Italy Part 1

Again I have to apologize for the lack of updates along the way.  The great thing about traveling around on your own is that you end up meeting fantastic people along the way.  However, you tend to end up spending all your time with people and less and less time on the computer updating your wonderful friends and family at home.

I am currently in Barcelona, Spain but I will catch you up on what has happened up to this point.  After my sail Croatia trip was over I had an entire day to waste in Split waiting for my night ferry to come at 10pm that would take me to Ancona, Italy.  Luckily I was not the only person that was spending the day waiting.  I caught up with friends as we were all leaving the boats and went for one last juice smoothie at Tonik, a place that could almost be considered our local stomping ground at this point.  We said our final goodbyes to our guides and the people that were heading out by bus then I went for coffee for a few hours with a friend that was waiting for his plane that would leave that afternoon for Vienna and made arrangements to meet up in Rome on my last night there as we were both going to be at the same campsite just outside the city with our other busabout friends.

Because of my amazing luck up to this point in the trip I had found out the night before that the bus driver from our Eastern Trekker week, Vlad, was also taking one of the night ferries that which meant that I had someone to harass all day long instead of wandering around Split alone.  We spent a few hours wasting time on the free wireless at one of the local coffee/bars called Charlies, sharing pictures and talking about places we have been or wanted to go to in the future, grabbed a quick lunch of the most amazing food ever, Burek, an eastern European hot pastry type food that is a type of filo dough wrapped around a special type of cheese.  It's hard to explain but it is delicious, I had had it one other night in Omis as well and was pleased to be able to have it one last time before leaving what was probably one of my favorite countries I have been to.

We spent the rest of the day walking around for a bit and talking, Vlad is hoping to work in the US after the busabout season is done doing shuttle buses in Colorado to the ski hills.  If this works out for him he wants  to get up to Vancouver for a visit and some touring around in BC.  He's never been to Canada but he already loves the place and wears a little Canada wrist band that was given to him by another Canadian on tour this season.

My ferry left a little later than his so I spent a couple hours waiting at the ferry terminal reminiscing on my Croatia adventure.  I think that if could I would have spent my last weeks in Croatia and not bothered with anything else in western Europe.  It isjust such a beautiful place.  Eastern Europe as a whole is an area I have fallen in love with and I hope in the coming years to come back and discover more of it on my own or with friends.  There is such a different feel there from western Europe and I adore it.


I had booked a bed on the night ferry and once I had gotten on and the boat had left the docks, was pleased to discover that I had a 4 bed state room all to myself for the night.  You have no idea what a treat it is to spend time alone in a room.  It is something that is afforded to the backpacker very rarely and it gives you a small sense of joy when you find out that you finally for one night at least have a little bit of privacy.  I had a wonderful sleep on the boat and as we were getting closer to our destination I went to the front of the boat and watched my first glimpses of Italy come over the horizon.  A mix of excitement and melancholy were in my head as I stared out over the water.  I was glad to be moving forward in my trip but at the same time so sad to be leaving my Croatia.

ANCONA

When we docked I went through the EU border once again and was playing with my bags getting ready to find out how to get to the train station in Ancona which was near where my hostel for the night was when I saw Vlad coming through the customs.  Apparently my ferry was about 2 hours faster than his so we ended up docking at almost the same time.  It was nice to be able to be with someone else trying to figure out how to get where we needed to be as he was going to the station as well to catch a train to Venice.  Traveling alone is hard, figuring out everything you need to do is hard, having no one to talk to when you are confused is hard.  So when you are able to find someone that may not know more about the situation than you but is willing to figure everything out with you it is a wonderful thing.  I was very greatful to have had a friendly face to spend time with and count on those couple of days.  It just makes you relax a little bit more.

We parted ways at the train station and I found my hostel, unfortunately the hostel had a lock out time from 11:00 until 4:30 and I had arrived just after they had left so I was stuck in Ancona with all my bags for 5 hours killing time on the internet and wandering.  There was nowhere for me to store my bags so I did not have the motivation to wander around much at all.  When I finally did get let into my hostel I abandoned my bags, took a nice long shower and decided that I would sacrifice my tour of Ancona for an easy night of nothingness.  Everything in the city was closed anyway as it was Sunday and a national holiday.  So really I did not miss out on anything spectacular.  Also, the only thing it says about Ancona in my lonely planet is that all it has to offer travelers is the ability to leave Ancona.  Not really a positive review for the town. 

The next day I waited for the bus to come and pick me up.  Ancona is a halfway stop on the busabout loop so it picks up usually around 1pm instead of the usual 8am start.  I arrived at the pick up point that Vlad had pointed out around 12:30 and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Around 2pm I started to panic a little and rushed across the street to the internet cafe to make sure I had not messed up on my bookings or the pick up time.  Everything seemed in order so I sat down and waited some more, confident that they would not leave me stranded in Ancona. I knew no matter what I could go across to the train station and get a ticket to Rome easily enough so I was not getting too stressed.  Around 2:30 the bus pulled up and I was beyond relieved.  They had run into some very bad traffic that had set them back quite a bit.

ROME

We arrived at the Plus Camp Roma later in the evening and I found my tent accomodations set down my bags and walked around the campsite a bit to see what everything looked like.  Camp Roma is like a little city within itself with a restaurant, bar, pool, park area, shopping store and of course the accomodations.  I spent the night hanging out with a fellow from the UK and called it an early night as I had a walking tour booked for the next day.

The next morning I slept in, did my laundry and got ready to make my way into the city for the walking tour.  I was glad to have a guide to show us around and give us a little run down of the history involved in the sights we were seeing.  I am not the strongest history buff so it was good to have a review of the significant places we were seeing.  In a strange coincidence one of the other people from the boats that I had met was also on the walking tour so we caught up a bit and swapped boat gossip from the week before while moving from sight to sight.  After 3 hours of walking in the hot sun we were pretty exhausted but the end of tour left us at the coloseum so a few of us went to check out the line, which was only about a 10 minute wait, and ended up getting in to see the inside of this reviered place.  It was awe inspiring to this place was built thousands of years before and yet still stood.  Touching the walls that millions had touched, walking along the paths that had been walked on since it's beginnings.

That night I hung out some people from the walking tour listening to some live music by the restaurant and then ran into Vlad again, whom had also come in on the bus to Rome when I did and had a couple days off to spend at the campsite.  I spent the rest of the night hanging out with him and some of the other busabout drivers/guides chatting and swapping stories.

The next day was a long one, an 8 hour tour of Vatican City.  Vatican City is a sovereign country in itself and probably the single wealthiest country in the world.  They do not have to be accountable to anyone for the wealth they possess so there is no real knowledge of how much they have within their walls.  Most of the grounds are actually occupied by forest and garden areas but there are also the theology schools as well as the museum and the cathedral.  We spent several hours walking through the Vatican museum which houses the largest collection of marble statues as well as some of the most incredible tapestries, size and detail wise, in the world.  Of course the crowning parts of the our were seeing the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica as well.  The insides were stunning and difficult to describe in words.  I have many pictures to share though unfortunately none of the revered Sistine Chapel ceiling as they have guards everywhere to make sure you take no pictures in there.  Apparently the reason behind it is not preservation as you might think but rather because Kodak paid for a great deal of restoration within the building on the terms that they had rights to all photography of the paintings.  Ridiculous if you ask me.  The 'shush police' as we referred to them would make people delete their pictures if caught and were kicked out.

The best part by far in the Vatican however was not all the art or the history but rather the Swiss Guard, or more specifically their outfits.  It is an intense process to become the Swiss Gaurd that protects the Vatican, one that takes more that 2 years of training.  How do they reward this men for their efforts?  By making them wear the single most ridiculous outfit known to man.  Please note the picture below.

After a massive day of walking I went back to the campsite and got there just in time to run into my friend from the boats that I had arranged to meet up with when his bus came in that night.  We had dinner and talked about the last few days of our journeys and made friends with some other Kiwis at table beside us.  The busabout guides and drivers came in and sat at the next table over as well and as they left I said one final goodbye to my dear friend Vlad as he was now heading north and I was heading south and it was unlikely that our paths would cross again on this trip of mine.  After dinner was over my friend and I said our final goodbyes and parted ways.  I was lucky to have a room once again to myself that night.

The night was sad as I said goodbye to a few people that I knew from both Eastern Trekker and the boats that I am unlikely to be seeing again on this trip.  A consequence of making new friends that live nowhere near you, although it is possible to see them again it is unlikely you will see them all.  I have made some amazing and wonderful friends in the last weeks and it is sad to think we all live so far apart. But at least I know there are now places to rest my head if ever I make it to their homes and vice versa for them.