2005 SUMMER TO SOUTHERN & WEST EUROPE: To start with...ITALY

Hello everybody:
Sorry for the waiting, especially Yasu, who'd been asking me for at least three times to post my photos on the blog.
There're six people in the group so when we collected all the photos we took, there are approaching thousands of them. This really reflects the fact that Asian people are crazy for taking photos of every moment of their trip to anywhere... Well, I won't show you too much in case you got fed up.

Ok, let me get started.


These are the members of the group, the tallest right in the middle is my boyfriend. Oh, yes, I think I forgot to report this part. I've a boyfriend now and it's been for five months. He's working for some really promising hi-tech company which never let him rest. So he decided to take a week off and join the Italian part with us.

The first stop is Rome.

I was so wrong...
The reason why I wanted to go to Europe in summer was that Taiwan was SOOOO killing hot. But Italy was even hotter!!! There was a heat wave striking southern europe when I went there. It was like walking in the oven whole day till the sun went down the hill, which was 9pm....I am the person who hates heat but put myself in a heat haven....
I had been to Italy in 2002 and most of the places I visited this time overlapped where I've been before because my friends wanted to go there. Even though I did not pay much attention to the magnificent places which already moved me my last time here, I did enjoy the time laughing and fooling around with my best friends and boyfriends on the European soil where I'm so familiar with and wanted to share with them. This was a good trip.


Vaticano is still extravagantly beautiful only the queue to the Church and Sistine Chapel was endlessly long and the temperature in the square was unbearably high. And oh, the other difference was the new Pope printed on the postcards and we saw only the tombstone of the passed-away Pope.

Firenze (Florence)
I sent Nuno a postcard here. That was the fourth or fifth day of our stay in the city. The hostel we booked gave us a small apartment on the top floor of a five-level building. I like such accommodation not only for the privacy but also like staying at home. Quite sweet. This can only happen when the group is big, according to the boss of the hotsel. This was the BEST hostel we had all along our one-month trip.

In this small and friendly and artistic city,

We had a lovely Italian meal in a local restaurant and the waiter seemed to be very interested in people coming from Taiwan.

and also a group of Mexican backpacker on the hill overlooking the city whose average age was around 20 and who started their trip from London and planned to go all the way east to Prague.

The last stop in Italy is Venezia (Venice)

Here we saw the most tourists than any other big cities and the weather was still very high (the water here didn't help any).
Though full of tourists, it didn't decrease its beauty a bit. Very romantic when I saw a sailor on the boat who not only sailed the boat but sang a traditional Italian song.

And this little girl playing on the St Marco square, which is one of the photos my friend who took this love best.

After Venice, we took 9 hours of train to our next stop, Wien (Vienna).