2010 Italy Holiday (8D7N)

08-Sep-2010
Departure from Muscat to Rome via Frankfurt.

09-Sep-2010 (Day 01), Rome
Reached Rome Airport
Hotel: Augusta Lucilla Palace (4*)
Internet: 5 Euros / hr (Accumulative)
• Take a shuttle bus (8 Euros per pax) to hotel and check-in.
• Pantheon
• Piazza Navona
• Piazza di Spagna (Spanish Steps)
• Piazza de Popolo
• Fontana del Tritone - A fountain on a roundabout in the middle of the road.
• Fontana di Tevi (Tevi Fountain)
• Return to hotel

10-Sep-2010 (Day 02), Rome
• Vatican City - Got a tour when reaching the Vatican City and decided to take up the offer to avoid the long queue. (45 Euros per pax)
o Vatican Museum
o Cappella Sistina (Sistine Chapel)
o St Peter Basilica
o St Peter Square
• Palatino (Palatine Hill) - Ancient tour, included in my tour package.
• Roman Forum - Ancient tour, included in my tour package.
• Arco di Costantino (Arch of Constantine) - Ancient tour, included in my tour package.
• Colosseo (Colosseum) - Ancient tour, included in my tour package.
• Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II (National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II)
• Fontana di Tevi (Tevi Fountain) - For day photo taking.
• Fontana del Tritone - For day photo taking.
• Piazza della Repubblica
• Return to hotel

11-Sep-2010 (Day 03), Florence
Hotel: Hotel Atlantic Palace (4*)
Internet: 10 Euros / 24hrs (Non-Accumulative)
• Proceed to Florence by Eurostar.
• Check-in hotel and proceed to Pisa by train (not Eurostar).
• Torre Pendente (Leaning Tower) - Before climbing the tower, please deposits your bag at the bag desposit counter just beside the ticket counter.
• Duomo
• Battistero
• Camposanto
• Return to hotel

12-Sep-2010 (Day 04), Florence
• Santa Maria Novella
• Piazza Michelangiolo - Included in my tour package.
• Duomo - Included in my tour package.
• Galleria dell Accademia - Included in my tour package.
• Piazza della Repubblica
• Piazza della Signoria
• Ponte Vecchio
• Palazzo Pitti
• Piazza del Mercato Centrale
• Piazza del SS Annunziata
• Duomo
• Piazza della Signoria
• Piazza Santa Maria Novella

13-Sep-2010 (Day 05), Venice
Hotel: Hotel Amadeus (4*)
Internet: No Internet available
• Took a Eurostar from Florence to Venice and check-in to the hotel
• Ponte Rialto
• Accademia - Did not go into the museum as it is closed for the day.
• Piazza San Marco
• Basilica di San Marco - Did not go into the church as the queue is too long.
• Campanile - Did not go up to the tower.
• Wander around in Venice and get lost in Venice - Seriously I do not know where else I visited as it is too difficult to navigate myself in Venice.
• A glass-blowing factory that have glass-blowing demostration.
• Gondola Ride - It cost 80 Euros for 2 persons, and the ride is about 40 mins
• Return to hotel at night.

14-Sep-2010 (Day 06), Venice
• Proceed to Piazza San Marco for day tour which is included in my package.
• Piazza San Marco
• Palazzo Ducale (Doge Palace) - Included in my tour package.
• Ponte di Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs) - Only accessible if you have admission into Doge Palace - Included in my tour package.
• Murano Island - After the tour, the tour guide asked us to follow another tour guide and he will lead us to take the free shuttle boat to Murano. It shuttle service is provided by the glass-blowing factory.
• Helicopter ride - Met the salesperson of the helicopter ride at Palazzo delle Prigioni, which is 39 Euros per person. It includes the helicopter ride which is about 10 mins up in the air and shuttle boat service to and from Lido
• Basilica di San Marco - Went into the church and it is admission free unless you wanted to climb up to the church.
• Again wander and get lost in Venice.
• Piazzale Roma - There is nothing there, it is just a train and bus terminal.

15-Sep-2010 (Day 07), Milan
Hotel: Hotel Antares Concorde
Internet: 5 Euros / 24hrs (Non-Accumulative)
• Took Eurostar from Venice to Milan train station.
• Bought a subway ticket valid for 48hrs to take the metro from the train station to my hotel.
• Duomo - It is free to enter the cathedral but it cost about 5 or 8 Euros, without lift and with lift respectively, to climb up to the roof of the cathedral.
• Piazza del Duomo
• Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
• Spend the entire day around Duomo and San Babila metro station to shop.

16-Sep-2010 (Day 08), Milan
• Take metro to Cadorna Triennale to visit Castello Sforzesco.
• Arco della Pace (Arch of Peace)
• Santa Maria della Grazie - This is the place famous for the mural of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. Reservation is needed to be book weeks before you visit the place as the daily number of visitors visiting is limited. I did not heed the advice and hope that I can get a ticket on the day itself. In the end I was told that the admission slots for the whole week is fully booked.
• Proceed to Duomo and San Babila area to start shopping.

17-Sep-2010
Departure from Milan to Muscat.
• Took a cab from the hotel, which I booked with the hotel one day in advance, to the airport and it cost 85 Euros.
• End of trip.

Things to take note:
1. Italy (In General):
• There are few types of train service in Italy, Subway Train / Metro, and the train connecting the city from Trenitalia and Eurostar. The subway train is just like our MRT and not available in every city. Rome and Milan have subway but not Florence and Pisa. As for train service, you may be confused on which train to take and the cheapest in order to reach your destination. However from my understanding or to make things easier, I divided them into 2 types, the slow train no first or second class) and the fast train (have first class and second class). The slow ones are used to connect within the city itself, like Florence to Pisa which is in Tuscany and they have more stop. The fast one is used to connect within Italy (as far as I do connect to other European countries but I did not travel out of Italy) and have lesser stop. So you may ask which train to take, slow or fast one. What I observed is the slow and fast train does not have the route. So often you only have one choice from A to B. So if you are buying online train ticket, just choose your locations and do not need to worry which train to take.
• The train ticket is also like the plane ticket, they have open and fixed ticket. For those who have open ticket, do remember to validate your open ticket before you board the train by slotting your open ticket into a yellow box in the railway station. There are quite a lot of them and you should not have missed it.
• All food and drink will have service charge if you are not planning to takeaway. The service charge is from 1 - 2 Euros per pax unless the restaurant specified that they do not have service charge. Service charge do applied on train.
• Do not expect to have a big hotel room even you are staying in a 4 stars hotel. All my 4 stars hotel rooms I stayed are very small especially the one I stayed in Rome, the room is so small to a point that I can't even find a spot to open my luggage fully and it is impossible not to bump into the wall in the shower area while you are bathing no matter what small size you are.
• If you see people selling the paper dancing doll claiming that it can dance with the music by rubbing the magnetic strip behind the paper doll, please do not buy it. It is a scam. You can find the video of the scam in Youtube, "dancing paper doll".
• There is a lot of Indian-like or black foreigner in most of tourist area giving you friendship band for good luck or rose or similar claiming that it is for free, please do not take. Once you take even they keep insisting that it is free, they will keep pestering you asking for some money.
• Please wear comfortable pair of shoe as there is a lot of walking and climbing of stairs if you wanted to experience Italy. Most of the attraction of Rome, Pisa, Florence, Venice and Milan is within walking distance. At most you only need to walk 15 mins to another attraction. Even you are at the bottom of the map and the next destination of yours is at the top of the map, you still can walk there. Of course it is the city map provided by the map I am referring and not the world map.
• Please learn how to see the map as it is not unusual to see all people around you trying to navigate themselves with the map. It is not easy to navigate in Italy as there are too much of small streets in the city.
• For the tax free refund, please bear in mind that there is a minimum purchase before you can claim. Do ask the salesperson for more details as some places allow you to combine the receipts of the day and some do not allow.

2. Rome:
• Do not to buy mineral water n Rome as it cost at least 2 Euros for a bottle. Bring an empty bottle and fill it up from the fountain. There are plenty of fountain in Rome to fill up your empty bottle with drinkable water.
• The subway ticket cost 1 Euros per trip regardless on the number of stops. There is also ticket that valid for 12, 24 or 48 hours but I believe you will not need it unless you do not want to walk.

3. Pisa:
• It is possible to walk from the train station of Pisa to the leaning tower if you don't mind walking about 20 mins.

4. Florence:
• All attractions are walking distance between one another.
• No subway in Florence.

5. Venice:
• Unless you are a very good topo man, I would advise you to buy a water-bus ticket to get around Venice. Venice is made up of small islets and linked by bridges. There are a lot of died-end and small street in Venice therefore even you have map, you will get lost after walking a few streets. Walking in Venice is just like walking is a maze.
• If you are planning to visit the glass-blowing factory, it is not necessary to go to the nearby island, Murano, there are also a few glass-blowing factories that will demonstrate the technique in the island itself. But you just have to know the demonstration timing and where is the factory. There is one which I remembered the location. Go into the shopping street of Piazza San Marco and you will find Cartier boutique, proceed to the street straight ahead of the boutique and at the end you will see a toy shop then turn left. At the end of the street up the bridge there is a glass-blowing factory. I am so lucky that I bumped into the glass-blowing factory unintentionally just in time that they are having a demonstration. I also went to Murano for free for another glass-blowing demonstration. To what I know that there is free shuttle boat to bring tourist from the main island to Murano to visit the factory for free but I do not know the timing as I was brought there by my tour guide after my tour. The boarding place is at the Piazza San Marco. As for the glass-blowing demonstration in Venice itself, I can't provide more information as I am also not aware of it, I just saw a group of people queuing up and out of curiosity I went up to see realizing that it is a glass-blowing factory opening for demonstration.
• Do not buy the glass product from the factory itself as the price is being marked up. There are a lot of shops in Venice selling Murano glass product at lower prices.
• There are no car in Venice island itself and all transportation is replaced by boat. There is water-bus and water-taxi but the water-taxi is very expensive and the price for riding it can be as high as 100 Euros per trip. Buy the water-bus ticket which can be single-trip, 12 hours, 36 hours and 48 hours. You can take unlimited rides of the water-bus as long as the ticket still valid (depending on the number of hours of the ticket you bought, not applicable to single trip ticket) even after midnight. The water-bus operates 24 hours.
• There are two different train stations in Venice, so beware of your train station when you buy the train ticket. The one at the Venice island is Venezia Santa Lucia and the other one is Venezia Mestre. I actually went to the wrong train station when departing from Venice to Milan.

6. Milan:
• There are a lot of people standing at the Piazza de Duomo giving tourist things to feed the pigeon so that the pigeon will fly to your hand for picture standing. They will insist that the pigeon feeding food for free, but please do not take or else after the picture is taken they will ask money from you. If you really wanted to take the picture with the pigeons on your hand, then I think 1 Euros will be enough.