So here is my travel journal from my backpacking trip to Europe. It's more involved than my day log stuff that's already been up the site. There has been some complaining (you know who you are) that my daylog was rather boring and that it focused too much on the details of transportation. I can't promise that this is less boring, but's there's certainly a hell of lot more of it. Occasional parts of the journal have been omitted to protect the (not-so)innocent. These parts really weren't that common, but hey - use your imagination. Keep in mind that this is a journal and things like punctuation, sentence structure, paragraph breaks, grammar, and spelling may or may not been a part of the writing process. Not to mention my almost criminal use of parenthesis. Like my pictures, the writing is quite erratic as far as consistency of content. The journal style kind of mutates over the course of the trip. Read at your own risk.
 4/28 Cincinnati 4/30 Paris 5/02 Paris 5/03 Paris 5/04 Bayeux 5/06 Toulouse 5/07 Barcelona 5/08 Barcelona 5/09 Madrid 5/11 Salamanca 5/12 Salamanca 5/13 Barcelona 5/14 Portbou 5/15 Narbonne 5/17 Nice 5/18 Venice 5/20 Naples 5/21 Rome 5/22 Rome 5/24 Florence 5/25 La Spezia 5/26 Lucerne 5/29 Interlaken 5/30 Interlaken 6/03 Amsterdam 6/04 London 6/06 Salisbury 6/09 Nottingham 6/11 Edinburgh 6/13 Kyleakin 6/15 Dublin 6/17 Dublin 6/23 Hamburg 6/27 Brussels 6/29 Berlin 7/01 Prague 7/02 Munich 7/03 Munich |
5/18 - Venice, Italy So now I've seen Venice. Pretty cool actually. Made my train last night with one slight hitch. I went to get the cord out of my pack to lock it up and realized that I'd left my Tevas back in the hostel room. This was 15 minutes before the train left. Leaving my pack with this Aussie girl in the same cabin that I just met, I set off running at full speed towards my hostel (about 3 blocks away). Managed to get there quick enough, the manager gave me the key without questioning (someone else had checked me out, guess he thought I was still staying there). I ran up the four flights of stairs to the room, and after fumbling with the keycard for a couple minutes, grabbed my Tevas and ran back. I made it to the train with about 5 minutes to spare, soaked in sweat and completely out of breath. I had a decent nights sleep, felt pretty well rested (that feeling didn't last as the day wore on). After almost getting off at the wrong stop (there's a stop labeled Venice on the mainland - the aussie girl figured that out and clued me in once I'd already stepped on the platform), I arrived in Venice. I had decided that I didn't need to stay in Venice for more than a day, so I bought a ticket for the night train to Naples. Unfortunately, there were no sleeping cars available. Oh well. Set out exploring the city.  Dear lord is it easy to get lost and disoriented. You can't walk a straight line because you can't cross canals where there aren't bridges, many of the streets are unlabeled (not that my map had much in the way of street names), and in general the roads are just confusing. I really could have used a compass. I eventually made my way to the Piazza San Marco and the Basilica di San Marco. The church was of course ridiculously crowded, I had to wait in line to get in. It was definitely something to look at on the inside,the entire ceiling and much of the walls were covered in tile mosaics, much of which was done in gold. I had the good and bad luck of going when they were having sunday mass. Bad because I couldn't get into the lower part of the church, good because I got to hear a beautiful choir. After that I went to see the overpriced, but very worth seeing Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace). It encloses the apartments where the Doge lived, council chambers, an armory, and a prison. The best part was the council chambers. The larger ones are these ridiculous rooms covered wall to ceiling in paintings, all bordered by intricate carvings. It's dumbfounding. Despite how cool these were, I managed to fall asleep briefly while sitting down for a moment in the largest room. That room actually contains what they claim is the worlds largest oil painting, which was actually kinda boring when it was surrounded by so much other more interesting art.The armory was pretty neat too, it had all sorts of medieval and renaissance weapons, including an assortment of primitive guns (that may be beyond the renaissance, chronologically). After leaving there I had I had a sit down lunch for once. I had some overpriced, underfilling, and yet very tasty risotto. Next I went to the Peggy Guggenheim collection, also overpriced. Although small, it was a very good selection of art from the last 100 or so years. I know I say I don't in general like modern art, but maybe I just haven't seen enough good modern art. After that I wandered for a while and get myself lost some more. I managed to find the Jewish Ghetto (oldest one in Europe, in fact it's the origin of the word ghetto). They had a synagogue, but it was closed for the day. After that I just headed to the train station to wait for my late night train. While sitting on the floor there I was accosted by an obviously imbalanced man asking if I was American. Stupidly I said yes. He then muttered something about being Saddam Hussein's policeman, and began to loudly curse America. Amusingly enough, when I mentioned that I didn't care much for our president, this seemed to shut him up for a while. Shortly thereafter, two policemen had a word with him and he sat quietly for the rest of the time. I then started talking to these two girls sitting near me who had also been approached by the guy. Talked to them for a while (one Mexican named Patti, one Columbian - both studying abroad, followed by travel). Spent a little while talking to them on the train too, but after I awhile I went back to where I was sitting, because I kept getting dirty looks from the guys in that cabin that were trying to sleep. People kept getting on the train, by the time I went to sleep, there were people trying to sleep in the hallways, it was that crowded.
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