time, but I looked into it when we got home.  It's actually a replica built of the area in Lourdes, France, where Mary is believed to have appeared.

By this time it was 1:15, so we headed out to the caves area.  This tour was fascinating.  The caves were first opened in the 11th century.  The stone they had down there was extremely soft because of how much moisture was in the cave air.  It made excavation easy.  When the stone was brought to the surface it had no more moisture and hardened considerably.  The buildings of Maastricht back then were built using the stone from these caves.  About 100 years ago modern technology created more reliable building materials and the caves were no longer necessary.  The farmers that owned the land suddenly lost a large part of their income, so they decided to open it up to tours.  There were various paintings all over the inside of the cave that they did with charcoal.  Due to the high moisture level, paint wasn't an option.  The guide also told us that because of the coldness and dampness a human being could only survive for 40 hours down there before succumbing to hypothermia.

The guide also told us about a group of farmers who survived for three weeks in the tunnels during a French invasion a few hundred years back by building an oven.  They would constantly keep it lit, which kept them warm.  Eventually the French soldiers found them, but did not kill them.  Instead they just took their livestock that they had kept down in the caves with them.  They eventually were taken in by monks in the area, which is why their story is known.  The farmers were not educated, but the monks were and they recorded their story.

During the entire tour we had three lamps we carried around.  There were no lights at all built into the caves.  At one point the tour guide stopped and told us to put our hands on the left wall.  He said he was going to collect all the lamps, and was going to walk a distance.  He said when the lights went out and we could no longer see anything, start walking with our hand on the wall.  He said it would lead us to him.  He also said that anyone who didn't want to do that could just walk with him, but everyone stayed behind.  I've never seen such darkness in my life.  It was literally a complete absence of light.  We eventually all made it back to him though and it turned out to be kind of neat.  He had us do that to illustrate how much trouble you'd be in if you were in the caves without a light source.

Once the tour was over we hit the road and headed home.  Normally I'd leave it at that, but we did see one interesting thing on the drive home.  We passed a car on the road that had Texas license plates.  I don't mean on display in their rear window, I mean it was attached to their car and was the only license plate displayed, there were no European plates.  I don't know why they did that, but it was definitely not something I ever expected to see.

Despite Queens Day not being anywhere near the celebration it was in Amsterdam, we still ended up having a great time.  While Salzburg was by far our favorite city that we visited, our favorite country is The Netherlands.  The Dutch people are the friendliest people we've met, from the Wine store employee who gave us a guided tour just because to the locals who wanted to talk about beer, America, and anything else that came up in the Take One bar.  If you ever have a chance to visit The Netherlands, do it...you won't regret it.

My next post won't be until next Friday at the earliest because I'm leaving for Rome on Monday.  I'll have pictures and a blog post late next week or early the week after.  For pictures, you can click here or any picture in the post above.