(another 30 days) day 11

Vatican is a must.

See how bright the sky is? it's very hot, even hotter than my hot city, Jakarta. thing is, you must wear outfit the don't reveal your body too much, otherwise the security will kick you out of Vatican. so i must wear my Jeans, dammit.

 A random Piazza that we found on the way to find Piazza Navona

 Piazza Navona. 

 Trevi fountain. last year i threw a 1000 Rupiah into the fountain, Mia threw 500 Rupiah. i'm back in a year, so maybe she'll be back there in two years. i also threw Bona's coin here, in the hope she'll soon enough will be able to travel.

waiting for the bus that rarely comes. seriously, i always find Italy and Indonesia are the same. especially the people. they're not punctual, they'll be nice for you if you tip them, they'll look at you with 'a look' if you just looking in their stores without buying, they'll follow you around the store too if their items are expensive, and once you buy something from them, suddenly they became friendly. familiar?

(another 30 days) day 10

we almost missed the Plane. not bevcause we're late, but because of the stupid arrangement by ryan air. we arrived two hours before boarding (standart procedure), and when we got into the table, the lady said "you must get your visa approved in that booth" and the booth was full!! i mean, Ryanair has a lot of flight that day, and every one who wants to fly outside Spain by Ryanair must get thei visa approved in that booth. ONE BOOTH. for all flights. to make matters worse, there's this American Tourist that complained in that booth. and too him 45 minutes just to accept his complains denied. all other pessenger tried so hard to squeeze in their visa. we got our visa stampped 15 minutes before boarding. we ran to the table again to get a boarding pass and the lady said our luggage cannot go in, "you must take it upstairs with you and pay 50 Euro for each". FUCKER!

we ran upstairs to the x-ray, and guess what, we couldn't bring any liquid more than 100ml (yes i know that's regular procedure, originally those luggage supposed to be in the plane's baggage so it won't matter.) we must open our luggage, throw away all the liquids (soaps, etc) we didn't care about those at the time, we only want to catch the plane, otherwise we must wait a whole day and buy new tickets for tomorrow.

we got to the gate in time. got seat on the very back of the plane, even my father said "this is the first time i ride in my own plane (he's piloting a 737-800 NG also) and sit on the back. too much turbulence here."

anyways, we arrived in Rome. too tired even to find our hotel we had to walked couples of kilometers. when we arrived we just wanted to get a shower (we did all those chaotic stressing running under 40 degrees celsius weather). my dad got out to find some pizza and pasta and that's the rest of the story for today.

today sucks. bu we managed to get out of Spain just in the nick of time.

#34. Rome - Barcelona

We used the time left in Rome to visit Basilica del Popolo. The bad thing about travelling more than 10 countries in a month is you'd lost interrest in the end of your trip (especially the last countries) and although we tried to make the most of it, lots of time we spent just to sit around and enjoy the atmostphere. So, we spent some time in the park above this basilica then decided just to go to roma termini to book shopping.

At around 3 we already back at our hostel and ready to picked up our bags. We had to take a shuttle to go to Ciampino Airport and the journey itself would be a 40 minutes trip outside Rome. According to our time schedule, we'd be in the airport on time before bording time.

We were right. We arrived, checked our bags in (my bag hasn't past the weight limit, which was 15 kg) and we spent sometime outside to sunbath before we really had to be boarded. Now i've said before that Ryanair didn't have a fixed seating so everybody had to line up before entering the plane and they'd run to the plane once it's ready. We're in line for about half an hour then suddenly a lady's voice in the intercom announced something in italian. But we did catch one word of what she was saying. The plane's delayed. We're looking to a couple behind us, hoped they were italian and understood what that really meant, but turned out they were spanish. But the guy finally came to the desk to ask, and what the lady in the intercom really said was 'the plane to barcelona's delayed and the passangers will be able to board to plane on 22.15. Which was two and a half hours! Seriously, i don't mind the price for the plane ticket but the service, dear God!

So yeah, we're too far from Rome and we had nothing to do exept writting in our diaries and pissed out. When it's time for boarding the gate's changed so the whole passenger ran to a different direction and it was a real chaos. The worst part was the announcement only spoken in italian, no english whilst there're lots of spanish and other people from the countries that don't speak italian. But we're on the flight anyway in the end, and i got a change to email the hostel regarding our unpunctuality to them (they have curvew) thank god they said it's okay and the doorman will open the door for us.

See you in barcelona, at around 1 a.m maybe, if we're lucky.

#33. Rome - Vatican

As any normal tourist, we visited one of the major sight in Rome, Colleseum. I'm a hostel princess! So far in our journey, i successfully picked good hostels with good location and good price! And yeah, mia just had to admit that. She's the transport queen and i'm the hostel princess. Nice team work. Anyway, the Collesium located only 7 minutes walk from our hostel so we could just use our feet.

First sight of this building was great. I haven't really research the story behind it but i know the main story of what this building (now ruins) was for. We went around and decided to enter. It's fricking €12 but we paid anyway, never knew when we'd got a chance to visit this site again. I got to tell you that the inside looked like every picture you saw, but i'm not sure if it looked the same as the one in Gladiator movie. The building itself was quite complicated and from the diagram provided in the 'galery' i saw how it used to be like. It's true they put wild animals as a trap bellow the main field. On our way out, we saw a group of gladiators in front of the building. Thir purpose was to 'take a picture together' Mia and i took turn to take pictures with them, dressed as Cleopatra being fed up some grapes from the gladiator. What i love the most about this group (a lot of gladiators offering pictures but this group's the best) they also have ABAH Paus Paulus in the picture!! :D

After collesium second major sight in Rome: Vatican.

Although i don't go to church, but st. Peter basilica wowed me (is that even a word?). The decoration was so complex and lux. I'm no fan of religious paintings but the one displayed here was just awesome. While we were there, some 'jemaat' were having their masses and they sing in the local language and i got goosebumps. It's a true amazing experience. The cute part about this place was the guard. They called 'the swiss guard' and if you think the queens's guard in London has riddiculous outfit then you should check out the swiss guard's outfit.

Vatican is a country in a city, and one thing i love about it was the fact they have their own mailing system! Yep. Poste Vaticane!! I think that's cool. Too bad i'm affraid my mail wont be delivered to my friends back at home so i didn't send them anything from here (despite the super pricey stamp) but i did purchace one postcard with 'abah' (paus paulus--the one that passed in 2005) and a rosario as a gift for my aunt.

the last thing to visit today was Fontana Di Trevi. we were looking for it this morning and couldn't find it. we stop at the Metro stop stated 'fontana di trevi' but once we came out we didn't see a fountain we usualy see in pictures. it was just a mermaid-ish fountain. Mia suggested to throw our coins anyway but i refused. i asked some mas-mas near Vatican later on where the fountain actualy was and he pointed it out right away in our map (while he was also dancing to the music in his stall). so the metro stop was right, only the fountain that was wrong. we had to walked 5 blocks to get to the real fountain.

I really love Italy. And Italian. I mean, according to my eyes, the British guys are more good looking than Italian, but i have to admit Italian guys are funny and charming. There're nice people to chat with, and even if they tease you, you wont feel played because they keep the jokes universal. For sure i'd love to go back to Italy, especially Venice. :D

#32. Venice - Rome

Our train shceduled to leave at 9.20, so we put on our alarm at 6 a.m and we're at Santa Lucia station by 8-ish. We thought we had the luxury of time, so we're just sat at the front and sunbath until 10 minutes before our train left.

We double-check the time in out ticket, the one in the station said 09.27 but the one in ours said 09.20 and we're supposed to be in carriage 9 whilst the train only had 7 carriages. So we asked the kondektur. He took one glance at our ticket and lightly said "oh, it's from Mestre. You missed it".

So, let me explain. There're two major stations in Venice, Mestre which located outside the the Venice island and the other one is Santa Lucia that located inside the island. we arrived at Santa Lucia the first time we're here so we thought the train that'd take us to Rome would also take off from the same station. but we were wrong. So, as the kondektur said, we missed the train. we had to buy new tickets. Cost twice that we already had. And we'd be in Rome at 20.00-ish. Which was 5 hours late from our original schedule.

The good part was WE GOT TO SEE VENICE FOR 3 MORE HOURS. WITH ITS SUN. yeah, it's sunny today. I went souvenir shopping again for my friend, i promised her, if i could get out on venice in sunny day i'd buy her present. And since Venice is her ultimate destination if she's doing a Eurotrip, i really think i should buy her something from here, as a charm.

At 13:07 we took off from Venice to Rome. It was a nice and quite train ride for two stations until a family of cahyadi entered (without even trying to be a rasist). 2 BOYS: ONE FAT AND NOISY, ONE SLIM AND UGLY. one baby and one ignorant lady that we're still confiused wheter she's the mother or the servant. We had our worst bus ride ever from Edinburgh, now we got the worst train ride ever. They smell weird. They spoke all the time. In their language mixed with Italian. Loudly. The fat boy couldn't stop moving (i'm talking about jumping, getting in and out of the compartment, sit down, get up, jump, and so on). The little boy just looked annoying. The baby wont stop crying. The lady wont stop yelling. So yeah, the bus ride we were 'cape badan' and this train ride we were 'cape mental' which was worse.

But in the end we arrived at Rome. Checked-in and passed out. We got two American roomates. They're couples who decided to sleep on the same bed. I'm impressed really. The bed was a single bed, and they have american size body, and they managed to sleep on the same single bed. If that happened to me, i think the boy would end up on the floor in the morning.

#31. Venice

Rain storm. Seriously rain storm in Venice. We did check the wheather for today and yes, it said raining, but without the storm. Because our hostel has a rule about a lock-out between 10 a.m to 13.30 p.m we had to leave the hostel anyhow. So we're stranded on st. Marco's square, wet, and longing for a small cafe to sit in to wait for the storm. McD, our great sponsor located in the other land and to get to that land we must get into a boat first, so we agreed to find a little cafe near st.marco's square. We found it. It's a cute little place called 'the indian place' but the poeple in it are no Indians, they all Italiano. We ordered our drinks and write postcards.

Turned out the rain didn't stop until 13.00 so we went out of the cafe anyway and went souvenir shopping. Honestly, it's still fun. we didn't espect to get hit by rain storm in Venice, but it's still fun anyway, we got to experience the sunny day and the rainy one.

After souvenir shopping the wind was just kinda unbearable so we decided to go home and planned to go out again in the evening. Of course the rain gotten worse and yes, we ended up ordering pasta in the hostel cafetaria which tasted great and we still got a chance to watch the sunset (yep, the sun decided to shine at 9 p.m).

#30. Milan - Venice

It's been a month!!

We took the train to venice and by two and a half hour we're in Venice already. I saw from afar how venice was and once we crossed the bridge and entered venice I litterally act like kid travelling to Disneyland. Call me mellow or anything but one of the reason this city is in my 'things to do before I die' list was because of my curiousity of its beauty. Venice didn't let me down. It is beautiful. And romantic.

Our hostel located abit far away from the main land so we had to get a 'bus'. 'bus' meant boat. The city built on water and there'd be no use having a car here. I grin all the time we're on the boat. Everything just cutely different. The system's different, the gas station's different, the workshop's different. Everything they built adjusted to the needs of travelling on water and that's just something nice to see.

After we checked in we went to st.Marco square just to be astonished even more by this city. The canal, the gondola, the cafes, even the pengamen are just great. I don't know how else to describe it. I had the moment before tears due to happiness here. Everything you saw on TV or internet about Venice are true. It is that beautiful (word count beautiful, I used it a lot).

After we saw enought of the city and it's gotten dark anyway, we went home and agreed to go souvenir shopping tomorrow. So goodnight venezia!

#29. Milan

Material connection was the main reason why we're here. If Mia wasn't planning on going to Milan, maybe I wont come here, but I kinda like the city anyway so it's okay. Material connection is a kind of library for materials. It's not huge but as far as i'm concern if I went there when I was doing my final project, I don't think i'd have any problem convinving any teachers about my lightweight material. I bought 4 books about material here, worth the price but I don't know whether my backpack could handle it or not.

After material connection we went to Duomo. Eva said that it's place we have to see if we're in Milan. Now we're talking. Duomo fitted the image of Milan I have in mind. The street full of Bvlgari, LV, Armani, Ferrari and stuff that name i'm sure you're familiar with. I said to Mia, we wont be able to shop here anyway so just walk though it take pictures and go home.

We ended up with 3 shopping bags each on our way home.

It's not Italy without pasta, we bought ready made pasta yesterday and cooked it tonight. It was tortelini and I liked it. Maybe it'll taste much better in a real Trattoria but the instant one was good enough for us.

#28. Prague - Milan

It's a relieve to know that Prague only has one airport, really made things easier because they provided good public transportations. When we got into the bus stop that'd take us to the airport, a whole bunch of other backpackers were also lining up with us. It was a nice thing to look at, because we share the same kinda way to travel.

According to experience, Easyjet was waaaaaaay better than Ryanair. The sevice was not that 'cheap' and the flight was actually smoother, execpt when we're about to land, the plane rocked right and left and later that I know that that'd happened to every flight from every airlines landing in Italy area. Everything supposed to end smoothly if only I didn't forgot my jacket. I left my jacket in the cabin and had to wait for more than an hour to get that back from the lost and found team.

Bought our ticket to the city and to be honest I felt like we're in Jakarta already. The building, the mess, almost the same. Milan didn't really look like a city I have in my mind when I heard it. I thought it'll be high class city with boutiques everywhere, but to me it was almost like a trip to 'kota tua' in Jakarta.

We met Eva and went staight to her place to put our bags, then we headed out for pizza. So there was this famous pizza parlor in Milan (according to eva's info) and they only serve one kind of pizza, Margareta. We ate it and good God! It tasted great. The mozzarella cheese literally melt and beleberan from the plate.

We called it a day, I like Italy, I like the language and I like the people.. All you need to do just nod along, saying 'si' and laughed because everything they said sound funny.