ROME - The Eternal City

I'm writing this from memory because I got back from my trip and I've been busy following the world cup 2010 and catching up with work.

Day 1

There are many reasons why I wanted to see Rome: the ancient city, Vatican, the piazzas full of artworks, the medieval streets, and the food of course. It was my most anticipated destination. We arrived at noon via trenitalia from Florence. Rome is a vibrant city with lots of history. Our hotel was at the Trevi fountain area so it was easy to find. It was a 3 star hotel named Hotel de Petris. We put away our luggage and started to explore the city. First we went to the Trevi fountain. It's always busy here, lots of people throwing coins into the fountain. It's a tradition that if you throw a coin into the fountain, you are ensured a trip back to Rome. We didn't throw any coin because we were going to go to Naples and coming back to Rome anyway. Unless I die along the way, I'd be back here. I stood there admiring the statues for awhile.


Next, we walked to the Pantheon. It was under construction so it looked pretty bad from the outside. Inside it wasn't that good either. If you saw the movie "Angels and Demons", the Pantheon looked much better in the movie. The Pantheon in Paris was much better. Our next stop is the piazza Novona. It was Rome's most spectacular Baroque piazza follows the shape of a 1st century AD stadium. There are a lot of history behind each attraction that I've read but it's just too much to write here. The fountain in the middle of the piazza was very attractive.


We then walked toward the old church Santa Maria in Trastevere. It was one of the first official place of Christian worship back in the 3rd century. We ate lunch and dinner here in Trastevere as it was very cheap compared to other tourist places.

In the afternoon, we headed north toward the Piazza de Venezia. It's a lively plaza with lots of people and traffic. We also passed by the Castle of St Angelo, which wasn't worth the money to get in. Another noticeable place we went to was the Spanish Steps. Not much here besides a church and many many people sitting at the stairs.

Day 2

The Vatican, St. Peter's Square, and the Vatican museum (next entry)

Day 3

We didn't do much in Day 3 because we got back from Naples in the afternoon. So we only went to the Borghese Garden and visited the Borghese Galleria. We bought the Rome 3 day pass for 25 euros each. The first 2 attractions are free, discounts for other attractions and free bus, metro rides. This pass is worth the money. I must say Borghese is the best museum we've visited in Europe. All of the statues and paintings in there were stunning. If you have to pick one museum to go in Italy, it has to be Borghese. The Villa Borghese and it's garden were designed in 1605 for Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The villa was used for entertaining and displaying the collections of paintings and sculptures. However, I was pissed off that they don't allow people to bring cameras in. You have to check everything in. I got my digital camera in my pocket so I was able to get it in but EVERYWHERE there's a person standing. I couldn't even take out my camera. Anyway, most of the sculptures here was done by Bernini. Some of the important ones are: The Rape of Proserpine, Apollo and Daphne, the David (a self portrait of Bernini). The best thing about this museum is that if you buy the audio guide (which you should), it tells you the details about each paintings / sculpture. For each important sculpture, there's a painting on the ceiling explaining why the sculpture below is in the position it is. Bernini is a genius, he breathes life into these sculptures. I stared at each sculpture in here for a long time and wanted to take a picture so badly.

Day 4

We went to ancient Rome in day 4. We passed by the Trajan's market quickly, arrived at the Colosseum. The Colosseum is Rome's great amphitheater. It was the site of deadly gladiatorial combats between gladiators with animals or animals with animals. Once there were as many as 50 bears fighting gladiators and other animals at the same time. I was impressed by the design. It has 2 levels. You can actually see the room where the animals and the gladiator were before the fights. The floor was destroyed and it is now under reconstruction.


Next to the Colosseum was the Arch of Constantine. Here, we went to the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill.

The Roman Forum was the center of political, commercial, and judicial life in ancient Rome. The ruins of the Roman forum date back to many eras. There are other buildings around. We walked around a little but, it was sunny and crowded. There's a hill on top of the Roman Forum where you can have the view of the entire ancient Rome.


The Palatine hill was okay. I was a little disappointed because I thought it was an amazing place. After all, it was the place where Rome was found. There's a museum here but it's not worth the time and money to visit.


We got out of Ancient Rome and headed toward Trastevere for some food. After that, we visited the Castle of St Angelo and the Basilica of St Peter's again.

Florence, Pisa, Naples

2 Days in Florence

From Venice, we took the train to Florence. We arrived in the afternoon about 5pm. Our hotel was right in front of the train station but it took us awhile to search around. Our location was very convenient. The best way to explore Florence is on foot. There's a bus but you don't really need it. All the attractions are within walking distance. We finally settled down and put our luggages in the room. It was a very spacious room for a 3 star hotel in Europe. The AC worked perfectly and it was very cool inside. First place to visit was the Uffizi gallery. On the way, we saw the Duomo, a famous church in center of Florence. We didn't go inside though. Uffizi was not a very large building but the line was very long. We got the ticket in advance so we just went inside and explored the place. There were some important paintings and sculptures. For the rest of the day, we ate dinner and took some photos at the piazza della Signoria where there was a copy of the David. We didn't get to see the real David in Florence though because we didn't book ticket for the Accademia Galleria. That was probably one of the most important sculpture I wanted to see but oh well.


At night, we walked around the city and went to Ponte Vecchio, a very old Medieval bridge with houses on top where blacksmiths, butchers, and tanners used to live. Now, these houses on the bridge serve as shops and jewelry stores.


On the bridge, there was a guy singing in Italian, Spanish, and English. The crowd gathered around and listened to him. Some gave him money. I guess that's his job. His singing of "Mad World" made me think a lot about life, people, and many things going on in this world.

5 Hours in Pisa

In the morning, we took the Terravision bus at the train station to Pisa airport. I bought the ticket in advance. It costs 16 euros for a round trip. Pisa is about 1 hr 30 mins away from Florence by bus. We only spent about 5 hours here as that was plenty of time to explore the city and the leaning tower. Not much to see here besides the Church, the Baptistry, and the leaning tower itself. There were many people taking pictures trying to push the tower. It looked kind of silly and funny.



In the afternoon, we headed back to Florence and visited the Palazzo Pitti, a castle near Ponte Vecchio. Nothing special here, just an old castle and it's not as great as the castles we've been to in Europe. There was a garden with some interesting sculptures.



1 Day in Naples

From Florence, we took the train to Rome and then to Naples. Since we didn't do much in Naples (we stayed there 1 day), I'll combine that part here too. By the time we reached Naples, we were very very tired, exhausted. Our hotel was right in front of us but we couldn't recognize it. It's a 4 star hotel named UNA. Compared to other places, Naples was very cheap. From the hotel, to the food, and the souvenirs all were pretty reasonable prices. That's the reason why we stayed at a 4 star hotel. Here in Naples, no one spoke English but the people were very nice and honest. We found a very good restaurant that we ate both lunch and dinner there. We visited the National Archaeological Museum via bus. There are some really great sculptures. Some of them are huge...

We got on and off the bus heading toward the coast. There weren't that many tourists in the city. We were probably the only tourists. The bus was full of old people. We walked along the coast and took some pictures. The view was beautiful with the steep village on the cliff of the mountains.



After enjoying the food and the peaceful views, we packed up and getting ready to return to Rome, the Eternal City.

Let the game begin

It was 1994 when I watched the first full world cup of my life. Inspired by a lot of motivational stories from the news, comic book, and the atmosphere, I started to show a lot of interests in soccer. My brother and I cut out color paper of all 24 countries participated in the event and glued them into a book where we kept records of the scores and the players. Nowadays there's the internet, nobody would do that anymore. It was USA 94 and because it was in the USA, there were lots of hopes and dreams for me. It was emotional to see a Nigerian player hugging the nets, kissing the ground when scoring a goal. I saw a lot of resemblances from the world cup today with the one in 1994. There are lots of coaches who were players in 94 (Maradona, Dunga...). It was also the year South Africa started to see democracy. And today, they host the world's biggest event. Hopefully, this world cup will set aside a lot of differences and bring people together. I will try to watch every game I can... With that in mind let the game begin!!!

One day in Venice

We got to Venice late morning. There was a little trouble at the airport because this lady from easyjet wouldn’t let me carry my hand bag. I was able to fit it in the box with some pushes but the lady was giving me a hard time. She told me to take it out and put it back in. I did it again perfectly and she wasn’t happy about it. She told me to check it in (to increase their revenues of course). I went to the counter and told the flight attendants that I can fit it in the box completely with some pushes. They were satisfied so they told me to come back and talk to the lady. She realized how foolish she is now and started to make a bitch out of herself. She stopped me again and told me that I cheated. The rules said that as long as you can fit your hand bag in the box, you can carry it onto the airplane. I got it in perfectly with some pushes sideway but it’s still inside the box completely. I even took it out and put it back in several times to demonstrate I can do it all the times but apparently she was not happy. Some easyjet customers started to get pissed off and jump in to fight for me. They started speaking her language. By now she realized that she’s probably wasting our time and her time so she let us go. Hooray! Got through security again without checking my bag in (but I need to be careful as I buy more stuff from now on).


Venice sunshine was beautiful, it was warm. We lived at an Island called Giudecca right below the main Venice island. The hotel was a 3 star hotel and it was more than satisfactory. We bought a waterbus ticket for 24 hours but it was probably not worth it (22 Euros each) because nobody was checking the ticket the entire time. As a tourist to a new city for the first time, you always make silly honest mistakes. Venice is beautiful and romantic. There are bridges, water, couples, and gondolas. They say Paris is the city of romance but I think Venice is more romantic. However, I was not surprise because I’ve seen Venice already. I’ve been to the Venetian in Las Vegas, it’s pretty much like the real Venice except the real one is 10 times bigger and looks a lot older. We went around, eating lunch, taking pictures at St. Mark’s Square. 90% of the people here are tourists, most of them from America. In the afternoon, we explored the town of Lido, away from Venice. There’s not much here besides the boardwalk and the beach, which was empty. We headed back to Venice and went around looking for food again.


At night, Venice is very beautiful with the tiny light from windows. We rode the waterbus again to the famous Rialto Bridge. It’s not crowded as it was late at night so we were able to take some pictures. Food was expensive in Venice so we walked far away from the attractions to find food. It’s still not as cheap as in Berlin but compared to the restaurant prices we saw, it was okay. Afterward, we headed back to our hotel and prepared to leave in the morning to Florence, the center of Renaissance Art.

Berlin day 2

Day 2 in Berlin was great as well. We woke up at around 8am after 11 hour of sleep. We went down to get breakfast. I loved the hams while my girl friend enjoyed the boiled egg. She took some to her room. After breakfast, we were all full of energy. So we headed toward Potsdam, a town outside of Berlin.

There weren’t much to see here except some old buildings and a small art museum. We went inside for 3 euros but it was not worth it. There’s only 1 room of artwork and that’s it. We went outside, took some pictures and went to lunch.

In the afternoon, we went to Pergamon museum. It contains lots of archaeological artifacts from many different places. We got the museum pass for 9 Euros each but only had time for 1 museum. There’s an island of about 5 different museums at the same place.


Berlin was destroyed completely from the wars so a lot of the buildings are new. Some old buildings still remained but they are mostly renovated to look complete. We walked along the river near the museum island. Afterward, we headed toward pub crawl. Pub crawl is a tour where mostly English speakers got together and went to this place to drink beer and have fun. It was 12 Euros to get in and you can drink as much as you want for about 1 hour, 1 hour 30 mins. After that, we started to crawl to 5 different bars (hence the name pub crawl). Each drink you buy there will be rewarded with a jegameister. We talked to many people there, made some friends. They are from all over the world. We were buzzed by the third bar at around 11pm so we had to run away from our new friends. In addition we have an early flight tomorrow and still wanted to see the Parliament building and the glass dome. They closed at around 12. So we hurried out. I think if you complete the pub crawl, they give you a free tshirt. By the time we got there, it was about 11:50pm and no one is allowed to get to the glass dome anymore. I was disappointed. That is probably the most symbolic building of Berlin that I wanted to see. After 2 days there, I still couldn’t get inside the dome… Oh well, there’s always next time. So we got back to our hotel and folded some clothes, getting ready for our flight to Venice tomorrow.

I really love Berlin and wish that I could spend more time here. I didn’t know there were that many things to do and there were so much fun. The food is cheap (doner, sausage and beer), people are nice, information are free, tourist-friendly, easy-to-use transportations. In my opinion, Berlin is the best place to visit, at least for English speakers. I don’t know how much information they provide in French or Italian or Chinese. It might be more or less.

Berlin is awesome!

I’m behind so I’ll try to write as quickly as I can so that I won’t forget. By now, we’re in Naples, Italy but I’m still writing about Berlin, Germany. This is because I was so tired and internet wasn’t free at several hotels. Anyway, here are my wonderful experiences in Berlin.

Day 1

We woke up early, called a cab to leave Paris to Berlin. After about 1 hr 20 mins of the super fast trip, we arrived at Berlin. Berlin is a very nice place, it was colder than everywhere we’ve been, but it was good because we needed to cool down and travel without sweating. We started to look around to find ways to get back to our hotel. One guy helped us out and took us to the right place even though he did not speak English. We got to our hotel, Best Western Express. It was about 10am but they let us check in because the room was ready. The hotel staff was making fun of me for using my credit card. He told me that not many people in Berlin uses credit card, only American does that. Yeah, America is a country built on debts and credits. There are so many people with multiple credit cards, multiple loans. That’s why we got the financial crisis in 2008 because they allow people who can’t afford things to buy them. After checking in, we tried to wash our clothes at the hotel but couldn’t because it was too expensive, each article of clothing (socks, shirt, underwear…) costs about 6 Euros. We ended up doing it at a local “Waschsalon”.

We got out of our hotel about noon. It was perfect weather, clear, blue sky, sunny, about 60 degrees F. we ate Turkish doner near Alexanderplatz, I think. It was delicious but too much. We couldn’t finish. Only 3 euros for a huge doner. If you try them, be sure to choose different sauce. Food was very cheap in Berlin compared to other places. In addition, Berlin is very tourist friendly and there are lots of free stuff to help tourists (free map, information desks everywhere, guide standing in front of metro stations for directions…). Among those free stuff, the best tour in Berlin is a free tour around the city. If you don’t have lots of time to spend in Berlin like us, this is the best way to explore the city. Basically, it’s a free tour of your chosen language. The tour guide takes you around the city to about 10 or so different locations and explains the history behind each place. The tour lasts about 4 hours and at the end, you can tip the tour guide depending on what you think about his knowledge and ability to guide you through the city. I thought it’s the best way for an organized tour since the tour guide gets paid by his ability. There are lots of other tours where you pay a fixed amount up front and there’s a tour guide taking you around. Often time, it’s very boring since he/she says the same thing all the times and doesn’t seem to want to do his/her job. This is completely different, the tour guide gets tips at the end so he will try to do his best. Our tour guide was Jeff, a Dutch but spoke perfect English. He was also very funny, knowledgeable, and made the tour interactive and entertaining. I recommend this tour for everyone. The tour starts at the Starbucks coffee in front of the Brandenburg Gate. We used metro to “Brandenburger Tor”. The metro system in Berlin is very good and it uses an integrity system. You don’t need to insert tickets to enter. You just need to buy ticket and then validate it with a machine before you go. Of course, you can just walk in without buying the ticket. However, at rush hour, there’s usually a metro employee walking around checking for your ticket. I think there’s a big fine if you don’t have your ticket validated. I think this is a really good way to run a metro system. In fact you will save a lot of money hiring employees sitting at the gate of each station all the time. It’s also very efficient to go in and out during rush hour, there’s no bottleneck.


So our tour started. Jeff, the tour guide, was awesome. He took us to all the main attractions and explained the history behind each one. I’m not gonna write the history about each attractions but it was very informative and I learned a lot from that free tour. A lot of the information were straight from text books. Some of the jokes were related to current news event and some jokes were about the French and German rivalries in English. If you are not fluent in English or you don’t know much about French history, you will not get some of the jokes. So we went to the Brandenburg Gate first, then the Parliament building. I was impressed by the glass dome design on top of the building. Below the glass dome was the work place of politicians. The design of the dome allows people to look straight down to see the politicians. Also, the politicians can look up to the people. It symbolizes Germany’s transparent democracy. Very cool idea and great looking building (I regret not having time going up there… explained in Day 2).
Next we went to the Memorial of the murdered Jews and Hitler’s bunker. Berlin is not a very rich city but it’s very rich in history. It’s also very proud of its history and does not hide it. The memorial is right next to the Brandenburg Gate, in the city center close to the Parliament building. This allows tourists, working class, politicians… everyone to see it.


In contrast, Hitler’s bunker is now a parking lot with some apartments around it. There’s not even a sign saying that it’s Hitler’s bunker. Again, the locations are also very symbolic. Next we headed toward the Berlin Wall, Check Point Charlie. After that, we took a break and went to a local coffee shop. Immediately after that, we went to see the tax building, the main Cathedral, museum islands, the square where there are churches built by the French and German. We arrived in front of Humbolt University where the book burning took place. Afterward, we went to some other places that I don’t recall the name. At the end, we finished up at the Art Gallery building. I loved this tour. I got a lot of useful information out of it and some great places to eat so we tipped him well.

For dinner, we went to this local restaurant called biergarten. We had some sausages and beer. German sausages were delicious and its beer was great too. My girl friend enjoyed Beck’s lemon while I tried out some wheat beer. We headed back to our hotel to take shower. We tried to go to see the Parliament building afterward but everyone was tired. We all passed out on our bed at around 9pm.