Quite A Grand Adventure: The Italy Tour

My apologies for the recent lack of postings. Things have been a bit crazy. So let's talk Italy!!

Spring break was the first full week of March. Our whirlwind tour took 6 of us to 6 different Italian cities in 10 days/9 nights. After 2 planes, 3 boats, 6 trains, 7 buses, 4 hostels, approximately 13 servings of gelato (possibly more), and an insane amount of planning and preparation, we made it back to Prague with only one pickpocketing casualty (sorry about your travel pass, Will).

Here's the overview:

Venice - (Friday the 7th and Saturday the 8th) lots of gelato, pizza, and wine. And lots of walking to counteract the effects of those three (especially in combination). San Marco square, St. Mark's Basilica, Peggy Guggenheim collection, gondola ride at sunset. So many beautiful buildings. A bit difficult to be out after dark because the whole city has an early bedtime - when the sun goes down, the shops close up. It was both eerie and peaceful to walk the alleys and see so few other people. Highlights: I just really loved the whole thing. At the risk of sounding cliché, it was quite magical.

Florence - (Sunday the 9th thru Tuesday the 11th) lots more exploring. And food. Really, those two are a given, so I'm going to stop listing them. Moving on... gypsies, outdoor galleries, the Duomo, St. Croce Opera, Palazzo Pitti exhibitions and gardens, view point after dark, the Ufizzi and the Academia (highlights: Birth of Venus at Ufizzi and the David at Academia), leather shops. While I enjoyed all the things we did in Florence, I did not particularly enjoy the city itself. Can't explain why. It just didn't feel good to me.

Rome - (Wednesday the 12th and Thursday the 13th) Vatican City, including visits inside St. Peter's Basilica, the Dome, and the Vatican museum (highlights: seeing Michelangelo's Pieta and praying inside the side room at the Basilica). Sistine chapel. (I can safely say that the Creation of Adam was something I never expected to see in person. And now I have not only seen it, but I have stood in the middle of the Sistine chapel and smelled it...) Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps - the fountain was very cool, the steps were rather disappointing. Our first "true" Italian dinner - appetizer, first course, main course, and dessert. The Colosseum, the Forum, and Palatine Hill. The Pantheon. The greatest tiramisu I am quite sure I will ever have in my life. As well as some of the greatest gelato I am quite sure I will ever have in my life. And I had a lot of gelato that week...

Naples - okay, including Naples is kind of a lie. We used it as a home base for Pompeii and Capri. So aside from eating breakfast and dinner in the city, we didn't do much. Except get pickpocketed (again, Will, sorry about your travel pass). I guess I should include that story here, because it was right when we arrived. These guys watched us buy our bus tickets (to get to our hostel) and got on the bus when we did. I made it on fast and through the crowd and found a safe spot standing by the window. These guys (three or four of them) got on and then, as other passengers were getting off, boxed in three of our group right when they stepped through the doors. They kept pushing as if they were trying to get off, and it was a shoving war - the doors tried to close on Will two or three times. I realized the aisles had cleared out completely but these people were still shoving, and just as I understood what was going on I saw one of the guys smile and heard Amanda say "hey!" and then they all bolted off the bus. She emerged with her purse (which clips shut) shoved open and her wallet in her hand. Yeah, the guy got it and she saw it and took it back from him. NBD. She's just my hero. One of them got into Will's jeans pocket and took the travel pass we use in Prague (it's about the size of a credit card). That was the only loss sustained. Which was actually quite a loss considering the mustache he's sporting in that photo. Will actually looked for it a few days later when we were leaving, but the entire bus stop was so dirty that there was no chance of finding it. So as for Naples, I can't really gauge it. We did have dinner at a really amazing restaurant. I ate a deep-fried calzone. Mmhmm, that's a thing.
**Note** William was so kind as to remind me that after a grueling battle with some samurai who had taken possession of his pass, and after summoning the power of a hurricane-force lightning storm, he did, in fact, recover his card.

Pompeii - (Friday the 14th) the bus to Pompeii dropped off in the current portion of the city. So there was lots of wandering to find the historical portion. But once found, some amazing exploring and photos. I really enjoyed Pompeii.

Capri - (Saturday the 15th) hydrofoil to Capri. I could talk for miles (yes, I meant to say that) about Capri in regards to what we did and saw and the cool shops and souvenirs, but it's beyond words as far as how it felt. It's a mountain island off the coast of Naples. It's famous for its lemons and oranges. It has the clearest water I've ever seen. We took a boat ride around the island and climbed up the tiny ally roads past brightly painted doors and wrought-iron fences to lookouts with the most gorgeous views I've ever experienced. I sat for ten minutes in a tree high above sea level and just stared at the water and the sky and the cliffs. It was the most peaceful I can recall feeling. Ever. In my life. I want to go back. I need to go back. Capri, call me home.

That about summarizes the week. Sunday was our travel day. We walked from our hostel to the train station, took a train from Naples to Rome, a bus from the train station to the airport, flew into Prague, took another bus from the airport to the metro, rode the metro back to our section of the city (that Jiřího z Podĕbrad, am I right?) and then walked back to the pension. And as amazing as our week was, it was so lovely to be back in my home away from home away from home.

Oh, Sunday afternoon, before we left Naples, was also the first and only time we heard a native Italian exclaim "mama mia!" in frustration. So that actually happens...

Venezia

Firenze

Roma - Pieta at St. Peter's Basilica

Roma - Colosseum

Roma - inside the Forum

Napoli - this is literally the only photo I have from Naples.
That fried calzone, though...

Pompei

Pompei

Pompei

Capri

Capri

Capri

Capri

Capri

Capri

Capri, call me home...

Quite A Grand Adventure: Kutná Hora

Kutná Hora is a small city about an hour's train ride from Praha. One of the main attractions - I may dare to even say the main attraction - is the ossuary.

The ossuary is an old church building surrounded by a cemetery. The chapel in the basement of the church has been decorated (yes, decorated) with almost or over or around 40,000 bones. Human bones. Real ones. Yeah. The cemetery, which used to belong to an abbey, has been around since the 1200's. It was enlarged in the 1300's and again in the 1400's in order to accompany more burials (courtesy of the Black Death and Hussite Wars, respectively). The church was built around 1400, with upper and lower levels, the lower one intended to serve as an ossuary for the bodies disturbed and excavated during construction of the church. Sometime in the early 1500's, a half-blind monk was tasked with exhuming the bones and stacking them inside the chapel. In 1870, a woodcarver was hired to organize the heaps.

So that's the history of it. Pictures don't do it justice, but here's a shot:

base of a mound

pattern in the mound

crest

so, this is how tall the mounds are, and there are four of them

presumably the woodcarver

I don't think I've ever been so close to bones, much less human ones

tower

I didn't find out what the tradition behind or significance of leaving a coin is

chandelier. 

Oh, and local legend says that the half-blind monk who dug up and arranged the bones had his sight fully restored once he completed the task. But that's just the local legend...