Wandering Europe

I'm now on vacation traveling around August 4th-28th with my backpack. My project at IIT went well. Luckily my experimental setup didn't fail. It was only hooked up with electronics and started moving my last day there, so it was a good finish.

I pooled together the money I received as graduation gifts and bought a Eurail pass, which allows me to travel on trains within Spain, France, Italy, and Germany for 10 days within a period of 2 months. So thank you to everyone for sending me around Europe! I probably won't have time to post up the pictures until I get back. I've usually just been planning out the details of where I'm going only 2-5 days in advance.

Here is a picture of me on the beach as I was passing through Nice, France at the beginning of my trip.

Cinque Terre

During my last weekend in Genoa, my friends Eric and Evelyn (MIT 2010's) came and we visited Cinque Terre ("Five Lands") which was only a 1.5 - 2 hour train ride away from my apartment. It is one of the most scenic sections of the Italian Riviera.

Since it was high season for tourists, we just trained over there everyday and stayed at my apartment. It worked out well, the train tickets were only about 10 euro. 

I believe the section is a national park, and it encompasses small five towns with hiking trails in between them. You can hike along the coast from the northern most to the southern most town in  about five hours. At this point, I think their only reason for existing is tourism, and it's a popular destination for Americans. Regardless, it was beautiful right off the bat!

The towns were very quaint as well. This one was the second most southern, Manarola I believe. I had always wondered where pictures with colorful houses on a rocky coast were taken, so it was cool to be see a landscape like it.

It was also some of the most enjoyable hiking I've done since there was such a variety. The coastal trail between Manarola and Corniglia (the middle town) was closed so we had to take a longer, more inland route. It took you up from the town into the hills, through some vineyards, and back down the to the coast.

You can see Manarola in the distance in this following picture, and we passed some nice houses up in the hills on the way.

After getting to Corniglia we passed through the town to find a nice place to swim. The water was super clear.

The second day we went, we started at the northern most town (Monterosso) and hiked down one path. The beach at Monterosso was much more crowded, we much preferred our more secluded spot from the day before.

Eric and Evelyn are in the middle of the trail here, when I snapped the picture.

Afterwards we went back to Monterosso to rent kayaks and paddled around for two hours. At one point we were far out enough to see all five towns at once, which was one of the highlights of the trip. You got some good views that you couldn't get from trails. We grabbed some drinks afterward, ate dinner, and packed up. They were even nice enough to treat me for letting them stay at the apartment; very generous!

Rome pt 2

For the next day we went to St. Peter's Basilica. I had seen many cathedrals by this point but it did not disappoint; it did seem like The Cathedral of Catholic Cathedrals. The stature of them is always impressive.

The inside was also very lavishly adorned. St. Peter's seemed to have a theme that was very heavenly. Other cathedrals seemed to often be dimly lit, and Milan's even had a painting of Hell on part of the ceiling if I remember correctly. This one was a lot of gold and white and very well lit.

Here I am in my Charlie Brown T-shirt again, as well as the view of the view from the outside.

On the way back we passed Castillo Sant'Angelo, which used to be a fortification. I don't think I snapped a picture of the actual castle but there was a bridge leading up to it with nice statues.

Tara and I sat down for a dinner that night at a neighborhood around the Pantheon. I got pasta with mussels in it while Tara's had a sauce with anchovies. I don't think I appreciated good anchovies before this summer. We got some gelato afterwards too!

 

The last day we stopped by Campo dei Fiori, an open market, and Piazza Navona, which some nice fountains. Piazza Navona has an elliptical shape since it used to be used to be a stadium until the 1st century AD.

Finally, we saw the Pantheon and grabbed a cappuccino at a cafe with a nice view of the Colosseum, which made for a nice picture.

Rome Day 1

I took a three day weekend to go visit Rome to tour around and to drop off the majority of my luggage with my friend Rachel from MIT, so that I could do my three weeks of travel in August with only a backpack. My travel partner was Tara, who flew in from her internship in Barcelona. She had a camera that took pretty nice photographs so the shots with a wider angle on the lens or panoramic view are taken with hers. We also met up with two other MIT students working in Venice for the summer, Alexis and Shavy.

Right from the beginning, there were monuments all over the place! I took a bus ride back to Rachel's apartment since I got in around midnight and it was like a city tour you'd pay for. Her place was near Piazza Venezia, so it was one of the first paths we walked through. While are too many centers like this in Rome to keep track of, but it had a building/monument that honored Victor Emmanuel, he first king of a unified Italy. It was very imperial.

Not far from this was the Capitoline Wolf, a bronze statue based on the legend of the founding of Rome. I had never heard about the statue or the legend but I kept seeing postcards of this thing in stands around Italy, which made it look like a huge statue. The actual sculpture on top is two and a half feet long so we were all confused when we unexpected walked up on it.

Soon afterward was the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. 

I didn't  appreciate the Roman Forum or quite understand how it was supposed to have been the center of Roman civic life until I saw a picture of what it used to look like. There was a better one that superimposed the image that some Canadian tourist showed us.

 Tara's camera took some cool, panoramic pictures. You'll probably need to click on them to fully appreciate it.

 Along with the Forum, we visited the Palatine. While it just looked like a bunch of rocks after awhile, I enjoyed the various views along the walk for its scenery.

Afterwards, Tara and I split off for two hours before meeting back up with everyone for dinner.  We ran over to the Trevi Fountain. It was a little hard to get nice angle to take the picture from since a bunch of people were crowded around it. The fountain was a nice sight since I was hot from walking around Rome all day.

We passed by the Pantheon as well, but just missed the hours that it was open to go inside that day. 

We all ate at a bar we found in the Trastevere neighborhood. It was more of an American bar feel though. The Anaheim Angels game was playing on the mounted up across from my side of the table. It was a unexpected juxtaposition. I remembered how far away from home I was and how many flights, trains, and buses I've taken since I was last home in the beginning of January.

Along the Tevere river there was a bunch of tents set up selling food, drinks, random cooking utensils, posters, and all kinds of stuff. We were all tired and full so we didn't spend much time, but I liked the atmosphere. There was a good jazz combo playing at one of the bars set up but we were already on the way back to Rachel's apartment.