Via Italia

I suppose it's high time I posted what promises to be a rather lengthy entry - the very reason why I haven't posted it yet. "Ehh, it'll take a while...I'll just post tomorrow," I've been saying for the past week and, as an essay which was due today has been extended until next week, now is as good a time as any to undermine this whole laziness epidemic I seem to have caught myself up in.

Few things could be more post-worthy than my first international excursion since beginning this whole year long international excursion so, without further ado, I bring you Italian Vacation 2007!
This is one Mary-Catherine Caffrey, MC for short, my traveling partner for our little six day, seven night journey. To forestall any questions, no we are not dating (a fact my parents cannot seem to grab a hold of). In fact, I recently (like, within the past 72 hours) got back together with my girlfriend of a year and a half, after we both realized - ok, I realized - that being single kind of sucks and that we had too good a thing going to give it up. Also she's studying abroad in Ireland next semester which makes the whole long distance thing so, so much easier.

After the pub pictured above, directly across from Victoria Station, we headed to Stanstead airport to prepare for the journey to Bergamo Airport, just outside Milan. Our flight was rather inconveniently scheduled for early the next morning. Still, the price was right and a night sleeping on my bag in the terminal isn't the worst possible way to rest (as I was all too soon in finding out...).

Next morning brought us to a gorgeous flight over the Alps and an eventual arrival in Milan, where we met up with MC's friend from back home in Pennsylvania, Damian. Milan ended up having a fairly generic big city feel to it, partially because Damian's dorm was so far removed from the middle of the city and the huge amounts of graffiti all over the buildings - though notably not present on the city's most awe inspiring attraction, The Duomo:

This is a big church. Started in the 14th century, it wasn't completed until the 19th when Napoleon, on his Magical Mystery Tour of Europe, demanded it be finished in 1805. Seven years later, and you have the building you see today. Obviously work is never entirely finished, especially in a city with such high pollution levels as Milan (the moon was shrouded in a mysterious mist every night), hence the unsightly billboards flanking the entrance. That aside, The Duomo was unbelievable from the inside, outside and the top... (I don't know why the text looks different here, but I also have no idea how to change it, so...ignore it)

Post-Duomo, Damian showed us around for a bit, took us to a museum, gave us our first gelattos (which are just...woah) and brought us out to pizza that night. The next day we already had planned as a day long excursion North to within three miles of the Swiss border, to Lake Como. A brief train ride later, and we were there.Lake Como was a gorgeous lakeside paradise, not too touristy but with enough to do to keep six twenty year olds occupied for a day. It was decently brisk, being at the foot of the Alps and all, but I fared better than some of the folks I was with, being a hearty Rochesterian/adopted Vermonter. We wandered around the city for a while, stopped at a candy tent in an outdoor market and eventually settled on a hike up the mountain you see at the right of the above picture for the day's activity. There was also a tram that went to the top, but where's the fun in that? We began the climb up the basically unmarked path, became lost, almost mauled by a dog, climbed about 10,000 stairs, wandered along a street between some random Villas and, somehow, emerged at the top. It was worth the hike.
That's me at the top. I guess you can't really see them, but the Alps rose beautifully behind those hills and the town spread out along the lake in front of us like a chessboard. It was awesome.

We took the tram back down, being beat and hungry and wanting to catch a train back to Milan before six. However, we stepped off the train and right into the middle of, of all things, a cycle race. Apparently a pretty major one too, and it was just reaching the climax, with the finish line exactly where we were standing. Naturally, we hung around to watch the end and who was to win but a fellow Damian, an Italian native Damiano Cunego. That's him winning - don't ask me how I took that picture, I don't even know.

That night we went out for a little bit to experience Milan's nightlife, but were pretty beat from the day's exertions. I, however, found a fellow Red Sox fan and, considering they were in the middle of a harrowing series with Cleveland, we watched them win on his computer late into the night.

We had heard that the A.C. Milan football (soccer to we Americans) team was playing a home game against the Italian equivalent of the Arizona Cardinals and that the game would most definitely not sell out, so we headed to the stadium and bought the second cheapest available tickets (and some souvenirs).

After being assured that this was one David and Goliath match-up the giant could not lose, the old adage held true and A.C. Milan just couldn't get an offense going, losing 1-0 much to our disappointment. Still, the atmosphere was pretty electric with everyone in the 60% full stadium chanting and cheering the whole time and I got a sweet new knit hat out of the trip, so by all means not a lost afternoon, despite the upset. From the left is Damian, myself and Chris, Damian's friend from Boston College who happened to be visiting the same weekend we were.

Chris left the next day and Damian had class, so MC and I took it upon ourselves to trek North again, this time to the Ski haven of Torino (or Turin, the site of the 2006 Winter Olympics). Despite literally every sight in the city being closed on Monday, we had a fantastic time, partially because we took a "chocolate tour" of a city known for its spectacular chocolates. This store to the right, "Stratta," was like something out of Willy Wonka, insanely ornate and everything was unbelievably delicious.

And that was the end of our stay in Milan. The next day we took a train through Tuscany and into Florence, which despite taking itself VERY seriously (and not without good reason) completely floored me and won me over. We did it all over two days...the Duomo (pretty much every city in Italy has a Duomo), the Uffizi Gallery, Acadamia (home of Michaelangelo's David)...I'm just going to post a few pictures and not give you a narrative, the 36 hours we spent there were just way too packed to recall and I have stuff to do anyway:

The Duomo - the third largest domed church in the world, I believe, behind St. Peter's in the Vatican and St. Paul's in London.


Ponte Vecchio - an ancient bridge over the River Arno lined with the most expensive jewelry stores I've ever seen. I felt like I was spending money just looking in the windows (I probably was). Incredibly, this is the only bridge to survive WWII in the city.



This is a cafe where we met up with two of MC's very, very awesome friends from school and spent the evening drinking wine and talking about how insanely cool it was to actually be in Italy. Apparently, this cafe is the birthplace of Italian fascism - I have nothing but their word to back that up, but I like the idea so I'll go with it.

Inside of the Duomo's dome depicting scenes from the apocalypse (though it's sort of hard to tell from here). This place was huge and there is no way for a picture to really capture the scope of it.

You aren't supposed to take pictures inside the various incredible museums in Florence, but I figured, "when is the next time I'll be in Italy?" so I simply had to snap a discreet, James Bond style shot of the David, which is even more inspiring in person than you imagine. MC and I also visited the renown Uffizi gallery, but I didn't take any worthwhile pictures there before being yelled at (though I swear I just didn't see the signs in that gallery!).

To cap off our time in Firenze, MC and I decided to climb the heights across the Arno to the Piazza del Michaelangelo and it was entirely worth slogging through rain and dodging cars to get there.


It was at this point that my camera, which had served me faithfully through a full six days of constant use, finally died. Still, I snapped the above picture and that's what really mattered.

After the climb we grabbed dinner and turned in early, entirely beat from the most tiring day and a half in recent memory. Next day had us take a train to Bologna where it was rainy and cold. MC and I wandered around for a while, but by now we were ready to call it a week and head back to Canterbury, so we jumped on the bus to the airport to wait for our 10pm flight back to London. It was here where the real odyssey began.

Using ultra-cheap airline Ryanair means flying into and out of lesser used airports, such as London Stanstead and Bologna Foli. We didn't quite realize that Bologna was large enough to HAVE two airports, so we took the first airport shuttle we found, only to realize that there was no Ryanair terminal after we arrived. Thankfully we had allowed ourselves plenty of time to get back to the train station and board an overbooked, hot, standing room only train for the hour ride to Foli. There we waited around, for a while and finally boarded our plane to Stanstead, where we disembarked and rode for an hour to London Victoria. Our plan, considering our bus wasn't until 7am and it was currently 2am, was to sleep inside (key being INside) the station for five hours before boarding. Unfortunately and unforseeably, Victoria Station closes down at night, leaving us stranded and with only a wide open bus garage area for shelter. I laid out a towel, put on as many warm clothes as possible and slept in the chill, but poor MC just couldn't rest and spent a pretty miserable five hours in the London chill.

We eventually did make it back to England and, despite exhaustion and the brutal final 24 hours, we had nothing but positive reports from our trip. For starters, I now know where I want to go for my honeymoon (Florence...you listening Braelyn?) and can look down my nose with reason at all American Italian food! (kidding!)

An incredible trip. If the rest of my excursions from England are up to this high standard, I will be poor and gushing with stories to tell come June.