That was great for the German teens, but it meant that St. Peter’s was closed and, because we were leaving the next morning, we weren’t going to get to see it. That was pretty disheartening; the German teens had been crowding the entire city and causing havoc everywhere we looked all week, and then to not see one of Rome’s most important sites because of them was like icing on the sweaty-smelling, loud-speaking, unaware-of-any-country’s-social-protocols cake. (Seriously, imagine thousands of teenagers all clumped together. If you’re a teenager yourself, it’s awesome, but if you aren’t it isn’t.)

Anyway, we were pretty dejected and we went to a park near the Vatican to sit down and rest. We had walked to the Vatican from our hotel, which according to Google maps is just over 2 and half miles (not counting getting lost a few times), and we had also gone through the harrowing experience of the Vatican museum, so we were also fairly exhausted.

Around the time we sat down, we noticed a dog come by, on a leash. The dog stopped at a bush right in front of us and began urinating. The dog’s owner yanked on the leash, and the dog quickly went back to walking, and we didn’t think much more of it.

However, as we sat on the bench for the next half an hour or so, we noticed that every dog that walked by went over and smelled that bush, but no others. What was even more interesting was that at one point we saw the original dog that had urinated on the bush coming back in our direction. At the same time, another dog was being walked by the bush. The new dog stopped and smelled the bush and then continued about 30 feet until it began passing the original dog. At that point, both dogs erupted into a furious barking frenzy. Their owners yanked on their leashes and scolded them, then looked at each other apologetically. They had no idea what could have caused the spontaneous outburst.

But we did! Obviously the new dog must have recognized the scent of the original dog from the bush it had just smelled, and for some reason that scent prompted both dogs to have outbursts. I don’t what these smells “meant” to the dogs, but they obviously signified somehow. I also don’t know how long this chain of communication had been going on. Maybe the new dog had already urinated on the bush at some point, and the original dog had breached some sort of etiquette by marking the spot.

Or maybe it was something else. What was clear, however, was that as we watched the dogs we became aware of a who layer of communication that was going on between these dogs, that no one else, especially their owners, seemed to be aware of.

The park where we witnessed secret dog communication

We looked at the ruins for a few minutes, but we quickly started to notice that the whole area smelled like urine. We had seen people urinating in public throughout our trip, but the smell seemed too strong to be coming from a few indiscreet guys peeing on things. Also, it didn’t smell exactly like urine, just sort of like it.

As we wondered what was going on, we noticed a couple of cats down in the ruins. We watched them for a minute or two, and then noticed a few more. Pretty soon, we were seeing cats everywhere in the ruins.

And then we realized: the ruins didn’t smell like human urine, they smelled like cat urine. Basically, it smelled like a huge litter box.

Area Sacra: Home to a billion cats

The Tiber River, near where we saw the otter. We were up above at the bridge level. The otter and guy where down below.

We arrived in Rome in the late morning. Like many cities before (specifically after Paris), I was worried that our hotel would be a disappointment. We had booked it before we left on the trip, and we learned so much while traveling that I wished we had waited. It was also within walking distance of the train station, which can sometimes be a mixed bag (to put it lightly).

In any case, we set out toward our hotel and I was surprised at how quickly we began to see ancient sites. I knew Rome was a historic city and we’d seen a lot of ancient things already, but to see old walls and ruins sticking out of modern-day pizzerias and clothing stores was very impressive.

When we arrived at our hotel and got our room, most of my anxiety about it disappeared. Our room was spacious and comfortable, and as we later found out, just up the street from the Forum, the Colosseum, and the other sites in that area. I was happy to see that Rome looked to be fairly walkable. Our hotel also sold us Roma Passes for the museums, and got us the nessecary reservations at the Borghese Gallery. It was great and I’d definitely recommend the hotel. It’s called Hotel Italia Roma.

After we checked in, we headed out into the town. We ended up going on something of a “fountain walk” as we somehow ended up visiting several famous fountains. One of those fountains was the Trevi Fountain, which like many people, I associate with the film La Dolce Vita. Unfortunately it was extremely crowded, but not without reason; with the water gushing out of all the stonework it’s really very impressive.

Next we went to the Triton Fountain, which despite being made by the famous sculptor Bernini, had almost no one around it. Of course, it’s not majestic like the Trevi Fountain, but we did stop to rest there for awhile. By this time it was also getting dark. We continued our walk to the Spanish Steps, and eventually ended up in the also sparsely populated Piazza del Popolo. It was a very pleasant walk.

On our second day in Rome we visited the major historical sites near our hotel. Using our museum pass we visited the Colosseum, the Forum, and Palatine Hill. My personal favorite of these was probably the Forum, which surprised me because it’s less grand than the Colosseum, but still fairly crowded. However, I think was enriched it was that we read about it (on the iPod touch) as we walked around. It was fascinating to see and learn about events that transpired throusands of years ago in the same places we were standing.

Once fascinating thing about these sites (and, we learned, Rome generally), is that the ground level has changed dramatically over the years. The Forum has been excavated down to it’s original levels, but it’s also sort of in a pit. That’s because after the fall of the Roman empire the city of Rome eventually fell into disrepair. Dirt and debris kept piling up until most of the sites were actually covered up. I supposed I would have expected this to happen, but I wouldn’t have expected the ground level to change by many meters. In the Forum there is a catholic church, for example, that is built on top of an ancient Roman building. From the sides it’s possible to see where the ground level has been and how that effected where different generations built. It was a dramatic demonstration of how, over the course of two thousand years, even the earth itself changes, swallowing up the past.

Our first stop was Pisa. We took a morning train and before no time, were in the famous city. Like many visitors, I was surprised to discover how big Pisa was. Apparently it’s a college town, and like Florence straddles the Arno river. Unlike most of the people who got off the train with us, we decided to walk from the station to the leaning tower. It’s about a twenty minute walk and pleasant, though I wish we had allowed ourselves more time to really enjoy it.

After not very long we got to the leaning tower. We didn’t go up it (for financial reasons), but did eat a picnic on the grass nearby. It was also impressive to see the whole tower area, which also has a baptistery and cathedral. For some reason I had always imagined the tower in a grassy field by itself, but in fact it’s quite close to church.

Not long after we arrived in Pisa, we headed back to the train station. And while I liked the tower and adjacent buildings, I would actually be interested in coming back to the city to see other sites.

Next, we went to a town called Lucca. It’s not far from Pisa, and has huge renaissance walls. Apparently the the citizens of the town decided to build extra strong fortifications at one point, and they ended up making them so strong that no one bothered attacking for hundreds of years. Today, the thick walls are more like a park, and from on top it’s easy to think of them as just an elevated pedestrian and bike road. There are tall trees and cheap bike rental places (which we didn’t use because we had spent so much in Florence).

We strolled the old walls for a while, climbing on old crenelations and turrets, then ventured into the town. In many ways, it reminded me of Aosta; there weren’t a lot of tourists, but there were some interesting sites. We visited several old churches, and saw the city’s characteristic towers (including one with oak trees famously growing on top of it). Apparently, the Pope and the town bishop had some sort of rivalry going on at some point and they both built impressive churches. The Pope’s was designed to remind pilgrims that while Lucca was cool, the real objective was in Rome. Another interesting thing about the churches was that they were decorated hundreds of years ago by paintings by local artists, and those artists painted the city in the background. So while the images ostensibly depict standard religious fare, it was possible to watch the progression of the town in the paintings.

For the most part, however, we just wandered around Lucca. Because there were some people out, but not huge crowds, I’d say it was actually one of the more pleasant places we visited and, like Pisa, I’d be interested in coming back if only to take in more of the laid back atmosphere and historic vibe. At one point, we also found parts of the old medieval wall. Before the Renaissance, the city had an older, not-as-strong wall. I think they replaced it because it couldn’t with stand the new technology or something along those lines, but parts of the older wall still exist. Some were worked into the newer wall, but others have been appropriated for other uses (homes, stores, etc.) in town. (I think there is also an even older, Roman wall in the town).

As the sun began to get low, we decided to head back to Florence. We walked back to the train station, and then spent the evening strolling through the city, looking at the Ponte Vecchio, and eating gelato.

Anyway, I believe I love art and art museums, but the big famous ones were uniformly not the most rewarding experiences of the trip. In Florence that fact was glaringly true. I don’t regret having gone to them, but in doing so I was surprised to discover something I hadn’t previously realized about my own travel philosophy.

Anyway, with ice cream being so ubiquitous, it naturally follows that people are constantly eating it, which in turn caused one of the more salient images of our trip:

One night, as we were crossing the bridge on our way back to our room, we passed a young American family. There are a lot of American families in Florence, but this one caught our eye (or rather, our ear) because a little, three year old girl was sobbing and surrounded by her younger brother and parents. As we got closer we saw that she was holding an empty ice cream cone, while the scoop that had previously been perched atop it was now on the ground, slowly melting into the Arno river.

Just as we passed the family, we heard the girl lament, with all the woe she was capable of, “now I have no more ice cream.”

Everyone in the immediate area heard the girl. Of course, many probably didn’t speak English, but I’m sure they all understood because in half a dozen languages we heard people commenting on the tragedy of sheer chance robbing someone of life’s small pleasures.

The walk to Soggiorno Alessandra from the train station wasn’t very far, but it did take us past a few interesting sites and required us to cross the Arno river. When we arrived, we disovered that Soggiorno Alessandra was in a big old apartment building. It was run by Alessandra herself and had four nice rooms.

After settling in we asked Alessandra if she knew of any way we could get tickets to Florence’s most important art galleries, the Academia (home of Michelangelo’s David) and the Uffizi Gallery (housing works by the major Renaissance masters). Apparently these museums have very long lines and it’s highly advised that visitors make reservations beforehand. Unfortunately, we didn’t know how difficult it could be to get in to these places until a day or two before we arrived in Florence, and the reservations are sometimes (including this time) booked up months in advance.

As a result, we were worried that we wouldn’t have time to make it to Florence’s major sites. However, we told Alessandra our situation and she went to make some phone calls. A few minutes later she came back with times and confirmation numbers for our reservations the next day. I don’t know how she did it, but we were impressed, and very grateful. It also reminded us yet again how the places we chose to stay in could often make or break a city.

With our museum reservations taken care of, we headed out into the city to look around. We saw the famous Duomo (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore), with its influential dome by Brunelleschi, the Palazzo Vecchio, the exterior of the Uffizi Gallery, and a lot of other buildings tucked away on narrow, arching streets.

As we walked around, I became fascinated at how Florence is not a beautiful city in the way that, say, Paris or Venice are beautiful. Its buildings, for example, tend to be hulking instead of elegant. The Medici Palace is a good example of this: it’s a huge, fortified-looking box lacking the external opulence of other palaces, as well as the storybook romance of earlier castles. The Palazzo Vecchio was the same way and looked rough and utilitarian compared to some of the other places we’ve seen.

I don’t say this to suggest that Florence is in anyway less appealing than other cities, and in fact in many ways I enjoyed it more than places like Paris or (later) Rome. However, as the epicenter of the Renaissance, the general aesthetic surprised me (which I know mostly just illustrates my relative ignorance when it comes to art and history).

The result of Florence’s roughness was that it felt more lived in than other places. Whereas some cities we visited felt like a cross between museums and amusement parks at times, the streets in Florence (except the pedestrian only areas) always had some Vespa zipping by and nearly hitting us. Several of the places we ate at also had bulletin boards filled with homemade, Italian advertisements from students wanting to sublet their apartments. It was a reminder that people actually lived in the areas we were visiting and that they were going about the daily lives.

Toward the end of the evening, we headed up to the Belvedere Fort, which sits above the city and has amazing views. There, we ate dinner on some steps while watching the sunset over Florence. It was the quintessential Florentine image, with a hot sun varnishing the city’s brick buildings yellow. And while individual buildings in Florence may be more interesting than they are gorgeous, the over all effect from up above is very impressive.

Despite not taking a gondola ride, however, we did do some fantastic things in Venice. And even better, we didn’t break our budget. So here are some of the things we did in Venice that stand out.

Gelato: I’m not the biggest fan of ice cream generally, and I think hearing people constantly rave about gelato kind of made me hate it. By the time we got to Venice, however, icy attitude had begun to melt. This probably happened because gelato in Italy is A) not ridiculously overpriced like it is in the U.S., and B) it was really hot. We ate a lot of gelato in Venice and, in retrospect the best chocolate icecream I’ve ever had was there. Gelato was especially good at passing time waiting in line.

St. Mark’s Basilica: We didn’t do a lot of “touristy” things in Venice, instead opting to wander the alley’s, but we did visit this church. We passed by the outside a bunch of times, and went in once. The line to get in wasn’t too long, and both the inside and outside were pretty impressive. The exterior—which is covered in marble—is a flamboyant hodgepodge of colors and patterns. It looks somewhat eastern in it’s influences and it is remarkably different from other churches. The inside is covered with impressive gold mosaics.

Sunday Mass at Frari Church: We had read that this church had Gregorian chant on Sunday mornings. It was also close to our hotel, so we headed over. After nearly being turned away at the door because we were tourists not worshipers, however, we discovered that it was a pretty typical mass. Though we had already been to a few masses by this point in the trip, this one was still interesting because it was in a spectacular setting. It’s a gothic church, and therefore large, airy, and echo-y. I’ve always enjoyed churches like that, but what makes this one even more fantastic is the fact that it also houses art by famous masters like Titian, Bellini, Donatello, and a bunch of others. Usually it costs three euros to get in to the church, but since we went to the mass, it was free for us.

Boat Bus Tour of the Grand Canal: Instead of taking a gondola, we decided to take the bus, which in Venice means taking a boat, called a vaporetto. We got boat #1 near the train station and cruised all the way along the Grand Canal to the other end of town, near St. Mark’s Square. We read about the different things we were seeing on the iPod, and it gave us a unique view of the city that we hadn’t seen from the streets. The ticket costs somewhere around 7 euros, and is good for an hour, though I think we actually rode boat #2 much later than that and nothing happened to us. (When I tried to scan our vaporetto pass message came up on the electronic screen saying it was invalid, but an old Italian guy who was standing by us told us just to get on anyway, and since there were no gates or people blocking our way, we just got on.)

Evening in the rain: On our last night in Venice it rained while we were still walking around. Colossal thunderheads rolled in first, and when it started we took refuge in a pizzeria. The pizza was delicious and while we were there we encountered a couple of middle aged American men who were overjoyed to discover that they could drink wine in the street. After we had eaten our pizza we kept walking around. The rain had driven a lot of people out of the streets and we strolled through an empty, gleaming St. Mark’s Square. After wandering around for a while we ended up behind the opera house, where could catch hints of the performance inside. When the rain stopped again, we sat on some canal steps (and contemplated what it would be like to whack the gondola passengers parading by few feet in front of us with pool noodles). When the rain started up again we decided to make our way back to the hotel, along the way passing the Rialto Bridge and the now glimmering Grand Canal.

I’m not sure how Laura felt, but I was a little bit afraid that, coming after Cinque Terre, Venice would be a disappointment. As we rode the train across the bridge to the Santa Lucia station I was even more afraid because I saw several large cruises docked at the edges of the city. Cruise travelers have an inherently different travel philosophy than Laura and I had assumed on this trip and, as a result, our encounters with them always seemed to be low points of our experiences. So, if Venice was filled with cruise people and tour groups, I knew that would make it a lot harder to have a positive experience.

As soon as we got out of the train station, however, my spirits began to pick up. I knew that Venice’s “streets” were all canals, but I don’t think it really hit me how ubiquitous the canals would be until I saw one, right in front of me. The Grand Canal, which runs right in front of the station, was lined with magnificent buildings and filled with boats of all different sizes. Though I would quickly learn that that specific spot isn’t Venice’s most aesthetically pleasing locale, it still made for a magnificent first impression.

Using the Venice2go iPhone app, we located our hotel and crossed the canal. I resisted the urge to start taking hundreds of pictures like the people all around us, but frankly, I couldn’t blame them. Unlike Cinque Terre, Cesky Krumlov or other beautiful places that I had learned about relatively recently, Venice was one of those places that I’d always heard about and seen in pictures. It was the kind of city that I always wanted to go to when I was a kid, but that had also seemed so beautiful and exotic that it was almost unreal and beyond the realm of possible places I could go (silly, perhaps, but that’s how I felt). To finally be there and, more importantly, for the physical experience to basically live up to the hype was really quite amazing.

After a short walk, we arrived at Hotel Dalla Mora, where we had made a reservation by email a few days before. (60 euros per night for a double with a sink, breakfast, and a bathroom down the hall.) Our room was down an alley overlooking a pretty, faintly brackish canal.

After checking in we were really happy with our hotel. It wasn’t extremely close to the biggest tourist sites, but Venice is very walkable so we knew we’d have no trouble getting around. Plus, it was in a quiet area that didn’t have many tourists around. That meant from the moment we set out from our hotel we had narrow Venetian alleys, courtyards of leaning buildings, and romantic arching bridges all to ourselves. Though the crowds in the area by our hotel varied depending on the time of day, we never had trouble finding a secluded corner or some steps leading down to a twisting canal to sit on.

As we moved toward St. Mark’s Square the crowds got thicker. Unlike Paris, however, that didn’t bother me as much. I think it was because it was easy to feel like I was a part of an age-old ritual. People have been coming to Venice for hundreds of years for more or less the same reasons that brought me there. Sure, there were a lot of tourists near the main squares, but there have been a lot of tourists in those areas for centuries. It was also surprising how easy it was to find refuge from the crowds. Much like Prague, a short walk down a narrow passage usually rewarded us with a quiet view of a moonlite canal lined with decaying mansions.