Italy - Part 1 - Firenze

So, my trip to Italy was awesome although I am also glad to be home with a nice warm comfy bed and easy access to water. Apparently there's this idea in Europe that Canadians waste more water than anyone else. Oh well, we have lots of it.

Anyways, I flew out of YVR Friday morning and landed near Rome on Saturday morning around the same time of day but just 14.5 hours later. The flight went north over Hudson Bay, Baffin Island and Greenland and then down south over Ireland and France.

There was a stop in Barcelona, Spain to let some people off.

When I got to the airport I had some problems communicating with the guy at the express train booth but eventually had to go to the other train booth because I couldn't take my bike on the express. The guy there was really nice and gave me tickets to get me all the way to Florence. The local train into Rome had a lot of graffiti in it and looking out the windows it seemed Rome itself had a ton of graffiti. In the end I would say Italy has a big load of graffiti.

Transferring within Rome to the train to Florence was a piece of cake and then it was a long train ride on the regional (slowest train) up to the main train station of Florence. I hop off with my bike and transferred all my gear onto it. Here it is before my very first ride in Italy. My mission...to get to the other train station and meet Greg, Jon, Beth, Gordo and Alex.

I messed up that mission pretty bad. The streets of Florence are hard to navigate, what with the only street signs being on the actual buildings or non-existent and a lot of one-way streets. When I did reach the station I somehow didn't see them and went on to our backup plan, a hostel. This is in the nearby Piazza della Liberta. My first look at some big arches and fountains of Italy.

The view from the back window of the hostel where the others eventually arrived late at night. This was taken the next morning when were deciding what to do.

We decided to start biking that day and made our way through the city. This is a bridge called Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) which has a lot of jewelry and leather shops on it. Apparently Florence is the leather capital of the world.

Greg, Jon and Beth shortly after the bridge.

After some small problems with my bike and a lot of biking through suburbs we climbed up out of town along switchbacks between olive groves. You can still see the top of the Duomo, Florence's central cathedral and Italy's largest dome, in the distance.

We were on our way...

Off to Italy

So it's 4am here but it's 2pm in Italy right now. I've already half adjusted to Italy time and it's not like I would be able to sleep anyway at this point. My flight leaves at 11:30am which means I have to be at the airport by 8:30. Before then I still want to weigh my baggage, make sure I have everything, try and find my watch that went missing, ready my bike for the flight by removing the pedals turning the handle bars and deflating the tires, and make a snack for the plane.

I'm currently at my grandparents place as this is where I"m getting a ride to the airport from. My brothers going to stay in my apartment and hopefully take good care of it. Unfortunately my fridge is completely empty except for the condiments and my cupboards are pretty bare so he's going to have to buy some food.

Today I'll have a really quick day and then a really quick night as the flight lasts 14.5 hours and lands at the same time of day it takes off. Hopefully my jet lag isn't that bad. After the plane I've got a couple train rides and then I hope to meet my friends at the train station in Florence. Greg said there's a 75% chance they'll be there when I get there. If not, well... I shall wait.

Peanut Butter Marshmallow

The marshmallows have been sitting in my cupboard fora long time and needed to be eaten, so I dipped some in peanut butter. Yum!

Italy in 6 days

Lately I've been doing lots of biking to get ready for Italy as I now leave in 6 days! I'm very excited because not only will I be traveling to another continent for the first time, but I'm going to be biking and camping with close friends who I haven't seen in a while.

Unfortunately I'm having some budget issues so its a good thing we'll be living cheap. My friends have already been there for a month and a half now and are also low on funds. Traveling to Italy, for me started as just a way of doing something exciting and escaping the everyday. Usually the money in my savings account simply gets saved for a rainy day. This time I thought I'd throw it all into a very memorable and awesome experience. Actually, I didn't think I'd throw it ALL in but it's now turning out that way. Due to some unrelated and unexpected costs to do with school, I'm now cutting it pretty close.

There won't be many visits into museums or famous historic sites (that cost money) and I may not be buying any souvenirs. I plan on taking lots of photos and just enjoying the moments. To me it's just being there with my friends in a totally new place, in a totally new situation that will be perfect.

Grind

So on Sunday, Q and I did the Grouse Grind. We managed to do it in 1 minute less time than the website said the average was, as we finished in 1 hour and 29 minutes. Q had never done the grind before and I hadn't done it in a really long time. We looked up some statistics before hand, like the record for fastest time is 24 minutes and the record for most times in one day is 13 times up the grind. Ridiculous!

Looks like Q was still sleepy at the start.

It was much steeper than this.

At points we were close to the gondola.


Kind of a view from the top, but most people
don't go up the grind for the view.

Q watches the giant wheels that are used to pull the gondolas up.

We didn't stay up there long, choosing instead to take the gondola back down and go eat some lunch/dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. It was delicious and well needed after the hike.