SAFUN

I use Flickr to store all my photos – all 7702 of them! Wow, I can’t believe I have that many photos. And no, they are not all photos of me hanging around with friends. They are mostly of my travel adventures and social events. I love Flickr because it’s so easy to share photos, add tags, organize them and most importantly they have API’s where developers can build applications that work with Flickr. I have used Blurb and Trippermap, both apps I wouldn’t have known about until Flickr. I really love their service.
Since I am able to tag my photos, they can be searched on. I received an email from Schmap saying that my photo of the Magic Fountain (Font de Montjuic) in Barcelona  has been short-listed for inclusion in the seventh edition of the Schmap Barcelona Guide, to be published early June 2009.

What is Schmap I wondered? I understood that they were a travel guide but I received a better definition by looking them up on Wikipedia:

Schmap is the publisher of free digital travel guides for destinations throughout Europe and the USA, as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand.^[1] The company’s travel guides are available for download at www.schmap.com, along with a small computer program that interacts with a Web browser to display the guides called the Schmap Player.^[2]

There are currently^[when?] 199 city or island guides available for download from Schmap, purportedly more than the number offered by traditional paper guidebook publishers Frommers, Lonely Planet, and Fodors as individual city or island guides.^[3]

The Schmap Guides are entirely free to consumers, with Schmap relying on sales from its travel store, advertising, and licensing revenue from its commercial customers for financial support

Cool, I thought. I would love to have my photo used for their travel guide. I signed the agreement to allow my photo to be published in their travel guide. Two weeks later, I was notified that my photo was chosen.

Please note: I am not a professional photographer and don’t aspire to be. I do love to travel though and I love to capture images that sometimes I know I may only see once in my life.

When I was in college, I studied in Seville, Spain in the Spring of 2003. I vowed to myself that once I graduate from college, I would return. I graduated in 2005 and the week after I walked the stage, I headed back to Spain with my mom and sister for a 2 week vacation. Barcelona was our first stop and actually the Magic Fountain was the first monument we saw. I remember that day so clearly. We were all 3 jet-lagged but hungry. We went to a little tapas restaurant near the Magic Fountain. The clouds were coming in as if it was going to rain. We walked down to the Magic Fountain right at dusk and just in time to see the lights turn on in the fountain. It was beautiful! I only had my little Canon PowerShot S410 but it captured the fountain perfectly.

I am glad my photo is being shared on Schmap. I hope many others will have the opportunity to visit Magic Fountain and enjoy this beautiful sight.

I was reading the CNN Travel section and noticed that they were doing a special on Vatican City. They were asking for people to submit their photos of Vatican City and tell their stories. Being that we just returned from Vatican City, I thought I’d submit a few photos. A few days later, I received an email from a CNN reporter letting me know that they were considering my photos for their final selection. They sent me a few interview questions and I replied with my answers. I also told my story of how I was by myself when I took these photos because it was the day Jason had to go to Florence to retrieve our passports. At least he knew I was really there !

The final 9 were chosen and posted on the main CNN Travel Section. 2 of them were mine! You can check it out here.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/getaways/04/10/travel.snaps.vatican/index.html

It is the one in middle right and bottom left. Posted below are the photos with my quotes:

It cost Ramirez-Bartels 7 euros (and many calories!) to climb to the top of the St. Peter’s Basilica dome, but it was worth it. “I was able to oversee Vatican City. It was truly beautiful.”

Angela Ramirez-Bartels found the interior of St. Peter’s Basilica the best part of Vatican City. “The interior of St. Peter’s really and truly took my breath away. The massiveness, the sparkling floors, the shiny statues, and the paintings — all of this was so hard to appreciate in just one sitting.”

I wanted to provide a recap on our Italy / Paris trip.

Many people might wonder, why the heck don’t you just book through a travel agency or travel with a group? Here are a couple of reasons:

1) I want to know exactly where our money is going. I don’t like to see one lump sum.  I want to be able to cut costs where possible.

2) Groups mean that we have to do what the group is doing. What if we want to wander on our own for a while? I want to be in more control of our time.

3) It’s more adventurous doing it on your own.

4) I actually love planning trips.

As mentioned before, I studied in Spain when I was in college. After returning back to the US, 2 years later I planned a 2 week vacation to travel through Spain with my mom and sister. After planning the Spain trip, I realized how much fun I had putting it together. So when we decided to go to Italy and Paris, I got a rush of excitement to start the planning!  Here are some tips just in case you are interested.

Flights.

Vayama.com is the best. They are like Kayak.com but specialize in international flights with origin in the US. They search all airlines finding the best price possible.

We paid $750/pp roundtrip from SAT to Rome. Right now, the prices are actually dropping the closer you get to the date due to the lack of traveling being done in this economy. However, it’s difficult for anyone to plan a trip to Europe a couple of weeks before – you usually want to plan 6 months ahead. So I thought $750 was actually pretty good.

Doing your Research.

As soon as I booked the flight, I started searching for a good book about traveling through Italy. I picked up Pauline Frommer’s Italy – Spend Less, See More. Highly recommended. She actually writes for various countries, not just Italy. Why I liked this book:

1) Best Times.  In the US, we expect everything to be open 24/7 or at least from 9am-9pm. Europe is a bit different on their hours – closing at odd hours or closed on random days. She will let you know about this up front. She will also let you know when the worst time is to go due to the lines.

2) Invdividual vs. Group. While in Rome, we opted to do group tours which Paulin recommended. This was the best decision we made, saving us so much time and provided us an education at the same time. For example, we booked a tour for Vatican City. When we went to enter in the Vatican museum, there were 2 lines – tour groups and individual. The individual line looked about 3 hours long whereas our group walked right in – no wait. I can’t even imagine the summer!

3) Traditional vs. Non Traditional Hotel. Hotels in high tourist cities are expensive, period. Especially when you book in the city center. Pauline recommends other forms of accommodations for example: apartments and even monasteries and in neighborhoods outside the city center.

4) Restaurants. She recommends restaurants at all price levels and in various locations of the city.

5) Information, Information! She provides websites, phone numbers, addresses.

6) Education. Let’s say you decide to go see a gallery, museum, cathedral, or any historic site on your own- she will provide you an education on that site as if you were in grade school all over again learning about the history of Italy. I really enjoyed this because it’s more than just seeing, you are actually understanding and appreciating what you are seeing.

Accommodations.

I recommend doing your research on TripAdvisor.com and doing your bookings through Venere.com.

TripAdivsor has an extensive amount of reviews done by consumers. You can read through people’s comments to understand if certain hotels are ideal for you whether you are a family with children, young couple or elderly. Further, you can weigh out location vs. cost. European cities actually aren’t large in space as most US cities are, well Texan cities for sure. Even if you stay in a neighborhood outside the city center, a walk to the city center is no more than 30 minutes. Or you can always take public tranportation such as the bus, metro, taxi – all very safe, easy to use and accessible.

This trip was the first time I had ever used Venere.com. Comparing to Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Hotels.com – Venere had the best prices. Not only that, you don’t have to pay upfront whereas you have to with lots of hotel resllers such as Hotels.com. This was so convenient because as we got closer to our trip dates, I realized that hotel prices had dropped. I went and cancelled all our bookings and rebooked. It was so easy to do through Venere.com.

I will mention the hotels we stayed out again:

Rome, Italy – WRH Trastevere Hotel (134 Euros/night). Apartment style, no elevator. Great room – Clean, modern. Free laptop in room with free internet. 20 minute walk to city center. Rome is a bigger city than most normal European cities so the tourist attractions are spread out all over.

Paris, France – Hotel Valadon (only 130 Euros/night). 10 min walk to the Eiffel Tower. Superb rooms- clean, modern. Free Internet.

Milan, Italy -NH Grand Hotel Verdi (157 Euros/night). Milan is an expensive city because it attracts businesses. Our hotel was a chain in Europe attracting business people. Nice, clean and close to the central station. About a 20 min walk to the city center. No free internet.

Venice, Italy – Hotel Ca’Pisani (159 Euros/night). Loved this hotel! Awesome service. Clean rooms, very cozy. Only 15 min walk to the city center.

Florence, Italy – Una Hotel Vittoria (141 Euros/night). About 30 min walk to city center. Very retro, modern hotel. Downfall was that Internet cost 3 Euros per 1/2 hour, what a rip off!

Attractions – Why we were there.

Make reservations for everything! I know you might not want to be bound to a scheduled itinerary but it’s so worth it, even if you don’t make a couple of your scheduled attractions. Seriously, if you are going to a city and you don’t want to leave without seeing a certain thing – for example, the Colesseum in Rome – then I recommend making reservations. Lots of attractions will sell out months in advance like the Last Supper in Milan.

I also recommend booking tours in Rome as mentioned before. The tour group we booked with was EnjoyRome – a recommendation from Pauline Frommer’s book. They were highly educated individuals and gave very thorough tours. Benefit was that groups get priority entrance also!

Getting around.

Europe has one of the best public transportation systems. Traveling from city to city is super easy and affordable. When we decided to go to Rome, we knew that we wanted to see other cities, taking advantage of our time there. To travel through Italy, we utilized TrenItalia: Milan to Venice 2.5 hours. Venice to Florence 2.5 hours. Florence to Rome 1.5 hours. Going from Florence to Rome was 33 Euros one way for example. Also, you can schedule and pay ahead via their website or you can book when you get there. I’d say book at least a week in advance maybe sooner in the summer just so you can esnure you get a seat. The benefit though is that trains leave and come very frequently to all the major cities so you should find something.

We did go to Paris while there but although we could have utlizied the train, we opted to fly. Mainly because it would have taken us all day to travel to Paris or we could have done a night train. Really, the flight was so cheap and the fact that it took only 2 hours to fly from Rome to Paris just made more sense to us. There are 2 popular low cost airlines in Europe: Ryanair and EasyJet. We went with EasyJet mainly because I have heard of so many horror stories on Ryanair. EasyJet had great service. Just remember that this is not Southwest Airlines. Yes, it’s a low cost carrier but Southwest Airlines is an exceptional airline. EasyJet will ding you for excess buggage items and weight or charge you to get on a new flight if you missed your flight.

When to go.

We chose March because the timing fit our schedules best. As you know, prices go way up for the summer. You will get the best prices from Fall through Spring. Also, do not go in August. Besides the fact that is it so hot, everything is closed ( meaning shops and such). Europeans leave the cities for the beaches during August. The weather is similar to the weather here in the US. We got some crazy cold days while in Rome and Paris. It was nice 60’s one day and then dropped down to the 40’s another day – sounds like Texas, huh. That’s just the randonmess of Spring weather I suppose. If you do go in the summer, it will be hot and and you are at historic sites so many times, the AC will not be like AC here in the US. Prepare to sweat!

Overall

I am a pretty organized traveler. I print all documents beforehand and organize it in a binder. I still managed to get one airport location wrong though. And we managed to forget our passports in one city. Next time we will have a checklist to follow just for an extra double check.

When we were checking in for our final flight back home, we conversed with this retired couple in front of us. They had spent 6 days in Rome and had years of travel experience. They asked us about our trip and what we learned. I told her about our mishaps. She laughed and said, no matter what, each trip you learn something new.

She was right. I thought about my last Spain trip and I specifically told my mom and sister that we don’t need to pack a lot since we will shop there. Well, we managed to pack a lot and buy a lot and our suitcase was just too large and unmanageable to take on trains. We ended up shipping it back via ship! It took 2 months to get back to us.

So this trip, I did a way better job of packing and thought twice before I purchased anything.

But as that woman said, you learn something everytime. This time, I will learn to follow a checklist and make sure I read in between the lines.

Overall it was such a wondeful trip and we absolutely, no question, want to return to Rome. That city leaves you wanting more.

We caught a train from Florence back to Rome early Monday morning. We were scheduled to fly out of Rome back to the US on Tuesday morning. I booked us at the Hilton Airport Hotel that way we didn’t have to rush in a taxi through traffic Tuesday morning; we could just walk directly from the hotel to our terminal. Our plan was to wander around Rome some more and go back to the sites we wanted to see again: St. Peter’s Basilica, Spanish Steps and the Colosseum.

We arrived at the hotel around noon. As a foreigner, every hotel will ask you for your passport. So I pulled out our travel book that has all our credit cards, money, receipts and identification. Hmm, our passports were not there. Jason and I looked at each other and he said: “Did you get them out of the safe?” What?? No! I didn’t put them in the safe and so I didn’t think to take them out. We had the front desk call our hotel in Florence immediately to check. Yes, they were sitting there nicely in the safe of our Florence hotel. Nice.

They made copies of our passports and faxed them over so at least we could check in the hotel. There was no way we were leaving Italy without our passports though – we needed them for our flight. I called DHL to ask for same day shipment and it was doable…for 400 Euros! It cost 70 Euros roundtrip on train from Rome to Florence. So we had to make a decision fast. Jason went back to Florence to retrieve them while I stayed in Rome. Not an ideal situation but that was really our only option.

So there I was wandering Rome by myself. First to do item was to go back to St. Peter’s Basilica and climb the dome. It costs 7 Euros to go up. I thought I was climbing to see the interior of the dome. Well, that was just one part. You can see the interior of the dome so basically you are standing at the highest point within the Basilica. You don’t get a great view because there is a chain fence that hinders your view. The purpose of the fence was apparently to prevent suicides which was a problem that occurred in the 80’s.

After seeing the inside of the dome, there is more to see which means more to climb. You begin going up a spiral staircase. The hall is extremely narrow and the right side wall is slanted inward not leaving you lots of space. I am pretty healthy and in shape but damn, this staircase made me sweat and breathe hard as if this was the first phsyical activity I was doing in a year! I was sweating and I had to stop a couple of times to take off layers. There was a couple in front of me struggling. I couldn’t believe how narrow the staircase was. It was a bit nerve wrecking because it seemed never-ending and you couldn’t foresee the end of it. There were little windows ever so often to let air circulate in. It was the late afternoon and it was March so there weren’t many people climbing this. I was thinking about the summer when the heat was overwhelming and lines were at a stand still, there has to have been people that had heat strokes, clausterphobic or anxiety attacks. I wondered how paramedics would get in or even know if there was an emergency. Anyways, this was all going through my head, I guess also because I was by myself.

I finally made it to the top and wow, it was so worth it! It was such a big breath of fresh air. I was able to oversee Vatican city – it was truly beautiful. I got some good snapshots. I wondered around on top a bit but there is hardly room to manuever through. I was really wishing Jason was there

After this, I went back down which naturally, was a lot easier than going up! I wondered through the Basilica again. There was a service going on also. I was feeling a bit hungry so I stopped by a cafe near the Vatican and woah, I spent 20 Euros on pizza, a soda, and gelato. The soda alone was 6.50 Euros! What a rip off – I suppose because it was tourist town.

I got on the metro and headed towards the Spanish steps. Tons of people crowded this area. I took some photos from the bottom and then you’d think I was tired of stairs but I went ahead and climbed the top. I think I did more of a work out in one day that I have done in an entire month! Viewing from the top was also beautiful. Since it wasn’t the summer, lots of the flowers weren’t blooming yet but that was ok. I still got some good photos.

I then wandered around a bit. I decided to head back to Trevi Fountain. That fountain just amazes me. It is so beautiful. I feel like it needs more space. Such a massive fountain in such a small plaza. It’s hard to sit there and appreciate it. It’s jam packed with people too.

Jason and I had a plan. We were to meet at the train station infront of a store between 8:30 and 9pm. If neither one of us were there, we were to head back to the hotel which was a 30 minute train ride. I got on the metro and headed back to the train station. I went to the place we said we would meet. There he was! It was so cheesy but it felt romantic

It was dark now so we wanted to go to the Coloseum and get some shots of it at night. That was lots of fun. We stopped and had some dessert and coffee and decided to head back to the hotel.

Our trip had come to an end.

We woke up early the next day and arrived 2.5 hours early for our flight. Come to find out that our Alitalia flight had been canceled. At this point everything was just amusing. Please, throw something else at us, please. So I had to go to speak to an Alitalia representative and she told me to go speak to a Continental rep in another terminal. We got on a shuttle to the next terminal. No Continental rep. Apparently they have random hours and only show up 3 hours before the next flight. Continental was the only airline that had a flight to Newark which is where we had our connecting flight scheduled from. We really needed to get on that flight!

I called Continental and they wanted to charge us a ridiculous amount. Finally, the Continental rep showed up at the airport. Long story short, we got on the flight – at no cost… and we caught our connecting flight to San Antonio. 5 hour lay overs are really worth it sometimes, you never know what will happen!!!

We arrived at 12 midnight and managed to be at work at 9am in the next morning. We are already back into the swing of American culture, WORK. Ugh!

I will write a post soon regarding travel tips just in case anyone is interested for future reference.

Ciao!

We arrived in Florence just in time for a late evening dinner. We stayed at the Una Hotel Vittoria which is about a 20 min walk to the city center. This hotel was ultra modern with optical lights in the bedroom, a massive glass door shower (see through to the bedroom) with the bathroom all decked out in the color purple. It is definitely not a hotel for a family with children – unless you want your kids to watch you take a shower.

We dropped off our bags and got ready for dinner. The front desk recommended a restaurant named Sergio’s located down the street. We walked down the street and actually passed it up the first time. We turned around and finally found the sign. It is a tiny little restaurant packed with people. Luckily there was a table for two still open. When we sat down, we were practically sitting with the couple next to us because the tables were so close. It was actually uncomfortable NOT to speak to them.

The waitress went through the entire menu with us and explained their specials. She was super nice and accommodating. We ordered the meat and cheese plate for our anitpasta. I had the special: pasta made out of potato with Bolognese sauce. Jason had the spaghetti with pesto and artichokes. We then had our main dish, peppered beef. Seriously, this was the very best meal we had out of all the restaurants.

The atmosphere was great – warm, friendly loud, the service was outstanding, and the price was so inexpensive.

So back to the tightness of the tables. Our neighbors realized that we were speaking English and they happened to be from Washington state. We visited with them during our dinner. The husband was there on business and his wife joined him. We talked about our trip and what we have done thus far. Great conversations.

The next day, we visited the Accademia and the Uffizzi Gallery. The Accademia in Florence holds the one and only original David – standing at 16ft tall. It was mighty impressive and surpassed my expectations. We were not allowed to take photos, of course I did, but the photo did not come out as great as I wanted.

The Uffizi Gallery was also very impressive holding masterpieces such as the Medusa, Birth of Venus, Annunciation and Two Angels.  We were somewhat galleried out (if that is a term). The Uffizi Gallery is located in one of the main plazas -Palazzo degli Uffizi . This plaza is filled with statues – mostly replications such as the David.  We wandered around the statues and plaza.

Then we headed to the San Lorenzo plaza where there is an outdoor leather market. Florence is known for their Italian leather goods. This was the first we had the opportunity to shop. We walked to the food market as well scoping out olive oil and wines. Then of course it rained. It wasn’t cold so it wasn’t uncomfortable. Everyone was just wandering around with their umbrellas.

Although we had an umbrella, we managed to get pretty damp.

We headed back to the hotel to dry off and get ready for dinner. We went to another restaurant called L’Osteria Giavanni located in the city center. We didn’t have reservations but they did have an open table for us. It was excellent and something they do different is their bread – it’s fried. Yum! It was so addictive. I don’t know how the Italians stay so slim and beautiful. Oh ya, they have to walk everywhere and climb endless steps.

The next day we had a bicycle tour scheduled to go through the Tuscan countryside and do a Chianti vineyard tour. It was daylight savings so we had to wake up an hour early. When I woke up, I heard drops on the window. I looked out and saw that it was still raining. I called the guy doing the bicycle tour and he said that it’s best to cancel because the rain is scheduled to go on all day. Bummer.

We slept in a little more debating on what to do that day. We decided to catch the train to see the Pisa. So we saw the Pisa. Everything you’d expect. Not much else to do in Pisa.

We came back to Florence and wandered the streets a bit more. We then headed back to Sergio’s because we loved it so much. They remembered us. We felt like family.

We packed that night and got ready for our train ride back to Rome.