After our day in the city of Venice we relaxed by the pool for a few hours and met some nice travellers. There are several other groups at our hostel that are travelling in organized groups throughout Europe. Their food, transport, guides and accomadation is planned everywhere they go. It sounds pretty amazing and some of them are even flexible about their times and destinations. As always, there are a lot of Australians taking advantage of these programs and travelling. We had a picnic on the blankets provided by the hostel and ate our dinner in the sunshine. The club on the grounds was pumping at night but Tyson and I had no problem sleeping. We watched part of the movie Megamind before going to sleep. There was even a rain storm in the middle of the night that did not bother us in the least. In fact it was very relaxing for Tyson to hear the storm but be safe and warm inside. I was sleeping so I did not even know there was a storm.
The next day we got ready and head to Venice by bus. Soon after we started walking into the center of town Tyson spotted two guys walking ahead of us, one of them was wearing a backpack that said "Pitt" on it. Since we went to a high school called pitt, he asked them if they were Canadian. They were not but this initiated a great relationship. In fact we spent nearly the whole day walking around with them and exchanging experiences. They were coming from studying a semester abroad in Jerusalem at Hebrew school. They were Americans, one from Chicago and one from Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh guy was a big hockey fan so Tyson was in his glory talking sports again. They were fascinated with our trip and listened to our stories while adding their input. They taught us about Judaism and learned about the Bahai faith. We walked with them to Saint Mark's Cathedral and ate lunch while they waited in the line up and went inside. We walked around the entire city over the canals all the way back to the bus station where we met. This is where we parted ways because they wanted to go to the Jewish ghettos and we had to go to McDonalds. The McDonalds idea did not work out as planned but we hung out there for a while anyway. We stopped at the store to stock up on junk food as well as fruits and salad before catching the bus back to the hostel. At the hostel, we ate dinner outside in the sunshine and relaxed for the evening before bed.
The next day we slept in and we did what we do best, layed in the sun and had pool time after our computor work, of course. We relaxed in our room and by the water in the hot sun all day. As our skin got darker and darker, we met many other travellers and talked about our experiences. In the early evening we walked to the store, and bought dinner and lunch for the next day. We ate our delicious meal while watching a movie and eventually passed out.
The following morning we woke up to the sun heating up our tent. I woke up a bit before Tyson and began packing our bags for our departure. At ten am we checked out , paid our tab (including a tourist tax) and went back to enjoy a few more hours at the pool. I found another book to read so I was pretty much a right off and Tyson worked on some of his own things. After baking in the sun we went into the city to catch our shuttle to the airport. We stopped at a store where we bought a litre of mint chocolate chip gelato and finished the whole tub off in a glorious fifteen minutes. It seemed appropriate to leave Italy feeling absolutely sick of gelato.
We had been invited to a Guiness book of world records event that was to take place in the city so we ran off to San Marco square where the event was to be held. We did not have much time to spare before the last shuttle was leaving for the airport so we had to rush but I am proud to say that I only fell once on the way. When we arrived we saw a huge sea of people wearing orange tshirts and orange sunglasses. There were many tents, a stage and a huge line of people waiting to recieve shirts of their own. The drink company Aperol Spritz was challenging the record of the worlds largest drink toast. They were handing out free drinks and pizza for everyone participating. We were a little strapped for time so we went in a reasonably short line up to get our shirts. After recieving our shirts and glasses we looked back and noticed that the line up actually started at the far end of the plaza and we had totally budged. Being naive sometimes pays off. We got our free swag and entered the lounge where the toast was to take place, we enjoyed the free pizza, garlic bread and drinks until the last minute and then ran through the city to catch our bus. It was very hot and we were dripping sweat but it was worth the run because we made it to the last bus and paid our hefty fare for the tickets to arrive safely at the smallest and dingiest airport ever. Only very budget airlines such as the one and only Ryan Air fly out of it and they do not feel the need to dress it up. Nonetheless, it was clean and they hosted us for the night on the hard cold floor. Of course being such a cheap airline, they only allow ten kilograms of baggage for free as a carry on so we performed a practice run of what was to happen the next day. Tyson and I put on as much of our clothes as possible, shoved the heavy stuff in our pockets and finally got our bags to the acceptable size and weight for a carry on.
We slept on the ground hugging our bags with many other backpackers and in the morning we did a live run of the same event. We put on all our clothes and filled our pockets and our bags passed the tests and we were allowed to continue through security. Unfortunately we had several bottles of sunscreen and liquids that were over the limit of one hundred millilitres so we had to step out of the line to reassess our bags and try security again. They caught us a second time with too much liquids but the third time was a charm and they let us through. Crappily enough though, they confiscated our two brand new cans of body spray that we had treated ourselves with. After security we got to the most confusing set of line ups that really just looked like a big crowd of people in a small room. There were no chairs and the signs made no sense. After lining up in the wrong cues several times we ended up creating a new line for our flight and being first on the plane. Since there are no seat numbers, this was lucky because we got to sit together. Both of us slept through the flight and we woke up to the sound of horns and the pilot's voice announcing "another on time flight with Ryan Air".
In France, we landed at Beavais airport which is an hour drive from Paris. We had organized to join a carpool from this city to Paris at five pm so we had about six hours to kill. After stripping off dozens of layers of clothing and breathing a few easy breaths, we drank some coffee, ate some croissants and head out for the city on foot. We stopped at the first McDonalds we saw to eat french fries in France. They tasted the same but it was significant to Tyson in a way that I could not quite understand. We continued down the streets of this small town, we walked by huge fields of multi coloured wild flowers. It was very beautiful and the architecture was amazing with various sizes of cute brick houses in perfect porportions. Each house had well manicured lawns and gardens full of fresh flowers. The streets were not busy and we took our time taking it all in. We stopped for some groceries on the way to the main area of the village where they were having a midieval festival in front of the cathedral. The cathedral was very impressive competing healthily with the ones we had seen in Rome and Venice. We walked around the inside of it and then window shopped through the small market. We stopped to watch a parade with a marching band, horse back riders and so on. We bought a tub of strawberry sorbet and finished it off in another enjoyable fifteen minutes. We need to stop doing this.
On the way to meet with our carpooling friends, we stopped to watch a caravan of high end cars drive by with young people hanging out the windows screaming their heads off. It was quite the sight, apparently there was a wedding and this was a part of the celebration. Also on our way back we stopped at a large world war two grave site. There were hundreds of white crosses perfectly lined up in rows and rows of fallen soldiers. It was very sad, each of them had died within a small period of time and there were photos posted of the war near their graves. It was a foreign experience to see mass graves like that.
We met the young guy from the carpooling website exactly as planned and rode with him to the big fancy city. We chatted with him and another girl who was riding along as best as we could with our very broken French and their poor English. We all all got along famously though because he offered us chocolates as soon as we got in the car. He dropped us off at the main metro station and we got our first glimpses of the eiffel tower and the famous ark de triumph. Tyson, the girl from the carpool and I went to catch the metro and after a thirty minute fight with the ticket machine we were on our way. We made it to the stop where our couch surfing host was living and we noticed a long line up and, of course, went to find out what it was all about. It was the salvation army handing out dinner to the homeless. Since we were technically homeless at the time and we certainly looked and smelled the part, we ate with them. The meal was surprisingly delicious with pasta, chicken with ham and cheese, yogurt, a big dinner bun with cheese, cucumber salad and bottled water. There was entertainment as well consisting of homeless people fighting each other in the line up and crack heads shouting nonsense. We met a few very nice people as well who kindly welcomed us to Paris. We finally found our host's home only to find that he was away in Italy until Tuesday. So he had a friend give us the key and all the instructions and we had the gorgeous central apartment to ourselves for three nights. It was an unbelievable amount of trust, he had all of his stuff (computors, appliances, cash, electronics etc) out and he had never met us, yet he gives us a key and tells us to help ourselves. So we spent the rest of the evening catching up with e-life, cleaning ourselves up and eating junk food.
"If we are not happy and joyous in this season for what season shall we wait"
The next day we got ready and head to Venice by bus. Soon after we started walking into the center of town Tyson spotted two guys walking ahead of us, one of them was wearing a backpack that said "Pitt" on it. Since we went to a high school called pitt, he asked them if they were Canadian. They were not but this initiated a great relationship. In fact we spent nearly the whole day walking around with them and exchanging experiences. They were coming from studying a semester abroad in Jerusalem at Hebrew school. They were Americans, one from Chicago and one from Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh guy was a big hockey fan so Tyson was in his glory talking sports again. They were fascinated with our trip and listened to our stories while adding their input. They taught us about Judaism and learned about the Bahai faith. We walked with them to Saint Mark's Cathedral and ate lunch while they waited in the line up and went inside. We walked around the entire city over the canals all the way back to the bus station where we met. This is where we parted ways because they wanted to go to the Jewish ghettos and we had to go to McDonalds. The McDonalds idea did not work out as planned but we hung out there for a while anyway. We stopped at the store to stock up on junk food as well as fruits and salad before catching the bus back to the hostel. At the hostel, we ate dinner outside in the sunshine and relaxed for the evening before bed.
The next day we slept in and we did what we do best, layed in the sun and had pool time after our computor work, of course. We relaxed in our room and by the water in the hot sun all day. As our skin got darker and darker, we met many other travellers and talked about our experiences. In the early evening we walked to the store, and bought dinner and lunch for the next day. We ate our delicious meal while watching a movie and eventually passed out.
The following morning we woke up to the sun heating up our tent. I woke up a bit before Tyson and began packing our bags for our departure. At ten am we checked out , paid our tab (including a tourist tax) and went back to enjoy a few more hours at the pool. I found another book to read so I was pretty much a right off and Tyson worked on some of his own things. After baking in the sun we went into the city to catch our shuttle to the airport. We stopped at a store where we bought a litre of mint chocolate chip gelato and finished the whole tub off in a glorious fifteen minutes. It seemed appropriate to leave Italy feeling absolutely sick of gelato.
We had been invited to a Guiness book of world records event that was to take place in the city so we ran off to San Marco square where the event was to be held. We did not have much time to spare before the last shuttle was leaving for the airport so we had to rush but I am proud to say that I only fell once on the way. When we arrived we saw a huge sea of people wearing orange tshirts and orange sunglasses. There were many tents, a stage and a huge line of people waiting to recieve shirts of their own. The drink company Aperol Spritz was challenging the record of the worlds largest drink toast. They were handing out free drinks and pizza for everyone participating. We were a little strapped for time so we went in a reasonably short line up to get our shirts. After recieving our shirts and glasses we looked back and noticed that the line up actually started at the far end of the plaza and we had totally budged. Being naive sometimes pays off. We got our free swag and entered the lounge where the toast was to take place, we enjoyed the free pizza, garlic bread and drinks until the last minute and then ran through the city to catch our bus. It was very hot and we were dripping sweat but it was worth the run because we made it to the last bus and paid our hefty fare for the tickets to arrive safely at the smallest and dingiest airport ever. Only very budget airlines such as the one and only Ryan Air fly out of it and they do not feel the need to dress it up. Nonetheless, it was clean and they hosted us for the night on the hard cold floor. Of course being such a cheap airline, they only allow ten kilograms of baggage for free as a carry on so we performed a practice run of what was to happen the next day. Tyson and I put on as much of our clothes as possible, shoved the heavy stuff in our pockets and finally got our bags to the acceptable size and weight for a carry on.
We slept on the ground hugging our bags with many other backpackers and in the morning we did a live run of the same event. We put on all our clothes and filled our pockets and our bags passed the tests and we were allowed to continue through security. Unfortunately we had several bottles of sunscreen and liquids that were over the limit of one hundred millilitres so we had to step out of the line to reassess our bags and try security again. They caught us a second time with too much liquids but the third time was a charm and they let us through. Crappily enough though, they confiscated our two brand new cans of body spray that we had treated ourselves with. After security we got to the most confusing set of line ups that really just looked like a big crowd of people in a small room. There were no chairs and the signs made no sense. After lining up in the wrong cues several times we ended up creating a new line for our flight and being first on the plane. Since there are no seat numbers, this was lucky because we got to sit together. Both of us slept through the flight and we woke up to the sound of horns and the pilot's voice announcing "another on time flight with Ryan Air".
In France, we landed at Beavais airport which is an hour drive from Paris. We had organized to join a carpool from this city to Paris at five pm so we had about six hours to kill. After stripping off dozens of layers of clothing and breathing a few easy breaths, we drank some coffee, ate some croissants and head out for the city on foot. We stopped at the first McDonalds we saw to eat french fries in France. They tasted the same but it was significant to Tyson in a way that I could not quite understand. We continued down the streets of this small town, we walked by huge fields of multi coloured wild flowers. It was very beautiful and the architecture was amazing with various sizes of cute brick houses in perfect porportions. Each house had well manicured lawns and gardens full of fresh flowers. The streets were not busy and we took our time taking it all in. We stopped for some groceries on the way to the main area of the village where they were having a midieval festival in front of the cathedral. The cathedral was very impressive competing healthily with the ones we had seen in Rome and Venice. We walked around the inside of it and then window shopped through the small market. We stopped to watch a parade with a marching band, horse back riders and so on. We bought a tub of strawberry sorbet and finished it off in another enjoyable fifteen minutes. We need to stop doing this.
On the way to meet with our carpooling friends, we stopped to watch a caravan of high end cars drive by with young people hanging out the windows screaming their heads off. It was quite the sight, apparently there was a wedding and this was a part of the celebration. Also on our way back we stopped at a large world war two grave site. There were hundreds of white crosses perfectly lined up in rows and rows of fallen soldiers. It was very sad, each of them had died within a small period of time and there were photos posted of the war near their graves. It was a foreign experience to see mass graves like that.
We met the young guy from the carpooling website exactly as planned and rode with him to the big fancy city. We chatted with him and another girl who was riding along as best as we could with our very broken French and their poor English. We all all got along famously though because he offered us chocolates as soon as we got in the car. He dropped us off at the main metro station and we got our first glimpses of the eiffel tower and the famous ark de triumph. Tyson, the girl from the carpool and I went to catch the metro and after a thirty minute fight with the ticket machine we were on our way. We made it to the stop where our couch surfing host was living and we noticed a long line up and, of course, went to find out what it was all about. It was the salvation army handing out dinner to the homeless. Since we were technically homeless at the time and we certainly looked and smelled the part, we ate with them. The meal was surprisingly delicious with pasta, chicken with ham and cheese, yogurt, a big dinner bun with cheese, cucumber salad and bottled water. There was entertainment as well consisting of homeless people fighting each other in the line up and crack heads shouting nonsense. We met a few very nice people as well who kindly welcomed us to Paris. We finally found our host's home only to find that he was away in Italy until Tuesday. So he had a friend give us the key and all the instructions and we had the gorgeous central apartment to ourselves for three nights. It was an unbelievable amount of trust, he had all of his stuff (computors, appliances, cash, electronics etc) out and he had never met us, yet he gives us a key and tells us to help ourselves. So we spent the rest of the evening catching up with e-life, cleaning ourselves up and eating junk food.
"If we are not happy and joyous in this season for what season shall we wait"
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