June 29: We are in Rome!

Yesterday we left Bassano and took the train to Rome. First we took a regional commuter train into Venice where we connected with a high speed train to Rome. The train travels at speeds over 300 kilometers per hour so it is much faster than driving. 

 

Our route

 

 

I found the train grafitti especially interesting

 

The view of the tuscan countryside from the train was just as I had imagined. 

 

The train barista making me a cafe macchiato. 

We made some friends on the train....

 

These girls are studdying abroad in Tuscany with a group through their college in North Carolina. 

They made me jealous with stories of the food chemistry and artisan bread baking courses they have been taking in Italy. 

 

These are the two Melissas. They are from San Diego. They are spending a couple of weeks together traveling through France, Italy, and Greece. Melissa(on the left) just graduated from UCSD, and Melissa (on the right) attends a college nearby in San Diego. They told us all about their visit to the Paris Disneyland which has an extra elaborate Cinderella's castle with a very realistic smoke breathing dragon beneath it. 

We expect to be welcoming all of our new train friends in Santa Barbara in the near future 😎

We arrived in Rome and found our hostel/hotel just a few blocks away. 

We are staying at "The Beehive", an urban hipster hostel owned by an american couple. I had heard about it on "the iceberg probect", an Italian language learning website and podcast. 

 

 

The room is clean and pleasant, but it is tiny, and the bathroom is smaller than I thought possible. The area around the hostel is very sketchy.  I would be nervous about walking alone. I guess that is what comes with a central location near the train station. Lucky for me I have a big burly husband to walk next to 😉

After checking in we went to explore. We took a metro to the area near the Colloseum to find a late lunch. We found this little hole in the wall place serving pizza by the kg. The family running it was very interesting to watch; the girl at the counter totally reminded me of an '80s Madonna 

 

 

Good pizza😋 and a super afforable lunch. 

 

 

 

Then we walked about 2 blocks over to the Colosseum and looked around. 

 

 

It is pretty amazing to be standing right next to such an iconic historical monument. 

We decided to book tickets for a hop-on/hop-off bus that goes all around Rome. 

 

We rode the bus all around the city for the next 2 hours, listening to the audio commentary of the city's sights. 

 

Vatican City is across the bridge

 

 

 

 

 

Then we got off of the bus and explored more by foot, walking through narrow stone streets, and we made our way to the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain. 

 

 

It looks so inviting. And it is so very hot out.   It took every ounce of self control I have not to jump in and go for a swim.  

 

We were ready for dinner so we found a restaurant recommended by my guidebook: "Miscelanea". It was very good and affordable and the portions were generous. We ordered way too much food. The whole dinner with wine was only 40€

 

 

 

They have a house specialty wine that they serve to guests as an after dinner treat. It is called "Sexy Wine". I thought it tasted like a black cherry wine cooler. 

We walked back through the streets which were all lit up and full of people. There was a lot going on and the energy was high. Rome is an active place at night. 

 

Then back to our hotel after a long day.  

We had a fun first day in Rome!
 

 

June 20: France, Day 3: sightseeing galore!

Our second day waking up in France we got a slightly earlier start than yesterday, but not by much. We spent about an hour driving around the St. Cloud suburb where we are staying and running some errands. We wanted to get some cereal and milk for Bethany, and I needed to buy more socks. I had expected to be wearing sandals and sundresses, but it has been rainy and I only packed 2 pairs of socks.  

We still don't have data service for our cell phones, and we mapped our way to the store on the apartment wifi before we left, but then we realized that we didn't know how to get back! We had to find a McDonalds so we could use their wifi and map our way back. 

Once we got back to the apartment we got ready and headed out to catch the bus. The buses in Paris were packed and there were so many energized crowds because of the Euro Cup games being played today. There was an abundance of soccer fans sporting their favorite team's jerseys and you could see seas of green everywhere with so many fans rooting for the Irish team. 

We headed to the Eifel Tower first. It was bigger than we had expected. 

 

 

 

A funny thing is that there was a giant soccer ball hanging underneath it. They are really serious about their soccer here!

Next, we found the bridge that has all of the locks hanging on it. Bethany was very excited because it was in one of her favorite movies- "Now you see me". We bought a lock and she wrote our names on it and then locked it to the bridge and threw the key into the Seinne. 

 

 

Apparently it wasn't the original bridge fence which had to be dismantled due to the weight of all the locks, but that didn't lessen Bethany's excitement. 

Next we went to explore the flower market on the little island in the middle of the Seinne. 

 

We were tired and hungry, but had a hard time figuring out where we wanted to stop to eat and we ended up eating our Paris lunch at a Thai restaurant which is ironic because we eat thai food all the time at home, and I expected to be eating only French food in France. We did however, get a crepe for dessert in the subway station 😜

 

 

The last stop on our list for today was the Moulin Rouge. The red-light district was interesting and, not surprisingly, a bit sketchy, but it was cool to finally see the Moulin Rouge. 

 

 

June 20: Day 2 in France: Public transportation

Today it was raining, which was nice after being in the California drought.  

We spent the day exploring Paris and leaning how to use the public transportation system. We purchased 3-day unlimited ride passes that give access to a complicated network of buses and subways. 

 

 
We found our way to the Pantheon, the Assembly, the Madeline, and the Opera. 

But one of the first things we found was an adorable little candy shop where we had so many samples that I left with a sugar headache. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ate dinner in a "Creperie" near the Pantheon. 

 

After we ordered the waitress came back to the table to ask if we would like to change our order because the bread was not fresh (it had been baked that morning!). We decided that we would be ok with the bread, which was delicious.