Europe gets Spiced - Part 1

Ok, so I’m gonna dive straight into the trip to Europe.
It was great as I mentioned before. It went a little something like this:

We left CT on the 18th of August flew to Johannesburg (Jozzie), waited for our next flight to Spain for a few hours, from Spain we connected to Rome (or Romà). The entire journey to Rome took roughly 22 hours including sitting around in various airports waiting for our next flight, and walking (ok, some of it was on a travelator) about a 1km in Spain’s extremely large Baragas Airport (we had more adventures with this one when we were coming back home). There was no time difference in Spain and in Rome from SA. All those hours on the planes with recycled air were not fun.

Dre and I made a rookie mistake when we got our tickets for the flight from SA to Spain we got seats next to each other. On a 2-hour flight this is no problem but on a 9-hour IBERIA flight in economy class, two adults sitting next to each while others (the well travelled) are stretched out along 4 seats asleep is not fun. I was so glad when all that travelling was done but little did I know about what real travelling was.

But we made it to Rome, and so did our luggage (this was a huge fear, we even split our clothes before we left). Anyway, so there we are in a foreign country and not knowing where our hotel was. We eventually ended up paying 32 euros each (that’s a lot of South African Rand, in shoe speak it was about two good pairs) for a shuttle to our hotel. Before we got on to the shuttle we both were convinced we had over paid and that our hotel was probably down the road, but the hotel was a distance away from the airport. We got to the hotel showered and decided that we would try and buy a SIM card to call home and let our parents know that we were fine. We should have sorted out our International roaming; it would of made our ET phone home moments so much easier. We could not find a single Vodafone outlet that didn’t require us to walk 2km! So we settled for an Internet café, which was a fair distance away from our hotel anyway. The walk was not the problem but the sweltering heat was breaking me, we came from the middle of winter in CT (10 to 14°C) to 38°C. We had the first of many of the most expensive MacDonald’s meals we will ever have, more than 10 euros for 2 meals. We were so unadventurous in those first days and we realized now that if we had tried to find the subway we could of gone and spent all the time we wanted in the Vatican City. But now we know…

So our tour (a Trafalgar Tour) began on the 20th of August. Our Tour Director, Barry Amor (no seriously that’s his name), took great pains to warn us of Europe’s many pick pockets, which sent us into high alert. Always worrying about the safety of our passports. We purchased a little moneybag and were off on one of the optional tours with a local tour guide, for an evening walk through Rome (wasn’t really evening as there was no real darkness, the sun only went down at 21:00). The tour group were all english speaking: 4 other South Africans, Canadians, Americans, Australians and Malaysians. There were a few nice kids as well.

The first picture is of an old building that we walked past. We went to the Pantheon first, video camera in hand I think I shot almost every inch of the place; it is truly a very impressive. You can see the enterance in the rear, in the second photo. This is one of the obelisks (called the Macuteo) stolen from Egypt, it stands over a fountain by Filippo Barigioni.

Then we hit Piazza Navona to have a bite and see the Fountain of the Four rivers. The piazza was full of artists, tourists and café’s. Dre and I had gelate (ice-cream), it was divine and of course in the heat it started melting as soon as we left the store. Dre’s chocolate was all over the place. Best sorbet I ever tasted, mmmm yummy.

The third photo is the Fountain of the Four Rivers by Bernini, with an obelisk (Agonalis). The fountain is in front of the St. Agnes in Agony church. The tour guide told us that Bernini positioned the cowering sculpture of the Nile River showing it fearing that the facade of the church, done by his rival Borromini, would crumble on him. The first of the last two photo's is of a side fountain in the Piazza and the last is of some of the artwork that was on sale.