Experience The Adventure

No one speaks english…

Where did my posts go? Apparently there’s server problems… time to save there entries.

What I can remember, there were a couple of weeks where I took it easy, and one weekend where I went to southend with Sean northern Ontario. Southend on the sea – not much there, a really nice beach, lots of bars and gambling a long the coast. And the worlds longest pier. I felt sick standing out of the wind, because for the 1/2 hour it took to walk it, it was really really really windy, like leaning over 30 degrees to compensate. And I guess most people took the train to the end of the pier.

I planned to go to Dublin, but didn’t quite make it there.

This October break, eventually figured out it was thanksgiving (thanks for the messages), my boss let me off Friday, and so I was in Rome for 5 days.

Off the plane in Rome Ciampino, bus to the termini station. There was graffiti everywhere. I walked into the hostel, and missed it because there was no sign, and you had to find the buzzer for the apartment, went inside, took a look, and think… What have I done! It was a converted apartment with 20 people sitting on the couch in the tiny entrance. I pay the young man behind what appears to be desk, and he puts it in his wallet.

Everyone is the tiny confined space, all young (except the odd person) and doing the travelling thing, they were all extremely friendly. People just sat around and chatted, used the internet, watch TV, and drank… that environment seemed to bring out the best in people. There was little security, but the feel from those who were there made everything feel safe. Breakfast and a quick dinner were provided, which was really nice, especially for dinner where everyone gathered and we talked about what to do in the evening. What did we do? Party of course!

Saw the coliseum the first day. It was amazing for a structure built so long ago. It’s too bad it wasn’t all still standing. Rather small compared to some things, or the movies, but still it has large with some definite engineering work. I paid extra to grab a tour and skip the line, well worth it (like 20 cad). That and the surrounding ruins, palaces, etc. took the whole day, though I know it shouldn’t.

The roman baths were huge, and it was great that the floor in part was still intact with the drainage system still working. I can only imagine our current day structures, any of them, that will be able to survive for so long.

The Vatican museum and Sistine chapel took the next day. With the tour you gain a little bit of insight into the artwork and the paintings, lots of hidden meanings. I thought it was funny that Michelangelo could not paint women, and that artist would put themselves in it or other people in different situations depending on if they like them. Saw that valuable purple stone, ooooo. Then through part of St. Peters Basilica, but sadly part was closed. I returned a few days later, to go up to the dome and down to the coffins. With the massive line-ups, it would have taken a day anyway.

Some sights covered:
St. Peter’s Basilica – was immense. Almost pure tourists.
Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel – huge, lots of famous painting
pantheon – well preserved, open dome, drainage in the floor.
The monument to the unknown soldier – spectacular
every plaza imaginable!
Shopping! In Italian only, quite difficult
The subway – nice or lots of graffiti
Spanish steps
Castle Sant’Angelo (castle) – Walked around outside
Coliseums and Palatine hill – amazing
The beach – clean, huge, hot there!

There were many places where no one spoke English, and was the first experience that I had like that. Especially shopping, either in stores, grocery stores, or out of the main tourist areas. People walk up to me and try to speak to me in Italian, every day. It was difficult at times, usually just shrugged my shoulders and off I went. One store, I was shopping for a jacket, and no one spoke English. There was a lot of charades and pointing. I could tell when he said in Italian, “he only speaks English”, then found a guy there who spoke French. It was better than English, even if I could not fully understand him, my French is a little rusty.

A couple of my favourite places were a church on top of the hill where the monument to the Unknown Soldier was. It was much nicer than the other one, looked like it was actually used and only a couple of people in there. Another neat place was a park, where the locals would go with their kids to play and walk around. They had turtles and fish in the ponds, that was neat.

It was a really neat trip. I would like to go back to Italy, maybe some other area (Leonardo, I will visit Milano yet). From what people said, it sounds like tourist are constantly everywhere it Italy.

Some picture, to try and give you a taste of what it was like. Enjoy.

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Other stuff

Yesterday saw a guest speaker at the school, Steve Goyl ASL 72, who led the first environmental expedition up Mount Everest. It was an amazing presentation. To hear in detail, and in person, what it was like to scale mount Everest, on all on a tight budget and environmental concern, in total his team removing 5 000 pounds of garbage from the mountain. After the group got ahead of him, his spent 5 days in bad weather at camp 4 scavenging off of the garbage and oxygen there, then on the 5th day summited the peak on his own. Meanwhile, the rest of the group was heading down to base camp.
So many of the people in the pictures died in the following years, on the mountain or elsewhere.
He finished up by saying, at no price would he ever return to Mount Everest.

Tags: London, London Trips, UK

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