Our trip to Italy didn't go as well planned. We were going to take a route to Venice-Rome-Pisa and then fly off to Paris. Somehow, once we landed in Venice (Treviso Airport to be exact), it somehow seemed different. Where are all the buildings and that big grand canal I've seen from pictures and heard from people's stories all this while?
Then it hit me.
We weren't even near to the grand canal. Apparently, we messed up and ended up booking for a hotel that was actually on the other side of the grand canal. We ended up asking this nice elderly man on the bus for directions to our hotel because like always; we lost our way. We asked how to get to the city and he told us that it was probably about a 40 minute bus ride to the city and the last bus that leaves for the city was at 8 pm. It was already 5 pm when we got to the hotel and we were planned to leave for Rome the next day. So yes; no gondola rides for Faten. Sigh, such bad luck. But like my favorite quote always said; "There's always a rainbow after the rain". We ended up spending the night by eating cereal and Ramen and I hit the bed early with my Eat, Pray, Love. It actually felt good to re-energize ourselves that night although the thought of the gondola rides that were just an hour away from me kept bothering my mind. Sigh, such bad luck.
So we headed our way the next morning to the Venice Mestre train station for our next trip to Rome. It was a long 6 hour train ride and by the time we got to Roma Termini train station I actually think I lost all interest to Rome. As soon as we got to Rome, we were hungry so we went on the hunt for any Halal restaurants and to our surprisingly good luck (only for about 20 minutes; you'll understand why later), we found a Halal restaurant just outside of the train station. We ordered nasi beriyani and curry mutton for take out and it was awesomely delicious. Did I mention that it was only for about 8/9 Euros? So after our hunt for food, we figured it was time to go on the search for our hotel and considering absolutely nobody seemed capable of speaking English (how is this even possible?!), we had absolutely no idea where to go (understand why now?) So we only had one other option. You see, my father has always been the type of person that makes friends easily, so he practically has friends all over the world and has such a wide network. And I have never been more grateful for then the moment as I went to the public phone and started dialing Uncle Rosli's (Papa's friend who is one of the navy officers based in Rome) phone number and managed to swallow down my pride and told him that we were lost and had no idea where to go. He was actually out of town that day, but to our relief he sent his driver to come pick us up and send us to our hotel. Again, I have never been more grateful.
We settled checking in at our hotel and was amazed that we got what seemed like a condo suite to me. We had a huge kitchen completely equipped with everything including a dryer and a washing machine which definitely came of many help to us (finally, clean clothes to wear!). There was a huge TV in the living room, although all we watched was MTV (well at least what we could understand of it), and two bedrooms on the second floor. We were excited, so we didn't go out at all that day and just stayed amazed at how awesome our place was haha
We spent the rest of our trip to Rome riding the hop on hop off bus visiting the Pantheon, Vatican City, the lovely Piazza della Republica, the Colosseum many more. My favorite had to be the Trevi Fountain. You cannot go to Rome and not see the Trevi Fountain. Okay maybe the movie 'When In Rome' had played a big part of my madness for the Trevi Fountain but it was nonetheless spectacular seen up front. However, it was smaller than I expected it to be but like I said; it still had its own awesome attraction to it. Got to see some people throwing a couple of pennies into the fountain which made me smile and wonder what they wished for. There was tons of gelato shops along the road in front of the Trevi Fountain so we grabbed ourselves some gelato and I believe that was the starting point of our madness for gelato, and the first reason I actually wanted to visit Italy. Once a foodie, always a foodie.
After our time at Rome, we took the train and headed to Florence (Santa Maria Novella Station). I swear, Florence is the capital of leathered goods. Finally got my hands on a leather jacket which I got for a really reasonable price. It was all shopping and no sight seeing in Florence for Faten! Haha Proof that all I could think about was shopping in Florence; this was the only picture I took,
And I have no idea what Piazza this is =.=" Anyone care to tell me? Please?
Oh and another picture from Florence!
Anways, next up was Pisa! To be honest, the only thing I was amazed by Pisa was its Leaning Tower of Pisa. =.=" We took the train from Santa Maria Novella station to Pisa Centrale station and found that we had to walk alllllll the way to the tower. It was a good experience though. The leaning tower was beautiful, and it was fun to act like idiots trying to take pictures in front of the leaning tower. Oh come on, you know what I mean. You knowwwww. Taking and re-taking pictures to get that right angle where you seem like you're pushing the leaning tower and your friend's trying to hold the tower from leaning further? Yes, those cliche tourist pictures. (We were such a set of tourists haha)
And guess what we did on the way back from visiting the leaning tower?
I regret nothing.
(Pictures credit to Pja)
