TravelStream™ news feed for member marcoconti83 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/marcoconti83 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:54:18 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/2/1096927200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/2/1096927200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/2/1096927200/tpod.html Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:54:18 -0400 Short trip to Belgium

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Namur, The Ardennes, Belgium

We wanted to leave Charleroi, but we had to take the plane in Charleroi the next day so leaving for another town was not an option. So we depart from the hotel, we left our backpack at the depot at the station, and went to Namur: we planned to come back with the last train, pick up our backpack and go to sleep in the airport (as the plane was something like 6:00).

Namur was quite better than Charleroi: it was an old city with lots of historical buildings, nice shops and an huge castle on the top of a hill. We went around the city, then we went up the hill and visited the awesome castle. From the castle you have a good view of all the suroundings (as Belgium has no mountain and I think this was one of the highest spot in the zone).
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/2/1096830000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/2/1096830000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/2/1096830000/tpod.html Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:44:51 -0400 Short trip to Belgium

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Charleroi, Hainaut, Belgium

After 3 days in Brugge, having walked to every corner of the town, we decided to move somewhere else. So, to be able to use our return train ticket, we went back to Charleroi.

Charleroi was not this great place as tourist offices says. Compared to Brugge, it's bigger and much more modern, more dirty and less safe: it's an ordinary city. We stayed at Hotel Buisset, an hotel runned by an Italian emigrants, and it was awfull: the floor of our room wasn't event plain, it was all up-and-down, and the fornitures were in a bad shape.

We walked around in Charleroi, only to discover that, apart from the Grimbergen (beer) factory, some belgian comics characters' statue and a few parks, there was nothing intresting that you can reach by walking.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/2/1096657200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/2/1096657200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/2/1096657200/tpod.html Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:33:56 -0400 Short trip to Belgium

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Brugge, West Flanders, Belgium

The Ryaniar airport near Charleroy it's not so near to Charleroy. You have two choice: a bus to the city, or a train ticket that allows you, for only 10 €, to go everywhere in Belgium (i.e. a return ticket for a city of your choice).

So we took the train to Brugge, a city everyone told us to visit. We arrived at the station and after some walking around the city, we found the right place to stay: Hotel Passage, an hotel-hostel, quite cheap. It was not very clean, we used our sleeping bags on top of the bed, but our room was under the roof and we got a beautifull sight from the window.


Brugge is a very tipical town, with awesome sigths on old canals and streets. The town is clean and tourist-friendly, there are far more tourist than inabitants. There are many, many shops that sells local beers, choccolate, Christmas decoration (as this town is also renown for it's Christmas markets). The main landmark is the Town Tower (Belfort), on the main square of the town, Big Market Square (Grote Markt), but there are also a lot of very impressive churches and the Begijnhof, a Beguines convent.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1062424800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1062424800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1062424800/tpod.html Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:52:41 -0400 Gone inter-rail!

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Pisa, Tuscany, Italy

Time to go back home, as the interrail ticket was endend, the money was also endend, and we had to start thinking about the univeristy tests of september.

We reached the Italian border and with a strong melancholy we went back to our loved, hated Italy. As a welcome gift, the train we took from the border to out house was a special one (but noone told us) so we had to pay a fee for not having te right ticket.
Yes, we were back in Italy!!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1062165600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1062165600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1062165600/tpod.html Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:42:17 -0400 Gone inter-rail!

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Montpellier, Languedoc-Roussillon, France

Our last destination was Montpellier. There was no definite motivation on this choice, but it turns out to be a very good choice. We needed a place to stay before going back to Italy, where we could spend our left money and enjoy our last days of holliday without many troubles.

I got the feeling that Montpellier was somehow similiar to my home town in Italy, Pisa, so I felt a bit at home, apart from the fact they all speak french, of corse :) There is a university, so there are many students in the city, a big public garden where you can relax on the grass, and the sea is just 20 minutes of bus away. There is also some nightlife, we ended up in a rock club.

Our staing in Monpellier was a bit surreal. After 20 days of camping, hostel, and cooking our food with stoves, we discovered that we have saved an amount of money we didn't expected to have, so we took a room in a hotel. This room had only a window on an internal courtyard so the temperature in the room, night or day, was always 30°C.
We were also aware that this was our last stop before going back home, so we where living in a sort of "ok, what I'm supposed to do now?" because we have had so much freedom and fun in the last weeks that we felt we couldn't easily get back to our ordinary life. As a result of this, everyone of us was immersed in his thought so we didn't talked so much, we eventually divided during the day (I went around the city alone, then to the sea, while the others where doing the same, or just staing in bed reading books).

We put together all of our money and had one dinner at a restaurant, a really nice medieval-style restourant where the waitress was dressed like a medieval lady. The funny thing was to discover that, after work, the waitress changed to its ordinary clothes, and she was a punk! (immagine the contrast between the fine long dress, circle in her hair, and no makeup, with leather black boots, metallic collar and dark makeup). We ask her what to do at night and she took us to a rock club where we spent our last night.

The day after we took the train to Italy.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1062100800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1062100800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1062100800/tpod.html Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:19:19 -0400 Gone inter-rail!

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Sete, Languedoc-Roussillon, France

We couldn't stay in Saint-Malo forever (even if I whished it was so), and we were also running out of time.
So we needed to go back to the south of France, to start our return to Italy. We already went to Cote d'Azur, so we decided to try to avoid Provence-Cote d'Azur.

Our decision was to catch a regional train (that will do all stops) that in 12 hours would take us from Normandy to Languedoc-Roussillon. We spent the night sleeping on the train and after some changes (we where not sure of our destination) we ended up in Sete, a small town on the sea. The local hostel was full, but we where told there was a campsite just 15 minutes walking.

So we start walking (always remember our 17kg backpacks) but after 1 km we found some polish guys trying hitchhiking because, they say, the camping is 15 km away! So after talking with a bus driver, who confirmed the distance, we took the bus until the last stop and then we also tried hitchhiking. We were so lucky that one of the campsite employers stopped to pick us up and picked us to the camping. It was a crazy tunisian driver, our 3 backpack where the size of a sitted person, so it was like we were like 6 person (one backpack was in the back) inside a bad shaped Citroen AX, I did the travel standing inside the car and pushed against the ceiling while this guys was driving far above any speed limits.

We settled at the campsite but the summer season was at its end so the campsite was about to close. There where very few clients and the beach was almost empty. It was time for a last trip, then back to Italy!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1061215200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1061215200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1061215200/tpod.html Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:58:05 -0400 Gone inter-rail!

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Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands

After Paris, we could travel to no less than another capital, and the choice between the ordinary Bruxelles and the explosive Amsterdam took less than 0.0001 seconds.

Amsterdam, the european capital of fun. The first time you go to Amsterdam, it's all about coffe shops and hanging out with other people who are there to enjoy the crazy atmosphere (sorry, I don't find the other famous Amsterdam attraction, prostitution, so amusing). You'll have time to visit the museums and the city on your second visit. Having legal marjiuana available in every street is a natural boost to the social relations of everyone, and you will pass most of the time smoking something. Just remember that it's forbidden to smoke in the street, and that some street are not safe at all at night, so follow the common safety rules for travelers: don't walk alone at night, and be sober when you do that.

We stayed on a campsite outside the town, across the canal, so we had to take a (free) ferry to go downtown, with fares every 15 minutes. The crazy thing about the camping Vliegenboos was the toilettes: there where very bright blue lights that, mixed with eye-relaxig drugs you can legally use in Holland, cause a big shock every time you return to sunlight.

We also meet here our friends from Italy, who went directly here after Cote d'Azur, and the three english girls we already met in Paris. Unfortunately they where continuing to Prague, far beyond our possibility :)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1061661600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1061661600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1061661600/tpod.html Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:55:34 -0400 Gone inter-rail!

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Saint-Malo, Brittany, France

Finally, an escape from crowded cities (apart from the two stops at Lille and Lisieux, of corse).
We have had a great view from the train in the last days, travelling through Normandie and Bretagne. Fields, meadows, woods, cows, old farmhouses, the ocean... it was really another atmosphere.

We stopped for some days in St. Malò. It is a town burn to the ground during World War II, but it was completely rebuilded as it was before. It is a nice town, on the ocean, with some castles (one of them, like the more famous Moint-Saint-Michelle, is accessibile only when the tide is low) and lots of memorials of World War II.

We found this great campsite that was on the top of a promontory on the ocean, with World War II fortification inside. I'm not a fanatic of World War II (Federico is, that's why he went in a bunker 6 floors under road level, and he caught a cold because of the difference of temperature) but sitting on the iron bunker, looking at the ocean and the big blast the enemy artillery carved into the solid iron, make you think of what had appened there and why.

All the place was surrounded with this meditative mood. The ocean is something fascinating for us Italian. We live on a peninsula in the Mediterrean Sea, so we all go to the sea at summer, but our sea is warm, calm, and tides are only 1 meter high. The ocean is so deep, dark, cold and the tides are something abnormal for us, that you are a little intimidated by it.

We spent in St. Malò more time than any other places during this travel. It was a combination on this relaxing and meditative atmosphere we were searching after visiting crowded capitals: great lanscapes on the ocean, a nice town and most of all great company. We meet many people here, and apart from some girls two of us met (while the other one was sick in the tent :P), the most intresting person we met was an african man (from Zanzibar) now married with a Spanish woman and living togheter in France with their small child. We spent one entire day speaking with him as we felt that in his troubled life across two continents he had archived a wisdom we were fascinated by. Oh, and he also offered us some marjiuana :P

Unfortunately one night, while staying on the beach with younger french boys and girls, two criminals tryed to beat us and stole our belongings. We managed to have them leave us italian alone without a fight (sometimes it's not so bad if they consider all italians to be affiliated with mafia) but they moved to beat the younger french boys before we could do anything, and they only fleed when we became more aggressive (they where later caught by the police, who I hope gave them the same treatment).
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1061560800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1061560800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1061560800/tpod.html Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:21:44 -0400 Gone inter-rail!

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Lisieux, Normandy, France

Ok, we don't know how we ended here, this interrail ticket gives you a sort of "ok let's catch the first train no matter where it goes" attitude that is great but sometimes you end up in dead ends. We wanted to go on the ocean, so we catch the first train going in that direction, but we catch the train too late in the afternoon. Unfortunately, it was headed to Lisiex, a small town where, at the time of our arrival, there where no other trains leaving for that day.

We considered sleeping in the station, but we discarded the idea when we discovered that it closes very early (like 20:00). So we found a small hotel in front of the station, where it was forbidden to cook (and there were smoke detectors in the room), so we cooked our meal with camping stoves on the balcony :) We haven't never heard of Lisieux, and judging from the station, it was a small town with no attraction. Only years later we discovered it had an awesome basilique, a cathedral, and a nice public garden.

But hey, back in 2003 wi-fi was an optional, and we didn't even had mobile phones with us, so we did a mistake in underestimating Lisieux, and took the first train in the morning.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1060578000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1060578000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/marcoconti83/1/1060578000/tpod.html Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:04:00 -0400 Gone inter-rail!

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Pisa, Tuscany, Italy

Ready, set, go!

With a 17kg backpack for each of us, full of clothes, bedroll, pots, stoves, books and lots of enthusiasm, we took the train to France at 1 o'clock in the night. We travelled in 6 person, but we plan to split in two groups after the second day, when I and other two friends (Marco and Federico) would travel around France, while the others would go directly to Amsterdam.

I feel the need to mention that summer 2003 was one of the hottest summer of the century, and carring our heavy backpack all the time was a real pain, but hey, this was just the first day, at the end of this 22 days-long travel we were pulling like bulls without any fatigue.
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