A lesson of history - The Italy trip in 10 days.

Summary

Day 1: Landed in Venice - around 12 noon, stayed in Venice, saw around and stayed in Venice.



Day 2: Visited Venice, island hoping etc to Murano, Burano and Lido, stayed in Venice.

Day 3: We did the walking tour, took train to Florence in the evening and stayed in Florence.

Day 4: We did a walking tour in the morning, visited Davids statue, Duamo in Florence. We took train to Pisa. Then took train to Rome and stayed in Rome.

Day 5: We went to visit Spanish Steps, Pantheon etc. Stayed in Rome

Day 6: We did the walking tour in morning and visited Spanish steps and the area around, stayed in Rome.

Day 7: We saw the Roman Colosseum, Forum and Palantine Hill and other places and we stayed in Rome.

Day 8: We did the walking tour and went to Vatican City and visited St Peter's Basilica, stayed in Rome.

Day 9: We did the walking tour in the morning for Jewish Ghetto area and visited local streets at Trastevere, at night went to Piazza Navona, stayed in Rome.

Day 10: We had flight at 11am, flew back to Scotland.

Detailed Itinerary

Day#1

• We landed in Venice around noon, took the bus to Piazzale Roma and then walked till hotel. It's must to carry a map because it's so easy to get lost in Venice. Luckily we had right directions from our hotel.
• We then went out in town and explored it ourselves. San Marco square was the highlight.
• First we visited Basilica followed by Doges Palace. There is a secret itinerary tour in Doges Palace at 11:35 am; you have to pre book if you want to visit this.
• We hired a gondola for 40min, shared it with another couple and hence costed us £40. It was worth a while with our private chauffeur showing us world's most beautiful city around. 
• After that we went to Rialto Bridge which is the famous bridge due to the story associated. It's a good place for shopping - definitely expensive.
• We had few Galetoes and pizza slices here and there before settling down near canal for few beers from supermarket.

Day#2

• Next day we bought the Veporetta pass for 24 hours, costed us £20 each. We decided to exploit it so started in morning, went to Murano island which is famous for glass work. 
• We had our lunch there and from Murano we went to Burano island. Burano is famous for colorful houses and lace work. It's a great place to take pictures.
• From Burano we went to Torecello island which was recommended by our gondola chauffeur. It was OK-ish with little bit of history.
• After Torecello we went to Lido island which is famous for the sand beach. Lido has lagoon at one side and sea on another. It's quite a big island with lots of places to eat and drink.
• We headed straight to the beach and relaxed for couple of hours, saw the sunset there and started back towards San Marco. They are really just 10mins apart.
• We headed back to Lido after dinner as we wanted to attend the live music show at the beach. There were not many people, but the atmosphere was great. We came back to hotel around 2am.

Day#3

• We had a late break fast at the hotel and headed to attend the free walking tour at 11am around San Marco Square.
• After the walking tour, we headed to Piazza Roma and took a fast train to our next stop - Florence. It costed £45 each and took 1.5hours.

• We reached Florence around 4pm, checked in at the hostel just next to railway station.
• We explored Florence downtown ourselves visiting the Duamo and then walked along the river to see David’s (Michelangelo) statue at Michelangelo Square. 
• We spent couple of hours there to witness the sun set, it was amazing - one of the most recommended things to do in Florence.
• At night we decided to treat ourselves with fancy dinner and bottle of wine. It was great theme restaurant in front of Duamo.

Day#4

• In the morning we had super heavy breakfast and started with the free walking tour organized by the hostel itself.
• It was 2 hour tour, we got to see and know about the highlights of the area including local markets and galeto recommendations.
• Around 12 noon, we took train to Pisa. Pisa was 1 hour journey, costed £7.5 each. From Pisa Centrale, we walked to Pisa Leaning Tower, took about 20mins.

• There stood the stunning Leaning Tower, the Cathedral and the Bapistry all nearby. We took pictures of all. We didn’t climb the top of tower as we had to pre book it. 
• Around 5.30 pm we took the train to Rome (3.5 hours). Stayed in Rome close to Roma Termini station for that night.

Day#5

• In the morning we changed the hotel and moved closer to Spanish Steps. Our hotel was 5 mins walk from Piazza di Spagna.
  
• We did the walking tour in the evening around 5 pm starting from Spenish Steps covering Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and few other places, it lasted about 2 hours.
• We got the basic orientation of the area and explored it further by ourselves during night.

Day#6

• We bought the Roma pass for free transport and entry to first two places of interest for next three days. It costed us £34 each. By the end of day three, we thought we had complete value of the pass.
• We visited Colosseum, it's the single most attractive archaeological site in the whole world.
  
• After Colosseum, we went to Roman Forum and Palantine Hill. We had audio guides from Rick Steve with us which helped us a lot of understand the history of these sites.
•  It was a hot day (38 degrees) and hence we took a break and came back to the hotel to relax for a while.
• We went out for dinner at Pantheon.

Day#7

• In the morning we went on another walking tour covering Colosseum, Capilotine Hill, Emmanuel Monument and Piazza Navona etc.
  
• We went to Galleria Borghese at 1pm, you'll have to make a prior reservation for that. They only allow 350 people inside at a time for a span of 2 hours. The gallery has great art work from different periods.
• We visited Villa Borghese which is a mythological theme park, it was OK-ish. 
• We went around these places again listening the audio guide. We went out to Vatican city at night.

Day#8

• In the morning we went on to do walking tour from Spanish Steps to Vatican city covering all the places on the way.
• Immediately after the tour we queued up for entering St Peter Basilica - The most powerful and biggest church in the world. After about 1 hour queue, we finally entered to this magnificent building. 
  
• We listened our audio guide and spent some quite time inside. We came out around 3 pm and headed back to hotel as it was too hot.
• We had an early dinner and then went to explore the streets of Trevistere. 
• From there we went to Piazza Navona and sat there for a while having beer.

Day#9

• We did another walking tour with couchsurfers. It started from Circo Massimo. 
• It was about the rather less known places and more interesting. We went to Jewish Ghetto and the streets around, Knights of Malta and the orange gardens.
  
• We started around at 10 am and ended at 2 pm near one of the local weekend markets for locals. We had our lunch there itself.
• We hang around in the street of Trevestere after that and changed the hotel back to Termini for the next day early morning flight.

Day#10

• We took the Teta Vision bus for £4 from Termini to Campiano Airport for flight at 11am. These buses go every 30mins from Termini to airports non stop.
• We took the flight for home with heavy heart !! 

Euro trip begins - 1 conti..

Day# 1 was fun. We bought the day pass in 7.5Eur and went around the town extensively. After trying Happy and Laughter truffle, we went to the Heineken  brewery for couple of hours laughing happily !
'I don't know how to behave because other people are not high' was the dialog worth remembering. The night ended at Red Light District, famous but seemingly artificial.


Day# 2 started at Ann Frank House. Good piece of history there. We then started exploring options to leave the place and head towards Brugge. We booked a Euroline bus ticket 30Eur pp for Ams-Brugge and Brussels-Ams. The bus has to start 7am in the morning, to be able to make it we have to wake up at 5.30am . Staying at Karo's place for the night didn't look like a good idea. We moved to another host, Chris. Chris stays about half an hour distance, married to Thai chic and had a beautiful 3yo daughter. We reached there and Chris had this massive collection of books and music CDs. After a bit of chit chat we decided to crash. Chris explained us how to reach the bus station etc.


Day# 3 we were at the bus station before I could open the eyes. I shared half 'Shiva' with the black dude at the station and slept in the super cozy Euroline coach. I remember updating my status for the free wifi in the bus and reaching Brugges then. Heavy snow shower was the prediction and so was the status when we reached there. Brugge was a little pretty town. We did the Bell tower, lunch, tunnels, coffee etc and headed to the train station for Brussels. Reaching Brussels we had our host came to pick us up from the train station. We had a rather (only) unpleasant experience with the Pak begger at the metro station.

Day# 4 started early morning again to see Brussels. We were carrying excellent guidelines from our host Guy and all he had to do was to follow them. Brussels has a bit of history left in it and that's what makes it more interesting.

Euro Trip Begins - 1

After much wait and anticipation, we finally set off for mainland Europe.
Trip# 1: Amsterdam, Brugge and Brussels.
Duration: 4 days (Thursday night to Tuesday morning)

We took an Easy Jet flight from Edinburgh, £70pp return trip. We started Thursday afternoon, drove till Edinburgh airport, parked Lucy at low cost car park (£22 total) and made it to Amsterdam on Thursday night.

We stayed at Karo's B&B, a contact forwarded by fellow couch surfer. Karo was nice, the place was OK. There was a Argentinean chic staying at his place already. Karo briefed us with enough information to visit and see places in Amsterdam.

We started right away, ended up in internet coffee shop, encountered 'Shiva' and lost in the town totally ! After revolving around the town at least couple of times and asking way to about a dozen people, we finally managed to make it to Karo's place at 3am, lost and defeated.

30 days

Couple of 30 days challenges that I am holding at the moment started from 11/11/12 onward :

- No youtube.

- read at least 10 pages/day of any book.

I have this Bin Laden book to complete at the moment and then Problem Solving 101 coming on the way.

Party Time, Walk to Remember.

Today we are hosting a party for her new job. Lot of people are coming, we will try to play games and have fun.

Last weekend we went for a walk, it was our first way. It was about 3miles along the coast. On a way we reached to a ruined castle. It was beautiful. We thought of giving it up in between but we carried on anyways and felt really good after we finished.

It was a good walk.

This is high time. I received my long awaited job offer from UK just last month. I have been waiting to apply for the visa now.

Last couple of weeks:
My manager asked me to travel to Egypt to help out on an offshore operation. Although I work for Europe and Sub Saharan Africa region and Egypt falls in MENA region and I can very well say no to this assignment, I displayed my good guy attitude and accepted it.
Now that operation in Egypt got cancelled and I had to spend stupid couple of weeks there doing nothing. Visa application got delayed.

Next couple of weeks:
My manager has asked me to travel to Norway to help out on another offshore operation. I am not sure when will that happen so I am sitting at home on standby mode. I can not apply for the visa as my passport will be retained at the embassy once I have applied. It'll take 3-4 weeks before I'll get my passport back. I am being very nice and very patience these days, which is not usual me.

I just hope it'll all work out fine. If it'll not, it'll be a BIG mess. I'll create it for them.

Scotland

We have moved to Scotland. She is joining her new job from Monday onward.

Not sure how this new step will work out in longer term but we are looking forward to it. Hoping things will be great and we will be able to make the most out of it.

If things work out well then we both will not have to look for another job for the rest of our lives. This could mean less opportunities but good life.