Europe Travelogue

2004-07-01T18:30:00.000-04:00

Wassup ya'll? Today I'm in Sienna after finishing up in Rome and spending the last 2 days in Cinque Terra.

Rome is an amazing city. After my last update, I spent the day at the Vatican going through the museum, seeing the Sistine Chapel, and going to St. Peter's. All that was very cool, but St. Pete's is mindboggling. All I can say is that Catholics sure do know how to build a church.

After that we hit some of the lesser known attractions of Rome before heading down to Naples to see the museum there and visit Pompeii. The museum was pretty interesting because it holds a lot of the stuff that was found at Pompeii and Herculanum, but we were glad we weren't spending the night in Naples. It is pretty much the Detroit of Italy, but with much better pizza (which was invented in Naples). Pompeii was cool though. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would after seeing so many ruins in Greece. It's pretty nuts to walk through an ancient city that is virtually intact.

We then took the night train to Cinque Terra. We had been planning on getting a sleeper train, but for whatever reason, the train didn't have any sleepers. So we sat in train chairs, which are very uncomfortable and non-reclining, from 9:30 to 4:10 in the morning when we got into La Spezia, where we took a short train to Monterrosa. Of course, being 6 in the morning, we couldn't check into our hotel yet, so we slept near the beach on park benches that were conveniently located under the chime-every-half-hour city belltower. Obviously, this was not the most restful night, but it was worth it. Cinque Terra was an awesome town, and after 5 pretty intense days in Rome, sitting on the beach all day could not have been nicer.

Today we traveled most of the day after doing a short hike. Tomorrow we see the Palio, a no-holds barred, bareback horserace in the city square that dates back to medieval times. That's it for now. Talk to you later.

2004-06-23T16:17:00.000-04:00

After a long hiatus, I think its about time for an update. Since the last update I've been to Florence, Venice, Sorrento, and Capri, and now I'm in Rome. So, as you can see, I've been pretty busy.

I think I should start with a Munich wrap-up. I got to admit that I had my doubts at first, but Munich ended up being an outstanding city. Shortly after my last update, I ate lunch at an excellent Bavarian restaurant/brewery, and it was here that I first encountered Weiss Beer, a Bavarian specialty that is beer made from wheat instead of barley. This stuff is unbelievable. After the first sip I couldn't believe the goodness I had just tasted, so I took another sip, and another, and another, and 3 tall beers later, I was much happier with Munich.

After this, I returned to my hotel, but on the way I came across a political rally where the "governor" (he's not called that, but the positions are basically equivalent) of Bavaria was speaking. Luckily, I met this girl named Sandra who spoke pretty good English, and she explained to me what was going on. Basically, the guy was telling people to vote to exclude Turkey from the European Union. One of his more interesting reasons for wanting to exclude Turkey was that they are Muslim while the rest of the EU is Christian. Imagine how that reasoning would fly in America.

That night I met some girls from IU at my hotel and we all went out to the Hofbrauhaus together. The Hofbrauhaus is this huge beer hall that is just an all around good experience. They only serve beer in liter mugs, and the whole time a band is playing Bavarian music and drinking songs. Everyone there is pretty much smashed, the result being people of all ages and nationalities coming together for a drunken good time.

The next day I went on a famous Mike's Bike Tour. It would've been pretty cool, but it rained heavily that day, putting a huge damper on the experience. It was still cool to get a quick tour of the city, though. After the tour I checked out some of the churches in the city. On the way back to my hotel, I saw a group of guys evangelizing to the crowds in the city square. I thought that was more of an American thing, but obviously not. That night I had trouble finding something to do, so I just sampled a few more German beers with dinner (including one that had 10% alcohol content) and got ready for the trip to Florence the next day.

After an 8 hour train ride, my first train ride ever, I arrived in Florence around 6. My brother met me at the train station and showed me to his apartment. He had a pretty kick-ass location. We could see the Medici Chapel from his window, and the Duomo was about a 3 minute walk away. I was in Florence for 6 nights and I saw damn near everything there was to see in that city, I don't even remember the names of some of it. Brian showed me and Kenny, a cool kid and a friend of Brian's who was also in town, around the first couple days when he wasn't in class. We saw the Duomo (a Cathedral), the Academia (which holds the David statue), the Medici Chapel, the Medici Palace, a church where Dante, Michelangelo, Donatello, Galileo and other notable FLorentines are buried, and a couple other places. I also met up with my friends Rob and Lee from the Greece trip who were visiting people in the same program as my brother. It was good to get to hang out with them in anther country. Rob and I went to the Uffizi Gallery together. We saw a lot of cool stuff, but we were disappointed that only 3 of the 4 ninja turtles were represented in the museum. There was stuff by Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael, but no Donatello. That's sloppy if you ask me, the purple turtle deserves better.

Besides all the Renaissance stuff, Florence also has excellent nightlife. The highlight has to be this bar called Faces. For the low price of $10, Faces offers a completely open bar from 10-12. Any kind of drink you want, in whatever quantity you desire, is yours for the taking. They also had a beer pong table, but being open bar, we decided to play with champagne. In an unbelievable game, Jason and I beat Kenny and Taylor, Brian's roommate, 6-1 in one of the fastest games of beer pong ever. Jason made 2 out of his 3 shots, and I sank 4 in a row. This was definitely the highlight of my beer pong career.

Florence was a great time, but after 6 days, it was time to move on to another city. On Saturday, Brian and I left for Venice with Lee, his cousin Amanda, and Elsa, a friend of Brian's from the Florence program. I know this may surprise some people, but I have to give Venice mixed reviews. Don't get me wrong, there's cool stuff in Venice, just not very much of it. The Doge's palace is an impressive sight, and its armoury is very cool, holding all sorts of weapons and armor from Venice's days as a world power. St. Mark's Cathedral is unbelievable. The entire ceiling is covered in gold and the opulence of the place is overwhelming, but I found it to be more overwhelming in a wordly sense than a heavenly one. The 5 of us also took a gondola ride, which I guess is something that should be done in Venice, but I think it would be fair to call the experience overrated. Venice is also ridiculously expensive, the only food we could afford was pizza and McDonald's. In conclusion, Venice is a good city if you are with your girlfriend and/or rich. Since none of us fell into either of these categories, we bounced out of Florence on night trains after our second day in the city. Lee and Amanda took off for France, and Brian, Elsa, and I headed down to Sorrento.

Sorrento was a very nice city that reminded me of a lot of the places I stayed in Greece. There's not much to see in Sorrento, so their tourist economy is dependent on providing a friendly, accessible, and affordable experience. We got to Sorrento early in the morning, checked into our hotel, and jumped on a ferry to go to the island of Capri, the favorite vacation spot of Roman Emperors and modern day rockstars alike. The island is beautiful; its got impressive scenery and great views of the see. The first day there we just hung out on the beach. We had wanted to go to the blue grotto, which is this cave that is turned blue from the light of the sun reflecting off the water, but apparently the sea was too rough or something. The next day we went back to Capri and once again the sea was too rough for the Grotto, so we settled on taking a chairlift to the top of the island for some incredible scenery. After that, we returned to the city of Sorrento, where me and Brian hopped on a train to Rome.

We got into Rome late last night, so today was our first full day here. We didn't waste any time though; today we got out and saw a lot of stuff. We checked out the Forum, the Palatine Hill, the Coliseum, Trajan's arch, column, market, and forum (he built a lot of stuff), the Pantheon, the prison where both St. Peter and St. Paul were held, and the Capitoline Hill Museum. So all in all, it was a pretty busy day and my feet hurt. It was great to see all this stuff for the first time. My favorite thing was probably the Forum, the center of Roman political life. This site contains a huge amount of stuff that a history major like myself can get excited about. The spot where Julius Caesar was cremated, the temple of the Vestal Virgins, the rostrum, the Senate house, and the temple of Saturn were all highlights of my day.

I think that's about it for now, I need to rest up for the Vatican tomorrow.

2004-06-11T06:56:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I ended my travels in Greece and arrived in Munich Germany, where I am staying for 3 nights before heading to Florence. The Greece trip was truly outstanding, I saw many wonderful sights and met a great group of people. Greece is an extremely hospitable country. Most of the people that we met were eager to welcome and help us in whatever way they could. I would certainly recommend Greece to anyone.
So far, Munich seems to be a lot different than anywhere I went in Greece. Its more cosmopolitan, in a 20 minute walk I passed 3 McDonald's, 2 Burger Kings, 2 Pizza Huts, and a Subway, but on the other hand its much less English-centric, for obvious reasons. In Greece, most signs and directions were in English and practically everyone in the restaurants, hotels, stores, etc spoke at least some English. This does not seem to be the case here. I haven't found as many English speakers and hardly any signs or directions are in English. Of course, I've only been here a night, so impressions may change.
Munich seems like a very nice city, I walked around for awhile last night through the main square. There were many street performers ranging from 4 piece orchestras, to guys playing American oldies on guitars, to this one crazy old German wearing a Che Guevera shirt, a crooked hat, and shouting all sorts of gibberish (other than all that, he looked very clean shaven, not your typical crazy person.) I've also tried a couple of the beers, Lowenbrau and Spaten are both pretty solid. I took today to sleep in and put some other things in order. After sleeping no later than 8:30 for a solid 28 days, it was real nice to sleep until 11 today. Tomorrow I'm planning on taking a Mike's Bike Tour through the city.
Now, I'm going to try and find some German food for lunch.

2004-06-08T13:03:00.000-04:00

Quick post: Today and yesterday we've been in Heraklion, the largest city of Crete. We went to the main museum of Crete yesterday, which was cool, but today we got to go to a waterpark. Ol' McCoy brokedown and decided to give us an easy last day on Crete, which was damn cool of him. Tonight, we ate at a Pizza Hut we found. It was pretty sweet to get some real American pizza. Tomorrow we fly back to Athens and the day after that I fly to Munich. That's it for now.

2004-06-06T08:36:00.000-04:00

What's this? Posts on consecutive days? Believe it.

Today has been pretty hot. We got to sleep in late today-8:30-which was actually nicer than it sounds. We then visited the monastery of Arkadi, the Cretan equivalent of the Alamo. A bunch of Cretans-men, women, children, monks-fighting the Turks in 1866 held the monastery for as long as they could before locking themselves in the powder magazine. When the Turks swarmed into the breached monastery, the Cretans blew up the powder magazine and themselves, killing hundreds of Turks in the process. Their action inspired their countrymen, who fought on to win their freedom from the Turks after 267 years of domination.

After Arkadi, we headed to the pottery shop of Manolis, an ancient man who makes clay pottery without any help from modern technology. His shop doesn't even have electricity. I bought a raki drinking set from him. Its pretty hot, 6 shot glasses, a jug, and a plate to hold it all. Quite easily the best 10 euros I've spent all trip. I just hope I can get it home intact. Manolis is pretty old and he's one of the, if not the, last person making this sort of stuff. This makes the set the most irreplaceable thing I've ever bought. Its hot though, I bought some raki at the store and we're using it tonight for sure.

Which brings me to my next point: Raki. Raki is this liquor that Cretans are crazy about. They drink it constantly. Every time we make a stop, our guide and professor take a few shots. Most places we eat for dinner will also bring us a complementary jug. Imagine how that would go over in America. A complementary bottle of liquor with a meal, yeah right. Hell, most of our hotels have had a jug of it in the lobby. We can just walk downstairs, turn in our key, and take a shot. Its ridiculous, but who's complaining?

While we're on the topic of alcohol, last night my roommate wandered into a nearby grocery store and found an 8 pack of beer for 2.67 euros. REAL hot. The beer is called Hollandia and its been around since 1758. That's older than America folks. Its a decent beer, but the novelty of the situation is that it is nearly impossible to buy beer in packs in Greece. 8 is the highest we've found. Other than that we've seen some 6's and a few more 4's. Other interesting things about beer are that there are no light beers here and only about 3 beers that we can find consistently: Mythos, Heineken, and Amstel (regular, not light). We find other things occasionally, but these are the only three we can count on.

Enough about beer, back to the rest of my day. We ate McDonald's for lunch. It was awesome. Some of you may think that's pretty crappy of us, but believe me, McDonald's will never taste as good in America as it does in Europe. After 3 weeks of Greek cuisine (which is good, don't get me wrong) a hamburger, even a McDonald's hamburger, is a pretty tasty treat. After that, I was shocked and delighted to see an NHL game on the TV of a nearby bar. It was only a replay of game 5 of the series, but it was damn nice to see some hockey. By the way, if anyone would like to tape game 7, which is on Monday at 8, I would be very, very happy.

I think that's about it for now. Take it easy ya'll.

2004-06-05T07:33:00.000-04:00

One more quick thing, if anyone would tape the last few games of the Stanley Cup Finals for me, I would be eternally grateful. The first game is tonight (saturday).
Thanks

2004-06-05T06:52:00.000-04:00

Update time
I am currently in the city of Rethymnon after being in the backwoods of Crete for the last couple of days doing some hardcore hiking. Like just about every other city in Crete, this one is on the ocean and very pretty. Our group is looking a little ragged after a couple intense days of hiking punctuated by a motion sickness marathon of an hour long ferryboat ride on less than calm seas and a 1.5 hour drive through the roughest mountains in Crete.
We started our hiking by going to the summit of Mount Gigolas, the mythological throne of Zeus. This was one of the most intense hikes I've ever been on; it took us about 3 hours to get to the peak and 2 more to get down. In many sections we were going hand over foot, but I'm happy to say that I kept up with the UNC track star of the group relatively well. The views from the top were amazing; we could see both sides of Crete, very impressive.
After Gigolas, we rested up for the 17 km hike of the Samarian Gorge the next day. I don't think anyone's feet were particularly happy with them, but after another 4 hours of hiking and some more outstanding scenery, we walked out of the gorge and into our hotel. The rest of the day was spent cooling off in the Mediterranean and enjoying some beers.
After our traveling this morning, our professor has given us a free day to rest our weary limbs and explore the city. Laundry is getting low, so I'm going to have to spend some time on that. Then, I'll probably head to the beach.

2004-05-30T12:10:00.000-04:00

So this whole blog thing isn't working out quite as well as I had hoped. I've made it into internet cafes a few times before this, but its been hard to find the time to sit down to do any indepth things. Dr. McCoy keeps us about busy as hell and I've been trying to use my free time to enjoy this country and catch some naps. The trip is going along great though. I'm pretty pumped that I still have a couple more weeks of this. Right now I am on the island of Crete in a resort town called Agios Nicolaus (or something like that). This is place is real hot. There are a lot of europeans here and the night life is pretty hopping. We've been here two nights already and tonight is our last. Crete is an awesome place. There is hardly a flat piece of land anywhere, its practically one huge mountain. The roads here are ridiculous, just one cutback after another, and the sea is rarely out of sight. People in this country drive like maniacs. Lane marker lines seem to be suggestions at best, and there's nothing to wake you up like watching your bus pass a slow truck on a winding 1 and a half lane mountain road. Rules continue to be nonentities. In all the time I've been here, I think I've seen less than 5 cops. Definitely a lot different than Cary, where there is an empty cop car parked in every strip mall. The food here is interesting, they could definitely do for some more variety, but I think I can survive on my current diet of Gyros. Breakfast is another story. I try to be open minded about it, but I hit the wall today and I don't know how much more I can take. The problem is, someone tricked europeans into thinking lunch meat was good for breakfast. Its a dirty trick, but they bought it. When our professor tells us our hotel has a nice breakfast, we know that it means they just have more lunch meat selections than the other places. I'll make it through though. Its about time for dinner, so I'll try to be back with a new update in the next few days.

2004-05-20T09:50:00.000-04:00

Sweet, I finally made it to an internet cafe, so here goes with the first update.
I gotta say Lufthansa airlines did a damn fine job getting me over here. The Germans don't mess around. They also don't hesitate to walk up and down the aisles with carts of (free) alcohol every half hour or so. This was the first example of what is a prevalent theme in Europe: there seem to be no rules. It seems that just as long as no one is dying, you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want.
Athens was hot, we stayed about a 5 minute walk from the Acropolis, right in the middle of the old city. There are tourists shops and outdoor cafes everywhere. Crazily enough, about every person you'll meet in Greece speaks english. They even have roadside advertisements in English. We spent two days touring Athens, visiting the Acropolis, the agora, the temple of Zeus, the temple of Hephaestion, etc.
Today, I am in the beatiful harbor city of Naphlion. Its a small city on the coast with a Frankish fort on an island in the harbor and an even bigger one on the mountain above the city. There is a 1000 step staircase to get to the top, that is on tomorrow's agenda. Naphlion is a super chill place, its very quiet, not nearly as hustle bustle as Athens. Today we visited the ruins of Mycenae, which was Agamemnon's city for all of you who saw Troy.
Its about time for dinner though, Greece is 7 hours ahead of ya'll. I'm going to get on that, hopefully I'll be back with a new update in the next few days.

2004-05-14T00:17:00.000-04:00

Today, my good friend Clay suggested that I update this thing. I wasn't really going to worry about it too much until I got over there, but since Clay, who has no job, no plans, and no responsibilities, is obviously looking to my humble blog for entertainment, I thought I would oblige him. So here is my planned itinerary once I leave Greece:

June 10 Thurs- leave Athens, arrive in Munich
11 Fri- Munich
12 Sat- Munich
June 13 Sun- leave Munich, arrive in Florence
14 Mon- Florence
15 Tues- Cinque Terra
16 Wed- Cinque Terra
17 Thurs- Cinque Terra
18 Fri- Florence
June 19 Sat- leave Florence, arrive in Venice
20 Sun- Venice
21 Mon- Venice
June 22 Tues- leave Venice, arrive in Rome
23 Wed- Vatican City
24 Thurs- Vatican City
25 Fri- Rome
26 Sat- Ostia
27 Sun- Rome
June 28 Mon- leave Rome, arrive in Naples
29 Tues- Pompeii
30 Wed- Paestrum
July 1 Thurs- leave Naples, arrive in Sienna
2 Fri- Sienna
July 3 Sat- leave Sienna, arrive in Florence
4 Sun- Florence
July 5 Mon- Leave Florence for Washington, DC

This might be a little confusing, but it makes sense to me. Basically, I'll be staying in Munich, Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, Sienna, and Florence (again) in that order. The cities listed that I didn't just name are going to be day trips, and they may or may not happen as listed. The main problem right now is finding things to do while I wait for my brother to get out of school on the 19th. Cinque Terra, the Italian Riviera, will hopefully help with that. Also, we extended our trip to the 5th so that we could be in Sienna on the 2nd for the Palio di Sienna, which is a no holds barred horse race that is a huge deal in the city. Certain friends of mine rated this as the coolest thing they did in their two month trip through all of Europe. These guys also went to Amsterdam, and if you know who I am talking about, you will understand why their rating of the Palio over Amsterdam makes their suggestion worth listening to.

2004-05-02T17:10:00.000-04:00

I should be studying, but this is slightly more entertaining.
Basically, I'm crossing the ocean for the first time in my life on May 15 to head to Greece for some study abroad action. I'm done with that on June 10, at which point I will fly to Munich and spend about three days there. After that, I'm hopping on a train and meeting up with my younger brother, Brian, in Florence. From there, we will be checking out the rest of Italy: Rome, Naples, Pompeii, Venice, the works. We fly out of Florence on July 2 and fly into Washington DC, where we will be spending the 4th of July with my parents and some family who live up there. I'll be back in good ol' NC some time after the 4th.

Meanwhile, I'm going to take advantage of the wonders of technology to keep whoever cares updated with what is going on in my life via this blog. I'm not going to have any sort of permanent address or phone number, so if you want to get in touch with me, hit up the email at kthill@email.unc.edu. My professor has ensured us that we will be coming across places with internet access, so I'll be checking my email about as often as I update this blog. It may be every few days or every few weeks, I really don't know.

Anyway, enjoy the drinking age while I'm gone and don't do anything too fun without me.