chinman.com
Public Zone 公開區 => Travelogues 遊記相薄 => Topic started by: hangchoi on 14 May 2017, 21:11:23
-
This Easter we went to Italy. I had been in Rome, Florence and Venice for a few days in 2006. There is a legend that if you throw a coin in the Fontana di Trevi, you will be back to Rome one day. My wife did that in 2006 and hence, she maybe made the legend happened this time.
Our route was to enter Italy at Rome, travel northward, and leave Italy at Venice. We took Qatar Airways and it is almost a must that we had to transit at Doha airport, which is good for us because we have not been in Doha before and we are happy to have a break in between a long flight. Later we found that if you have a long transit time in Doha, you can book their city tour free of charge and they will take you out to the Doha city to have a tour. What you need to do is to go to their customer desk and make the booking, and as long as you inform them your flight time, they will bring you back to airport. We should really give it a go next time.
-
Doha air port is huge and beautiful. Big arrival and departure halls, it is so big that they build a monorail inside the terminal. It operates 24 hours a day with good hang-out areas, accessible food and beverage counters, big duty free shops with lots of wine, spirits and cigars.
-
There are 3 landmarks for this airport which are good meeting points for groups. We just found 2 of them as our transit time was only about 2 hours. The first landmark is a bear lamp and the second one is a metal robot for kids. You can see how big they are.
-
We arrived Roma at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport. The most convenient way to go to Rome is by express train. The name of the train is called "Leonardo Express". It took about 35 minutes from airport to the main transportation hub of Rome, the Roma Termini station.
I strongly recommend that you stay close to Roma Termini if your trip will go to more than 1 cities of Italy. Roma Termini is the main train station of Rome, it is also the transit station of metro of Rome and it has a large bus terminal too. You can go to any tour spots by a single traffic here.
-
We took an evening flight and arrived at Rome in the morning. We dropped our bags at the hotel, which was close to Roma Termini, and started our journey.
Over 75% of the tour spots in Rome are confined between the east side of the Tiber river and Roma Termini, all in walking distance too.
We walked toward the Colosseo area and our route passed by the Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli. People go to Rome and rush to St. Peter Church to see the Pieta made by Michelangelo. But the fact is that sculptures made by Michelangelo can easily be seen in many places. We went to Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli because it has a huge sculpture by Michelangelo. This church opens one hour earlier than the Colosseo, hence you can fit it into your schedule without affecting your schedule to the Colosseo (you will know why you should go to Colosseo at the earliest possible later)
-
About 15 minute walk from Roma Termini, we arrived at the Colosseo area. This area contains 3 parts: the Colosseo itself (together with the Arch of Constantine), the Roman Forum and the Palatino.
This spot may be the hottest tour spot, only Vatican Museum may be comparable with. Every year over 40 million visitors come to this place. Crowd control applies during peak hour. Therefore, you may see people lining up for tickets an hour before it is open.
-
To save time for queuing up, you may reserve your ticket on internet by paying a few Euros more for each ticket, Or you may join a group tour so that you need not to buy ticket. Now I tell you a special way not only to save a few Euros for reservation, but also need not to queue for ticket.
First, you can buy a ticket for the Colosseo only or you can buy a ticket for all 3 parts. The difference is just a few Euros more. If you will visit all 3 parts within 2 days (yes, the ticket has 2 day duration for you to visit all 3 parts), you should better buy a full ticket.
Now the trick is this, DON"T line up at the Colosseo ticket center to buy ticket. Just go to the entrance of the Roman Forum and buy a full ticket by paying ordinary price, there is no one lining up there. Then visit the Roman Forum and the Palatino first. In that case, you can save the reservation fee and the queuing time. The only drawback is that you will visit the Colosseo later on the day. Crowd control rarely limit the visitors having ticket, it only stops selling tickets to the new visitors.
After visiting the Roman Forum and the Palatino, you can hold your ticket to enter the Colosseo directly, skipping the long line in ticket office.
-
Rome is built on seven hills. People lived in different villages on these hills, one of them was Palatino. The foothill was where people met for trading or gathering. That was how the Roman Forum appeared. Now this forum is more like a ruin after long years of history with different disasters and destruction. Some of them are still intact tho.
-
This building is worth to mention. Not only that the bronze door was original one, the hinge of this door was original at Roman time and it is still working. A door hinge more than 2000 years. :o
-
Palatino is a village on the hill, so you have to walk up to see the old residential buildings and the scene. The first one is a flat of a wealthy Roman and the second one is the view from that flat.
-
It seems that the village had its own forum and public square for their own.
-
Arco di Constantino is just next to the Colosseo, an arch for the Constantine who named Christianity as the national religion.
-
Colosseo is a must see place in Rome. You may see that there is a queue at the lower left corner of the picture. This line is for the ticket to the Colosseo. The line is about one fifth of the circumference of the Colosseo. With a ticket on hand, I can pass this queue and went to the security check before entering.
-
A closer look at the Colosseo. The first one is the staircase in the old days. The second one is the structure built under the arena, there are different rooms, elevator shaft (yes, they had already had elevator at that time).
-
The arena from two sides. They put a platform on one end to let the visitors know the original setting.
-
After visiting the Colosseo area, we went to Spagna, a hot spot for the people to chill out. It was a long staircase overseeing the district selling luxury goods.
You will always see a lot of people in these tourists' spots.
-
Second day. Vatican Museum or Musei Vaticani. No trick you can play here about ticket. MAKE SURE you reserve the ticket in advance, unless you join a tour group.
I took the second picture to show you the queue for entering. The first picture is the exit of the museum, on its left is the entrance. You may see a crowd there lining up for ticket and the line goes around the castle wall of Vatican city. I think the line is longer than 150m. This is the longest line I can see AT THE MOMENT (which means a even longer line is coming in later posts)
Oh, btw before we went to the Museum, we had a good breakfast at this shops, which is close to the Vatican.
-
Vatican Museum has a very good collection of paintings and sculptures. Only sculptures areas are allowed to photo. After you enter the museum, you will go to an open area overseeing Basilica de San Pietro and the garden.
The other pictures show some sculptures, the first one talks about the story of Troy, where these 3 father and sons died in the war of Troy. The next one is Athena, the goddess of war and daughter of Zeus, this brings my curiosity that how come the Christian city emphasizing a single god would keep some sculptures of other gods?
-
A luxury decorated corridor ceiling and a quiet and decent carpark. By visiting the museum, you are actually walking around the Vatican city.
The third picture is one of the exhibition room.
The main theme of this museum is the Sistine Chapel, but no photo is allowed. You will hear the guard keep saying "no picture please". ;D The painting in Sistine Chapel is astonishingly beautiful, but it makes your neck tired. Worth to see once at least in your life time, great work.
-
We spent the whole morning in Museum Vatican, then we bought some sandwiches and had our lunch at San Peter's Square.
-
Heading straight from the St. Peter's Square will lead you to Castel Sant Angelo. A castle once was the residence of the Pope.
From there you can oversee the Basilica de San Pietro. Now it is just an old building.
-
Castel Sant Angelo's entrance is facing Tiber river. The Ponte Sant Angelo connects the east side of Rome. We walked through the bridge to our next spot, Piazza Navona. On the way we go to Piazza, we passed by a gelato shop which the chef was showing his skill on making gelato.
In this trip, we tasted a lot of different gelato, will show you the shops and stories later.
-
Piazza Navona is a crowded place. People go there to see the Fontana dei Fiumi, a work of Bernini. This is a fountain using 4 different sculptures to represent four different rivers from different continents, and an obelisk stands in the middle. The four rivers are the Nile representing Africa, the Danube representing Europe, the Ganges representing Asia, and the Río de la Plata representing the Americas.
Can you identify which is which?
-
After that, we walked to Patheon. On the way we visited a cafe shop. The cuppuccino of this cafe is rated the best one in Rome. We bought some coffee beans too.
-
Pantheon, long queue again because there was just a ritual running. The ceiling is big and beautiful. This place also has a number of tomb for the national heroes. The last one is the tomb of Raphael.
-
Only 5 minute walk you can go to Fontana di Trevi. We went to visit a gelato shop which has over 150 different flavours. We also went to another cafe famous in espresso.
-
Fontana di Trevi, we had been here in 2006. If you throw a coin into the fountain, your next trip to Rome will be guaranteed. We dare not to do it again as we do not expect we will visit again in near future.
There is a gelato shop next to the Fontana. Nothing special indeed, we took a picture of it just because we visited this shop in 2006. :P
-
We had dinner somewhere close to Fontana di Trevi. Time was in the evening and guess what, we decided to go to hotel on foot. We did a lot of walking in Rome because somehow it was quite difficult to utilize the public transport. Each spots is within walking distance, and generally you will spend almost the same length of time by public transport or on foot.
We walked a few hundreds meter from Fontana di Trevi and arrived at Altare della Patria (the so-called white cake). Then another a few hundred meter we would be at the Roman Forum, another hundred meter or so to Colosseo, then about 10 minute walk to hotel.
The night views of Roman Forum and Colosseo are a bit creepy......actually.
-
Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore day and night.
We went back to hotel, passing by this church. This is the biggest church in Rome (except Vatican). The church was close at night and we decided to visit it tomorrow morning.
The next day we went there early but they had a ritual doing. A large group of visitors and pilgrims were waiting to enter.
-
It was interesting that after they did the ritual at the entrance of the church, they continued the ritual inside and at the same time, allowed the visitor to enter the church. The church is huge and beautiful.
I found that they can provide counselling services with different languages.
-
Then, we went to Circo Massimo, the place where the Roman chariot racing in the old day. Almost like a garden now, which some structures left. You can still see the tower and the spectator stand.
Then we walked down to the river side of Tibre and saw the Isola, There is a gelato shop of over 100 year history.
-
The main theme of this day was Appia Antica. There is an old saying that "Every road leads to Rome". Appia Antica is a straight road in Roman time that leads the people from the east of Italy to Rome. Roman Empire built this for military purposes, part of this road remained today.
The starting point now has a tourist information center where you can rent a bike for visiting. This area is a national park as well.
Some of the road surface were re-paved but the further part of this road still has the road surface at Roman time. Along the road you can see some old structures, some of them are statue in memory of the ancestors, some are catatombs for Christians.
A good walk and a good place for hanging out. Too bad that we did not have enough time to go further. We should rent a bike actually.
-
In the late afternoon, we went back to Campo de Fiori, a market for both local and tourists. Maybe we arrived there late, some stalls were closed or closing. We had our dinner at a Trattoria.
In this trip, we mainly went to Trattoria for dinner. In contrast with Ristorante (i.e. restaurant), Trattoria is another type of eating place. Traditionally trattoria is mainly run by family; dad is the waiter, son making pizza, mom the chef and the daughter cashier. They offer limited menu but fresh food, more reasonable price. Less spacious seats and higher turnover. Very homey.
Except our first lunch in a ristorante in Rome, we went to different trattorias everyday. I will show you some other later in this post.
-
That finished our trip in Rome. Next day we went to Firenze by train. The journey time was about 2.5 hours. We booked a B&B room close to the train station. This room was the best room we had in our whole trip and I highly recommended it. The place is called Florence Station Room. Here are the pictures of the place we stayed.
-
After we dropped our bags, we went for lunch at Mercato Centrale (Central Market). We had the famous Ox Belly Bread at Da Nerbone.
-
The first place we went after lunch was Cappelle Medicee. Medici family was the famous family in Florence in the old days. They were so powerful that even a few Pope were come from Medici family. It is also said that the Renaissance was actually paid by Medici family. There are a lot of building related to them and Cappelle Medicee is one of them.
-
The next one is Cathedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. The landmark church of Florence. From the last picture you will see a long queue lining up to the roof of this church.
-
The church inside has nothing special. Only there is a painting in the dorm area but we cannot get close to take picture.
-
Next one is the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella and its Basilica. The landmark church there as the full name of the train station of Florence is Firenze Santa Maria Novella.
Piazza della Signoria, I had been there in 2006. Not much change, still crowded with tourists. There is a replica of David at the city hall entrance. Medusa is still there too, just opposite of the David.
-
Fontana del Porcellino. Someone says that if you put a coin inside its mouth and if your coin does not slip down, you will make a good fortune. Hmmm, I saw a lot of tourists do this but failed. This is because there is a stream of water flowing out from its mouth. It seems the city is making a good fortune instead.
-
Gelato time. We visited 2 gelato shops in Florence. The first one offered me the best Pineapple gelato I have ever had. The second shop is very famous, Vivoli. It has close to 100 years old and they have gelato of rice flavour.
-
We went to Piazzale Michelangelo to see the sunset in the evening. You may go there by bus or on foot. Last time we went to there in the afternoon (11 years ago). The entrance has another replica of David in bronze.
You can oversee the old city of Florence. Nice view and hence a lot of people fighting and squeezing to get a good angle to shoot.
-
We had dinner at Trattoria Za Za. Quite famous here and we had to wait for half hour to get a seat. Nice environemnt and yummy food.
-
Next day, we woke up early to go to Galleria dell' Accademia. The original David is here. Make sure you reserved the tickets for this place. When we arrived at 9:00am the opening time of the gallery. A long line of people were already there. This may be the longest line I have ever seen. The line almost surrounded the whole block of building.
-
The gallery is not big actually, most people came for the original David. However, the hall in front of the David is worth to have a closer look. There are 5 sculptures which are also the work of Michelangelo in his early stage. Some of them were partly finished. You can see another version of Pieta.
-
David. The original one once was installed at the entrance of city hall (Piazza della Signoria). To celebrate the opening of this gallery, the government moved the original here and made a replica at the city hall. If you take a closer look at the sculpture, you will find that the head of the David is larger on scale. Michelangelo deliberately made it to cater for the viewing angle as most people will look up the statue.
I took some pictures from a different angle too. ;D
-
Before we went to museum in the afternoon, we went to Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze. This church houses a lot of Firenze's heroes and was a scene for the movie Inferno. At the entrance, there is a statue of Dante, the one who described the hell in details and his description was generally used by the religious people.
-
The church was constructed by Franciscan pligrim. It has a lot of tiny chapels. Quite and solemn. On the two side of the main church, different Firenze celebrities were buried there. Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, etc. There was a tomb for Dante but as far as I know Dante was not buried here... ???
-
We spent most of our afternoon visiting Galleria degli Uffizi. Before that we took a picture of Ponte Vecchio, the old bridge.
Galleria degli Uffizi, due to its famous name, attracts a lot of visitors. Most of them know they have to book a ticket before visit and hence, not many people line up, just about 100 meter long queue. Yes, 100m long is considered as short queue here........
-
The gallery is huge with lots of collections. They arranged the exhibits in chronological order. The most famous one is "The birth of Venus" by Botticelli. (the second picture)
The last one shows some sculptures, seeing them as a whole gave me an impression of a set of martial art.....
-
They had a featured exhibition at that time. It was the re-vitalizing a painting of Da Vinci. They showed the process of cleaning the painting plus a analysis of the way Da Vinci made the painting. Very information and interesting.
-
This was the last day we stayed in Firenze. Our dinner had to be Florence steak. We went to Trattoria Dall' Oste. This one is well rated by tourist and close to the train station. Food yummy and friendly atmosphere. Food portion is big, the smallest order for Florence steak is 1kg.
-
Our next stop is Bologna. A quiet city. The old city area is a bit farther from the train station, but we still stay at a hotel close to the train station. This is because we will take an early train on the next day to San Marino. Besides, we did not want to walk a long with with large bags.
We chose this hotel based on review on internet. Most people said that the breakfast of this hotel was wonderful. In fact it was just a usually buffet breakfast in hotel, saying it a full breakfast merely because the usual breakfast in Italy is only coffee and bread.
Room is quite spacious and decent, not bad.
-
After we checked in, we walked to the old city of Bologna, it took about 15 minutes but the route was not boring. The street we walked was like Nathan Road in HK, lots of shops. At the end of the street is the Piazza Maggiore (first picture), the old citycenter of Bologna.
We went to see the Fontana del Nettuno (Fountain of Neptune) but it was under repair. (second one)
The old palace, church and government office surrounds the Piazza. The third one is the palace.
-
A few minutes walk further from the Piazza is the University of Bologna, some said that this was the first university of the world. We went to see the Teatro Anatomico, this place held the anatomy lesson in the old days.
The corridor to the theatre is well decorated with symbols and paintings.
Inside the theater, an Apollo statue at the ceiling to look down the table for dissection. All furnishes are wooden with some old scripts and books shown in a glass casing.
-
There is a lecture room next to the Teatro Anatomico. Large with lots of book at the back of the lecture room.
-
Two tower, the landmark of the old city of Bologna. You can go up the tower to see the city. The next one is the Basilica di Santo Stefano, a well preserved old church.
-
We went to a sandwich shop in the evening, their sandwich and the place is rated No. 1 in Tripadvisor. We met the shop manager Luca and he is a very nice and friendly guy. He introduced to you all the interesting sightseeing place in Bologna, he would let you charge your phone, he told me that he would open his wifi for every day even the shop is closed, you can use his toilet, etc. etc.
He also wrote a note on his ipad about the tour spots in Bologna and would share it to anyone. The note is very comprehensive, with location, virtual tour and description. Based on that note, I found that there is a place named "Little Venice". That is a part of Bologna city having canal, and hence we decided to go and see.
Btw, the sandwich shop is called StreeTOAST.
-
The next day we went to a state inside a state, San Marino. Italy before united is a place with a lot of tiny countries. San Marino is one of them and they do not unite with other and form the nowadays Italy. This is the fifth smallest countries in Europe, as far as I know. The full name is Republic of San Marino. It was establised in year 301, so they claim that they are the oldest republic country in the world.
To go to San Marino, beside driving direct, you have to go to Rimini first. There is a bus from Rimini to San Marino. Hence, we took an hour train from Bologna to Rimini, then go there by bus. After you cross the border of San Marino, you can take a cable car up the old city of San Marino. See the picture showing the cable car.
-
After you arrived by bus, just walk up to the entrance of the old city St Francis Gate. San Marino has their own guard with full uniform. They will direct you to the gate. The city is a bit like Mont St Michel in France. It is a small city, neat and tidy, built on a hill top. You can enjoy a view looking down the country. The third picture shows the quarry that they used to build the city in the old days.
-
Walking up the hill you will find a square, a nice view looking down. Next to the square is the tourist office of San Marino. In there you can get a stamp of their country into your passport. It is the official tourist visa given by a country San Marino, although you have already been in the country.
-
Next to the tourist office is a chruch. A small but solemn church. Passing the church you can walk up to the landmark place of San Marino, the three towers.
-
Three towers are three different tower buildings on three different hill. They are the hottest photo spots in San Marino. Most of the time people only take pictures for the first two, because the third tower is relatively small and you have to wall a small bumpy path to it.
Another point is that you have to stay somewhere near the first tower to take picture for the second tower, and vice versa.
This is the first tower, I took this picture from the ground floor level of the second tower.
-
The first picture shows the footpath you walk from the first tower to the second tower, and somewhere in the middle of this path is the place where you want to take picture of the second tower.
The second picture is the second tower.
-
The third tower is rather small, like a lighthouse. You need to walk a longer footpath there.
-
We spent about 4 hours in San Marino and then we went back to Rimini by bus. We still have time to take a quick look of Rimini, a city in east coast of Italy famous in breach. This city in the time of Roman Empire was a port. We walked into the old city area to have a look.
Straight into the city center is Piazza Tre Martiri, on the way you will pass by a church Tempio Malatestiano.
The third picture is a digging work showing the floor level in Roman time with the marble floor and wall finishes.
-
Arco Augusto, an arch for King Augustus. There is a stand telling tourist about the evolution of the arch. It was somehow renovated quite a lot.....
-
Next day we went to Venice, our last stop. From Bologna to Venice the train travel time is about 1.5 hours. Some people would like to stay away from the Venice island because the room rate is cheaper and less crowded, but we had booked a guesthouse for our stay inside the Venice island. The flat is quite large and I think it can accommodate at least 4 people. My room has a nice canal view too.
-
We arrived at early morning, so we decided to go the outside islands of Venice. We took the water bus to Burano and Murano.
Murano is famous of its glass making, you can visit a glassware factory there.
-
Burano is more popular. To go to Burano, you need to change the water bus at Murano. So..... a long queue again. The far end of the picture is the ferry to Burano.
The journey from Venice island to Murano is about 15 minutes but from Murano to Burano is 30 minutes.
-
Burano is famous for its colourful houses. Each house would pick a colour different from its neighbour and the governemnt subsidizes the painting of the house. This is due to an old story that once upon a time there was a plague in Burano, the residents painted their house in colour other than white to indicate that none of them were infected. Hence, you cannot see a white house here in Burano. And it gives us a beautiful scene now.
-
Another scene to look at is the leaning tower. Due to its soil structure, the tower of the church is leaning a bit to one side. So, not only Piza has a leaning tower in Italy.
However, you have to see closely in order to see it (better to compare with the wall line of the colourful house)
-
The third outside island we went to was Lido Island. This island is big, so does its ferry. We walked along the street and found quite a lot of tourist. But the point is, we did not find anything interesting to see, not much I should say.
And I felt like walking in Beverly Hills more than in Italy.
-
Having said that, the sunset at Lido was beautiful.....
-
We bought a 24 hour pass for water bus. On the next day, our water-bus pass still have an hour to go, then we decided to take bus no. 1 for a tour. This is because route no. 1 travels through the grand canal of Venice island, so that we can have a view of the city along the canal.
Hence it is not necessary to pay 80 Euros for gondola, unless you really want to take a ride on gondola.
First picture is Ponte della Costituzione - the bridge linking Venice Island to the train station.
Second one is the Venice train station
Then, Rialto bridge
and we left the waterbus at Piazza San Marco
-
Ponte dei Sospiri......bridge connecting the palace and jail in the old days. I took a picture and found it look nicer if the picture is black and white.
Ohh....Gondola congestion in the third picture.
-
Piazza San Marco....I had been there 11 years ago. A lot of people lining up for Basilica di San Marco.
-
We had our tea at Caffe Florian, the first coffee house in the world. Beautifully decorated with expensive price, because your are drinking history. This cafe has over 300 years of history and their live music also has over 100 year history. You have to pay music fee (6 Euro each) in addition to the food/drink you ordered.
-
We had gelato everywhere during this trip. But for food, the outstanding items that we had to taste was spaghetti with squid sauce and risotto
We had the spaghetti with squid sauce in Burano and risotto in a Trattoria in Venice. We were so crazy that we walked through the menu of each Trattoria we came across. If there was not risotto in the menu, we skipped. ;D
Our crazy move paid out at last, we had the best risotto we had ever had.....yummy
-
On our last day in Venice, before we went to airport, we visited the Casa di Marco Polo, the home of Marco Polo. Then we did a bit shopping.
I had a Vin Brule at a stall too. That is a boiled red wine, usually for winter time but somehow I just found it.
-
From Venice island to Venice Marco Polo Airport, you may take ordinary bus or airport bus. The journey by airport bus is just about 20 minutes, very convenient. You may go to airport by water-bus as well.
We took an evening flight back to HK, transit at Doha, and completed my trip to Italy.