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 |
5/21 - Rome, Italy I'm sitting on the side of Tiber river.  They have these wide walkways along the shores about 30-40 feet down from the street, which are much quieter than the bustling streets above (as well as being a bit dirty, I think this is where drunks and the homeless come at night). Yesterday, I uneventfully arrived in Rome and found my hostel fairly quickly it's less than a 10 minute walk from the station. It seems to be a quiet hostel, I've met the 2 guys in my room and neither seem like the partying type, but I'm ok with that. My first objective was to do laundry as it was an absolute necessity at this point. Found a place that had laundry and internet access, so that gave me something to do while it was going. I failed to get the wine out of my Stoli t-shirt, so that's one less t-shirt (course that depends on how desperate I get). After the laundry, I sat around and read for awhile before going to a restaurant recommended by the guidebook (up til this point I haven't followed any of the food suggestions, just the sights and accommodations). It was decent, I had gnocchi and rabbit, having never tried either (I tried making gnocchi myself once, but I now know I didn't cook it right). After that I went and crashed out for about 12 hours (guess I was behind on my sleep or something). Today I've spent the day exploring Rome and so far I've enjoyed it. I started off looking for the Capuchin Cemetery. I read about it on Salon about a year ago and thought it sounded really interesting. I thought it was somewhere that it wasn't and spent a while walking around there. Then I actually checked my notes, and wondered exactly why I was where I was. I did see the Spanish Steps, which weren't very interesting. Found it easily after that. I've never seen anything like this in my life (the paris catacombs were similar, but didn't have the same impact). It's composed of only 4 or 5 small rooms, but each room contains thousands of bones laid out in patterns on the walls and ceilings. In several of the rooms, there are the corpses (I say corpses because while they are very old, they aren't clean skeletons, you can still see the remains of skin) of Capuchin monks still in their brown cloaks. These were really creepy because they were propped up vertically, some of them in bowing positions. They even had two intact child skeletons as well as an adult skeleton holding a scythe (blade made out of pieces of pelvis) and scales (the grim reaper I'm guessing). Also in a few of the rooms there are simple graves of monks on the floor. This whole thing really got to me, I've been to plenty of cemeteries, all of them thought provoking, but none like this. To me, this felt like death staring you in the eye. As a I sat overlooking the street after I left, I began picturing every passerby as a skeleton. Morbid, eh? After that little brush with death (ha ha), I headed to Vatican City. I passed up going into St. Peters, it didn't look quite worth the ridiculous line. Maybe if I was catholic. Instead I went to see the Vatican museums, which includes the Sistine Chapel. The halls leading up to the Chapel were endless hallways with painted ceilings and walls, many of which give the illusion of depth (i.e. a raised frame to a painting or vaulted ceiling that's simply painted on). These hallways included the Raphael rooms. The actual Sistine Chapel was not like my mental picture at all. For some reason, I thought that the picture of man reaching towards god (the really famous one) was the whole painting and that it was huge. Instead it's just a small part of an utterly huge painting. Still quite impressive though. After that I wandered aimlessly for awhile, finally heading through the Jewish Ghetto up towards the Pantheon. On my way I came across the Largo Argentina ruins which apparently also serves as a cat sanctuary. The Roman Cats sanctuary is basically a refuge for homeless cats, with a population of about 300. Apparently there's a large portion of the Italian (or at least Roman) population that feels it's wrong to spay or neuter that cats so people just abandon kittens here. The shelter sprang up around the cats, apparently the cats started settling in there after the ruins were unearthed because it was below street level. Very cool. After that I saw the Pantheon , which was neat, but I couldn't stop laughing because there's a McDonalds right in front of it. -- For evening dining, I tried what the guidebook said was the best pizza in Rome. I don't know if it's the best, but it certainly was tasty. On the walk home, I walked past the Forum and the Coliseum (on my itinerary for tomorrow) kind of by accident, but they all look very cool at dusk. I finished off the evening with what the guidebook (and apparently the New York Times, judging by the article by their door) says is the best gelato in Rome. It was very good, and I sat enjoying it by the Trevi fountain. Today actually turned out to be one of my most enjoyable days so far.
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