In Fair Verona

Arriving in a new city is always an interesting adventure. Some cities are gorgeous from the start. The small places in Germany, Paris, Rome...these are all pretty, or else impressive, when you arrive.

Then there are the cities that drop you at a bus or train station that seems to be in the middle of Sketchville. Or those that make the city look like it's entirely industrial. Venice was one of those places. If you stop at the Mestre station, part of your brain can't combine the facts of "I'm in Venice" and "This is Venice." It's just not very pretty until you get to the actual island.

Verona's train/bus station lives in an odd place between Sketchville and It's So Pretty I'm Gonna Die. We arrived during a slow time, and most things looked kind of bland. At first I worried that Verona was going to be more like Milan than Venice. But once you go a few bus stops to the Arena, Verona is THE CUTEST.

Everything you need to see in Verona (as in, the big name sites like the duomo and Juliet's balcony/house) is in a couple of miles' radius. We had a room in a tiny B&B just two minutes from the arena--essentially a mini colosseum. It was a fantastic location, and even though we we only a few seconds from the big things, we spent a few hours walking around.

One of the things I love about Italy is the architecture. Even though most of the buildings look like they were designed by the exact same person, there's something eternally charming about iron balconies and red-tiled roofs. I have so many pictures of multicolored streets with iron balconies covered in small gardens. And the shutters! I just don't think you can beat the look of an old town center in Italy or France. When I get home I probably won't be able to separate which city each photo goes to. But I don't really care. I'll keep taking pictures of random buildings until my phone fills up.

If Venice is a magical labyrinth, Verona is the opening scene of a Disney princess movie. I suppose that makes sense, since Shakespeare put Romeo and Juliet there. Cute town = romance, right? And "quaint" doesn't quite cover it, but it gets relatively close. So, how about "quaint romantic"? As if that can't describe every city and town in Europe. Ha.

If you ever get the chance, go to Verona. Just don't spend too much time at Juliet's house...we were there on a Sunday afternoon and it was PACKED. to get inside the courtyard, we simply inserted ourselves in the crowd and let it carry us to the right place. If you pay a few euro you can go in the house and stand on the balcony, but why do that when you can stand in the bustling cortyard and watch people creepily caress a statue of Juliet? Apparently it's good luck to rub her right breast...some people do it comedically. Some do it like pedophiles.

In general, if you see a crowd of people walking toward something, follow them. We ended up at the base of a castle (well, we think it was a castle...or monastery? Something?) with a fantastic view of the entire city. The sun was setting in fog and gathering rainclouds. There are few things better than watching a sunset while surrounded by Italian couples making out. Wait...not that last part. That was just slightly awkward.

For dinner we went to what felt like an Italian Chili's; Bri was starving and our first plan ended up being a bit too expensive, so we stopped at the first place we found. I ate an entire pizza by myself. Because Italian pizza. You need no reason besides that.

The super fun part of Verona happened when we left this morning. We had a 9:40 train from Verona Porta Nuova. The bus + walking inside the station would take 13 minutes. We were walking out the door at 9:10 and the owner Carmelina--for some reason behind me--just couldn't figure out how to add three person's worth of tourist tax to our room price. We stood there for ten minutes while she tried to add random numbers. Steph offered her a calculator, which she refused for five minutes. Carmelina spoke only Italian, and she kept saying things and nodding and mentioning numbers and shaking her head, and Stephanie looked up how to say "Our train leaves at 9:40" and only then did Carmelina think to call someone named Roberto whom it took about 3 seconds to add up our total and get us on our way.

At 9:30, we ran, backpacks and all, to the taxis.
At 9:33, we got in the taxi.
At 9:39, Bri and I ran into the station while Steph essentially threw 7 euros at the taxi driver.
And at 9:40:30, Bri and I arrived on Platform 3 just in time to watch the last few cars disappear down the tracks.

Few things start the day off as well as missing a train first thing in the morning.

Thankfully, there was a train leaving at 10:02 for Turino which would also stop in Milan, where we were meant to change trains for Geneva. We had to buy new tickets for the Verona-Milano leg, but our Milano-Geneva tickets were still fine.

I'm actually impressed we've only missed that one train so far (if you don't count that one German train that was late--totally not our fault).

Magic (aka Venice)

When I was in Italy in 2008, my friends and I spent most of our time with absolutely no idea where we were. We actually had--gasp--paper maps. Paper. Maps. And we used them to get around. It was surprising every time we arrived somewhere we *meant* to visit.

Smartphones changed everything about European travel. My sisters and I have used GPS daily to tell us where we are, where to go, what's nearby....until Venice.

I swear there's something in the air that confuses technology. People spend even amounts of time holding hands and starting dumbfounded at their phone screens. There's no mistaking the "Where the eff am I?" look in every language. The alleyways in Venice are like a sneaky labyrinth. You think you're headed the right direction, then you suddenly are forced to veer right and left, and you end up in a piazza behind where you started. The streets seem to move around you, like a puzzle that gains new levels depending on the steps you take.

But it's beautiful, and romantic, and kind of depressing to be here with sisters and not a significant other. It's been cloudy and since the island is pedestrian only, every sound is hushed. It makes it so easy to imagine you're alone in your own personal city.

Incidentally, we were here for New Year's Eve, and Venice put on the most spectacular fireworks show I've ever seen. Just...wow. Waterfalls of fire and light.

Concerning Busses...I Mean Coaches

Instead of "busses", I should probably say "coaches". Steph keeps correcting me on that. Yet, no matter how comfortable your coach is, it's still a big bus. It's nearly impossible to sleep on those things.

Unless you're 4'9" and weigh 3 pounds, in which case you can just curl up on two seats like a cat (I'm lookin' at you, tiny Italian teenager).

I've come to the conclusion that I'm an Amazon living in a world built for midgets. My knees are intimately acquainted with just about every seat back from Venice to London. Turning sideways doesn't create more room for long legs--it simply provides more surface area for the seat in front of you to bruise.

BUT I do have to say it's pretty fantastic to be able to get from Rome to Venice for only €19. It's a six-hour trip, but just short enough that the cheap price keeps it worth it. And when it gets you to your destination half an hour early, that's even better.

When in Rome...

Rome. Is. Awesome.

-the end.

I know every city in Europe is full of history. You can feel it in every cobblestone. But there's something about Rome that is almost overwhelming.

"That's where Julius Caesar stood. That's where Nero lived. That's where gladiators fought. This building has been here in some form for 2000 years."

On our first night in town, we checked into our apartment (a slightly awkward arrangement in which we had one bedroom and a couple had the other room and there was only one bathroom) and then we went straight out for dinner. We've had a problem with forgetting to eat on the days we travel...oops. after a quick calzone meal, we tried to get back into the apartment. Tried.

So I apparently am key-impaired. The door is one of those typical European ones, where the handle doesn't turn--you use the key to unlock and push the door open. Only it wouldn't unlock or open. For half an hour. We asked the owner for help, and she and her awesome husband came over. Of course it took them about 4 seconds to open the dumb thing. Since then, I always practice opening doors, like a small child...

The next day, we slept a little late and went to the colosseum. I love the colosseum. It's way smaller than it used to be, but it's still huge. It had this strange quality that makes it feel only large until you glance across the arena and see how tiny the people are over there are. Standing there and imagining what it would've been like to experience the colosseum during the games. Well, you know, without that whole people killing eachother thing.

We found ourselves a part of a tour group that had some great info, and afterwards they offered a "free" tour of the forum. The guide we had there was a British guy named Alex. If you ever go to Rome, get his info from me, because he's brilliant and knows everything about ancient Rome. He has worked at the Louvre, now he works at the Vatican. No big deal, right? At the end of the forum tour he offered everyone a morning or night walk through the "Secrets of Rome" the next day. It was expensive, but we like learning and Alex was a great guide, so we went reserved spots for the next evening.

The following morning we headed to the Vatican. I'm not Catholic, but I love the museums there. I'm pretty sure I hurt my neck looking at all of the ceilings. It's amazing. The Sistine Chapel, you guys. The rooms filled with statues. We wondered what would happen if all the museums in the world agreed to give the owner countries back all their art...so much art has been stolen or "borrowed" from its home over the centuries.

It takes hours to walk through the museums. I think we did it in about 3 hours, and that's not including the ginormous line out front.

By the time we got out of the museums, checked out the basilica, got pizza for lunch, and headed back to the metro, it was almost 4. The days go by so quickly here. I know it's because we are always headed somewhere, but I wish I could slow time down. I want to be here forever.

The night tour was spectacular. The monuments in Paris and Rome are lit from the bottom at night, so everything is bathed in golden light. It's like a dream. We went in a few churches, stopped in a few stinky alleyways....gazed slack-jawed more than a few times. Glass coffins, false ceilings, illusions. You know, typical awesome things.

And then it was done. No matter what city we go to (well, except for Milan), I wish we could be there/here longer. I could spend months in Paris and Rome. Years. Germany feels like it was so long ago, but I could spend years there, too.

"Meh" is for "Milan"

I expected big things from Milan. Fashion, shopping, pizzazz.

Yeahhhh, no. Maybe I caught it on a bad day. Or I caught all the people who live there on a bad day. Or it never actually has good days? If anyone knows, I'm open to ideas.

Milan just wasn't very fun. We visited the Duomo, saw the ginormous line, and decided to save our time and money. The problem is, if you don't go to the top of the Duomo, there really isn't anything to do in the city except wander around like a bum and eat panzerotti at Luini's.

So that's what we did...for several hours. It was a lot of walking. We rode the bus a bit...actually, maybe I should talk about the bus first. Ha. Haha.

So I have this really annoying quality called "honesty". I know, it's weird. Because who pays for public transportation? Well, me. "But its just a bus, who cares?" Um. Me.

Which is to say, instead of jumping off the train and sinply jumping into the bus and heading to our "hostel" ("hostel" being a reeeaaaaally generous term), I made my sisters search 45 minutes for a stupid bus ticket machine. Because Italians don't believe in putting them in easy-to-find places or telling you if you can buy them from the driver (nope). This is all information you're just supposed to know. I'll bet it's genetic.

By the time we finally found the ticket machines--down by the metro--and got to the "hostel", it was almost 11 pm. We were exhausted.

The "hostel" was above a dentist and on their Hostelworld profile they said they took cards. You pay a few bucks for the reservation, then pay the rest when you arrive. Easy...until the credit card machine stops working, and you have no cash. I offered the girl my last €15, but she said we could use the card in the morning.

The room was, well, it was a room. It had beds. For color, it had mold in the shower. Which was in the corner of the room. We took one look at it and decided showers could wait until we got to Rome. Seriously, it was so gross. The heating in the room was broken, the walls were paper thin, and the toilet only flushed when you pressed down on the screw they jerry-rigged in the open top of the water tank.

Given that this space was the second step of our introduction to Milan, I'm not surprised that they next day didn't impress us. The card machine wasn't working, so I had to wander around the block looking for an atm. The whole ordeal was so "fun" that after panzerotti, we went and sat in the train station until it was time to go to Rome.

Now. Panzerotti. You guys. EAT THEM. It's like a donut and a calzone had a baby. The best, most delicious baby ever. The dough is slightly sweet, raised, fluffy, and I could eat it forever. They fill it with pizza-type toppings and if you only get one you are cheating yourself out of true happiness. EAT DOZENS OF THEM.

And that's it. Milan was a delicious meal, a pretty cathedral, and a train station. I'm just gonna pretend none of the rest ever happened.

Why I Love Paris and You Should, Too

Reasons I love Paris:

1. It's pretty. The mix of old and new makes it look like buildings have popped up looking like that for hundreds of years.

2. The history. Oh, that building? That's where we kept our queen before killing her. That one? That's where a famous thing was made. This old thing? Oh, we used it 300 years ago to symbolize the relationship with so-and-so. No big deal, you guys.

3. The people. Yes, you read that right. Imagine living in one of the most touristy areas on the planet. How would you treat idiot tourists who ruin all the fun things you like to do? I'm actually impressed with Parisians for not being rude. They almost all speak English and one or two other languages, and they're willing to help you figure out where to eat and what to see. What they don't like is when they do something nice for you and you either ignore it or don't say thank you.

4. Pastries.

5. 4€ bottles of wine that taste like heaven.

6. How everyone essentially wears the same outfit every day (especially the women) and no one seems to notice or care. It's so easy to get dressed in the morning. Black skinny jeans, long, black coat, black ankle boots, purse? Check and done.

7. When a guy in France checks you out, if you don't acknowledge him or don't respond when he says something, he doesn't cuss you out or tell you to smile at him (which is what happens in the States). He just shrugs and goes about his business.

8. All the things.

Paris.

I kept trying to write my Paris post while we were actually *in* Paris, but writing a blog about it felt too much like saying goodbye. So I waited until we were leaving Paris (about an hour from now; we're  at the airport as I type). That way I can say goodbye while trying to impart my feelings about this city.

Paris is... well, a friend once told me that the entire point of life is to get to Paris, and I absolutely agree with him. 100%.

I grew up in the suburbs and haven't ever really thought of myself as a "city girl". For me, a city girl and a suburbs girl and a country girl are all totally different things. Throw into the mix the fact that I'm ALSO a Colorado girl, which is a crazy, convoluted thing in and of itself...and you may see why enjoying a city, for me, can be kind of a big deal. Denver isn't  a city like New York, and New York is nothing like Paris. They all have different heartbeats and different ways of breathing.

I know that all sounds really floofy, like I'm trying to make it sound like this huge thing, but it's  honestly the only way I can think of to describe it. Paris can be just like any other city. There's graffiti, dirty sidewalks, confusing roads, millions of hair salons, poor sections, and rich sections. But there's something about Paris...I don't even know. It's  Paris. It's beautiful and exciting, and I just want to sit and watch the people walk by. I don't  even care that so many of them are tourists.

We arrived in Paris on Monday afternoon. Our hostess was thrilled to find out I understand french, and I was thrilled that she wanted to speak it to me. I've been a little paranoid that in the years since teaching, I've lost it. Luckily, that wasn't the case. Eve left us to the apartment, an itsy bitsy teeny tiny one-bedroom-one-bathroom-half-of-a-kitchen little thing.

I had planned to go walk around and see a few of the closest sites (our apartment was just inside the 10th quarter, at Porte Saint Martin). But I'd  forgotten that people who've  never traveled abroad before often experience culture shock. Steph has been out and about for several months, but Bri's travel has been confined to the States and a short middle school mission trip to El Salvador. If you've never experienced culture shock, know that it's awful. Everything feels like an emotional, physical, and mental overload.

So while Steph and I were happy to be in Paris, Bri needed to shut down. We let her nap while we walked down to the Seine and did some errand things like groceries and a post office stop. After being in Germany, it was refreshing to understand what was going on around us.

Walking in Paris feels like walking home.

"_______, it's What's for Dinner"

This post begins with a mystery. Let's call that mystery "What did we have for dinner in Stuttgart?"

We got on the train leaving Füssen just fine, if you don't count the part where the train wasn't labeled and we spent about ten minutes thinking that maybe, possibly, probably it was the right train, but our paranoia said BUT WHAT IF IT'S NOT, a feeling that should be familiar to anyone who has traveled on European trains. Steph declared it was right, so we stayed.

Everything was going great until our final connection between Buchloe and Stuttgart just....sort of...stopped. This would've been just fine if we'd had any idea why the train was stopped, but all we understood was that there was a delay, they were very sorry, and there was free coffee and tea in the cafe car.

We were supposed to arrive in Stuttgart at 19:56, but we were well past 20:00 when Steph went to the cafe to try to find out what was going on. The two people she talked to couldn't remember the right vocabulary to describe what was going on, so all we found out was that it wasn't an emergency with the train. (It was very reassuring. Ha.) When the train finally started moving, we'd been stopped almost an hour and a half.

About 20 minutes later we passed a massive fire and a half dozen fire trucks on the side of the tracks--obviously the emergency that wasn't as emergency. I had a funny moment when I said, "Weird. It smells like smoke, but not normal smoke. What is it?" Well, duh. Burning German trees would smell different from burning Colorado trees. It smelled nice, which is probably a bad thing to say. True, though.

By the time we got to Stuttgart, it was almost 21:00. We had a bag of soup for an easy dinner, so we bought bread at a bakery in the train station and then headed out. We stood waiting for the bus for five minutes before I realized we were supposed to be getting on the U bahn...which was under us.

The hostel was a chain business, and we'd gotten their cheapest room: a mixed dorm. This is where the amusing part started. So. If you ever want to get the best, travel with my sisters. Apparently everyone just wants to make them happy.

We walked into the dorm room (three bunk beds and two regular twin beds side-by-side) and immediately, Bri and Steph were offered the best beds from the guys inside. Seriously, I've never seen guys move so fast. The guy who was on one of the regular twin beds leapt off it to give it to Bri, and one guy gave me his comforter (not sure where mine had gone...). We struggled through putting sheets on the beds (I'd like to talk to the person who dried those fitted sheets to the size of a baby crib. Jerk). At 22:00, we were so hungry we didn't even care that it was past dinner: Steph and I asked our dorm mates where the kitchen was.

They laughed at us.  "Do you have bowls?" No... "Do you have a pot?" No... "How are you going to make soup?" SHEER DETERMINATION, PEOPLE.

Turns out that sheer determination doesn't work if the kitchen is closed. And the bar wasn't making food. So we headed back up to the room with an even better plan for dinner.

Bread? Check.
Meat? You mean two bags of beef jerky? Oh, so many checks.

I think we worried the other people in the room with how eagerly we ate our awesome dinner.

A Crazy King's Castle

Füssen is a small, relatively unknown town so far south in Germany that it's practically in Austria. We got there by flying into itsy bitsy Friedrichshafen airport, then taking trains through Bavaria.

I wish we had known to stay longer in Füssen, or that area at the least. It was beautiful and quaint. Everything looks like it belongs in a fairy tale. The "downtown" area of Füssen looks like Belle's town in Beauty and the Beast. Every building is painted a different pastel color, the streets are well-worn cobblestones, and there are colorful shutters on every window.

My first visit to Germany (in 2008) was to Berlin. I thought I'd "been to Germany". Ha. Berlin has massive streets and felt like a generic city--I wasn't terribly impressed. But Füssen. Ermahgerd, Füssen! The people are generous and nice. If you un-focus your ears (kind of like letting your eyes fall out of focus), German totally sounds like sexy English gibberish. Or Sims-speak, but better.

The nearby castle that Füssen is famous for isn't actually in Füssen. It's in Hohenshwangau, about ten minutes toward the towering Alps if you grab a car or bus. We got packed into a bus with a heck ton of Asian tourists--you know you're going to a popular destination if there's a flood of Asians around you.

In Hohenshwangau, i learned that Germans are really nice about you appealing German to them. And if you happen to, say, form a somewhat logical sentence, they think you speak German. I asked the ticket lady for three tickets for three people, and she started giving all these instructions in German....I know my face looked awesome because once she looked at it, she stopped herself and asked what language I'd prefer. We skipped Schlöss Hohenshwangau and the kings museum, which ended up being a really good thing. You see....there's no supremely easy way to get up to the tour area for Neuschwanstein. Either you climb a mountain, pay 6€ for a horse-drawn carriage, or pay 1,80€ for a shuttle bus.

Our tour wasn't supposed to start for over an hour, so we wandered past the town center to the lake, took pictures, wandered some more, then headed back to the horse carriage line (because CASTLE, people)....and realized that with the line in front of us and the total of one carriage on it's way down the mountain, we were going to miss our tour.

Missing the tour meant buying tickets and waiting all over again, and we didn't really have time for that because we had a 16:06 train to Stuttgart to catch. We walked over to the shuttle bus line...which was packed with about three busloads' worth of tourists and no bus in sight. We had 40 minutes to get to the castle, but the bus would essentially get us there 5 minutes too late. So, we did what any sensible Colorado girl would do: hike the mile up the mountain.

Everyone we had talked to said it takes 30 minutes to hike just to where the horse carriage drops you off (although "hike" is generous...the path is a paved road, really is just that it's super steep). THEN, there's still a 15-minute hike to get to the courtyard where tours begin. With all that in mind, we essentially ran up the mountain.

We arrived in the courtyard with 7 minutes to spare. It almost killed Briele and Steph and I felt gross with sweat, but we made our tour. Of course, the first thing they had us do was walk up a few flights of staircases. It was a good day for exercise.

Neuschwanstein castle was the inspiration for Disney's Sleeping Beauty castle. It's tall and skinny, with all white and gray stone with huge turrets. Everything about the outside screams YOU ARE IN A FAIRY TALE. But what I loved about the inside was that it just felt like a big house. Wood and plush fabrics create a cozy, almost cabin-like feel. It's designed with hallways around the rooms in the center, so as you walk down the hall you can either look out over the valley (gorgeous) or into the rooms of the castle (homey).

King Ludwig, the guy who designed and built the castle, may or may not have been crazy. He actually built a bunch of castles--Neuschwanstein is simply the most famous. Just before he turned 40, the court declared him insane and arrested him. A little while later, he died in really mysterious circumstances.

If there's anything that helps prove he really had lost a few marbles, it's his bed chamber at the castle. Not gonna lie, it was pretty cool. Intense, but cool. Imagine every aspect of Gothic architecture and design shrunk down into a space about 20 feet square. I wish we'd been allowed to take pictures. He literally topped his bed with an itsy bitsy Gothic cathedral (or castle, it was kinda hard to tell). Towers, buttresses, pokey details...the whole thing. He was definitely a nerd. Gothic bed. Gothic chairs. Gothic carvings. Gothic ceiling. AND he had a grotto built just outside his bedroom. That's right. A GROTTO. As in, an actual cave with actual stone walls. Just so he could end a particularly stressful day by saying, "If anyone needs me, I'll be in my grotto."

He had to have been a little off. He wanted to live like "the kings of old", but it's almost like he went for the look of that kind of King and then forget about the rest of it. While visiting another castle, he saw a beautiful singing/performance room that he later replicated in Neuschwanstein. Except he didn't design the acoustics for performances. He just liked the look of the room. Kind of like buying a bottle of wine for the look of the label, but never actually drinking it.

So, that was the awesome castle. We rode the horse-drawn carriage back down the mountain because it was closer than the bus (Bri was nearly dead by then) and only 3€ to go down. We even had time to stop at a restaurant for lunch (mmm bratwurst and fries) before we caught a bus back to Füssen.

Pictures of Füssen and Neuschwanstein

Pictures of Germany