Sleepless in Rome

On the Palatine Hill.

Why do I have to be in these photos??

Gardens on the Palatine

Sleep issues continue to plague Stewart - he didn't get to sleep til 6:00 am this morning, and then I dragged him out of bed at 8:30.  So he was dragging his feet as we walked through the archaeological site of the Palatine Hill, right beside the Colosseum.  The site is immense, and I know we didn't see it all, but the parts we did see were quite amazing.  Took a ton of photos, of which I will only post a few here.  The Colosseum was next, and having purchased our ticket at the Palatine, we were able to skip right in.  Crowds again, everywhere.  Stewart was not impressed at the lack of available cold drink stands!  Inside the Colosseum, however, was a running tap that many people filled their water bottles at, so we did the same.  We didn't feel it was necessary to walk the whole circuit of the Colosseum - climbing those steep stairs to the upper level gave us enough of a feel of the place!  We tried to imagine the place when it was new, but it is hard!

Colosseum in the sunlight

After a rest in the hotel, we went out to find some lunch and then walked to the Spanish Steps and beyond that to Piazza del Popolo.  I was repeatedly accosted by a rose sales person trying to give me one of his roses.  He didn't seem to understand no.  Stewart has also remarked on how strange he finds it that waiters come out into the street to try to get customers.  We have had to decline a few of those.

Walking, we experienced the flavour of Roman traffic - you just go out into a cross walk and let the cars go around you.  It can be somewhat harrowing.  In one of our taxi rides yesterday, the driver slowed down at a red light, and then just barreled through.  It was the most rolling of taxi driver stops I have ever seen.

Roman Holiday

We had some struggles and delays getting out of Florence - and missed the train we were supposed to be on and so ended up in the train ticket office lineup after all, which we had so carefully avoided.  No harm in the long run, as we got on almost the next train and arrived in Rome with little difficulty.  We decided on a taxi to the hotel as I didn't want to attempt the Metro or the streets with our luggage.

Well, we went from a sizzling 34 Celsius in Florence to a sizzling 37 Celsius in Rome.  I opted for the extra 12 Euros a night to have our room air conditioned!  We walked around, even though we were melting, (actually Stewart seems quite happy in this heat) and visited the Trevi Fountain (about a billion tourists), the Pantheon (about a million tourists), and the Piazza Navona (several hundred tourists).  The hotelier gasped when we had suggested we were going to try for the Colosseum today - so we followed his advice and will try that in the morning.  A few shots of the day:

Trevi Fountain

Inside the Pantheon

outside of the Pantheon

Stewart "I will NEVER eat pizza with a knife and fork" Pollock

"Eeew, what is this?"

Trevi fountain

Florence - on a couple of hundred Euros a day

"Architecture" sculpture

Jason with the Golden fleece

Stewart was feeling ill when we woke up this morning, so I went to the Bargello Museum without him, after purchasing anti-nausea medicine and some Vicks - for about 20.00 Euro! I enjoyed the Bargello very much - there were lots of statues from well known sculptors such as Donatello and Michelangelo.  There was an awful lot of vanquishing - images of muscular men and women wrenching their opponent into impossible poses and chaining them up or bashing them on the head.  Bacchus was another favourite.  I am always interested in the relative sizes of hands and feet compared to the body size, because my impression is that they are usually not in proportion to the body (too large).  I read today that in the case of  Michelangelo's David, the right hand is intentionally oversized, to represent the hand of God as David slew Goliath.  In general, however, I wonder if there is a rule of proportion that sculptors use for emphasis of the hands and feet.

Small fountain in the courtyard of Palazzo Vecchio

After getting lost again (I thought I knew which street I had come out on exiting the museum - apparently not), I came back to the hotel to eat lunch with Stewart.  He was feeling well enough to try to see the science museum, which has a collection of old clocks and various scientific equipment from Galileo's time, right through to the 18th century.  We could have gone through the museum faster if we had run, but not by much.  Stewart dragged me through at an accelerated pace - there was little interactivity (except at the end) and he wasn't as impressed as he had been with the da Vinci exhibit.  We then took a look at the Duomo museum and the Palazzo Vecchio.  Stewart allowed me to go a bit slower, but he was getting tired and thirsty after the first half hour or so.
Coming out of the Duomo museum, we tried to find a slushie type drink, and when we did, we ordered two large, without checking the price - bad mistake.  Two large frozen lemonades, smaller than a regular sized McDonald's drink, cost us 10.00 Euros.  I was not impressed.  We check all prices first, from now on!

Views from balcony of Palazzo Vecchio

The best laid plans

Near the Jewish Ghetto

 Well, I didn't think too clearly about travel times etc., when we bought our train tickets from Venice to Florence.  I just suggested noonish, thinking that Stewart would not want to be rushed in the morning.  In fact, though he groans about getting up, a 10:30 departure would have made more sense, as that was the hotel check out time, and so he would have had to have been out of the hotel room by then anyway!  So we had a couple of hours to kill in the morning before we left, and ended up wandering the streets again.  This time we ended up west of our hotel, somewhere near the Jewish Ghetto, but I didn't actually locate it.  I took this photo of the house across the canal from us because it had an incredible profusion of flowers blooming on the roof.  Not so visible in the photo, but still lovely.

Santa Maria Novella Church

Sadly, the second consequence of leaving Venice later is that we have now missed out on the opportunity to visit the Uffizi Galleries.  The train got in mid afternoon, and then we had to find the hotel, and then we had to have a bite to eat, and by the time we got to the Uffizi, there was a bare hour and a half before closing, and a long line that wasn't moving. We waited for half an hour or so, and still had only moved up a little bit, and so we abandoned.  We thought that by the time we got to the front of the line, there would be less than half an hour to visit the gallery.  And tomorrow, it is closed...

 So, we continued along the walking tour outlined for us by the hotel, to at least see some of the sights of the city.  As I took photos of some of these famous sights/statues/buildings, I wondered again why I was snapping the shots, particularly ones that others have photographed much more beautifully.  It is just such a tourist thing to do!  I could buy a book or purchase postcards with the same images, but it is cool to be able to say that this particular image is from my perspective, my camera, my visit.
The train ride was a welcome experience.  I was not really anticipating it with any pleasure, as I remember the old, stinky, uncomfortable rail cars that I travelled in in the 70s.  This car was sleek, new, with seats that were more comfortable than airplane seats, air conditioned and super quiet!  A true pleasure.

Facade of the Duomo

Reproduction of Michelangelo's David

Murano and the Doge's Palace

Yesterday afternoon, after a rest, we headed over to the island of Murano to take a look at the glassworks.  Trying to find the waterbus stop from our hotel was again a bit of a challenge, but we finally made it.  The island is very small, nevertheless the proliferation of glass shops prevented us from seeing all the island - we gave up after about 20 shops!  Stewart found an amazing glass knife that he wanted as a souvenir, and I managed to find several bits and pieces that I liked a lot.

On the island of \Murano

 Stewart condescended to be included in this picture of a large sculpture in a public square.  On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a small fruit stand to buy some oranges and plums.  After I had selected a few pieces, the owner yelled at me "No Service!  No Service!"  I was quite confused, but the other customers said, "No, no, he will get FOR you!"  Stewart later assured me that he had said "No self service", but that's not what I heard.  Who would guess that such a small thing could get a shop keeper yelling at you!

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Overdone - but amazing execution of glass art

This morning we got up and headed towards San Marco as we wanted to buy train tickets for Florence and Rome.  When we got to the ticket agent, we found that their system was down, so we decided to do a tour of the Doge's Palace.  The line up wasn't too bad, and the price was reasonable comparatively speaking, particularly when you consider how immense the place is.  The paintings on the ceilings were truly amazing and Stewart enjoyed the armoury.  By that time I had had enough, but there didn't seem to be an easy exit, and we circulated through the prison before the exit.  I would have been ok with that except for my tendency towards claustrophobia, and feeling we had done enough already.  The prison block corridors are not that small, but there were many people, and you had to keep following, following to trace the one way path to exit.

Doge's Palace, inner courtyard facade

One of the many statues on the facade

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St George's dragon isn't too impressive...

Oops.  Snapped this photo of a wooden door detail before I realised we weren't supposed to photograph inside...

Meandering

Calzone on the bridge...

 Stewart and I left the hotel this morning with the intention of visiting the Accademia, which we did.  A large gallery with many impressive paintings, and a few sculptures, all religious in nature.  Stewart's legs were killing him, so he sat down in every room to look at the work.  I am not that familiar with renaissance and pre-renaissance painters, but had of course heard of Titian.  I was disappointed to find that his work was darker and less alive than some of the others painters in the room.  After leaving the Accademia, we decided to wander in the direction of the Rialto Bridge, and find a vaporetto stop somewhere.  We came across an exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci, and as there were no lineups, went in.  This was housed in a small, old church, so the exhibit wasn't very big.  However, we marvelled again at the genius of the man.  There were several displays that were interactive; in particular, Stewart was impressed with the Archimedes screw.

Leaving the exhibit, we continued walking, and walking...  Finally, following some signs to Piazzale Roma, which I thought would take us to a vaporetto stop, as the Piazzale Roma is the terminus of line 1, we discovered ourselves actually at the Piazzale!  We had walked halfway across Venice, and bypassed not only the Rialto Bridge, but also our hotel.  Consulting the map hadn't helped a whole lot as it isn't always easy to determine where you are on the map.  May I comment that Stewart remains impressed with my navigational skills [sarcasm].

Venice of the north to Venice, Italy

Bikes on the bridge - across the canal from Anne Frank House

Amsterdam Centraal Station

The only photo that turned out from our canal cruise -from this vantage you can see 7 bridges.

Amsterdam, with a population of 800,000 people, boasts somewhere in the neighbourhood of 500,000 bikes.  The main roads all have 3 lanes in each direction: bike lane, vehicle lane and then transit lane.  All the lanes are separated by a small curbed section; when crossing the road, each section gets the 'walk'signal at different stages, so you might be halfway across the road when the light changes and you have to stop.  The first few times we crossed the road, we forgot to (or, rather, were unaware of the need to) check the bike lane - we didn't really have a near miss, but the bikes surprised us several times.  Vancouver could take a few lessons from Amsterdam.  While there is car traffic, it seemed lighter than Vancouver's.  Granted, it's a smaller town, but the options for cycling are just so available and it's part of the mindset to bike.  A man sitting next to us on the plane over told us that the city of Amsterdam spent something like $5,000,000.00 for bikes for the city.  These bikes are placed all over the city for anyone to use at any time.  If you come out of the grocery store and the bike you had been using is gone, you simply take another one!  We hardly saw any helmets at all, and we saw a man pedalling a large trike with a huge wooden  box attached to the front - where his children were sitting.
The weather while we were there wasn't the greatest - there was rain and even lightning and thunder one night.  We were lucky that the morning we went touring about was very sunny, and we only had to dodge raindrops briefly.

And so, on to Venice.  Stewart is very tired -waking up in the middle of the night and not able to get back to sleep, but also he doesn't have much stamina for walking!  Actually, I shouldn't say that as he has done very well, but it has been a struggle.  We have found the hotel and then been down to the Piazza San Marco after a light supper.  (Light in calories and content - heavy in monetary value!!!)  We purchased a three day vaporetto pass and have been using that to move about - it is convenient, but wow are there a lot of passengers.  You rarely get a seat.  Most of the following were taken from the canal on the vaporetto.

Stewart wishing he didn't have to be in this photo!

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection Building - from the water side.

A small intriguing bridge down a waterway.