Paris, Strasbourg and Venice

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  Venice, Veneto, Italy
Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Greetings now from Venice, Italy! I have a lot to catch everyone up on since my last post from Barcelona. Since then, I have been in Paris, Strasbourg, parts of Switzerland and now Venice. I'll try to give you a quick synopsis of the past week or so!

My trip to Paris from Barcelona was rather long. I flew out of Girona, which required an hour bus trip north of Barcelona. I made a Canadian friend who was also going to Paris, and we ended up spending pretty much the entire 10 hour journey together. When we arrived in France, we were at a very small airport quite far out of the city (to use the cheap airlines you end up in these little teeny cities and then have to take a bus to the city center). By the time my friend and I had claimed our bags, the two buses that were supposed to take everyone to the city had filled up. There were eight of us without transportation. The bus company quickly put the four people in front of us in a cab, but the remaining three and myself had to wait about 45 minutes. So in the end, I made three new friends on the trip and got a 150 Euro cab ride for the price of a bus ticket!

Looking back on my time in Paris, I definitely took more out of my interactions with other travelers than the time in the city. My hostel was amazing, but pretty far out of the city. The first night I had planned to go back into the city to see Paris at night, but ended up hanging out with a Canadian girl named Kelly and a Finnish guy named Tuomas. Our hostel was right on a canal, so we bought a bottle of wine and three plastic cups and just sat by the water talking.

A gondoliers' stuff.

The following night, I also intended to go back into the city to see Paris at night but met Anthony and Pak from Australia and David from England. So I never actually got to see the city of lights in the dark, but had two great evenings with new people!

My first day in Paris I took a "free" walking tour of the city and got to see most of the highlights: the Louvre, the gardens throughout the city, the Champs Elysses, and the Arc de Triompf (if you're French forgive my spelling - I don't have my book with me to double check the spelling and the cost of the internet here is too expensive to waste time Googling the right spelling!). The concept of the tour is pretty cool: this company uses non-French people (in my case, a Canadian) who love the city to give the tours. They then get paid in whatever amount in tips the people on the tour want to give. So in the end you get really enthusiastic, funny young people giving good tours of the city, because the better you are the better you get paid!

In addition to the tour, I also spent some time at the Eiffel Tower. I took the stairs to the first level and then chickened out to go any higher! I also walked through Montmartre, which is considered to be the "real" Paris. It's an amazing labrynth of small streets full of cafes and shops. At the the top of the hill in that district, there's a beautiful basilica and from the steps you can look out and see all of Paris. I bought a crepe for lunch up there and just sat and looked out over the city as the bells rang from the basilica.

A long lost relative?

On Friday afternoon, I hopped on the high speed train to head from Paris to Strasbourg for a weekend with my French family. I hadn't seen most of them since they visited Alfred in 1989 (when I was only three years old!). This wing of the family goes back to my great-great grandfather, but we have stayed connected through the generations. I had an absolutely amazing weekend reconnecting with many members of the family, reconstructing the family tree, seeing the beautiful city of Strasbourg and being fed very, very well on traditional Alsacian food. The weekend has been the highlight of my trip!

Before I left Strasbourg on Monday morning, I received word from my mom that she was going to be delayed to meet me in Venice. We were supposed to meet there at about the same time on Monday night, but the leftover wind and rain from Hurricane Ike kept her from leaving Rochester. As of Tuesday afternoon, she had found a later flight and was enroute. She's still not here but I expect to see her later this afternoon! Keep you fingers crossed that we meet up today!

Monday morning I boarded a train in Strasbourg that would take me to Basel, Switzerland where I would change for a train to Venice. The train out of Strasbourg ended up being just late enough for me to miss my train in Basel (imagine me running full speed through a train station with a 30 pound backpack). I ended up having to take a route that forced me to change trains three times instead of one. It was a bit inconvenient but the route was absolutely beautiful - the bonus was an unexpected tour of the Alps! A Canadian couple also missed the train and we keep bizarrely running into each other.

Celebration dinner

We ended up bumping into each other on a water taxi last night and again this morning in San Marco.

So now I'm currently in Venice, which is so incredible I can't even begin to put it into words. It's a city in a lagoon, so all the buildings seem to just float on the water and all transportation is either on foot or by boat (or by the famous gondolas which will cost you an arm and a leg). I arrived at dusk when the buildings were just starting to light up and the sky was still that dusky blue color. I first knew I wanted to travel to Venice when I went to the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas and they have an amazing recreation of the city and its waterways. You look up at the fake sky and wonder if it's real. Last night from the water taxi, I looked up and wondered if it was fake. It's just so completely surreal.

Our hotel is a cute little place in a very old building just off the Grand Canal (the biggest waterway through the city) and right beside San Marco, the grand piazza with a huge and beautiful basilica. I enjoyed just wandering around the streets last night looking at all the beautiful Murano glass and Carnevale masks for sale in all the shop windows. The evening was complete watching a string quartet perform in the San Marco piazza eating best gelato I've ever had in my life! The only thing that was missing was Mom!

Today I've continued my wandering. The streets are better described as alleys, since no cars could fit through them even if there were cars on the island. I've found it's best not to have a specific destination here, since the streets don't seem to have any particular destination either. I just walk until I find something interesting, stop to take a picture or two, and wander on until eventually I find what I might be looking for (in this case an internet cafe).

So again, apologies for such a long post that encapsulates so much. I've had to be brief in my descriptions to make sure I was able to at least mention everything and I'm sorry I couldn't go into more detail! Tomorrow Mom and I move on to Siena after hopefully a sidetrip out to Murano to see the glass factories and buy some jewelry!

I won't embed pictures in this post because it takes too long, but please check out the album.

Ciao!

Amanda

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It really looks like this!	My favorite gelato place!	Notre Dame	Obernai
Paris	Proof we finally united in Venice!	Strasbourg	Switzerland
The Eiffel Tower	The family!	The Louvre	The Moulin Rouge
Venice by night	View from the Rialto bridge

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