Erasmus Roadtrip: destination Italy

Haciendo el longuis en Verona..

Hello foks!!

Here it comes the very last trip I made between winter and summer semester break. I must say I enjoyed this trip even more because I knew it was going to be my last one around these months, since the classes of the summer semester has already started (Mon,  21st of Feb). Anyway... here is the Italy post, I hope you enjoy the reading.

How was this trip organized? Well we have to go back to several weeks before, along with the 2 Madrilian girls, Tamara and Barabara, Alfonso and me while playing Mus, we were talking about how great could be going to Venice to see the Carnivals, and maybe visit some small towns around it, but that was all, some chitchatting about the trip while concentrated on the game... but the weeks were passing by and the idea of going to the Carnivals was getting clearer.

We finished exams and I started my weekend travelling, right when I came back from Budapest, we decided to meet to play Mus (as usual), and it turned out that the girls and Alfonso organized already the trip to Italy, including Verona, Padova and Venice of course. Long story short, they ended up with one free seat, so I joined to the road trip to Italy.

So on the 18th of Feb, 7am, we departed from Rozna on our way to the first city in Italy to visit, Verona.

5 hours drive, and after spending some time looking for the hostel (that it was kinda far from the city, and it turned out that it was really a hotel) we step our feet on the city around 3pm. The very first thing we did was to look for food desesperately, so we tought, what is the typical food of any globalized city? McDonalds it was ! So the guys went to it, but I refused to eat one more hamburger, it was pretty much my diet during the past weeks travelling, so I went out to look for some Italian bakery and buy some pastries or sweets.

Fortress

After charging our energies, we got ready to visit all the part of the city, starting from Castelvecchio, The Arena, Juliet's House, Verona Cathedral and so on... All the monuments were gorgeous!! So different from what I am used to see in Ljubljana, and from the places I've visited the previous weeks, I was so excited to see everything, I could say that I am finally in Italy. I regret sometimes missing the High School trip to Italy becuase it overlapped with me living in the US for 4 months.

Anyway, after 4 hours walking non-stop trough the city, it was getting darker and colder for moments, so we decided so it was time to go back to hotel, but first going to the supermarket to buy the dinner, and of course some alcohol to deal with the rest of the night!! yeahh you have read right, we went to the supermarket because Italy is freaking expensive!  I rather spend the 10-15 euros of a meal in a restaurant to buy a whole bunch of food, drinks and stuff to spend the night, which we all did, hence we end up with lots of food, chips, chocolate bars, beers and wine... we had a great night I must say!! some people would prefer going out to a club, but this kind of plans don't disappoint me at all.

Heart shaped 'tree' right outside of Juliet's House

For the next day, we decided to leave town early enough and continue with the next city, Padova, so around 12ish we were arriving to Padua. And again, amazing town, generally speaking it wasn't very different from Verona, but all the rivers and canals in the city made it very special and extremely beautiful. We visited pretty much everything, from the Saint Anthony's cathedral (Basilica di Sant'Antonio), The Oratorio de San Giorgio Scrovegni's Chapel (Cappella degli Scrovegni), a 90.000 square meters, Prato della Valle (the biggest square in Europe), Santa Giustina Basilica Roman ruins, including an Arena.Chiesa Eremitani, The Duomo, Palazzo della Ragione, Palazzo del Bo and Tempio Antonio della Pace.

We spent half day in Padova, because we wanted to get to Venice and register in the hotel before the sunset. That's why we left the city and within 2 hours we arrived to Mestre, because all the hostels/hotels in Venice were accoupied, and those with room left were extrmely expenive due to the festival, and c'mon its Italy !! so after some incidents finding the location of the hotal, we made it save to the hotels, but it was kinda late already, and the conection from Mestre to Venice is not good either, so we decided to stay the night in the hotel and wake up early the next morning to see the romantic city of canals and Gondolas.

Ohh yeaah baby, Carnival costumes

 For a strange reason I found Venice very familiar, (damm Venetian Macau casino), but it was very good, very pretty, I dreamed about going to Venice for quite a long time, I liked it a lot from the beginning, but due to the all the tourist, wether Italians or foreigners, I felt a little bit stressed, It was good to walk slowly and enjoy the views, but the crowd made me wanted to finish asap. Still, check out the amazing sites we saw

Amazing Sunday we spent in Venice, it's a pitty we couldn't have seen Venice during the night, because there was schedules parades of people in costumes and stuff, but still, we saw some during the morning.. so it's fine.

Once we got tired we decided to go to the parking, grab the car, and get our butts back to Ljubljana.

Beside of all the walking and tireness, the city we've visited were all fantastic, very typical Italian and full of history, something that I enjoyed the most! 

I hope you have enjoyed reading the post as much as I enjoyed the visiting them.

1 abrazooo a todos!