Day Two - 10 Dec 05 - Milan/Florence

Damn it.. Woke up late 'cos I was just so tired I stopped responding to my alarm... ;p After breakfast at Ostello Pieto Rotta, we set off for the Duomo (Cathedral) in Milan. Remember I said Notre Dame was beautiful? This one was even better...

How I wish to attend a mass in one of these cathedrals.. I can imagine how grand it actually is... Some of my friends actually went for Christmas mass at Notre Dame!!! Now I can understand why the church had so much power in the past...

Took the train to Firenze (Florence) thereafter, checked into Ostello Archi Rossi. This was another hostel recommended to me by one of the backpackers I met in France. And now I know why this hostel was recommended - It has a character of its own... Upon entering the front doors, you're greeted by walls of graffiti, some beautiful crafted & painted, others left behind by residents in the hostel. There was a quote which I liked:

"People who think they know everything, annoy us who do."

So anyway, the day was spent walking around the town of Firenze, which I must say was a lot more lively, lots of street markets and night life, and not to mention walking into a cinema (because it said "Cinema") and realising it was an adult cinema! *gasp!*

The highlight of the day was the visit to Galeria dell'Academia where Michelangelo's David was housed.

Well, initially I though, aiya, it's just another sculpture.... But I was wrong... I was awestruck when I turned into the "David gallery". Perhaps it was the positioning of the sculpture in the middle of the room, or perhaps I just hadn't David to be so huge (in more ways than one.. *wink*) or perhaps it was just the detail/proportion/features of David that was so... vivid... and suave... It was also amusing to have the curator in the gallery going "NO FOTO" to the people taking photos but people still continued to take more shots... ;p

Returned to the hostel at night where I got some dinner for myself cos Gullnaz was beat and went off to bed early. And hanging out in the dining/common room, I bumped into this asian looking guy again whom I bumped into earlier when I was using the internet. We started talking and I found out that he was a Japanese who was travelling around on his bicycle and he started his trip in Singapore and took him 10 months to get to where he was.... His name is KUROSAWA Takehiro.

A photo of me with Takehiro and his bicycle. I've only known of one other person who's done such a trip.. One of my council seniors in college who took a year off to travel on his bicycle. He managed to get to Iraq where he had to return because of the war. Hmmz. How exciting. I should try that too. The Adventures of Kenny... on a Bicycle.. =)

Day Three - 11 Dec 05 - Florence/Pisa/Rome
Woke up to a hot bacon & eggs breakfast at the hostel. =) Took the train to Pisa thereafter - to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa of course.... it is one of the seven wonders of the world afterall... After a 20 minute walk from the train station, we caught the first glimpse of the tower, which I must say was... rather disappointing.. Having gotten used to seeing colossal structures like the Eiffel Tower, mega-cathedrals like Notre-Dame, the Leaning Tower was quite a midget.. but well, to see it was still interesting...

One of the reasons why the tower is not gonna topple over anytime soon... =)

Can see from this picture how the tower really is dwarfed by the buildings around it.

So anyway, we had to catch a train back to Florence to get our backpacks afterwards, and we rushed to get on the train which we thought was supposed to head back to Florence, but in the end, it was the WRONG way! =( so we ended up getting off and taking the next train....

When we got back to Florence, we found out that the next train to Rome was not gonna arrive till 2 hours later, so we decided to visit the Duomo (Cathedral) at Firenze, which we didn't get to do yet cos we were always late and it closed before we got there...

This duomo wasn't as impressive on the interior I thought.. But I guess it's hard to compare...

When we got back to the train station, we found that our train had been delayed by 30 45 minutes! Darn... So we waited.. and we waited... and we waited.. and the train finally arrived 90 minutes later.... By then, there were hordes of people waiting on the platform, and if you thought Singaporeans were kiasu, you were wrong. These Italians were trying to get onto the train even before it came to a complete stop! But of course, Singaporeans must have back-up plan one.. so we walk to the other end of the train where not many people seemed to bother to walk to...

While on the train, I kinda finished up a whole bag of clementines (the european equivalent of mandarin oranges..)... Some had seeds in them and some didn't... But I must have eaten so many clementines that there were enough seeds for a whole orchard of clementines.. =)

We arrived in Rome FINALLY around 10+pm, tired from a whole day of travelling and waiting. Checked into our dorms, which was a 10-man dorm, but the other 8 beds were occupied by this group of 8 Finnish dudes... And because it was their supposed last night, they went out and got drunk, came back at 4am, made a hell lot of noise before settling into bed some 45 minutes later. Idiots.