Massive photodump ahoy! Not sure if this fits better in the blog thread, but I'll take my chances. As some of you might know I've been traveling Europe (mainly Italy) by train with a few friends for about a month. I started out in Rome where I ran between
exhibitions, museums, churches and so on constantly, explored and enjoyed sights, places and good food. I even saw the
pope, and I found some
glasses I really regret not buying.
Greetings from Colosseum!
After a week in Rome it was time to get on the
train to Naples, which was a boring and ugly city where we spent about four hours in total. We dragged our heavy
backpacks on to another train that went to a cute little town called Salerno on the Amalfi Coast, which we used as a base for when we took day trips to other places like
Pompeii, where there were a lot of interesting
sights and opportunities to pose in
silly ways, just to mention a small part of it. Oh, and the hot weather and burning sun made us all wear silly straw hats,
this is mine, and
this is my friend's. Without them we would probably have looked like a lobster for weeks.
After several hours in Pompeii I was tired of walking, and
my feet were kind of gross and hurty (I almost wanted to call
Fabio). It was a good day!
Last night in Salerno we took the only photo that has all of us in it, so I'm putting that up as well, even though it's blurry as hell.
Headed off to Paestum, where we saw some
beautiful ancient temples and nature and
climbed some trees.
We also did a lot of walking, it was a long way from the station to the temples!
Two-ish weeks into the trip on our way to Sicily we decided that
trains are boring, so it was kinda fun when we finally got on the
ferry. Arrived in the beautiful town Taormina shortly after, which we would use as our base while we had outings that included climbing the
Vulcano Etna and bathing in stinky mud that made most of our clothes smell awful forever.
Here I am attempting to reach the top of the volcano, and
this is how far I got. I was actually almost at the top, but the thin air, slippery lava sand and slushy snow made it impossible for me to continue. The two people furthest away from me in the linked pic are my friends, the two others were strangers that climbed with us for a bit. I'm very impressed by how far we got, Etna is 3,328 meters/10,919 feet tall.
We left Taormina for Palermo, one of the biggest cities in Sicily, and the only place in Italy to still have
ruins from WW2 that hasn't been demolished or fixed.
Here we are in a bombed out church that ended up without no roof, which lead to trees growing inside of it. It was pretty incredible.
Sicily was amazing, but we had to keep moving and
Florence was our next stop. Like in Rome we found ourselves overwhelmed by the amount of things to see, and we managed to go through a couple of museums, churches, and so on. We also took a day trip to Pisa, where we found out that
the tower isn't leaning at all, it's everything surrounding it that is leaning! ... I'm sorry, I hope that I'm allowed a couple of lame tourist jokes.
After Florence it was time for
Venice, which I didn't really enjoy that much because of the insane humidity and extreme tourist masses. Also, our hotel was crappy and expensive, so when we left for Milan I wasn't exactly sad. We only stayed in Milan a couple of hours because we had to catch a night train in the evening, but we managed to explore a bit in the little time we had. The highlight was definitely climbing to the
roof of the Duomo, which not only was amazingly beautiful in itself, the view was absolutely breathtaking.
This is my friend posing with the Lonely Planet Guide for Italy, in the exact same spot as the cover photo was taken. The guide was really a lifesaver throughout the whole trip, it helped us find cheap places to sleep and eat, and cool places to visit.
From Milan we took yet another night train to
Amsterdam, which is a really exciting and fun city. We visited a couple of museums, but what I found even more interesting than that was going to the markets, and go out at night just watching the everyday life (I think The Red Light District has scarred me for life. Whenever I've seen a red neon light since then I expected a prostitute to appear in a nearby window). Oh and bikes! Amsterdam has a lot of
incredible bikes. We also had the most hilarious meal ever:
The Obama Burger, followed by space cakes for dessert. It was delicious.
Berlin was the next city on our adventure, followed by Copenhagen where we took the ferry back home to Oslo. Sadly I forgot I even had a camera on the last part of the trip, so when I say it was as great as the other places you'll just have to take my word for it.
That's all for now, I'll probably upload more pics when my friend sends me all of her pictures. Yeah, I wont stop until you are all sick of my holiday.
