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Thursday 22 October 2009

Six days in Italia

The Swiss trip happened in August and I never got around to blog about it. So here is a brief account of our recent trip to the historical capital Rome and the water city of Venice. It was a six day trip planned well in advance unlike the Swiss trip which was literally a last minute booking. I was more organised this time and opted for a self catering accomodation and we survived on home-cooked food for 4 days. We also bought a child carrier for Aditi as I had quite a tough time carrying her around in Switzerland. The first 3 days were spent in Rome, the next 2 days in Venice and the last day in Pisa.
Day 1: Woke up at 2 am, drove to East Midlands airport to catch an early morning flight to Rome. The flight was uneventful and had no trouble from Aditi while securing the seat belt. Took the coach from Rome airport to the city and walked to the apartment. And heres where the fun begins. The apartment was really well done. It had been recently refurbished and we were probably one of the its first tenants. It was exactly as it had been described and with tram and bus lines running right outside on the street, the position could not have been better.A supermarket closeby and buses straight to the colosseum. We had a lunch of idli/chutney, had a nice hot shower and left to explore Rome. Our first halt was the colosseum.We spent quite a bit of time exploring the inside of the colosseum and taking lots of pictures. On our way back, we spotted a park and Aditi was delighted. That was her part of the holiday. We usually hit a park or beach in the evenings so Aditi can have some fun. She played for a while on the slide, watched the dogs and enjoyed herself. We visited the supermarket later and had chappattis and subzis for dinner.
Day 2:
Had a good night's rest, followed by home made breakfast and we left early that day. We were to take the open top double decker bus from the main station. There are about half a dozen companies that run this service and we chose one with a 3 day ticket that also allowed us to use the public transport in Rome. We visited the Pantheon, a few Squares and then hit the Vatican just after lunch. It was breathtaking. Right in the middle of a modern city, you see this huge monumnet - brilliant architecture that was created almost 1400 years ago.It took us around 2 hours to complete the tour - and Aditi slept the whole time in her child carrier. Both of us were eager to try an authentic italian pizza and the first one we had near the Vatican was a disappointment.It was nowhere as good as the Pizza Hut or Dominos one. My MIL wanted us to light a candle and here we found electronic candles in every church. You drop a coin in the box and a tiny LED light comes on. Really nice. We then left for the Trevi fountain. This place was terribly crowded, but we found a quiet corner. We took turns to drop a coin into the wishing fountain, and then threw another one each over our left shoulder. We drank water straight from the tap - thats considered a visitor attraction here. Aditi enjoyed it all, drinking water from the lion's mouth, wetting her clothes and being very happy licking her cone ice cream. She loved exploring it all with us, happily posed for pictures and enjoyed the food we gave her.
Day 3:
More sight seeing happened today.We booked our tickets to Venice, enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate. It really is melted chocolate, unlike the hot chocolate we get in Britain. Enjoyed a vege panini. It was heavenly and we were very hungry and exhausted too. Realised that we are vege people. That cheese and bread is not for us. But salads - always welcome, never boring. Hit the shopping center of Rome and shopped aroudn for a few souveniors. Went to McD to be totally disappointed with their Vege burger. Their was no cutlet thing inside the burger, just 2 leaves of lettuce, a slice of cheese, tomato and cucumber. Climbed up the Vittorio to get a panaromic view of Rome. Learnt that its better to carry more cash than cards. More than we think it might be necessary.
Day 4:
We debated quite a bit on our leaving time. I wanted to catch the 6:50AM train and reach Venice by 11:20, but Prashanth was nto sure if we'd be up and ready, The next one was at 8:50AM, which would go into Venice by 13:20 - well past lunch time for Aditi, which I wanted to avoid. I knew we'd be able to leave on time, so we booked the 6:50AM train. Left our self catering apartment early that morning and reached the train station - had a quick coffee and boarded the train. Nothing spectacular about the train itself, we reached Venice before noon. And the sight that struck us was so beautiful. right outside the station is the Grand Canal and it was buzzing with activity at that time. Lots of people getting in and out of the boats/gondolas and the stretch of water that seemed never ending - it was fantastic. We were in love with this place. We did not want to let go the water out of our sight, but we had to check into our hotel. We walked through the narrow lanes and watched the shops dotted all along our route and our hotel was in another narrow lane. The room was on the second floorr and after having lived in a spacious self catering apartment, this felt rather tiny. A quick shower and lunch later(I had prepared curd rice that morning and packed it for our lunch), we hit the boat stop closest to our hotel. Aditi was as excited as we were and kept saying boat - We go boating. She loved the waters. We went to the San Marco area which is the typical tourist spot - went around all the touristy places - more churches, clock tower, the narrow lanes and bridges - we loved it all. Venice is famous for its glassware and although I was tempted to buy so many lovely articles- Prashanth was successful in preventing me from doing so. He convinced me that it may not be possible to carry them back in a good state, and I'd be terrribly upset if they broke during transit, so we bought none of the glassware. We went on the boats for a while, enjoyed taking different routes, shopped at a supermarket and headed back to the hotel. After another shower, we went out to dine in an authentic Italian restaurant. I had already fed Aditi her dinner and thankfully they had a high chair, which was very useful. We ordered pizzas, but they allowed no sharing. So we had to eat a whole pizza all by ourselves. The base itself was very thin and it tasted authentic, but one whole 10 inch pizza was a bit too much for me. And worse - we were not allowed to take away the leftovers - because they had nothing to pack them in. The bill came as a shock - what with 12% service charge added to it, but the pizza tasted great - so no whining there.
Day 5:
We had no itenary in place, just decided to visit the islands around Venice and the first one we went to was Lido. Lido is a smaller version of Blackpool considering that there are lots of casinos. This is a very well formed island. the roads are neat, the pavements are wide -it was like suddenly stepping into an English town - it was too organized after the lovely chaos that was Venice. We walked down the main road to reach the other end of town - to a beach - hardly populated beach. There were in all about 10 people on the beach and we had fun. Its been a relaly long time since I went to a beach, cant really recall when I went last time, so it was total fun. It was the first time Aditi was taken to a beach, so she had fun playing on the sands, collecting shells and being a little girl. The water was not too cold and perfect for her to dip her feet. We posed for some photographs and had tea at the beach restaurant. I had fed Aditi her sandwich at the beach before we treaded on the waters, so I wasnt expecting her to be hungry. We gave her a glass of hot chocolate when we had tea. But when we were walking back after about 2 hours on the beach in the morning sun, she wanted lunch. Aditi was sitting on her child carrier and when she spotted a bench on the pavement, she asked me to put her down. We thought she probably wanted to stretch her legs and brought her down. She hopped over to the bench, asked us to sit down and said - Let's have sandwich. We were surprised - the way she declared she was hungry - it was so cute. So we sat down, fed her and went back to board the ferry to Venice. We left Lido after spending the morning on the beach - the real fun part of our trip and went to yet another bridge in Venice - this time taking a completely different route. I was stunned to see a university in the middle of the waters. We had covered various routes by now and had almost taken all possible means of transport in Venice.We went to the trains station and bookedo ur tickets to Pisa, shopped for a bit at the supermarket and went back to the hotel. Unlike the previous day, we opted for a simple dinner. I was unable to eat a lasagne in Italy, but none of the restaurants had a veggie option - really none of them - and we checked atleast a dozen restaurants. since the lasagnes are layered in advance, there was no option to remove the meat portions.
Day 6:
We left shortly after breakfast at the hotel, bid goodbye to Venice and were off to Pisa. This was the last item on our itenary - to visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa and we were waiting to get back home. But Pisa did not disappoint us. We had to change trains enroute and just about managed to catch our connecting local train to Pisa. We had to activate tickets when travelling on a local train, but the lady ticket inspector was extremely friendly and waived our fine. We took a bus from the train station and were in front of the leaning tower in less than 10 minutes.And there are a couple of monuments to admire before you get to the Leaning Tower. Wikipedia gives the details about the history of this tower. Children below 8 years old are not allowed to enter the tower. So me and Prashanth had to take turns to sit with Aditi while the other went up. There were about 300 spiral steps leading to the top and the feeling on top was wonderful. The weather was perfect as well for early October - we had enough sunshine to get tanned. We booked our return flights from Pisa, so stopped over at McD, before taking the same bus to the airport. One thing new to this trip was I had atleast half a dozen people ask me how I managed to bring a toddler along on a sight seeing trip. I met a couple in the Tower of Pisa - from Scotland, who had left their toddler daughter back home.another one at the airport who also got someone to babysit their toddler. I also had quite a few strangers ask me about the child carrier and why the child would not walk around everywhere(!!). How do they expect a two and a half year old to walk all day along in crowded touristy places? We spent a while window shopping at the airport and finally sensed a huge sigh of relief as we landed in Britain. An hour later we were home. Aditi slept on the rturn flight as well and gave us no trouble putting on the seat belts. A lovely trip indeed.
Aditi has learnt the concept of time. She has learnt that we leave if its 20 past 8 in the morning and we come home in the evening by 6'o' clock. That shes allowed to play with her friends(the girls as she calls them), until 7'o' clock. Dinner is at 7:30pm and so on...Every few minutes, she comes and asks me - What time is it? And then repeats whatever I say. Its so cute to see her do that.