Destination Africa
The third installment of my Destination travel series. It will happen in Sept this year.
for my two previous installments, go to:
Comments:
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Thanks for the comments
Glad that you liked it.
I was in Italy for two weeks(4/23/05~5/7/05). It was pretty much a photography trip. My photography buddy and I didn’t spent a lot of time on going to bars and clubs for social purposes. We spent most of our time on exploring the back streets of those Italian cities and hoping to find an interesting scene/event/people to photograph. So we logged about 20 miles of walking everage in each of following cities.
We visited: Venice(first stop), Bologna, Florence, Pisa, Cinque Terre, Siena, Naples, Pompeii, Herculanum, Capri and Rome(last stop). We avoided Turin and Milan because both of those cities are very modern and industrial so they maybe not as intersting to our photographic intention. My favorite city would be Siena. A very quiet, clean and serene medieval town. After been to tourists congested cities like Venice, Florence and Rome, Siena was a real retreat. Hotel Minerva, where we stayed at, has a spectaular view of the city. From Siena, you can also explore the nearby Tuscan area.
We ran out of time after Naples. So we didn’t explore the area south of Naples such as the tip and heel of the boot, and the soccer ball: Sicily. My plan is to go visit the southern Italy in 2007. Much of the cultural heritage from the classical time is there waiting to be discovered.
If you’re planning on going there in Summer, Italy can be very hot. Spring(late April, early May) and fall probably would be the best time to visit.
My Africa trip will require at least 3 weeks. I have to do a lot of mouth work to get that long vacation approved from my boss. But it will all be worthy.
Good luck with your journey!
Shaun
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You're welcome
If you like history, culture and arts, Italy will not disappoint you. I was more interested in the classical period, but those magnificent duomos and cathedals from Medieval times were simply breathtaking!
My Italian friend in Rome told me that it gets very hot in summer well into 90s. But if you’re used to 100 humidy weather, then it shouldn’t be that bad for you. The worst senario would be for you to hit the Midterranean beaches which are not far from any corners of the Italian pennisula.
We backpacked and took trains. We thought about other options like taking luggages and renting a car. But we found backpacking + taking train rides is the most simple and flexible option for us. Each of us had a full size mountaineering packpak and they weight about 40 pounds each. Most of the weight came from the camera equipment and the tripod. When we arrived at hotel, we left the big backpack behind and took the small add-on packs and cameras with us for site seeing. The rail system in the whole Europe is very well developed. There’re major carriers like Trenitalia(www.trenitalia.com) which runs the major lines between large citys. Then there’re more local lines and those slow but fun milk trains. We went onto the Trenitalia’s website and printed out all of the schedule for the cities we would be visiting before we left for Italy. That saved us a lot time and kept our daily schedule in check.
Photography is one of my hobbies. When you turn a hobby into a profession, it starts to get less fun.
