Italy: October 28 - November 2, 2011

Hi to all Family and Friends!

Because university activities were suspended for three days straight to celebrate All Saints Day (November 1) and both the proceding and following days, four of us (KSweet, Bee, and Germany) took the opportunity to escape Belgium and wander south. With no school for 6 days and cheap international flights, we launched into a whirlwind four city taste of Italy.

Our path and city order are in blue. As you can see, we stuck to Northern Italy.

Firstly, this post is super long and not nearly the quality or detail that I wish it was. If you want to skip reading, I totally understand. However, I do encourage you to check out the photo album. It does a much better job of describing things than I ever could.

Italy Photo Album

Moving on.

There were several themes that revealed themselves throughout the course of the trip:
1) Taking pictures of any sleeping group member
2) Taking jumping pictures in front of monuments
3) Gelato every day and often twice a day
4) Getting lots of directional help from really sweet old ladies
5) Insisting that Bee was our trip mama

Our flight from Belgium to Italy left from a Belgian city called Charleroi. We had to take the train 2 hours from Liège to Charleroi and then find transportation to the Charleroi airport. Normally, during daylight hours, there is a bus and this is not a problem. However, our flight to Turin was leaving too early for us to take a morning train. We caught a night train (22:47h) and got in to Charleroi around 00:47h. Because Charleroi is not a tourist town in any sense, there were no hostels and we didn't want to shell out for a hotel. Again, with no bus running, our only option was to take taxis to the airport and sleep there. The taxi drivers know this and charge ridiculous rates accordingly. Luckily we ran into two Belgian students who were in the same situation and wanted to share taxis with us. The one guy managed to do a pretty decent job of haggling with the drivers and after a quick 15 minute drive we arrived at the airport. Upon arrival at the airport, we discover that many many many people were also stuck with nowhere to spend the night. The terminal was absolutely filled with people sleeping in all sorts of creative places and postures. We settled down by a pillar in the middle of the check in area and eventually drifted off for about two hours. At 04:30h we were woken by cleaning staff and sat around groggily for another hour before grabbing breakfast. At this point we moved through security, found our gate, and the others took the opportunity to sleep for another half hour before boarding. When we went to board, we found out that one of the ESN team girls, and one of KSweet's good friends, was on the same flight as us to Turin. Aurelie, having a decent fluency in Italian, ended up being an enormous help when we reached Italy and tried to figure out how to get to the city center. Of course we all slept through the majority of our two hour flight. The best part though was waking up and looking down on this:

So nice to see mountains again - I had been missing the Rockies from home

And thus started our adventure. Every city followed more or less the same structure:
1) Arrival by plane, train, or automobile
2) Find hostel - usually after stopping in a different hotel and obtaining a city center map
3) Check into hostel
4) Drop off our bags and freshen up
5) Spend the afternoon wandering the city centre
6) Dinner at an Apertivo (a neat concept where bars offer a buffet with beverage purchase - usually really good food and decent variety)
7) More wandering
8) Bed
9) Check out
10) Departure by plane, train, or automobile

Because we had such a short amount of time in each place, hitting all the main sites on the maps usually used up all of our time while still providing us with lots to see.

Turin was a good place to spend our first day. Our first impression was a business man walking up to us and offering assistance when he saw we were pouring over a map to find our hostel. Even our hostel was a lot nicer than the one we had in Paris. Throughout the trip, three out of four hostels provided all linens and were just as nice as any standard hotel. Because we were extremely sleep deprived from our airport night, our wandering was perhaps a tad quieter and slower than it might have otherwise been. Germany had friends going to school in Turin so we had dinner plans scheduled with a really interesting group of people.

Highlights of Turin:
- Finding a really nice open beautiful park and taking a big long group nap in the sunshine
- Buying a container of ice cream, sitting on a bench, and attacking it with spoons
- Going to our first apertivo
- Wandering around after dinner with one of Germany's friends guiding us around
- Getting a really solid night's sleep

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of Turin to share as my camera died but the other three more than compensated. I just need to get my hands on some of those pictures now!

After check out we grabbed a bunch of meat, cheese, buns, bananas, and yogurt from a grocery store. Our train ride to Bologna from Turin was to be our longest (approx. 4 hours) but I really enjoyed it. We were in a 6 person compartment which was a new experience for me. I'd never had the compartment train experience before and found the privacy vastly preferable to the open carriage style. We passed the time sleeping, reading, listening to music, chatting, eating, and just relaxing as the Italian countryside whizzed by. It was such a simple moment in time but truly one of my favorites. Funny how that is.

Bologna was our nicest hostel by far. It was this enormous suite with two king beds, a kitchenette, big bathroom, and was really well lit and clean. We didn't hear or see anyone else the entire time which is always a bonus. As for Bologna itself, the highlight was this enormous inner city park that was just teeming with life. People were hanging out with their families and friends, there were lots of games being played, and so many random activities were happening simultaneously. We saw a guy juggling and throwing each of the balls 5 feet above him until he was working with at least 7 or 8 balls. There were 8 trampolines set up for children, many playgrounds, a lake, lots of paths. It was just such beautiful weather and everyone was just in such high spirits. Autumn in Italy was very picturesque:

This was a four person teeter totter. The boys had the actual teeter totter and Bee and I were on these springy things.

The real adventure in Bologna came when we went to catch the train the next morning. Although we were on time, we couldn't find our train listed on any of the departure boards. Eventually we located the platform and waited... and waited... until it seemed like surely we must've missed it. After much confusion and concern it dawned on us that we had missed daylight savings time. At least we were an hour early and not the other way around!

Next stop on our tour was the ever famous Verona. This city was my definite favourite. Between the Casa di Giulietta, Castelvecchio, Arche Scaliegere, Ala Arena and the market places, there was just so many interesting and diverse places to go. With it being a Sunday, the local families were also out and about which always enhances atmosphere, but even without that, Verona felt very exciting. And touristy. But we were tourists so no complaints.

I personally really enjoyed the markets. There were huge wheels of cheese, cannolis, hot beverages, pastries, meats, nuts, and all sorts of homemade crafts. Every square we went to seemed to have more things to see and taste than the one before. Mmm.

Our final stop consisted of two nights in Milan. After almost missing our train, literally running to the station, our first impression of Milan was the enormous and impressive train station. After a quick ride on the metro (which thankfully Germany had experience navigating), we got off and went above ground. The very first thing you see coming up the stairs is the Duomo di Milano - a gothic cathedral that literally takes your breath away at first sight:

The stained glass inside was INCREDIBLE.

Milan kept us the busiest by far. Because we were able to make good use of the metro, we ended up going farther in distance than any other city. With so much to see, both historical and modern, we easily could have spent the full week there. However, we made good use of the time we had. The best part of Milan was spending Halloween there. Europeans dress up differently than North Americans. They have less funny/ironic/slutty costumes and really focus on the day of the dead aspect. Most commonly, people paint their faces white with black eyes and a little fake blood. We also passed a procession that was carrying a giant Mother Mary statue and was headed for a church for some sort of Halloween mass. The next day, we took one of the metro lines to the end and walked through a really impressive cemetery. Because of the Day of the Dead celebrations, all the graves had fresh flowers and there were lots of visitors. Just another neat aspect to see of Italian life.

Our return trip home was fairly uneventful (thankfully) and we were pleased to be surrounded by French again. At least we can all hack our way through French. It was really quite a challenge to not know any Italian.

Alright. That is just barely scratching the surface of the trip but truly, it is next to impossible to really chronicle a trip like that. Suffice it to say that it was amazing company, excellent food, phenomenal scenery, and worth every penny.

Love and light,

Jacqueline