Trip 2

So it was the Sunday before last and we were supposed to leaving for trip 2...unfortunately I (Alli) had this great idea to take the train to Brno in Czech and then from there to Vienna, so we did not have to pay as much for reservations. Well, we were not in any too big of a hurry to leave because I said there were a few trains, coming on the hour...what I didn't take into consideration was all the connections that we were going to miss...So luckily I figure this out right after we payed a good chunk of money for our overnight train (one of the later connections) to Italy. So we had heard you can get refunded...reluctantly Barry went to talk to the same woman we got our ticket from about 15 minutes before. She wasn't very nice before, and definitely was not happy with us now. She kept saying things to Barry in Czech, and we ended up getting on the tram for our apartment, luggage in tow, and a receipt in Czech to boot...did we get our money back- who knows!!!
So Monday morning, we take off with Barry having figured things out, guess I can't be trusted much anymore haha. We checked our statement online and still no news on what the heck our receipt meant. Anyways all that passed, we were headed for Vienna!!! Here is a map that Barry uploaded...


Well, here we are in Vienna taking a peek at Karlskirche. This beautiful church was dedicated in thanks to the end of the plague! The weather on our day trip in Vienna was gorgeous, cool in the shade and hot in the sun!

Below is the top of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. We didn't go inside any of the beautiful buildings we saw in Vienna since we were just there for the afternoon. They sure are great to enjoy from the outside though.

Alright, so here is Barry walking away from me passing this weird statue. The story here takes place before this snap. We saw a big advertisement for the one thing I have been dying to see...a King Tut exhibit...Well if any of you know me at all you would know this couldn't be further from the truth and I was brave enough to go up to the window with Barry to see how much tickets were and see what all the exhibit was about. So after much "I will do it for you," and "I can't make you do this," we walked away from maybe this once in a life time ordeal, sad for Barry, lucky for me!!!


So next we ended up on some stairs sitting looking out at Heroes' Square. We had fun just looking around, taking pictures (some in black and white...), and talking about all the Eurofest craziness they were working on taking down to our left. The day before the big game of Germany vs. Spain was here in Vienna, so we were actually thankful we were not there then as it might have been cool to see, it would have been CRAZY! Spain won by the way, we watched the game Sunday night at our local place, Pod Slavinem, over a few beers. Everybody was rooting for Spain.

Hey! Told you we took some black and whites! I think we both look pretty sleepy here, and this is just the beginning of our trip!!!!!

This is St. Stephen's Cathedral...the next picture shows you zoomed in, it is pretty awesome.

Note: A lot of our pictures not displayed in the blog are very bright and white, as I was in charge of the camera, and was snapping pictures thinking it was on Auto, but it definitely was still on Manual from the expert photog, lol oh well, it was pretty funny when later Barry was like "Alli...what were you doing, do you not look at your pictures you take!?" Nope, I sure don't lol!!!
p.s. Barry doesn't say that. He says, "Do you not look in the viewfinder when you take pictures, because if you did, you would see how terribly overexposed they all were."

Alright, goodbye Vienna, hello Roma!!! We hopped on a night train and splurge to have 4 couchettes in our cabin instead of 6. Worst idea ever, for some reason we were in the one cabin that's outlets were broken...and all the other ones even with 6 couchettes had outlets...Barry was extremly disappointed. I was happy because we got coffee and a croissant the next morning, which was a great way to start the day, I can't skip breakfast!!! The two other people we had with us this night were a mother and her son from Albania. The boy was pretty stinky when they first got on, but we either got used to it, or he smelt better after he changed clothes. Just so you know, my least favorite thing about Europe are the smells. Ick!!! I don't understand it, and I hadn't smelt anything before we got to Italy haha!

So we arrive later than we were supposed to to good ole Termini in Roma...Not that impressive really. The German train stations and Sweden and stuff are like 10 time nicer, and more efficient too! Anyways, we start out trying to find information so we can find a place to stay, we wanted to spend a little more time in Rome if possible. So we are waiting in a pretty long line, when Mario comes over. Mario's services are free and you can imagine the pestering we endured I am sure. He was quite annoyed when we turned to the woman behind us who gave us a card of the hotel she stayed at that was more than what we told Mario our budget was, and well we were pretty on board with the woman behind us! The best thing about Mario, was Barry heckling him for sure. We ended up getting a map out of the deal, and some of his brochures which he doesn't carry around to hand out lol, yay Barry! Barry definitely had fun doing this...reminded me of somebody else I know! Ok so we have an idea of a place to stay that we were ensured was central, and were done with the idea of waiting in line while we were in Rome. We couldn't check any of our bags at the terminal in lockers, they take your money and throw your bag behind the desk, it is pretty lame, maybe it is security purposes? Anyways, we wanted to stay in Rome so we rolled out of Termini on foot, with our Mario Map, hotel card from the stranger lady, in search of what Rome was all about and a place to sleep!

Above is our first experience in Rome. We still had all our luggage and had pretty much just began what would be our 45 minute walk from Termini to our hotel. This still is one of my favorite places we saw in Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore. We walked in just thinking we would check it out, not having high expectations. In the heat of Italy I had to dig into my bag to pull out my sweater to be sure and be modest! When we walked in we just couldn't believe it, it was so detailed and so beautiful. Our pictures won't do it justice, but will give you a glimpse...


Alright, if you liked Maggiore, I know you will love the PANTHEON!!! The Pantheon was just a minute walk from our hotel that we have checked into at this point. Our hotel was way too much for us to spend in one day, but it ended up being worth every penny. Before we headed out for some sightseeing we got to shower, and I got to blow dry my hair!!!! It might sound silly, but it felt so good, my hairdryer blew a fuse here in Prague and I had to pitch it, so I have been airdrying for quite some time, which I generally do anyways, but miss the ability to dry haha! Ok, enough of that...we are checked into the hotel, our window looks out at Parliament, and we are out and about not sure what all we are going to see!

The Pantheon was pretty crowded, and loud. It definitely is amazing, I studied it for quite some time, and I guess dozed through the lectures in my art history class at UT on Rome...because I don't recall much of anything about it, except my prof saying it is hard to find a bench haha. This might be a good time to bring up my ability to recall things I have studied, learned, been taught...it is pretty bad, and to top it off Barry is like one huge box of 20 questions!!!! Seriously he doesn't stop.

Here we are in front of the Pantheon. This is after we had enjoyed the inside. And, might I mention, to the left of the Pantheon I starred in a little flick Barry shot, maybe you will see it when we return home. Lol. It was ridiculous, mostly because I am nothing of an actress, yet I gave it a shot! Barry had me go stand in an alley where he couldn't see me, count to 5, then come out toward the Pantheon in distress looking both ways...needless to say it is a funny few seconds of me giggling!!! I wish we could have videotaped Barry's "directing" to me, it was pretty serious lol.

This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and is really really big! As you can see on the right it was under construction, or preservation or whatever.

Here is some views of the Roman forum you can see with out going through them actually.

More history

Ahah! On our way to the Colosseum! We bought a ticket to go inside, and it actually would have gotten us into the Roman Forum too, but we missed closing time by 15 minutes, oh well!

This is me inside the Colosseum, Barry thinks he is more fortunate because he knows what the Colosseum looked like since he has seen Gladiator, you know since that is the only way you could know...

Here is an over the shoulder shot of Barry, I learn so much lol! This is after we climbed a lot of stairs to get to highest level you are allowed. Oh yea, did I mention I completely wiped out climbing the stairs of the Colosseum and Barry missed it on videotape by like 10 seconds and only got me going "oh no you didn't get that did you!?" Haha it was really funny. We had a blast playing around inside the Colosseum, it really is a cool place, I thought of Brian a lot while I was here! We tried another scene of me acting too, more giggles!!!

I think I have mentioned how hot it is in Italy, but in case I haven't, it was hotttt!!! So, remember that Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers??? Well on each side there is a fountain...tempting...Barry was knee in in like 5 seconds, me, "is this water sanitary?"...lol it was too hot, I had to join. The water was numbingly cold, and oh so refreshing. Still kind of grosses me out, but it was a great idea and a lot of fun all the same.

This is our view of the fountain from where we were splish splashin our feet!

This is our hotel! To the right is an obelisk with Egyptian inscriptions I believe...behind the camera is Parliament. When we came home that evening we saw a camera crew and lots of people. When we got into our room the Italy news station was filming at Parliament...so we looked out our window then to the tv then back out the window and were seeing all the same thing, kind of cool we thought!!! Okay and over to the left of the picture a bit is Trajan's Column which I think I failed an essay on in that Ancient Rome class, sad reminders in Rome haha!

Okay, day 2 in Rome!!! We checked out of our hotel and took a bus to Termini (much shorter than the walk, only 2 euros) and we checked our rolly suitcase which cost quite a few euros...boo! Then we hopped on another bus and headed for the Vatican!

Here I am, at the Vatican, just a couple hours after the Pope spoke! We only knew this because Barry ran into a UT Club Baseball buddy while I was in a grocery store...go figure huh? (Mom-we only separated because you were not allowed to take in backpacks, and he waited at the door for me, Dad will be ok with it because I bought come Cabernet Sauvignon!!!)

Here are pictures from inside St. Peter's Basillica. It was incredible. Just incredible.

This was a bitter sweet moment for Barry. He was so excited to see Michaelangelo's Pietra. Today they make you stand pretty far from it, behind glass, and behind those bars with hanging ropes. He really wanted to get up close to the sculpture...there was a replica in the Vatican Museum, but it didn't do it justice in any way really. It was still neat to see!

Alright so walking around St. Peter's to the Sistine Chapel is quite a walk I thought, maybe it was the hot sun, but it seemed far! Then once you get it it is quite a journey to get to the "final destination" as those of you have been probably know. This is one of the beautiful ceilings along the maze of a way.

Good old School of Athens...one of Barry's favorites (I think all his favorites are all the famous ones, but he really does love them, and knows more about them then me!)

Here is the main man, the one looking at you!

Okay so I guess we are done with Rome, because this is a pic up the cute little stairs to the cute little B&B we stayed at at Taormina, Sicily. How did we get there!?!?!? We aren't completely sure, but are completely thankful. Ok so a long story short, well this will probably be long... we planned to go overnight from Rome, to Palermo...wanting to save a few bucks we thought we would cut it short to Messina which is the closest city in Sicily to the mainland of Italy. So we got the tickets, and purchased "reclining seats" for the night train. We departed late, a trend in Italy we have discovered, and found our seats to be with two other girls who had been backpacking for 2 months and were basically my age. Seemed like things were going well. They were from Louisianna, but one of the girls actually is from Sweden, but has been going to school with the other girl in Louisianna for 2 years now. So just getting to know each other, and discussing the disappointment in TrenItalia, we hear something disturbing in the walkway of the train, and it is headed for our cabin!!! He had a seat, all the while spilling out Italian like there is no tomorrow...he was very old and us girls were pretty sure he had had a few. He is talking to us with some passion, and we should be making it clear we don't understand by talking in English...Alright so me and one of the girls, Ashley, get up and start checking for empty cabins, desperately. I think if it were a day train I could have handled the "experience," but we had to get some sleep...so feeling a little guilty we left the man and headed for another cabin that had one man from Tunis who was like 27. He spoke French and Italian, and our Sweden friend who also spoke French was translating between everyone, she said it was pretty hard understanding French with and Italian accent haha. Anyways we hd some good stories with this guy to tell later if people care to hear, but I am wearing down, blogs really take it out of you!

Oh wait! How did we get to Taormina? Barry stayed awake all night protecting me :) and then slept in the morning for an hour or so. During this time we were moving back and forth on the train boarding a ship to take us to Messina. This took a loooong time. Once we finally crossed, we stayed don our train because we had no idea what was going on and nobody was telling us, and we were just pooped. This didn't make me sea sick which was a perk. So we get to the next stop and it says Messina C.le...I shaked Barry to ask if it was it, and he thought I said S.le not C.lke and said no and conked back out. I was like okay, because we were supposed to get off at the second stop in Messina...we thought...NExt thing we know the woman comes to check our ticket and we are like how much longer to Messina (because it is way late, even if we got off at the right stations...) and she explained to us we were headed for Taormina and assured us it was beautiful and we would love it...lol...pretty funny, and a little scary. So we got to Taormina, got off the train and headed down the main road. It was beautiful indeed. We went into one of the first B&Bs, booked, put on our swimsuits, and headed out for some cold cold refreshment! The Ionian Sea was so beautiful, and the clearest water we have ever seen. We were on a part of the beach that was pebbley with pretty rocks, I thought of Audrey. I even took a couple, I will share if she is interested!

So here we are outside our room on our way to dinner!!! Happy happy.

This was the view walking home at night, gorgeous. We ate with a view out at the sea at a Trattoria that was so fun. Our food was pretty good, and it was fun to see the family run place with everyone hanging out there.

We had some fun with the shutter in the camera and the pretty lights in the distance. There are a lot more where these came from haha.

Me walking home, turning back when Barry called my name, little sneak!

Taormina the next morning, we were in search of the archaeological sites, this is after we kind of got lost.

Me getting some of the view.

We found the site! And it wasn't that cool! But, you could see Mount Etna, so it was totally worth it, pretty cool huh.

Here is Barry and some cacti, isn't he cool!?

We left the sunscreen in my backpack in the B&B ahhh!! What a gentleman to share his hat!?

Here I am, a little sunburned. I am wearing one of our first purchases, it is for a friend of ours. Actually it is a replacement of something Barry ruined long long ago.

Georgie! Georgie! Georgie! Here is the most lively eight year old Sicilian we know. He rode with us most of the way to Milan and was quite entertaining/annoying at times. Even he knows High School Musical and Hannah Montana. He called us "Americanos" in such a funny way and would try and communicate with us and then spill out Sicilian and run off frustrated! By the next morning this kid wouldn't leave me alone, and we could not get him to stop playing with my hair!!! He was cute.

Here we are at the Duomo in Milan. We are pretty exhausted at this point in our trip. And it was a pretty long walk fromt he station to here.
If you walk in the archway on the lef to f the picture above you walk into the picture below!

Pretty cool! Here is where you can find all the shopping you can't afford, but if fun to look at!!! We only went into a bookstore while we were here and discovered The Last Supper was in Milan, we had been wondering which city that one was in! So we quickly located the church on the map, and set out quickly to make it there before they closed. Apparently you have to book months in advance, and only 25 people can see it at a time, so we didn't get The Last Supper, but we did get a washing of our feet...

Barry did it first, and I thought it was gross, like the fountain experience, but remembered how good it felt, and looked down at how dirty my feet were and here we go again! Lucky for me Barry got some lovely snapshots.

This is the pretty neat looking church that we got to go in, but didn't get to go see the outer wall that The Last Supper is on.

This was our last stop in Milan. We have eaten a lot of McDonald's this summer. I can say more than I have eaten the rest of my life, I don't think Barry can. Karalise warned us it wouldn't taste the same. But it taste soooo good to us haha. Anyways from here we went overnight to Frankfurt, and almost died. We were on the last car of the train, and the AC was not working, and their windows did not open. By far, most miserable part of the trip yet...really didn't think we would make it. And, the whole time Barry had this positive attitude---I was like what is that all about, this stinks! After about an hour and a half somebody on the train came back, pushed a few buttons, and it slowly started to return to a livable temperature. These seats were truly reclining, and most comfortable yet, it was a German train, not TrenItalia...from frankfurt to Dresden we had a 7 minute time frame to hop off and hop on the train to home sweet Praha! It was a good trip, and I am exhausted from blogging! Miss you all more and more each day! And, Chrissi, I re-read all your sweet sweet notes today and it made me sappy!!! Thanks!!!
Na Videnou