Wednesday, July 25, 2012

A little taste of Italy






3 comments:

JPull330 said...

Nice photos! Justin

Unknown said...

Very Nice!! Thanks for sharing your pics with us from your vacation.

I have a few questions about your trip, as it relates to these photos and videos.

I thought the Gondolier guys sang in Italian as they drove you around? (or is that ONLY in the cartoons?)

Did the drivers speak English? How long (time wise, not distance)was a typical ride? How much did it cost? How do the "locals" travel from place to place?

Did they have any "simulated" contests within the Coliseum?

Was the FIST viewing of the Coliseum when you came out of the train? THAT would be very shocking I think!!

Dad

Waterblogged said...

Sometimes the Gondoliers sing, although more often they are like "tour guides" and tell you about the buildings you are passing. Ours, unfortunately, didn't do much of either.

I'm not sure what "drivers" you're referring to... we only took one taxi, and that was arranged by Siemens to take us to Trento for Jon's work. That driver did not speak English. We took the train from Trento to Florence (3 hours), then from Florence to Rome (1 and a half hours on the direct, fast train), and then from Rome to the airport (30 minutes on the direct, fast train). The train rides were expensive, although a taxi would have been more. (I think they were between $70-100, but I don't remember exactly. The one to the airport was less- only about $15-20.) The subway ("Metro") in Rome was used by the locals. For that, you can ride for 90 minutes for a $2 ticket, or you could get 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month passes for different amounts. In Venice, there are no cars, so to get somewhere, you have to walk, or take a boat. There was a water taxi that we took from the airport to the city.

The video of the Coliseum that I posted was not our first actual view, but I took it because that is how we first viewed it, so it was very shocking. That's why Jon said it was the most memorable thing from the trip.