This is a first in the series of many such to come, where I will write about the places I have seen and why they were special and what made them click for me. Since many of these trips are done over just the course of a single day, this will not at all be representative but should give a fair idea of what to expect. Hope you enjoy:
Paris, France: Love is in the air
12 hrs by flight from India and about 7 hours from Newoundland, it has been the centerpiece of attraction for many travellers to europe. Many honeymooners, people in love walking the streets of a rustic Paris in the midst of a modern city. The gorgons still adorn buildings, b
rooding over what is to happen and what is not.
The first place to visit is ofcourse the Eiffel, not too old but not new enough, a reminder of the rise of the industrial era. A hunk of metal and a marvel of engineering (whoever said engineering wasn't ro
mantic, clearly never saw the Eiffel). A melee of people, from all over the world to visit here everyday. Many lovers others just curious!! The view from top is breathtaking, but what will really turn you mind is how this gray metal during day turns into a beacon of love during the night when it shines for all to see. Something, one won't forget. Definately the first place to go in Paris.
Then next on my list was the Louvre, the treasure trove!! If one were to put a value to each
item here and total it up, it would probably be more than the income of most people in the world put together for a 100 years. The masterpieces evoke feelings, you never knew you had. Artistic sensibilities are given birth to here, everyday. Look at the lines and the curves on a sculpture's imagination. Strokes on the sky. Mona Lisa , was good, but unfortunately, didn't work for me! My favorite painting was the one called the "Raft of Medusa" (not allowed to take pics of it, but you can actually find replicas to look at on any search engine) by Theodore Gericault between
1818-1819. It was this one, I stood staring at it for almost 5 minutes ( some people would know how long that is when you are just standing doing nothing) and my friend's had to wake me up from my stupor. I don't really understand art but that painting made me feel something and I don't know what it was but it just grew on me. I also saw a lot of other stuff and the only other thing which stuck to me was a sculpture by some french sculptors ( a beautiful piece of work), an old man (I'll let the pic speak for itself).
Next stop, Basilque de Notredam and a short cruise on the river Seine. The Notredam is built on
an island in the middle of seine, it is pretty amazing to see. Especially when it's bells are chiming , one really wonders if the hunchback is ringing it (of course you have to know the story for you to be that delusional). A grand church, once inside you can see the mass, a preacher standing at the altar speaking, but what he said was all greek to me (actually all french) anyways it sounded nice. The choir then started singing and that was a beautiful sound too. You could also the sun filtering through the stai
ned glass windows and giving the place a dark and eerie look with shadows from the thousand candles jumping as the light breeze shook them. It was absolutely fantatstic.
Paris all in all was a nice place to vist. To walk along the champs elysee in the evening, drinking coffee on the sidewalk as you watch the world go by, surely a sight less seen.
Brussels,Belgium: The land of beer and chocolates
This was on a whim! walking in the mall, I found a few guys and they said they were going next day to Brussels, so I and a few other friends decided to join them. The only problem was it was nine thirty in the night and we weren't sure if the reservation counters were still open. We decided to try anyways and when we got there it was closed. So we ended up walking around disney village where the reservation counter was.
In the morning though we did go to the train station and boarded the train without any tickets!! Well unlike india we found out that we could buy the train ticket on board, at just 10 Euros above the face value and the Conductor was so good, that he gave us a discount on the train for a below the age of 26yrs, which is cool coz it reduces the cost of the train by half!! the r
est of the journey to Brussels was quite uneventful.
Once we got there the first thing we went to see was the Atomium, its a marvel of engineering, a BCC structure of the atom,resting on one corner. And we went in all the way to the top, and the view was breathtaking(HELP!! I am running out of adjectives).
Next on the menu was:: "finding a hotel"!! So we did :D!! we found a cheap hotel thanks to one of the guys! The hotel was cheap and nice but still had parts under construction and so the heater did not work (2degC outside !!!) but the blankets were thick! So once that was done we decided to walk some more around town.
As you walk by there is this unmistakably huge building!! It was the "Palais du Justice" (means the "Palace of Justice") it is one of the most famous landmarks of Brussels, we just clicked a few photos coz the building was under renovation, but was an amazing building and walked on!!!
The rest what we saw was all general stuff!! nice park with a nice fountain of which I have no stories to tell you!! Just questions which remained unanswered! In the evening, we went out to look for a man's elixir:: BEER :D and did we find some! We found this pub which brewed home bren beer and we tasted all 3 types of them -Blonde/Amber /White (The black comes later in the story :) and by around 2 in the morning we were pooped and decided to go to bed!!
Next day we woke up bright and early and walked in the market setup right in front of the hotel in a small square, you could buy all kinds of odds and ends!! It was an amazing sight! A lot of the people there were not even Belgian but were Moroccons and Syrians!!
Well the rest of the morning was spent in the main square sitting and s
ipping hot chocolate and soaking in the w
arm sun! It was an
amazing feeling just sitting down and watching the world go by!! Everyone seemed to be going somewhere or waiting for someone to show up.
Later in the afternoon we went down to the war museum, it was full of artifacts from the military dating back to the 1500's!! It was quite educating to see how warfare has evolved through the years. How technology has helped us create weapons more sophisticated, to help us kill more people !!!!!! It was an interesting tour though!
Finally we went back to the main square and thats where we waited till we finally boarded our train back to Paris.
Pisa, Italy: Leaning the right way up!!
This was by far the most interesting one and the most exciting (also the most expensive). We first had to take a 10 hr train ride to Milan, we never went more than a 100 mts from the trainstation here as we decided we would go to Pisa. So we bought our tickets and went to get into a train, which by the way is very much like the unreserved class of India except if you buy the first class ticket(they don't come cheap) and the fact that the trains are better maintained. It was full, no space even to stand!!! This train journey was another 3 hrs, Pisa from what I saw on the train, is situated near the mountains (hills at any rate) of Italy.
We got down and the air had its own distinct odor, not at all bad rather a quite pleasent one! We walked out of the station and it got only better. And Imagine what, we were out looking at the map, and what do I find "another Indian family", they were from Canada!! Halfway across the world and you see Indians-WOW! Anyways we kept walking towards the tower of Pisa , narrow streets, it was just full of the Italian flavor.
As we got closer the chatter of people increased and the silence gently faded away. The street 
suddenly flowed into a great big square filled with people on one side of the wall were small shops selling curiosities and souveniers and on the other a big palance and on its right was the famed Leaning tower, almost falling but not quite. Just there frozen in moment. It was a beautiful monument and the weather made it a better experience. To complete this experience all we needed was some Italian food and we found quite a place, a Pizzeria !! Amazing food, pizza cooked in olive oil! Eating a Pizza the way it was meant to be! Just wonderful.
And then we decided to take a tour of the square, walking around one of the guys got bit by a dog!! Well we didn't do much then except wrap his fingers with a handkerchief.
Well it was time to move on, so we walked back to the station and that was quite uneventful.We took a train to Rome on our way to Venice but we got to Rome only around 9pm and we had to get this guy a shot so me and another guy volunteered to get him to the hospital and 
meet the other guys at Tiburtina(a small station, about 10kms from the Roma Centrale staio
n). So we w
ent to the hospital and we were there 3 hours before anyone would see him, it was ofcourse an emergency room, so a lot more people who were more needy so we patiently waited for his turn. So once we were done we took a cab and this driver must have been atleast 70-80yrs old but amazingly energetic, he would drive at almost 120kmph within the city but took us to the place to eat, where we found more Pizza(thats all I ate in Italy, actually), this one was just as good. He also showed us the Palace de Venezia in Rome in passing, we could hear it whooshing past us as we drove past holding on for our dear lives. We finally did get to Tiburtina, and a sight greeted us there a bunch of whackos outside the station, you were allowed
inside only if you had the ticket luckily our guys came and got us. So then we waited for 3 hrs till 4 in the morning to get our train and believe it or not when we got on the train we weren't expecting what we saw.
The train was full, so full that we had to find a place, outside the seating area, near the bathrooms and almost 7 of us were crunched hard into that space trying hard to sleep but ofcourse we didn't get much of it. Most people were pissed off with the situation but i kinda thought it was quite an adventure :D, but that could just be me.
Venice, Italy: WaterWorld
Finally got there, it looked like the city in the movie"Waterworld" (Kevin Costner starrer) . There were boats and more boats!! And lots of people!!! The buses were also boats :D We walked all along the main canal and walked around shops and things!
There wasn't much to see on the streets so we sat down and had a cup of coffee. Then we walked some more and tried to find a Gondola to take a ride on. It was the best boat ride I ever had, looking at people on bridges waving and mossy walls going 3 floors up.
This took us about a few hours and all(the walking and shoping etc the boat ride is only 1/2 hr though). This is when the real adventure began :D, when we got back to the station we found out that the jerk at the counter who had sold us the ticket earlier for a 1630 train didn't tell us that we couldn't ride on the 1630 train with the tickets he gave us!!!! So we had to beg the train manager of the next train to let us travel so we could make it to our flights at 2030 that night. So we made the station at Milan at 2000hrs, what we also didn' t realize was that the airport was 50 min away from the train station (this is what we found out on the train) so as soon as we got out of the train we ran out of the station in a desperate search for a cab, but to add on to our woes, there is a line for cabs at the station and this line extended like for abt 200mts(that is a long line) , it took us 15 min to stop two cabs out of turn and take them to take us to the airport but we were cutting it real close!! We got there at 2045, the drivers at 150kmph almost 40kmph above speed limit to get us there in time!!! unfortunately we made it just 5 min after the boarding closed so we missed our flight! this wouldn't have been too bad under normal circumstances, but these weren't normal circumstances, we had to make it to the hotel by 7 in the morning (to catch the bus to our training centre)!! The next flight out to Paris was at 0630 hrs the next morning so we could forget at being there at 7am. We made it to Paris at 8am, but believe it or not, it took us another 2 hrs to get to the training centre!!! Luckily we made it before lunch, which is when u get marked absent for the day!! Thus ended a long and eventful trip through Italy.
The last 2 weeks were spent visiting local bars tasting the local beers! and then I was back in St. John's , Newfoundland. Another Journey had begun.
