Last day in Florence

Well, we didn't see as much as we would have liked today - turns out last night just before dinner I was starting to feel a cold coming on and wasn't feeling particularly well. Dinner was good, but we had to cut the evening short since I just wasn't up for walking around - my throat was sore and I was getting a really bad sinus cold. So, after a nice dinner - one which included some very good pizza and a bit of wine, we walked back to the hotel.

Today we woke up alot later than expected for the same reason. I just simply didn't want to get out of bed too early, but we had to check out by 11am. I knew I wasn't feeling well when I didn't even desire a cappuccino! We did manage to walk around most of the day, but it was alot slower than yesterday - about 1/2 the pace for sure. We still managed to see a few more sites, such as the Basilica of Santa Croce - begun in 1294 - a fine display of Gothic Architecture, and the Basilica of San Lorenzo. We did consider going into some of the buildings but considering how many people were in the lineups, it wasn't looking good. So we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping in the markets that lined the streets. Yesterday we booked our train at the train station for 5:53pm and arriving in Rome at 7:30, so we'll be heading off shortly to catch it. It's a Eurostar train, and thus, should be pretty comfortable.

Tomorrow we plan to hit the Vatican Museums early...

The Renaissance of Firenze

After having walked around the city of Florence in the light of day, it is easy to see how this city was the heart of the Renaissance period. It has a completely different feel to it than Rome. In Rome everything seems larger than life with more of a statement of size and structure. In Florence, the buildings, architecture and sculptures seem to be on a smaller scale and there seems to be an attention to detail that is less prevalent in Rome. The city itself is also much smaller than Rome. You can walk the heart of it in easily a couple of hours, while still having time to stop and appreciate the piazza's with their many sculptures. Both Vicky and I really enjoyed the "feel" of this place.

We started off our morning with a couple of fresh cappuccino's and pastries, at a local hangout not far from our hotel. After that traditional italian breakfast, we made our way down the street loaded with street vendors selling everything from little keychains, to leather purses and jackets. We were approached by a leather jacket vendor, and being that I was in the market for a leather jacket, we agreed to have a look at his store. If you need any kind of leather good, Italy is definitely a good place to go. Florence, had both the selection, and quality I was looking for in a leather jacket. I think this is simply due to the number of tourists that go the the area of Tuscany. I managed to find a beautiful brown leather jacket that was amazingly affordable. With the jacket purchased, we continued on to Piazza Del Duomo - which is the religious center of the city - home to the Baptistry, Bell Tower and the Duomo. It would have been nice to go into each of these separately, but the sheer number of tourists milling about and standing in lines already, made us re-think this idea. We simply did not have the time to do this and see the rest of the city so, we continued on after snapping no less than about 30 photographs. Walking towards the river Arno, we passed by the Bargello Palace - completed around the 14th century and was the home of a prison with torture and execution chambers in the 16th century when the Bargello(Captain of Justice) established himself there. The building today is a museum, the home of many Tuscan Renaissance sculptures. We continued on to the Piazza della Signoria - the civic center of Florence and further on to the Palazzo degli Uffizi(public offices) - which overlooks the river Arno. We strolled along the river for about a block and then took a bridge across to the other side. We were told we must climb the hill to get a good view of the city. In order to do this we had to enter the Pitti Palace. The palace is full of different areas - each of which cost about 6 or more Euro to enter. These too would have been nice to visit, but would have required more time than we had in Florence, so we continued on and entered the Boboli Gardens behind the palace since it allowed us to still be outside. The gardens are beautiful and home to many sculptures, and some beautiful views of the city. When we were nearing the completion of the tour of the gardens, we got a call from Renato saying that he'd be swinging back through Florence sooner than expected - around 4pm. Since we hadn't seen enough of the city yet, and the fact we were enjoying it, we decided we wanted to stay in Florence for at least another day, and that he could come into Florence again, or continue on to Rome. He and Karri decided to head back to Rome, and we decided to take the train back the next day as it was only a 1.5hr journey for about 30 Euro. This gave us another day to explore the city and not be too rushed. After making that decision we needed to get back to the hotel we checked out of and see if we could reserve another night. Turns out this wasn't a big deal, and thus here we are...We're here for one more day. We'll head off tonight for a nice dinner.

Unexpected stay in Firenze

Well, here we are in Florence, Italy, or Firenze as it's called in Italian. Originally we did not really plan to make it here, but a slight change in plans made it possible. Renato has a possible job opportunity to explore near Milan and decided to drop us off in Florence while he drives up there to meet with a guy about it. Karri's going with him to help navigate and keep him company. So, we've managed to get a quick stop here, before we head back to Rome (about 2 hrs drive from here). They stayed over in Florence last night after our flight back from Istanbul...oh yeah, that was interesting...and got up early this morning to head up to Milan. The hotel we stayed at is called the Mia Cara, and is not far from the train station where you can hop on a train to any place in Italy you care to go. It's both serviced by EuroStar and the italian train service.

Before I mention anything about Florence, I have to talk about our trip back from Istanbul, thru the airport. Note: if you ever have to leave istanbul, give yourself PLENTY of time...the airport is nuts...or at least, it was when we went thru. We don't know if it's always like that, or if it was partly because of the F1 race, but, the airport was crazy busy. I wouldn't say their airport is all that efficient either. The first thing you do when you go thru the airport is go thru security! There's not place to check in your bags until AFTER you pass thru the security. So imagine, everyone showing up to the airport must pass thru this BEFORE they can check in any baggage. The line ups were nuts and it took us about 40 minutes just to get past this. We thought our lineup hassle was over, but oh no, it was only beginning. The next line up was our lineup to check into our Luftansa flight to Frankfurt. Another 20 or 25 minutes and we eventually get our baggage tagged and our boarding passes. Time looks a bit tight though, cause it's already been over an hour since we arrived at the airport. We had another 30 minutes or so to make our gate. We weren't sure if we had to pass thru security again, or simply get thru passport control. Did I mention the airport was nuts! We rounded a corner and looked at the passport line and thought for sure we would never make our flight...the line was monsterous...at least 40 minutes to an hour based on the size. luckily however, there was a separate line for those that had seen the F1 race, so we quickly hopped into that line, waited about 20 minutes and rushed to our gate. Sadly, we run to the gate and realize there's yet ANOTHER line to get into. We have to pass our bags thru another security checkpoint at the gate entrace, and it looked as if the plane had just started boarding, so the line there was huge. The line was moving at a snails pace and by the time we even got on the plane, the plane was already 30minutes late from the departure time on the tickets. It was no wonder though...the xray machine was catching everything as you walked thru, including my metal button on my shorts to Karri's spare set of Kleenex in her pocket!
How crazy is that! OH well...we still made it on the plane and made it to Frankfurt, an hour late. It simply made our layover in Frankfurt alot shorter. The stay in Frankfurt was without complication and we hopped on our plane to Bologna and amazingly enough, arrived on time. Back on Italian soil. A quick bus to the car park where we had left the Alfa Romeo, and we were on the road again, towards Florence.

So now in Florence, we are planning to explore the city a bit. When we came in last night - around 10pm, and managed to find a hotel there wasn't much time to see much or grab much of a dinner. We did grab a quick pizza and strolled around, but only for about 30 minutes and then headed back to the hotel for some quick Zzzzz. Renato and Karri left early, and we got up this morning around 8 so we could see some sights. They are planning to stroll back thru town later on this evening to pick us up to head back to Rome. So it's a go-go-go day to catch as much as we can. When we walked around last night though, we did manage to see the large Dome in the centre which is quite beautiful on the outside - I can only imagine the inside of this church. We strolled up to the river and walked along it for a few streets and then back towards our hotel. There were a few people walking around last night, but it was pretty quiet compared to now. There's tons of tourists around this place today, and by the looks of it, loads of markets too. More to explore though! Will update more later.

Merhaba from Istanbul!

Well, here we are in Istanbul, and sadly we are already almost done with our journey here. It's been short, but very fun and interesting - you definitely get the feeling you have come a long way when you come to Istanbul. The sites are amazing, such as The Blue Mosque, Aya Sophia, as well as Topkapi Palace. Considering the age of Aya Sophia (construction started in 527AD) it's most impressive. It's unfortunate the large dome in the center, measuring 30m across, had scaffolding around it on the inside, but even still, the building was massive with the smallest gold mosaic tiles you've ever seen...and millions of them - 30 million on the dome alone! This is not to take away from the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace...they too are impressive and well worth the visit.

Our stay here has been extra special as we had two of the best tour guides in the city, tour us around - friend's of my aunt Lesley who gave me their contact info before we got to Istanbul. Murat & Zeynep
were absolutely wonderful hosts taking us for a little cruise up the Bosphorous Strait which connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara. We went under both bridges that connect the European side with the Asia side and Zeynep took us for a drive along the European side showing us all the little neighborhoods around Istanbul. We also had a chance to meet their son Emir who is only 1 and a half, who joined us on the drive up coast. He seemed to really enjoy Vicky's entertainment in the back seat, as he was laughing out loud and giggling wildly. Saturday night they took us to a wonderful traditional Turkish restaurant called "Tike" which was outstanding! The eggplant-lamb kebap we had was scrumptious, and the "raw meatball" - not actually meat, but spiced cracked wheat (I think) was really tasty. Actually, everything we had was tasty...and I don't think we could get any of it back home, so it was well worth the trip. I hope they both get the chance to come to Canada so we can return the favor, and show them around the Calgary area.

Much more to tell, but we are off tomorrow for our trip back to Italy. We might get a chance to see another city in Italy before we head back to Canada on the long journey home - Total milk run! (Rome-Frankfurt-London-Calgary...oh so long!!!)
But before then, we will enjoy ourselves for at least a couple more days before heading back home on the 26th.

Talk to you all soon.

Here's a picture of Vicky and I, with the Bosphorous Strait in behind us.

F1 from Istanbul

Well, here we are at the first ever F1 race to be held in Istanbul, Turkey. It's a new track added for the F1 circuit this year, and we're glad we're here to witness it! Actually, having the F1 tickets for the race this year, really helped speed our way thru customs at the airport, and in addition, helped us save 90 us Euros on the Turkish visa requirement - it was completely waved for F1 ticket holders. Almost didn't work for Vicky and I though, cause we didn't have our tickets yet...not even a confirmation number of payment. Karri and Renato had confirmation numbers, but for some reason I didn't get any after purchasing the tickets. The only piece of paper I had was a printout I had of an email I had sent to the ticket purchase agency in Istanbul asking them to deliver the tickets to our hotel. This was all I had...but it was enough to get the F1 Turkey stamp in our passports! Sweet! At the airport the F1 organizers were great - lots of information about how to get to the track, 70kms outside of Istanbul, and the people tending the various booths were helpful. Once we got into instanbul however, this seemed to change and not many people seemed to know much. Luckily though, it was not difficult to get to the track - we simply caught a city bus a few blocks from our hotel and it took us directly to the track.

When we got to the track, we looked around and picked an area in the green section that our tickets matched, to watch the race. This happened to be on the far north side of the track. It had a view of two corners, with a chance to see the cars both decelerate and accelerate, but not to top speed. There was only 1 corner where you could see them get to top speed of about 320km/hr, and this happened to be near Renato and Karri's seats. Our tickets were general admission which means we didn't have "bleacher" type seats - we sat on the ground, which was supposed to be grass, but because the track areas weren't quite complete, were actually dirt. Good thing we brought our rain jackets to sit on!

Before the race started at 3pm there was a parade with all the drivers in old style sport cars, as well as a few flybys by the Turkish Air Force, shown below.

By 3pm though, it was race time, and we were ready to watch. The clouds had parted and it was starting to get pretty toasty out there. Good for the cars though, as the heat would assist gripping on the corners. The track is huge ...over 5kms long but it was amazing to see how fast the cars would make it around this 5km circuit. Shortly after the race started, maybe 3 laps had gone by, and the cars had already split up enough that it was almost a constant buzz of doppler effect.

Cars were passing in front of us on average, every couple of seconds till the end of the race. Raikkonen who drives for McLaren-Mercedes, managed to get the pole the previous day with the fastest lap and also won the race on sunday - details here: http://www.formula1.com/archive/grandprix/2005/745.html. We didn't see alot of place changes from where our seats were, but we did manage to see one car spin out off the track. It definitely would have been fun to see them in the last S turn before the grandstands, since the cars were carrying so much speed, and it would have resulting in seeing more passing. But overall it was fun to have seen the race...and we managed to get a free sun hat as modeled by vicky below, on our way to the race - courtesy of the winning team this year, Renault.

Quick update from Rome

Well, we're back in Rome for a quick stop before we drive off to Bologna early tomorrow morning. Roads in most of Italy are often very crowded during the days and with August being a major holiday time, almost everyone is on the roads. So, we've been driving during the wee hours of the morning and it's been pretty good. We left last night from Amantea around 11pm and strolled into Rome at around 4:30am. With the exception of the odd slow driver who actually obeyed the 40km construction zone area, the drive was painless. This guy was clearly a foreigner, cause we've been passed while doing 140km/hr and if looked as if we were standing still! Clearly, most locals don't drive slowly. When we got to Rome, we had a quick 5hr nap and then got up to tour around the city a bit more. Due the fact that the official holidays in Italy started yesterday, many, many shops are closed. However, the heart of the downtown area was still open, so we strolled around and looked at a few more sites before being kicked out of one of the churches due to the fact we didn't have enough on...apparently we needed long pants. But that's just craziness, cause there's no WAY you're going to get me to wear pants in over 30deg C! So we made a quick exit of that church and toured the outdoor sites...and found an excellent Gelateria for some awesome ice cream. If you make it to Rome...it's south of the heart of the city, and it's called "Ping Pong Gelateria." Almost everyone eats ice cream here...and we're still trying to figure out why the majority of the population aren't fat as hippos. Well, that's about it for now. Since we have to head back and get some quick dinner, we'll sign off for now. We'll have an update and maybe a few more pics when we stop at our hotel in Istanbul.

Update from Amantea

Ok...so the picture doesn't match where we are...but we decided to upload one from Rome.
This is actually one some of you might recognize as the Vatican. The sight being so amazing, made us both convert to Catholicism overnight...just kidding!

We're still staying along the coast for a few more days before we head off to Turkey for a week. The weather has been great for beaching it and that's exactly what we've been doing for the last few days, with the exception of a quick day trip to Sicily which will require another post all it's own.

Every night in all of the small towns dotting the coast are festivals that start around 6 or 7pm and go all night long. We've had a chance to check out a few of them during our evenings here. Nights are very warm and you can walk around in shorts and t-shirt and not be cold at all. Many of the various festivals also have markets where you can do some late night shopping. The days being so hot, things close from 1pm to about 4pm, so the only time to do the shoppping is early morning or late evening. The rest of the time you can spend napping or swimming at the beach.

In a few days we take off back north in the car to the city of Bologna where we catch a flight to Istanbul. There we have about 4 to 5 days to see a ton of sights! It will be quite a contrast to the very relaxing time we've had on the coast here. I believe our hotel has an internet connection so if we get some spare seconds here and there, we'll update you from there.


Here's a little shot of the typical shoreline along the western southern coast of Italy. Miles and miles of beautiful beaches.

Oh...and one thing must be mentioned - the italians sure do know how to make good ice cream and treats. We've been filling our bellies daily with both...and lovin it.

Still full from lunch

Well they say you eat well in Italy, and they weren't kidding! We have yet to have a bad meal in this place...anywhere. It seems like every town you go to has a pizzaria open with loads of excellent tasting pizza - and if that isn't what you fancy, you can find some wickedly tasty pasta dishes with seafood, or a variety of great antipasti (appetizers). We went to this place last night that had the most amazing selection of antipasti...and about half of the ones I loaded on our plate were filled with CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSEEE! If you like cheese...you must come to Italy. The choices and flavor are unbelievable. Oh...and did I mention wine is cheaper than water? You can buy 5L of wine here for less than 5 Euro. Not exactly a bad deal.

the other thing we've been doing a lot of is...nothing. and it's been great! Life is a lot slower here than any place we've been to, but it provides for some great down time and relaxation. The beaches here are huge...and there are very few people on them...even for august which is the start of the Italians' holidays. So between eating, going to the beach, eating again, and having loads of gelato...life's been pretty good. Good times!

I'll try to load up a few pictures in a few days, but being that we are on Italian time, don't expect them right away. We'll get to it, when we get to it ; )

Next stop...Sicily

ciao

Update from the South!

Hi from Amantea! We've left Rome, city of so many sites, and the swealtering heat box, also known as +40C, and made our way down south, south of Naples, to the area of Calabria, Italy. The heat is a little less, more like +35, which seems quite cool actually, so I take it we have aclimatized to the heat. It's a much different lifestyle down in the south than in Rome. Rome seemed fast paced compared to where we are now - if that's possible to believe!

Rome itself was amazing - we spent the two days there exploring every major tourist site we could and plan to see a few more when we return at the end of August. We have yet to see the Sistine Chapel, but we did get to the Vatican, which on its own was quite impressive. Other sites we visited were the Forum, the Pantheon, The Colosseum, The Trevi Fountain, The Spanish Steps, and the extremely large monument of Vittorio Emmanuel, aka "The Wedding Cake" - a name due to it being totally ostentatious.

One of the more impressive sites though, was not found in Rome, but in the City of Pompeii. This city is a must see on anyone's trip to Italy. It's simply stunning to see a city of its age so well preserved.

So where is Amantea you may ask? This city(more like a small town) is south of Rome by about 4 to 5 hours and is very lively at night along with a few of the other small towns around the area. We spent a few hours on the beach today, late in the day as the heat of midday is too much unless you spend the whole time in the water! A few short moments ago we finished dinner at a small little restaurant and had calzone, pizza, and canoli - an superb dessert!

Anyway...we'll update you all on another day, but we'll sign off for now to enjoy a little night life.