Naples to Rome and around Rome

We went and had our dinner at Napoli’s finest pizzeria. We lined up so we could be one of the first in when it opened it’s doors. Outside there were so many locals and tourist hovering, when they started to let people in we went upstairs and found a seat. We were going to share a pizza – but Cindy thought they’d be small… so we ordered two. The service was really good and the meals were really quick to come out – probably wanting to clear tables as fast as possible. The pizzas were massive… They were really good, they got cold pretty quickly though so that sucked… It wasn’t the best pizza we’ve had but it was really good. Cindy still thinks the pizza we had in Egypt is the best so far. Haha.
After dinner, we walked around Napoli and went back to the hostel and hung out there. We were heading to Rome on Sunday morning.
We caught the Intercity train to Rome at 10:24 – this train was 40 euro cheaper combined than the Eurostar train. The train was really nice – they had like 6 seater cabin type things (totally reminded us of Harry Potter – which was really cool). We were the first ones in our cabin so we snagged the window seats. As the time was getting closer to our departure, our cabin slowly filled up with all guys… we were the only girls in the cabin, but they didn’t say anything… they pretty much slept the whole way.
The rain came and went as we were going through the country… We passed so many farms – the country side was very beautiful… 2 of the guys got off at the stop before Rome so it gave us more room in the cabin for the last hour.
We got to Rome and we found our hostel really quickly, Cindy had taken pretty good notes on how to get there. We weren’t able to check in straight away as it was 1pm so we had 2hours to kill. So we dropped our bags off and went exploring… of course the rain decided to come then… we walked around and hung out in the Piazza della Repubblica – has a really cool fountain in the middle of this roundabout. We found that crossing roads at pedestrian crossings are scary… cars/scooters/buses, they don’t pay attention to you… we crossed when locals crossed, they would just walk out in front of cars… I got used to just crossing – but it’s a little daunting. We got something to eat and just hung out, we saw one bar sold Bulmers – but it was quite pricey.
When we checked in, we signed our names for the free pasta dinner that the Italian owners make every night. This hostel gives free breakfast and dinners… pretty much the reason we chose this place. They only give you 5 hours free internet – so we wont be on much this week.
Got settled in our rooms and thought we’d go to the laundromat and do some washing – we were getting low on clothes. So we walked around and found the place that would give discount. We thought it was self service… but we were able to drop it off and come back and pick it up later. So we went to the bar that we knew sold cider and we got Cindy a bottle of Bummers and I had a half pint of Harp (Irish beer) and we watched the football.
We picked up our clean smelling clothes and headed back to the hostel and had a shower and had dinner at 7. It was a really nice pasta and they gave free bread rolls with it. It was great.
The kitchen was really packed so it was pretty much an eat and then let someone else sit in your seat, so we went back to our room and spoke to a couple of French girls who were here for a few days.
Today we got up, had breakfast and the sky was clear and beautifully blue – we hadn’t seen blue sky in ages!! So we headed out to realise it was freeezing. But walked to the subway to catch a metro to the Colosseum.
As you walk from out of the metro – you see the Colosseum – It was absolutely amazing. We walked in and got tickets – I got in half price as an EU youth… (gotta love it). And we went exploring the Colosseum. It was really good, we had beaten most of the crowds so we wandered around quite happily. The centre of the Colosseum had like a mazey type thing in it (like in the movie jumper). From one side you can see the entrance with the cage/grill where the gladiator/animal would come out. We went down to the lower level and walked around and got a closer look at the mazey thing… I wish they would let you in the actual pit area – that would be cool. This is when we first started seeing frost on the ground and ice puddles.
After that we walked out and saw the Arco di Costantino which is this massive arch in the square between palatine and the Roman forum. We tried to get into Palatine Hill but we went the wrong way and found a church instead. When we found it, we walked up the less steep part where we met a British girl who wanted us to take a photo of her in her poncho she wore in the rain the day before as her boyfriend didn’t believe she wore it. A bit funny really…
We walked up the mountain and saw the stadium, some old houses, we went into the museum which was just a small room with remains of sculptures – mostly heads and a few torsos… There was so much frost and ice puddles around (Cindy loved jumping on them and making them crack). The views of the Roman Forum were great from the top of the hill, we then walked down the hill and saw another arch – Arco di Tito. There were a lot of old buildings/ruins – they looked like they were influenced by the Greeks (or they influenced the Greeks).
We walked out and walked towards the Vittoriano e Piazza Venezia- which is this really cool building with these amazing statues and these two big chariots being ridden by an angel. One side was being restored but the other side was really impressive. We saw the Colonna Traiana which is this cool column thing. We sat here for a little while – Cindy’s ankle has been playing up most of the day so we rested for a little bit before continuing our walking trip. We found an Irish pub that had strongbow on tap so we stopped here for lunch and had nachos, I tried a beer called Nazuro Azzuro.

We kept walking and found the pantheon – which was in this little square with all these little Italian restaurant all around, it was quite picturesk… Of course McDonalds snuck there building in there – but discretely. They had a fountain in the middle of the square with a stolen obelisk from Egypt. We kept walking and found the Palazzo Montecitorio which was another impressive building with another stolen obelisk in the centre of the square – but this one was massive (that would’ve been hard to transport). We saw the Piazza Colonna which was another cool column thing. Walking up through some small streets – we found this incredible building/fountain called Fontana di Trevi – it was this massive fountain… but not ordinary – it was absolutely incredible… These Romans knew how to make cool things!
We started to get tired of all the walking so we wanted to find a post office… we found the one we were told about and got in the line to be served… we were the 3rd from being served and then bam… they say stuff in Italian – We think they said – oh it’s 2 o’clock, its time to close… the two Italians in front weren’t happy they were saying (we think something like) We’ve been waiting for ages – can’t you serve us… Come on… But the postal workers weren’t budging…we decided to leave – and on the door it did say closing at 2… but still to not even serve the last few people in the line… but to just kick them out. We thought it was ridiculous – so far that’s the only thing that I’ve thought was pretty stupid so far in Rome. Rome is such a lovely city.
A new girl has just come into our room who seems really nice – Francesco is from Milan but is living in Dublin. We’ve signed up for our free pasta dinner tonight again– hope it’s good.

Tuesday
Last nights pasta dinner wasn’t as good as the first night. We call it pesto pasta. It pretty much had the same things that the pasta the night before did, except it didn’t have tomato sauce, it had a pesto sauce. Nonetheless it was great for a free meal. We had another quiet night, watched a movie and made plans for the following day.
We woke up reasonably early today, had our breakfast and headed off towards the Vatican. When we got off the metro there were all of these tour guides asking if we were going to the Sistine Chapel and if we had bought our tour guides. We just ignored them all (a good trick we learnt in Egypt). We went into St Peter’s Square where a giant Egyptian Obelisk was, and there were 2 fountains, 140 statues religious figures and also the entrance to the St Peters Basilica . We also saw the big screen that the Pope gets displayed on when he is making a speech. We then decided to go to the Vatican Museum. The tickets were really expensive and we decided if we couldn’t at least get one half price we weren’t going to bother about going in. We had to go through security before even buying tickets… We approached the ticket box and both of us handed over our Youth Cards and the guy gave us 2 discounted tickets – yay! We got the 2 of us in for the price of one. Once inside the first exhibition in the museum is an Egyptian one. So we wandered through there, seeing all the things that were stolen from the Egyptians. They had a really cool mummy – I took a picture of it.
The rest of the museum was filled with pictures of religious things, Jesus and Pope’s and famous religious things (Kath said they were famous – I have no idea). We saw a really good picture of Adam and Eve in a garden. We weren’t too impressed with the Sistine Chapel. We liked the paintings of the ceilings in the other rooms better. They were filled with more details.
We had some morning tea in the Pope’s garden. Well we thought it was the Pope’s garden as no one was allowed to walk on the grass. And it was very neat.
We then went to another garden like area that had a great big golden sphere in it. We had some pictures with that.
We then left the Vatican to go to hunt down the Castel Del Angelo. Our book said that it was 5euros each, then when we turned up it was 8.50euros each, we couldn’t justify that so we just walked around the outside of it and Kath played on a dolphin thing in the park. We then left there and walked back to the hostel. We were getting really tired from all the walking we were doing. When we got back we had another new girl in our room. She is from Japan and really nice.
We had the good pasta for dinner again, the tomato one. As usual we watched a movie and went to bed completely exhausted.
We had really rude girls in our dorm for the last two nights – they are so inconsiderate of other people in the room. Their alarm was going off full ball for about half an hour this morning. We got up and had breakfast to try and have some peace. Today we went to have our restaurant meal for Rome. We picked a restaurant out of our travel book. When we arrived at the via (street) it could not be found anywhere, so we went to a restaurant where it should have been. The meal was quite expensive, Kath had gnocchi. She really enjoyed it. I had cabonara, I stand by my pasta from Athens being better. We then wandered around the town for a while and then went to the Irish pub for a drink and to book our next hostel. After our drink it started to rain so we came back to the hostel to pack and got ready to go tomorrow.

We hope it doesn’t rain like it is forecast too…

Dublin, Belfast and back again to Glasgow..

Our last few days in Dublin were very wet, we didn’t do much touristy stuff – except for tourist shops, the weather was quite depressing so we went to the movies and saw the cirque du freak – the vampire assistant. It was a book I read when I was younger (gran won it for me).

We went back up to Belfast for the last few days before we flew out, we stayed at the same hostel we stayed in when we arrived in Ireland. We shared the room that night with a New Zealand girl who was really nice – she was there for a night and was flying back to Bristol where she was working as a teacher till January.  The next morning we got up nice and early and we decided to go on the Belfast Bus Tour, we got student rates (hehe) and jumped on the bus, It was really good – the tour guide was okay and we saw the ‘big fish’ which is a giant salmon next to the waters edge that was awesome! ahah – on each scale held a different part of history of Belfast. We then saw the massive odyssey arena which has a massive cinema, Ice Skating Rink, Concert hall etc.  We then went through the titanic quarter. For those who don’t know Belfast was the city who built the Titanic and were back in the day the largest ship building city around. They were currently building a Titanic display/museum and wasn’t meant to be finished until 2012. We then drove to Stormont Estate which is a massive gardens and the parliament house. It’s such a massive complex is 365 metres long and has 365 windows for every day in the year.  The bus then continued back into the city and we past quite a few churches (one had the largest Celtic cross on the building). We then headed into the trouble area, this is where a lot of fighting happened between the protestants and Catholics / British vs Irish.   They had many many murals painted on the side of buildings to remember soldiers, political prisoners, the wars in general. We also saw the large walls that had been erected to try minimize the fighting (if they couldn’t see each other – they couldn’t fight each other).

The tour was really good that we did it a total of 3 times, we’ve found the lady tour guides have always been better, with stories, history and more enjoyable to listen too.  They had a really cheap cinema in belfast – so we saw 9 and fantastic mr fox.  We went into the Stormont Estate one day and spent a couple of hours in the estate and in the parliament house.

I really enjoyed Belfast and preferred it to Dublin – Belfast wasn’t overridden with Tourists and was quite relaxing and friendly, Dublin was just soo busy and loud ( I did love watching the buskers though).

So we caught the ryanair flight back on the Wednesday for our 20 minute flight back to Prestwick airport. The flight was quite bumpy as the weather hasn’t improved.

Last night (5th November) was bon-fire night which is a massive UK tradition (If you’ve seen V for the Vendetta (the movie) its about that). With Guy Faux’s attempt at blowing up Parliament. Ellen took us and Ross into the city to watch the cities fireworks. We had dinner in a nice restaurant that was under an old church – quite cool. Then we walked around to the park to watch the fireworks – They were awesome. The amount of people there, it was like river fire! Haha

As fireworks aren’t illegal to buy here, driving home we saw so so MANY fireworks just going off and hearing the popping noise they make… It was quite cool to watch.

Tonight we’re having a bon-fire party. Tom has been building this massive bon fire in the back yard which looks amazing!! The boys have invited all their friends around so its going to quite a good night, if they can get the fire to actually start with the rain – but they’ve done it in the past. So I can’t wait for tonight.

Cindy and I went to the shops earlier to get some boooooze. Cindy has started to get into Cider because wine is so variable. So cindy got 4 bottles of Cider, and I got 4 different beers (3 I haven’t tried before) So I hope I like them.

Cindy’s favourite Cider is Magners Pear Cider (whereas I like Bulmers Pear Cider better). Tonight I will be drinking a Cobra, a tiger, a Innis & Gunn and Duvel.

Cindy is putting up a Cindy’s Cider Page to match my Kath’s beer page so have a look and see the types of cider Cindy’s tried.

Anyways… Up next in our journey is a short trip to Edinburgh (again), our London trip for Tegan and Sara, a trip up to Oban, and then our trip to Mallorca.

Take Care,

Love – Kath and Cindy

btw – new photos are up in Ireland

Limerick, Cork and Back to Dublin…

We arrived in Limerick an hour late on Tuesday evening. Tom greeted us at the train station and he took us to his apartment in Annacotty. He showed us a few of the sights along the trip to his place.  He has a very nice 2 bedroom apartment. We headed over the road to an Asian/Indian Restaurant called Copper and Spice. We had some Indian and it was very delicious (bit spicy and I got mild).

We then headed back to his apartment and watched a movie on TV (there are only 4 analogue channels in Ireland and one is in Irish).

In the morning, after Tom had gone to work, we attempted to ring a taxi company to take us into the city centre). It took us 40mins to get a hold of them (due to our missing a number to dial an Irish number). When we finally arrived in the city we headed to the Hunt Museum. That was really expensive so we didn’t go in there. We then walked past a few chuches/cathedrals and up to the Sir John’s Castle.

We got in there at student rates haha. The castle had 2 movies. One was boring and the other was ok. They both showed different parts of Limerick’s history. We then explored around the castle grounds. They had an archeological site under the main entrance which was excavations of 18th century houses and a counter-mine. It was very interesting.

We then went from the castle to the Museum next door. It was quite small (and a little bit boring). They did have cool bottles though. One bottle which we saw in the galway museum was a clear bottle that had a bottle stopper inside the top of the neck which was like a little glass marble, and when you tipped the bottle to get a drink the marble would come out and you’d get a drink. It was really cool – apparently they’re quite rare because kids always used to smash the bottles to collect the marble. They also had some stuff on display which they collected when they excavated a river off the Shannon.

We then had a nice walk along the river front, we saw the Treaty Stone and lots of birds. We walked around the shops and got some lunch. There is only ONE tourist store in Limerick (and that is the Tourist Information shop). Crazy!! We then had a bit of time to kill before meeting up with Tom, so we did what we are good at doing… We headed off to a pub. This was a fancy pub though, we got some peanuts out of a peanut machine. They were delicious and expensive. But nonetheless they hit the peanut spot!

We met up with Tom at a restaurant called Freddy’s Bistro. We had a 3 course meal – Kath and I got the same thing.. We had Caeser Salad for Entree, Cabonara and Garlic Bread for our Main, and Nutty Pancakes filled with Icecream, topped with chocolate and peanuts. The meal was delicious. We also had a bottle of wine (between the 3 of us), called Tin Roof (an Australian Wine, from SA).

After our meal we went around the corner to a pub called the Whitehouse. It was meant to have Irish music and Poetry (and free finger food). Kath and Tom had beers. There was no Irish music and the poetry started late and half of it was just tape recordings, so a little bit disappointing. We did however get free food, not as though we were hungry after dinner. But you can’t say no to free food. We got little sausages, chips and a chicken strip. The chips had chicken salt on them (one thing Kath and I are really missing – a good shake of chicken salt).We headed home shortly after we finished the food.

The next morning Tom gave us a lift into the city to catch our bus to Cork. We went to the Art Gallery and a park. Kath really enjoyed the Art Gallery (upstairs was really weird), but downstairs was good. They had a life-size van made out of cardboard boxes. It was pretty cool. For the rest of the morning we just hung around the city until the bus was due.

Our bus trip to Cork was pretty good. We had free Wi-Fi.

When we arrived in Cork it was drizzling. We found our hostel and checked in. Our room was very crampy. It was a 6-bed Dorm and it should have only really held 4 beds. The only free space was really just a path to get to the door and ensuite. We went for a wander around the town to find some lunch. We found a nice pub. Their meals were cheap.. shame they were small… We then wandered back to the hostel to plan the next day.

We had really good internet in our room, it was really fast.

There was a trick to using the toilets in our ensuite. You had to turn on the sink taps to allow the toilet to fill up to flush. It was really annoying.

We checked out this morning, and were planning to head up to the Cork City Gaol. It was pouring rain, and the hostel didn’t really offer good Luggage Storage, so we decided to plastic-bag all of our clothes and take our bags with us. After an hour and a bit long hike in the pouring rain, we found the gaol. Turns out they have a Cash-Only policy on their entrance. We didn’t have enough euro’s to get in. The woman said she would take pounds, but it was at a ridiculous rate, so we told her to forget it. We sat undercover for a little while to have a rest before our long walk back to town. Our walk back was much quicker (helps when you know where you are going), but it was also very rainy on the way back. The walk down had nice views of the city and the river that ran through the city. We decided to catch the earlier bus to Dublin.

Luckily we arrived when we did, as the line was very long and we were one of the last people allowed on the bus, (I wouldn’t have wanted to be one of the people left behind).

It rained the entire 5 and a bit hour journey into Dublin. When we arrived it poured again and we walked again through the rain to find Tesco’s and our hostel. We are in a 10 bed dorm (the largest we have been in yet), it is very spacious. We have hung out all of our wet stuff, hopefully it dries tonight so we have some dry jackets for tomorrow (fingers crossed it doesn’t rain again).

Two girls just came in to our hostel room and are very loud and listening to something very loudly/rudely on their laptop. Very annoying since we are about to watch a movie (with head phones!!). Hopefully they quieten down soon.

We hope everyone is well and enjoying their October 31st.

Happy Halloween to all.

Love Cindy and Kath

Galway….

We arrived in Galway yesterday after a 3.5 hour bus trip from Dublin… It wasn’t the nicest bus trip… however the bus had free wi-fi which was awesome. We got to Galway and walked from the bus to a pub (which we had lunch and a drink at)… we then walked around for awhile trying to find our hostel… (they like to hide you see…) We found it and was a really really really nice hostel… Cindy chose well. We were in a 4 bed female dorm and our beds were really 3 beds… Cindy was lucky enough to walk in and see her bed was actually a double bed… and I got the single bed… haha. We were in with 2 german girls (mother and daughter).  We didnt really go out for the afternoon but got some dinner from Lidl and booked our way back from Cork to Dublin.

Today, we checked out and went for a walk around Galway… turns out Galway is really small and doesn’t have toooo much to do. So we walked down the main street looking at shops and then went to the spanish arch. We then went into the small museum and had a look (they had some interesting things)… We then continued to walk around and then decided to hit the pub to kill some time before our bus leg to Limerick.

We are now on the bus to Limerick (free wi-fi again). We’ve put photos of our time in Dublin up… and will put some photos of Galway up when we empty the camera.

Take care,

Kath and Cindy

Our stay in Dublin

We arrived in Dublin on Friday afternoon, after a 3 hour bus journey from Belfast. We had to hike for miles to get to our hostel (was at least a 30min walk from the bus station, which isn’t much unless y0u are carrying 10kg bags with you).

The front desk lady at the hostel was a but rude. Seemed like a total inconvience that we were wanting to check-in. We had to walk up 5 flights of stairs to our room… We met a nice English girl, Amanda and had a chat to her before going to explore the hostel. We were both on top bunks (4 bed dorm) and we had an ensuite and tv in our room.

We went to find a supermarket for dinner. We eventually found a Tesco’s and a cheap shop (where we got some 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner). When we got back to the hostel Amanda invited us to go out to the pub with her and a few other people.

We headed out after 10pm (took so long for the boys to get ready).  We headed into our first pub (it was very expensive) so we only had 1 drink each. We then went down to a pub/club (upstairs was a pub, downstairs was a club). We stayed upstairs for a while and watched the live band that was playing, then headed downstairs. Kath and I left the club at 1.30- we were buggered from the long day we had.

The next morning we decided to do the free walking tour of Dublin. It was a 3 hour tour (walking and standing non-stop). We went to the Dublin Castle, a Church, Temple Bar, St Andrews Green, Trinity College and a few other places.

Saturday we had a quite night in and just watched a movie on Tv.

Sunday we headed out quite late (the clocks turned back on Sunday) and we didn’t even realise it. We went out for a walk down all the main streets (on both sides of the river). We then went to the Photography Gallery, which was really small and only had about 20 pictures in there. We had some lunch, which was not very nice. Then headed down to the Museum. It was pretty interesting.. quite small though.

We hung out in the afternoon in the hostel trying to book buses/accomodation for our trip out to Galway on Monday.

Hope everyone is doing well… pics to come soon

Love Cindy and Kath