Wandering Browns

Organ in the church the pope wouldn't let the people build... In  order to catch a train to Catania, we had to leave our hostel at 5:15 this morning. It was hard to get up that early, but the water and bay were beautiful at that early hour before sunrise. We took a few buses to the train station, then a train to Catania, then a bus to our hostel. We dropped our stuff off around 10:00 and set off to enjoy the city. The ladies at the hostel were incredibly nice and had a cute little boy that kept chomping on pens while the hostel owner was trying to tell us the best sights in Catania. She also let us have a little snack from the breakfast bar! We went first to a very old monastery that is now a university. We saw archaeology students working on some old parts of a building there. The church next to the monastery had some interesting history. At one time, the plans were to build it very tall. The pope came and stopped them because no church can be taller than St. Peter's Basil...

The night train to Palermo was way better than the one to Rome. We left Rome at 9:30 pm, and were in a sleeping cabin with a delightful Sicilian couple from Messina (main industrialized city on the island). She was a retired teacher and had a great conversation with Austin for about an hour about our background and travels. She was traveling back home from spending a day with her daughter in Rome. Both her daughters are archaeologists and go to University of Padova.  She was so nice and gave us some great travel tips. They got off in Messina, so we even got the car to ourselves for a couple hours as we made our way to Palermo by 10:00. Half of the HUGE tuna and guy chopping it up. Once in Palermo, we headed over to the famous market to see what that was all about. It was a pretty cool place, each vendor had a little shade set up over their merchandise and so there was just a narrow space to walk through the entire thing. It lasted for about 2 blocks, and a new addition ...

Gold leaf crowns and jewelry Rome day 2 was all about the Vatican. After getting off the subway, we were bombarded by people offering tours in every language possible in order to skip the lines to get into the Vatican museums. We had to refuse at least 10 very insistent people in order to wait in the line to get in. Once the museums opened, we were able to get in within a few minutes. I had read about how overwhelming these museums were to visit, and they did not disappoint. The view we take when going to museums is that if we are spending the money, we want to see as much as possible. I had prepared myself to not see everything, because it has been calculated that if one took 1 minute at every exhibit in the museum, they would be in the museum for over 1 year. We started in the gallery that we knew would be the hardest for us to get through- the painting gallery. We saw works by many famous artists, and then took a peek at some of the gardens down below. Austin in front of ...

The days seem to be really long, but this trip is going by fast! Piazza Navona  To start off (mostly because it was too early to do anything else), we decided to go to a historic/famous market, Campo dei Fiori. It is just in a little square in the city, but hosts a daily market with all kinds of goods. It reminds me a lot of Farmer’s markets that  I have been to before, but they also have special pastas, spices, and other goods that normal farmer’s markets may not have. We bought some delicious strawberries and cherries and had them for breakfast. After Campo, we visited Piazza Navona, with the famous Bernini fountain of the four great rivers in the middle. It is a huge piazza, with restaurants lining it all around, and the big main fountain in the middle with 2 smaller fountains. After eating breakfast in this piazza, we wandered over to the Pantheon, which is a HUGE dome that used to be a pagan temple. The Catholics took it over and made it into a real church, but it...

View from our hostel window to Piazza San Marco Our night and day in Venezia turned out to be filled with surprises, both good and bad. We knew going into it that the Hostel Venezia was gigantic and so many young people would be there, but we did not know that quiet hours were not enforced, or that the wind whistling through the rafters of the buildings would slam the bathroom doors shut every 5 minutes... all night long... Our hostel was on an island right across from Piazza San Marco, and so it was just a boat ride away from the main sights of Venezia, so that was nice. The hostel was right on the water separating us from the main island, and we ate pizza sitting at the edge of the water Saturday night. As I alluded to before, Austin and I did not get very much sleep that night between drunk Italian girls yelling and slamming doors from about 1am-4am. We got back at them by getting up early… and heading over to Basilica di San Marco for mass at 9 am. This church is by far my f...

We awoke this morning to find that it was Saturday (It is REALLY hard to keep track of the days here when there is no schedule and we are exploring a new city every day), and market day in Prato della Valle. We strolled around the market, peeked into a church that looked cooler on the outside, and then wandered around the market for a bit. I wanted to take a picture of Prato della Valle with a bridge, and Austin got the camera out to find that the shutter/lens thing was stuck half way open. He, of course, accused me of breaking his camera, while I accused him of using all dead batteries so that the camera did not even have enough power to close. Turns out, a few glancing blows to the camera did the trick, and we did not have to buy a new camera! Crisis averted! Prato della Valle bridge and moat in background... right after the camera decided to live!  We next went over to the Duomo. While the Duomo was pretty cool, what was really amazing was the baptistery next door....

Internet has not been the most accessible the last few days, and right now we are in an internet cafe instead of on Austin's mini, so stay tuned for posts on Padova, Venezia, and Rome with pictures coming up when we have wifi. We are in Rome today and tomorrow, and today we were able to see the Pantheon, Colloseum, Palatine hill, and the Roman Forum, all ancient ruins of Rome. There was quite a bit of walking involved in these sights, but it was worth it to see so many HUMUNGOUS buildings. It is hard to fathom how they did it back then without cranes and other pieces of modern construction equipment. Tomorrow, we are spending the day at the Vatican to see St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican museums, Sistine chapel, etc. Then we are taking our 2nd night train to Palermo. Yay for night trains! Since we don't have access to our pictures, I'll stop with Rome there, and turn attention to other subjects both very important to me: food and bathrooms. Traveling in the manner we...