Rome/Pompeii, Italy

We left early in the morning on Sunday to arrive in Rome early afternoon, so we could get to exploring right away.  We pre-ordered our colosseum tickets online and decided that would be a good landmark to check out in the afternoon as it was only a 10 minute walk from our hostel.  Since we booked online, we paid a small extra booking fee but it was well worth it when we arrived.  We walked past hundreds of people in line in what was estimated as a 2-3 hour queue to the "reservations" line with only 5 people.  We walked around the colosseum with our pre-downloaded audio guides so we wouldn't have to bother with a tour guide.  We found out some interesting information, for example:

• Place for fights between gladiators, fights with animals and public executions by wild animals
• 9,000 animals slaughtered in colosseum in the inaugural year in 79 AD
• 4 levels of seating (moving upwards) were for senators (personalized seats made of marble), knights, Roman Citizens, poor citizens and common women
• Where the private entrance for the emperor was located
• Up to 73,000 spectators

The ticket also included access to Palatine Hill and the Roman forum which we visited right after. These sites were full of ancient ruins.

The following day we decided on a day trip to Pompeii as other travellers had highly recommended it and we had an extra travel day to use on our Eurail pass.  Pompeii was covered in 20 feet of ash in 79 AD after an eruption of Mount Vesuvius and later uncovered to find the city to be very preserved due to the lack of air and moisture.  We were there for a couple hours and got a chance to see a good portion of the city including the amphitheatre and voids between the ash, filled with plaster, to see the positions of the humans when they died.  We were kind of hoping to see the people as they were in the houses but the people and artifacts have all been removed and put into one area.

Our final day in Rome was to visit the Vatican City and St. Peter's square.  We booked online, which once again saved us waiting in a MASSIVE line, allowing us to walk to the front and right into the city.  We're glad we did our research before visiting these huge Roman attractions.  The city was neat, although there was waayyy too many people in there so it was hard to move around freely.  We saw a lot of the famous artwork, including the Sistine Chapel, where security tried to keep everyone silent to little avail.  After the Vatican, we headed out to check out St. Peter's square where the Pope comes out most Sundays.  Unfortunately we were not there on a weekend so only got to check out the area.

We then finished the day by heading out to an Italian restaurant that specializes in gluten-free pizza and pasta for our last night in Rome.  Holly had the gluten-free pizza she had been craving and I had a large calzone that looked like a giant pizza pop.

We headed back to the hostel for an early night, as we were off to Greece the next day!

Kev

Cinque Terre, Italy

We arrived in the Cinque Terre a little later than expected, due to the reliability of the Italian train system.  After checking into a small family run hotel, we explored the village we were staying in (Vernazza) before going out for a nice dinner by the ocean.  All the villages in the Cinque Terre are extremely charming, with so much color, character, and situated in the most beautiful landscape.  It's no wonder the region is considered a World Heritage Site.  Due to there not being much on at night there, we just checked out the stunning sunset and watched the powerful ocean waves explode over the rocks, before calling it an early night. 

The next day, we hiked the trail from Vernazza to Corniglia, the next town over.  The hike consisted of rugged landscape, absolutely breathtaking views of the ocean, and friendly people along the way.  Surprisingly, most people we talked to in this region were North Americans,  which was definitely a change.  After exploring Corniglia (situated high up on a cliff, unlike Vernazza which is right on the water), we took a train to the village on the other side of Vernazza, named Monterosso.  This is the most resort-like town in the Cinque Terre, with the nicest beach.  Here, we relaxed on the beach, checked out the town, and we were going to hike back to Vernazza until we were advised against it.  So instead, we took the train, and arrived back in Vernazza within five minutes.

After dinner, we spent another quiet night researching Rome, which we left for today by 630 am.
Holly

Florence, Italy

We arrived in Florence in the evening, after a long travel day.  It took us about fifteen extra minutes to find our airBNB host's apartment, as Florence has a system consisting of three different numbering systems for addresses.  They are color-coded, and of course the number we were looking for was in the palest color of all three (and as our host said, "nowhere else in Italy do they have this, only in Florence"). We had a rather lengthy introduction to the apartment with the host, where Kev had to prove he could unlock the apartment door about three times and turn on the gas stove, and as for me, the important information was where the iron and hairdryer were - and whether or not I approved of the bathroom.  Finally around nine pm, after a swift goodbye, our host whisked out the door and we went out for a nice dinner.

Our first full day consisted of exploring the main focal points of the city.  Included in this was the great Duomo (cathedral) which was absolutely breathtaking, the central market, the piazza del Signoria, and the piazza Michelangelo which had magnificent views over the city.  That night we went for dinner at a buffet where you pay 9 euros for a big drink and all you can eat.  However, the food was pretty mediocre, so the all you can eat aspect was lost on us.  We also had to check out a gelateria, which Italy is so famous for.

The next day, we checked into a hostel in the morning, and went for lunch before going on a budget wine tour in the Chianti region.  The guides drove us and fourteen other attendees in two vans, first into the Tuscan countryside to a vineyard up in the beautiful hills.  After getting to try the grapes right off the vines, we arrived at a charming house where a very passionate host gave us a tour and then a wine tasting.  The tasting consisted of three different wines (two reds and one dessert wine), olive oil, a very small tasting of truffles (worth €5000 per pound), bruschetta, 8 year old balsamic vinegar, and finally 3 drops of 30 year old balsamic vinegar on vanilla ice cream (delicious - don't knock it until you try it).  

After the tasting, we got driven to Siena, which is a beautiful small city sort of similar to Florence.  We got some free time there, where Kev and I went for a drink with four other people from our van.  The next leg of the journey was where the 'budget' part of the type was extremely apparent... We basically got dropped off in some fortress in the middle of nowhere, for ten minutes of exploring.  To top it off, we couldn't even see around us because it was already 8 o'clock at night.

Finally, we got to our destination for dinner, which must have been the most entertaining part of the day.  Our host, an older Italian man named Giovanni, couldn't speak more than three words of English (hello, goodbye, and thank you), but still spent the whole night singing, drinking wine, and interacting with all of his guests.  Our dinner was a three part meal, all delicious.  We started with appetizers of Italian meat, cheese, bruschetta and salad, and then had spaghetti (they even had gluten free spaghetti for me), and finally we had dessert with a mousse-like cake and another apricot pastry.  Of course, with this was all the wine you could drink (the bottles were at least 2.5L each).  

 

After a great dinner with great conversations, we got driven back to Florence where we went out with all of our fellow wine tourmates, before heading out the next morning for the Cinque Terre.

Holly

Austria

So we decided to add Austria to our itinerary for a relaxing time outside of the big touristy towns we've been visiting and so Holly could see some of the Sound of Music sites that are famous in Salzburg and surrounding areas.  We stayed just outside Salzburg with an AirBNB host who runs something  like a small hotel in a little town called Loibichl in the mountainous region. Our first day we rented bikes from our host and spent the day cycling up and down the hills, through the bush and along the lakes for a total of 34 km.  We were exhausted by the end but it felt very good to get a solid workout in coupled with some gorgeous scenery.

Our next day we spent cycling around our area and the nearby city, Mondsee, where we visited the church where the wedding was in The Sound of Music.  There wasn't much going on in the town, so we called it an early night and were headed off early the next day to Florence (we decided to skip Venice as it is very expensive and we suddenly ran short on time for Italy).  Before we caught the train in the morning we spent an hour to check out Salzburg and some more Sound of Music scenery.

Munich - Oktoberfest

Our visit to Munich was short and very centered around visiting Oktoberfest so our experiences were almost exclusively based on this event.  All accommodations are very expensive as they are scaled up through the roof as there are an extra 4 million people visiting the city over the course of the festival, so we decided 2 nights should suffice to experience it.  We had a long travel day to get there from Interlaken, arriving in the middle of the afternoon.  We got settled and decided to take the S-Bahn into the festival area to get a feel for place before we spent a full day there the following day.  The initial impression was overwhelming as there were more people in one area then we'd ever seen before including a lot of Germans from all over the country as well as people from all over the world mixed in.  Almost all were dressed in traditional Bavarian outfits with the men sporting lederhosens and the women dirndls.  We were not dressed up for the event yet but we realized it would be a necessity for the full experience the next day.  The crowd included people of all ages from families with small children to old couples who I could imagine having attended the last 40 years.  The most intoxicated individuals were all between 16-30, many of which appeared to have lost any one they had come with with no clue what was going on as they stumbled through the crowd bumping into everyone.  We were both hungry and decided to dip inside a restaurant and order a half-chicken each as that is one of the main food options at the festival.  Of course to fit in it must be accompanied with a 1-litre stein of beer for myself and glass of wine for Holly as a gluten-free alternative.  We then continued on to the absolutely packed festival (it happened to be a German holiday that day to make it even crazier) to scope out some alternatives for beer tents to visit the next day including the Hofbrau tent, Hippodrome, Augustiner, etc.

We had ordered costumes to wear for the festival although Holly's did not arrive in time and mine was extremely tacky compared to the authentic outfits people were wearing.  The next morning we went into a discount clothing shop underneath the apartment we were staying in and hit the jackpot with Bavarian outfits being cleared out as there was only a couple days remaining in the festival.  Holly's was a very nice dirndl and my lederhosen looked very legit as well although I could have fit two of me inside of it.  We were at the festival early to try to get a seat in a tent, arriving just after 11am. We went into the Hofbrau tent as this was one of the most famous.  It was already packed but we narrowly missed a lineup about to form as they reached capacity.  The atmosphere was amazing as we looked around to see 10,000 people with beer steins in their hands clinking glasses and having a great time.  The band would come on sporadically and play one of the Bavarian tunes that was heard all over the festival to a huge response of cheering from the crowd. There were very few seats left as we looked around but we managed to squeeze in right between a group of Germans and a group of Italians who we partied with for the next few hours before we were kicked out at 3pm for all the people that had reservations.  We had an excellent time and actually fit in pretty well with our outfits, even the Germans were impressed we dressed up for the 1 day.  We then hung out with the Germans for a while before heading back for a nap and supper.

Hofbrau tent statistics

Next we went to Salzburg, Austria.

Kevin

French Coast

From Barcelona we took the train to Marseille for the night and spent the following day there.  The main attraction there was the huge port and the views along the coastline.  We used the city bike rental service that cost only 1 euro for a week long subscription as long as you switch the bikes off every half hour. The bike stations were all along the coastline which allowed us to bike all day, traveling just under 20 kilometers at a leisurely pace.

Port in Marseille

Biking along the Marseille coast

The following day we headed into Nice for a 4 night stay.  We spent our first full day on a beach just outside of Nice which had an excellent view along with warm, clear water.  That night we headed out for a night on the town with some people from the hostel.

We spent our next day in Monaco where the Monte Carlo casino is located where they filmed Casino Royale of the James Bond collection.  This is one of the most plush areas either of us have ever been to, with a brand new Porsche being one of the lower end cars on the road.  Most cars on the roads were Ferraris, Maseratis, Rolls Royce, etc.  They also happened to have a yacht show where they had the craziest yachts in the world on display.  A guy was leaving and gave me his pass (80 euro value) to check it out for a little while before it closed.  I spent some time on one of the classic sailboats letting the yacht broker show me around.  It was very nice but I decided there are more practical ways to invest €15M, although it was one of the cheaper ones.  Some of the new yachts were up around €40M that I saw.  We headed back to town and went out for ice cream that night after dinner.

Kev with some of the cars parked outside the Monte Carlo casino

Today was a thunderstorm for a good chunk of the day so far, thus why I am inside writing the blog in the middle of the afternoon.

We're heading out to Interlaken, Switzerland tomorrow for some hiking in the alps before Oktoberfest in Munich from October 3-5.  We will keep you posted.
 Kev

Interlaken, Switzerland

We arrived late our first night in Interlaken after a long day on 5 different trains to get here from Nice.  It was dark, but a nice quiet town with hardly any vehicle traffic.  Our big event of the first night was to go to the small grocery store that was open late to get some food after we had checked in at the hostel. We noticed on the walk there was a large light way up in the sky that appeared to be floating in the middle of nowhere, which we assumed had to be some restaurant on the top of one of the mountains, that were invisible at night.  It was a very weird feeling as we could feel that the mountains were all around us but we couldn't see them.

The next day we decided to do our first hike on the nearby mountain, Harder Kulm.  Although the lady at the front desk advised us against doing this hike without proper footwear and equipment, we decided it would be a nice challenging hike to start out.  The morning had very poor weather with rain and lots of clouds and fog which provided poor visibility, so it was better to wait for the biggest mountains for the next day which was supposed to be clearer.  We ended up hiking to the top in a couple hours over a distance of 4.1 km and an elevation change of 800 m.  The weather was very weird as it started off chilly but we ended up shedding all of our extra layers by about half way up.  We imagined the hike would be similar to a rainforest hike as the humidity was so high and we were surrounded by fog the entire climb.  There was one opening on the way up where we travelled through ranging cows with staring problems. This was a messy leg of the trip as it was muddy and full of cow pies.  I also got a nice little boost of energy when I decided to jump over a small fence that turned out to be electrically charged. The top of the mountain was at elev. 1322 m and was almost completely immersed in clouds at the top, clearing up a bit later so we could get some views and cool pictures.

Kev at top of Harder Kulm - Elev. 1322 m ASL

View of Interlaken from the top of Harder Kulm - Elev. 1322 m ASL

Today, we decided to head into the Jungfrau region where the "Top of Europe" (Jungfraujoch) is located.  We took a couple trains up into the mountains and got off at the Alpiglen station to start our hike of the Eiger Trail, which is located under the huge Eiger North Wall and leads up to Eigergletscher and an excellent view of the glaciers on Monch and Jungfraujoch.  This hike was a bit longer than the previous day at about 2.5 hours and we travelled from elev. 1615 m to elev. 2320 m above sea level.  The hike was came with the warning of "For well-equipped and experienced hikers only" as it was fairly steep at some points, however, we managed with our running shoes once again.  It was an excellent workout as we did it uphill, when it seems that most prefer the downhill option.  The weather cooperated and gave us some clear skies up until the very tips of the highest mountains so we managed to get some incredible views.

Kev and Holly at start of Eiger Trail - Elev. 1615 m ASL

Holly at Eigergletscher with glacier between Monch and Jungfraujoch in background - Elev. 2320 m ASL

We got access to a computer today so we were able to upload some pictures as well as type on an actual keyboard to provide a little extra description.

Kev