Rome, Venice, Milan are not expensive,
Journey to Italy
First, a brief financial report (may be useful to someone):
Time June 10-23.2013 Rome-Venice-Milan. For 2 people. All prices are converted to $.
Flight 1200$
Tashkent – Rome-Milan-Tashkent 1200 $
Hotels – $1420
Rome – Bed @Breakfast -100$*7 days -700$
Venice - Bed @Breakfast - 130$*4 days -520$
Milan - Bed @Breakfast - 100$*2 days -200$
Transfers -242$
1. Train Fimulchino Airport - Rome -20$
2. Rome-Venice High Speed Train - $100 (Via Trenitalia. )
(There were tickets for 45.2 tickets. But for 1.5 months I didn’t dare to take it, I didn’t know if they would give a visa)
3. Train Venice - Milan $50 (Through Trenitalia, there were $22 tickets for two tickets, but I was late, these were only left for 2 am)
5. Milan. Hotel - bus station, taxi 13$
6. Bus Milan-Manpelsa Airport - $26.
7. City bus in Rome - $18
8. City bus in Milan - $15
Excursions 166$
1. Sightseeing tours on the Houp@Houp bus - 48 hours $ 52 (bought at 11.30 in fact, you can ride 2 days until 21.00 and the third day from 8-11.30), Russian-language audio tour, first one ring around Rome 2 hours - (Colliseum, Trevi Fountain , Vatican, King Vittorio Memorial, etc.
), then the second ring: get off, look around, then get on the next bus of the same type and drive on.
2. Excursion to the domes of St. Peter's Basilica (Vatican) -18$
3. St. Peter's Basilica (Vatican) inspection and visit for free
4. Cathedral - Mary de Majore - inspection and admission for free
5. Coliseum with your own recorded 30-minute audio tour - from the outside around, free of charge (on the inside there were just shapeless remnants)
1. Three hours on the nose of the vaporetto (steamboat) with your own recorded audio tour - Evening Venice: all the islands of Murano, Burano, Lido, etc. , grand canal, lagoon, etc. - $ 18 - for the first hour, and then free.
2. Gondola ride (emphasis on the first syllable) with a gondolier singing Italian songs. Grand Canal and small canals. 25 minutes -78$ for the whole gondola. It is better to take it at 8-9 am and not in the center, the official price list posted on the pier is 80 euros ($ 104) -40 minutes. You can bargain, we pretended that we were leaving the gondolier dropped the price.
They took it on the pier at Strad novo (Сonoredjio) Сampo s Sofia. Turn, house 4271 and to the channel.
3. St. Mark's Cathedral - visit 20 minutes for free.
4. Some huge church with paintings, I forgot, for free.
5. San Marco Square, Realto Bridge, Bridge of Sighs, other squares, streets, canals and other romance - walked in the morning from 7-12 o'clock, until it's so hot and in the evening, with their own audio tours - for free.
1. Duomo Cathedral of Milan - inspection and admission for free
And in all cities - shops, shops, shops ...
Nutrition. -400$
Restaurants and cafes (examples):
1.2 pizzas 30 centimeters in diameter and half a liter of wine $35
2.2 bowls of spaghetti or risotto (rice, clams, grated cheese) and 2 beers – $25
3. Grilled chicken and 2 beers -10$ (for some reason they have cheap grilled chickens)
4. Indian cafe - 2 Indian dishes with beer - $18
Food from the supermarket to take to your hotel room (when your legs are already tired of walking the streets):
grilled chicken (700 grams) - $ 6, a bottle of Italian wine $ 1.3, cheese 100 gr. -1.3$, raw smoked sausage 200 gr -1.
$3, a kilo of oranges or bananas $2.5, bread $1.3, mineral water $0.5. total $14.3 dinner.
Visas, translation of documents, bank statements -220$
Total: $3648
Rome crowned.
I opened the window and saw Roman villas standing below, some already over 500, and others freshly built. Noble crumbling plaster, arches and capitals of columns, dark greenery on balconies and courtyards, cobbled streets and the distant chime of bells in the cool air - this is how Rome appeared before them on their first morning at the hotel. From the third floor, the view was like from the top of a hill - far and clearly in the transparent morning air, the domes and turrets of churches and the roofs of villas were visible.
Breakfast, slightly bitter cappuccino, croissants, milk flakes. The quiet creaking of footsteps, the quiet audience, the occasional muttering of a coffee machine and the clinking of appliances. In one of the corridors of the hotel there is a small living room from which the entrance is directly to the church hall.
Rows of wooden chairs with soft stools for the knees, dull copper pipes of the organ, a high ceiling gently turning into an overhanging balcony - the balustrade of the second floor. In our hotel, we respect religion. By the way, so are we.
On one of the flat roofs below the buildings, a Roman (how meaningful it sounds! ) was filming hanging dry laundry. Along the streets, paved with cubes of handmade paving stones, uneven and angular, but thick and black, like the volcanic lava of Vesuvius, we walk to discover the country. The first sensations of the morning are the crackling of window blinds rising, the cry of greengrocers setting up their stalls and tents, and the smell of coffee. Along the edges of the sidewalks are large black boxes with round holes closed with a rubber curtain - Roman-style dustbins, which later were not found either in Venice or in Milan. Around them there is almost knee-deep garbage.
Local residents walking or hurrying to the bus stop do not pay attention to it, well, no attention. Life is short, but garbage is eternal. Salute senori!
We go to the supermarket - twenty varieties of cheese, surprisingly inexpensive, wine for every taste and budget. Yesterday at dinner I liked the deep and bright taste of Italian wine, obviously natural shades. There is no sugar or alcohol, and it is somewhat reminiscent of good homemade wine, which you sometimes try at our summer residents.
Bus tickets are sold at newsstands and tobacconists. I go into a shop, in the window of which I see smoking pipes.
There I can bay autobas tickets? Do not understand. Well, where can I buy tickets for the bus? ! About tickets! ! ! Further, an untranslatable play on words from which I catch dritte - straight. Bitte-dritte frau madam, I'll give you the first lesson right now. It turns out that I understand Italian, and they speak Russian!
It remains to remember only the blue-straight - to the left, it will be to the right - gum, like the Bulgarians (the right hand is the right hand), I knew this before. I begin to remember - director, absolute, dottori, medicine veni, vizi, vici, arividerci leva, grace, bonjorno, donna, seigneur, rogazzi, felicita, dolce vita - yes, I'm just a polyglot!
There are no benches at bus stops in Rome and Milan. There are no buses in Venice either. A trifle, but after a 5-hour walking tour, when the legs fall off and the sun beats mercilessly, I want to not just sit down, but right on the asphalt. Buses do not run very regularly. I remember on the bus ring at the Termini station in Rome, people stood in the heat for about 20 minutes, and when an empty accordion bus drove up and, without opening the door, pulled on, a dull murmur was heard in the crowd. Benches, I remind you, no. A gray-haired old man jumped out into the middle of the road waving his arms and exclaimed: Italians!
And then he delivered an exciting speech in which he mentioned both Berlusconi and the mayor and some other word very similar to the name of the Italian writer Galdoni. The crowd, with a muffled murmur, approved this, apparently, a call for an uprising, but did not go to storm the palace.
By the way, surprisingly, in many shoe stores there are no “spoons” for shoes, and in clothing stores of famous brands such as Zara, Mango and many others, the fitting booths are so stuffy that women jump out of there lathered and with stuck strands of hair, cursing at different languages and fashion and the lack of large and low-power air conditioners.
On the famous Buenos Aires street, 100 miles of clothing stores, there are many Russian-speaking buyers. There are also sellers from Moldova and Ukraine. If you look at the shop windows, then the Italian woman is a teenager, thin and with long legs.
All fashion is short shorts, T-shirts, denim vests and occasionally scarves in various variations. Where they dress women over 30 and even 46 sizes, my wife and I never found. Although on the way to this street we met a Russian woman with her daughter, who, looking with envy at her wife, said, well, you will find a lot for yourself.
The best part is that in many stores, where dresses cost 50 and 60 euros, on the tags where it is indicated how to wash and clean these clothes, it is modestly but honestly indicated: maid in pakistan, vietnam, bangladesh, rank. In Rome, on the streets, there are sheds with price tags “All for 10 euros”, where things are sold with the same tags and from the same countries. Somehow it's stressful.
We were standing at such a stand looking at shoes, and suddenly a crowd of Italian women rushed out of some bus, it seems from the south and uproar, and tearing shoes out of our hands began to try on and bargain with an Indian seller.
Many obviously Chinese things have cardboard tags “Produtto Italia”. Often, the saleswoman at first claims that these are Italian products, but after discovering a tag with a clarifying inscription of the rank, Pakistani, etc. lazily shrugs her shoulders - Maeby.
Walking through the narrow streets in Venice in the Rialto district, we found a fur shop. The doors were closed, but the hostess was sitting inside. They chose a long, beige mink - the hostess announced the price of 30 thousand euros! Almost 40 thousand dollars. Although the inner seams on the sleeves are uneven. Yes, even if they are even! Seeing the “eyes wide open” of buyers, she began to offer shorter fur coats, from another hanger at prices of 8-10 thousand euros. At the same time, promising that the customs office will return the VAT upon departure. Yes, even a tax on profits and property! Obviously not the same store.
Dad doesn't take cards
A red double-decker omnibus drove up to the colonnade of St. Peter's Cathedral, but did not stop, but turned the corner and drove another hundred meters.
Ah that OK on foot so on foot. Until you get tired. Not like yesterday, like blacks on a plantation and the Cathedral of Mary de Majore and the Coliseum. Oh, and here are blacks. Right on the sidewalk they sell bags from famous designers, you have to understand right from the podium. Two slightly pot-bellied angels in blue with police stripes were walking reluctantly towards them. The blacks, like in American football, stood bent over and dancing, and as soon as a couple of meters remained before the police, they rushed from a low start and disappeared into the hot air. Well, the miracles have already begun.
After standing for about forty minutes, we approached the Vatican checkpoint in line. And then it turned out that the wife's skirt is too short, which can apparently have a bad effect on the servants of God, turn their thoughts away from thoughts about the divine and turn to earthly problems. Well, that's not why we stood in line. The wife took off her vest, wrapped it around her skirt and buttoned it halfway up the front.
And in this form, with a slightly mincing gait, we overcame the moral cordon and moved on with the queue. And then they made the first mistake. The queue split in two, there are no signs and we moved with the right queue. A barrier and a ticket office were waiting for us around the corner. Excursion to the domes of the cathedral 7 euros by elevator and 5 euros by stairs, but it is not recommended for cores and not young people. But the turn to the left was for a free inspection of the cathedral from the inside. Fate. There is an announcement next to the cash desk - student cards, cards of all banks, Rome Pass and everything else is not accepted. Cash only.
Moreover, a Russian family stood in front of us and the guy asked if there was a discount for his two boys of 5 years old. For two? The minister (of course, not God's, but the administration's) was surprised. Note discount. If I knew where this queue would lead, the guy muttered, they are bred everywhere. One word "lyrigia".
In the garden, the white acacia is blooming, Dad doesn't charge for viewing the map.
From heaven.
Past the statue of the Armenian (! ) Bishop, we approached the elevator shaft. The doors opened and then - holy, holy, holy - in the middle of a huge, 20-man elevator, we are met above all in a black tuxedo with a dazzling white collar, in dark glasses, black as ebonite, a guy with a Mephistopheles bearing. To be honest, when the doors slammed shut and the lights went out, I thought that the elevator would now collapse down and rush along the shaft through laughter and screeching ...But it passed.
crowned Rome,
dark purple,
Covering your stubborn forehead,
What were you to the world
Christian lyre
Or like a barbarian drum pounding into oblivion
It was quiet and cool under the dome of the cathedral. Behind the metal mesh enclosing the balustrade, far below, small, insignificant people crawled like goosebumps. A cool breeze blew a hot forehead. From time to time waves of roar floated from below, reflected by the domes.
I thought that if some director wants to make a film about purgatory, there is no better place to be found, and there is no need to compose a sound sequence.
TV ES PETRVS ET SVPER HANC PETRAM AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM ET TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI CAELORVM – chopped letters grow one after another on a golden belt running along the edge of the dome. You are Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church, and I will give you the keys to heaven.
San Pedro, Vatican Gardens. People's memories are short. There is no deception. But the hand gets cold. The letters are wobbly. There are no such words in stock. Stars shine in the daytime sky. I see and hear them.
