Thursday morning I left Granada at the ass crack of dawn for Barcelona where I spent a lovely 6 hours napping on and off in front of my next terminal for Venice. I eventually arrived in the city by bus, pulling in front of the train station where lo and behold, I spotted my mommy out the window! I flew out of the bus to leap into her arms (well I walked briskly and hugged her) and a few tears escaped my eyes at our reunion. She was wearing an uber cute new purple jacket from forever 21, and other than that she looked to be in the same perfect condition I left her in January. We walked to our hotel, which was only across the street (linking arms of course as I was feeling emotional at that point) and arrived at our room where I saw Carolyn, just awoken from a catnap after their long journey from the States. After evaluating our room, which was very nice, bidet and everything included, we headed back to the train to get to the island of Venice, connected by about a million small bridges over man made canals. It was pretty dark out by this point and we plan to write a letter to the Venetian board of tourism, if that exists, about their lack of lighting along the canal. Next time we visit we expect fully lit canals and for the Colors of Bennington store posters to be taken down from the faces of antique buildings.
As it was late and we weren’t ready to take on the water taxi system yet we decided to dine in a nearby pizza and pasta place. The wooden tables drew us in; don’t ask me why but the aesthetic was pleasing. We each got quite the personal pizza and a pitcher of expensive coke, which is apparently like liquid gold in Venice. We hit the sack early that night, which was fine by me as I am always ready to pass out and geared up for a day guided by Rick Steves.
Friday March 26th: Our day began with the somewhat daunting task of purchasing 3 day water taxi tickets, which we later realized worked somewhat on the honor system, but we weren’t ready to risk jail time on our first day in Italy. After boarding the water taxi we sat in the front of the boat, outside, which later turned out to be a mistake as we had gotten on the long route and would be freezing our asses off by the end of the trip. We made it to St. Mark’s square and got a look at the front of the church and the Doge’s (or governor’s) palace, which were very impressive minus a few bits of construction. We bought our tickets, me with my wonderful student rate, and entered the Doge’s palace. This place was gilded in gold and contained neat old world maps and globes as well as numerous paintings on the walls and ceilings, including Tintoretto’s “Paradise”, the largest oil painting ever made. However, the real fun began when we got to the prison area. Apparently, the doge decided the fate of criminals and they only had to travel a few floors to find their new home in a damp cell downstairs. After visiting a vast array of places I never want to be jailed and being mystified at the short height of the doors we crossed over the bridge of sighs, which was the last time the prisoners got to see the outside world before entering jail. I will not complain about the construction view.
We then entered St. Mark’s mosaic church, which could do with some lighting and climbed to the top for a great view and perfect photo shoot opportunity. Rick told us all about the history of the church and the four horses that look out over St. Mark’s square, which are duplicates – the originals were inside, and mom got a great shot of them, very sneaky. Apparently these four horses are very old, I’m talking 4th century B.C. old. They were taken to Rome to Constantinople to Venice to Paris by Napoleon and back to Venice finally where they now remain.
After our tours we headed to a pasta place where we got the most expensive Coke I’ve ever purchased – 5.50 euro which is like 8 bucks or something USD. We then entered a church (I can’t remember the name now) and headed to the Rialto bridge where we took photos and shopped around the outside vendors. It was at this point we began wandering in the streets of Venice and became thoroughly confused and lost, circling somehow the same spots until we finally made it back to St. Mark’ square at night. We enjoyed a delicious, very thick hot chocolate before our water taxi ride to the train. It took us back to the hotel and we hit the sack for another early morning.
Saturday March 27th: We had breakfast before heading back to the train to the boat to our stop at Ca ‘ d’ Oro, where we navigated the streets like experts, not getting lost at all! We stopped to take pictures along the way as usual, and finally got to the outside of the island where we saw a lot of water and a couple distant islands. We boarded the water taxi at Fon. Nuove and enjoyed our 10 minute ride to the island of Murano. This place is famous for it’s glass, and we enjoyed a brief glass factory show where they made a vase and a swan. Unfortunately, the vase had popped by the time we left, so we weren’t too impressed with the lifehood of the glass there and we decided to keep shopping for our own glass gifts. We went to the glass museum after walking around, and it was quite boring so we headed out to grab a sandwich from a cute sandwich shop on the side of a canal. We took it out to a dock and sat down for a picnic in the sun.
After shopping again we took the water taxi to the stop “cimiterio”, the island the people of Venice are buried after a command from Napoleon, who thought burying the dead on the island they lived was unsanitary. After a little feeling of morbidity, we left back on more water taxis till we arrived at S. Toma and saw the Frari Church. As usual, this church was amazing and beautiful, filled with statues and paintings as well as grand organs and altars, smaller chapels and intricate design along the floors, walls and ceilings. Then we headed to Scuoa San Rocio to a boat to San Marco. We shopped for a bit, I got my leather gloves finally and mom and Carolyn got purses, then we took a water taxi at night to Ferrovia for pizza dinner, gelato and the train to the hotel.
Sun March 28th: After hotel breakfast, we took a train very early at 855am to Verona. We bought tickets for that day at the window and boarded the train, only to find out during the ride that our tickets should have been stamped before boarding and we would each receive a 50 euro fine. We argued with the 12 year old conductor checking the tickets but he would not let us off the hook, he probably never broke the rules in his life, especially considering I don’t think he’d even hit puberty, but he did let us off with one 50 euro fine instead of three. After taking the money (and putting it in his wallet, which I found a little sketchy) he wrote the date in pen on the ticket, not that it mattered since NO ONE EVEN LOOKED AT IT when we got off the train. Aggravation ensued but we let it go as best we could so we would enjoy the day. We got on they city bus to Piazza Bra where we saw the Roman arena and bought a “Verona card” for all activities in Verona. The arena was great to look at as it is the best preserved in the Roman world. After spending a leisurely two hours there we got outside where a weirdo dressed in Gladiator uniform smoking a cig came up to us and made us pose with him for a euro. Then we got on the “Rick Steve’s” city tour guidelines again and hit a neat devotional column before getting to the Porta Borsari archway and entering the Piazza Erbe. We saw a fountain from medieval times and some touristy souvenir places before getting to Juliet’s house, where we saw the famous balcony. We walked around and saw the Piazza dei Signori – the last gothic staircase from some time I think, and then reached the Tombs of the Scaligeri family. These were a sight to behold, gothic spires reached up over tombs enclosed by gates, intricate floral design and statues of their favorite dogs. We got to the Church of Saint Anastasia where we saw some cool hunchback figures holding water basins and stuff. Then we saw the Ponte pietra and river view from the roman bridge – apparently it was bombed but the people of the town fished out the original stones from the river to rebuild it. We saw the Duomo church for a while before wandering back to the main city center.
After finishing our church tour we bought tickets to the Romeo and Juliet opera for that night. Once we had the tickets in our hands we asked how long it was, and found out it’d be a 3-½ hour ordeal. We were a bit wary but figured we could always leave after two hours and it’d still be worth our money. After a quick bite at the Mickey D’s, we got to our nosebleed seats in the opera house, waited eagerly for the opening act, and found ourselves in a modern rendition of Romeo and Juliet. Not only was the stage a turning record player, but the people were glowing with neon clothing and hair, clubbing it up for Juliet’s bday bash. We knew we were in for a treat then. The entire thing was in French with Italian subtitles, so we had absolutely no idea what was going on for most of the time. After dozing off a bit we headed out so we could see the Castelvecchio – a castle, fortress, bridge and museum mix. We took some pictures over the bridge and headed inside for an extensive art collection, and finally to the top where we got to walk along the wall of the castle and view the city. We were quite exhausted by this point but decided to stop for gelato before the train. Unfortunately we were farther away from the train station than we had realized and ended up missing our train completely. Instead of the cheapsy six euro tickets, we’d have to pay more like fifty euro if we wanted to leave anytime soon. Instead we opted for the cheapsy tickets that didn’t leave till about ten that night, which meant we had some time to kill. We headed back into Verona and sat on a bench, wandered a bit and sat down for cheap pizza before finally making it to the train and hotel. It was a very jam packed day, we saw a lot and it was a bit exhausting but definitely worth the day trip.
Mon March 29th: Hotel breakfast yet again before walking to the bus to Villoch. We were worried about finding said bus but we managed, and ended up on the second floor of the bus. It was very cool – I’ve seen double decker buses but usually for sightseeing tours and not like a greyhound bus on top of another greyhound bus. I slept most of the ride till we arrived at the train station and headed to Salzburg. We took a city bus to the Goldenese Theatre hotel, turned out to be quaint and authentic. We ventured out to “old town”, on the other side of the river for dinner. Apparently during WWII new town was bombed and rebuilt, while old town managed to survive. They are separated by a river and bridge. That night we took Rick Steve’s advice as per usual and went to a Monk brewery - a very authentic establishment where you buy grab a mug, rinse it out in the fountain and pay to have a guy put the beer in before sliding it back to you, overflowing and sticky. Mom and I decided on the roasted chicken and fries for our meal and attempted to drink the beer but as neither of us like beer much in general, it was slow going. Carolyn on the other hand got the dark beer and put us to shame. After eating outside in the garden, we headed outside to take some pictures since we were pretty high up on a hill and walked back to the hotel. We passed through Maribell gardens, our first attempt of three, but as it was very dark we didn’t see much. We got to bed relatively early, but for some reason the phone rang throughout the night on and off, some kind of redirection to our room from the front desk, but they fixed it after the second night.
Tuesday March 30th: We slept in a bit and had hotel breakfast at around 10am before starting Rick’s old town tour at Mozartplatz, the statue of Mozart in the center. We wanted to see the Italian fountain in residenzplatz, but to no avail as it was under construction. Instead we decided to see the Salzburg panorama for 2 euro, consisting of an artist’s view of the city from atop the main fortress in 360 degrees, and other panoramas from early travelers who wanted to show the outside world. Afterwards, we hit our first church of the day – the Salzburg cathedral. It had three gold dates on the entrance gate, 774, 1628 and 1959. Each represented a rebuilding period for the cathedral, the final one being after the WWII bombings. This place had four organs near the center, and apparently Mozart used to play one of them in his youth. Just outside the church was Kapitelplatz, a plaza where mom bought a lovely small watercolor painting to frame back home. We headed to St. Peter’s cemetery, searching for Mozart’s wife and father’s graves, but unfortunately they weren’t even buried at that cemetery. We walked back out and to the Salzburg cathedral again as the painter who sold mom her watercolor had told us a traveling high school chorus group would be playing in the church at 1 or 2pm. We got to go inside and listen to them perform which was nice, although those churches are just freezing with their marble seats and surroundings.
After the church choir we headed up to the funicular, a small train/trolley thing that goes up the side of the mountain to the fortress, one of the best intact as no one ever dared to attack it. We got inside to see rooms filled with neat soldier’s medals, WWII stuff, state rooms, and most interesting, a torture room. This was really a sight to behold, especially the chastity belt with sharp pokers to discourage men from fooling around with the King’s wife. We looked down from the fortress to see a school band playing back at the Kapitelplatz plaza, so we took the funicular down and watched them play for a while. It was a band of American high schoolers and local Austrian players, coming together for part of an exchange. Mom got all teared up as she always does for music, especially high school bands and concerts, and also because she was feeling guilty that Kayli didn’t get to go to Europe (since Briana was in Paris with her school that week). After she calmed down (haha) we got pretzels from giant bins that were delicious. Then we headed inside St. Peter’s church, again beautiful but very cold, before heading to Universitatsplatz, the open air market filled with deli meat, pretzels and Mozart chocolate. Poor Mozart is used to sell pistachio chocolates in Austria. We got to see the neat medieval tunnels that connected this plaza with the neighboring street Getreidegasse which was filled with shops and Mozart’s birth house. We made our way down the crowded street to Alter markt where Carolyn bought some candies for people back home and we took a break to sit in front of a fountain. We were then on the hunt for dinner, seemingly difficult as most stuff was in German or we didn’t feel adventurous enough to try. We ended up at a pizza and pasta place by our hotel before deciding to try Mirabell gardens (attempt two) again. It was lighter than before, but still not an optimum time to see the gardens. We had figured we’d lucked out on weather so far in our trip as it was supposed to rain almost every day but never did, and were worried we’d miss out seeing the gardens if it rained the next day. However, it was just as gorgeous as the last.
Wednesday march 31st: Breakfast at the hotel as always before heading to Mirabell gardens (attempt three) in daylight. This was the type of lighting we were waiting for. Mirabell gardens is where they filmed part of the Sound of Music, the fountain she runs through singing “I have confidence”, and the steps the children hop up and down on singing “Do Re Me”, as well as a vine tunnel she runs through in the movie. After enjoying the gardens, although we were a bit early in the season for things to be blooming, we got on a bus to hellbrunn, an estate of an archbishop that had a trick fountain garden. We were not on a good luck streak as the place didn’t actually open until April 1st, the day after we were there. However, we did still get to walk through the regular gardens and ponds and decided it was a good idea to walk up the side of a hill to get a good view. We were huffing and puffing when we got there, but it was a nice view. We took the bus back to old town and got Hot dogs stuffed into buns and a pretzel back at the open air market. Then we did the new town tour as Rick suggests, and saw the St. Sebastian cemetery (we visited a lot of cemeteries) where Mozart’s wife and father are buried. This was a relief – we thought we’d never find their graves. In Austria, the graves are rented, not bought, which means if someone doesn’t pay the rent on your plot, you are dug up and thrown into a mass grave somewhere else. If you had a nice headstone, sometimes they will hang it up on the walls of the cemetery for decoration.
We headed to Mozart’s house and got the audio tour, explaining every artifact of Mozart’s life they had. We got to see his pianos and organs as well as original music and a room dedicated to his father and sister, who were both musically inclined. However it was very hot in this building and made me sleepy so I was glad to get back outside. We walked in new town on the street Steingasse, which was the main medieval street out of the city, and we got to see their “red light” district – one house open 12 – 4am with a red light over the door. We walked around some more and decided on eating back at the Monk’s brewery again since it was good the first night, and headed to a place that does Sound of Music shows, but only in the summer. We were screwed again so we decided to walk around the area once more and saw a harp player before stopping for hot chocolate at Café Bazaar. Then we got back to the hotel before for our last night sleeping in Austria as the next day would be a long one.
Thursday April 1st: Our last free breakfast hotel before a walking to a bakery where mom got a croissant and I got a muffin, then we shopped a bit. We had bought tickets for the Panoramic bus tour that drove through the Bavarian mountains to a Salt Mine. We had no idea this was actually on German territory, so we got to visit Germany for about 4 hours! The drive was interesting as we got to see the place where Hitler’s old house was, where he made diabolical plans and later was bombed. We got to the Salt Mine Tour which turned out to be a really fun activity and I’m glad we did it. We got into miner’s jumpsuits and boarded a train that reminded me of a Six Flag’s water ride where you sit on the log. The tunnel we rode through was hand made and made me think I could never have done it, as it would have been very claustrophobic. We got off the train and into a large cavern with a wooden slide looking thing that we actually got to slide down. This was fun and slightly frightening, we held onto one another and reached the bottom. We got to walk around and see neat mining tools, learn about how they mine salt before we got to the neatest part in my opinion – the lake in the mountain. It was actually the result of mining as the water is part of the salt process but it was big enough that we got on a boat and slowly made our way to the other side. During the process the lights were out and a light show against the wall lit up along with music. It was very beautiful actually. Then we got off the boat and got to taste the water – verrrry salty. At some point we did another slide chute before reaching a funicular to get back to the top and ride the train again. We drove back home but on the way stopped in a German town for hot chocolate (big surprise) and headed back to Salzburg. This was a perfect day for that activity as it was not very nice outside, raining slightly. We had dinner at a pizza place before walking to the fortress and riding the funicular again. We took some last Austria pictures at night before entering the fortress for our Mozart concert. We were in the 2nd row and it was great. Four people playing viola, violin and cello as well as the piano for one song played three songs, two by Mozart, for about a 1 or 1 ½ hour show. It was very enjoyable and a nice way to end our night in Salzburg. We had some time to kills so we stopped at Café Bazaar yet again for hot chocolate before heading back to the hotel to rearrange our packed suitcases and getting a taxi to the train station. It was about midnight when we arrived and our train left at 130am, but we wanted to be sure there was no requirement for stamping your tickets so we walked around a bit trying to find out. We waited on the track in an enclosed area that was still freezing with a crazy old Austrian man trying to talk to us in German while he drank. We finally got on the train and it was lovely, warm and quiet. Our room was the most hilarious tiny sleeping car I’ve ever seen. It was three bunks high and had a seat and small table along with a sink and small closet crammed into about an 8 by 5 ft space. I climbed the ladder to the top bunk and mom and Carolyn and I laughed about our situation for a while, we were probably a bit slap happy by this point. Then we put up our little guardrails so we wouldn’t roll over and die in the middle of the night and dozed off till 7am when the conductor brought us a plate full of croissants. I slept surprisingly well but was very tired when we arrived and had to drag our stuff off the train.
Friday April 2nd: We stopped at a café for crepes and walked to the bus station where we bought tickets to our respective airports, me in Treviso and mom and Carolyn at Marco Polo. I had been dreading this moment of separation for days and knew it was going to be hard to say goodbye to my mom after such an amazing week. I love being abroad and in Granada, but I have a really fantastic mom and I couldn’t imagine getting to experience more in Europe without her. After a teary goodbye I got on my bus to the airport and they got on theirs. I was very early to the airport and I later heard that mom and Carolyn were a bit late to theirs, but they made it. I on the other hand sat around the airport metal seats for a while before putting on every item of clothing I had because my suitcase was full and Ryan Air is strict about the size of the luggage you bring on board. I was afraid they were going to make me try to fit it in their testing thing again like on the way to Venice so I was sitting with eight shirts on for about 4 hours. I thought this would be horrible but it turned out to be quite cold in the airport and I was actually ok, although I was a bit uncomfortable and felt like I had a snowsuit on. The airline didn’t even glance at my bag so when I got on the plane I undressed in my seat, probably very odd to the people next to me as I took off 7 of the 8 layers and shoved them in my bag. I got to Barcelona and headed to the hotel outside the airport to shower (we hadn’t been able to shower since early Thursday morning) and fall asleep. I was very nervous about oversleeping as my flight was at 625am but I managed to get up on time and get to the airport. I was hungry by this point, as I hadn’t had dinner, so I broke open two of the milky ways mom had put in my Easter basket. That’s right, my mom is so sweet she brought me a mini Easter basket. I was worried again about getting checked for my bag so I put on every item of clothes I had yet again and made my way to the plane where no one checked. I got on and made it the hour to Granada and caught a bus for only 3 euro to the city center. This was great, as I had had to pay 30 euro for the first taxi a week before when the bus wasn’t running. I got to the apartment, took off all those layers and passed out in bed, exhausted from such a fantastic trip.
My spring break was amazing. I got to visit Venice and Salzburg and a little of Germany. But most importantly I got to spend it with my mom!!! (and Carolyn of course, who was a joy to travel with). I am so glad she came to visit me and am so grateful she is so generous and paid for nearly everything for my trip. She is the best mommy ever!
