Ciao, my dear netizens! Haha, no, that wasn't siao (mad in hokkien) but a form of greeting in Italian. As you all can see, I'm back from Italy & Switzerland (3 days ago actually)! Now, the other day I was blog-hopping and checked out Sui Ying's blog. In one post, SY said that according to some TV show, travel blogs are boring. No offence to anyone but that is rubbish. Otherwise, Discovery Travel and Living would have been a flop long ago. But I do agree ploughing through paragraphs of tedious, dry text would make the head spin. So instead of giving a blow-by-blow account of the trip, I'll do like one junior did and list the highlights and the shitty moments. A sprinkle of humour would be added of course. And since a picture tells a thousand words, I'll include photos as well.
Italy
Venice
Venice was once a great city state but started to decline in the 18th century and was finally catured by Napoleon of France (we did Venetian history in Social studies). Since then, the city has pretty much frozen in time.
One word to sum up my thoughts on Venice: surreal. You see, instead of roads and highways, Venice has an extensive system of canals. The absence of asphalt felt strange but the boat rides to and fro were lovely!
Venice is known for its Murano glass and intricately-designed carnival masks. Unfortunately, these 2 were caught in the centre of a storm brewing between my parents and a shopkeeper. You see, Mum accidently knocked down a Murano vase containing some masks at the shop. In the end, we parted with x euros and took home the broken vase and a mask (which I fixed).
In spite of this, the sojourn at Venice was lovely.
Florence
Florence looks like a big Orchard road to me. But unlike Orchard Road, there aren't any big malls. All shops in Italy are found at ground level. While at Florence, we took a train to Pisa to lay our eyes on one of the 7th wonders of the world:
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is easily my favourite Italian place-of-interest, though the Vatican in Rome is a close contender. Its X-factor: a breathtakingly-beautiful view on top.
Rome
The saying 'lightning never strikes twice on the same spot' certainly doesn't apply to my parents. Once again, they lost more euros. But this time, it was because a fuckwit pickpocket dipped his hand into my Dad's pocket during a Metro ride.
Singaporeans who complain about congested MRT trains should ride Rome's Metro during peak hours; it'll be so packed they'll have the wind squeezed out of their lungs. It was so packed that when I moved my hand forward to get out this guy mistook me for his girlfriend and held my hand! Anyway, we lost abou 2.5 times thge previous. My parents were hopping mad and made a police report. Along the way, we all cursed the asshole pickpocket and cooked up all sorts of bizarre punishments for the (inserts the very worst of swear words and obscenities)
May he get killed from the radiation emitted by his new handphone and may his new Ferrari fall off a cliff. All in all, may his 'windfall' bring him misfortune.
Other than the above-mentioned, Rome was pretty nice. I've always been interested in Ancient Rome so I enjoyed checking out the ruins and the Colosseum with its gladiators toting spears-and-handphone-and-credit-card:)
The Vatican was quite beautiful, especially its interiors. This is my favourite corner in the Vatican:
Switzerland.
We booked a hotel in Zurich but from Zurich, we travelled to many places via train. My favourite place is the summit Mount Pilatus which is in Luzern. There, we were surrounded by snow-cloaked mountains which protruded through a thick blanket of clouds. I call that layer the 'floating Antartica of heaven' because looking down from the summit, it really looked like a huge snowy landscape. All this, plus the glittering snow and azure blue sky was so breathtaking that I shed a few tears.
We got up Mt Pilatus via cable car.
My brother and I
What liked best about Switzerland was the villages. As Christmas was just round the corner, out comes the fairy lights, Santa Claus dolls, reindeers, ornaments etc. Coupled with the thick snow, the villages look extremely Christmas-card worthy.
Another thing I like about Switzerland is the warm and friendly people! Apart from Luzern and Zurich, we also visited Interlaken, Grindelwald, Bern etc. I've now decided that England, Switzerland, Japan and Singapore are my favourite countries.
Miscellaneous pics and funny moments:
Mini-Ritter Sport!!! So cute yeah?
We are The Wans. I told my Mum we looked like members of a rock band and she laughed:D
And I will always think of you as the sun*
