Light Rail

I never realized how nice it can be to travel by train.  It’s loads easier than flying, cheaper, and generally less stressful.  It's also a great way to see the countryside between major cities!  On our Italy trip we ended up taking six trains (3 round trips).  We took trains between Malpensa/Milan, Milan/Florence, and Florence/Pisa.  In Sri Lanka we took the train at least 5 times, but it was much less awesome than Italy.

Visiting three different cities wouldn’t have been possible if Italy didn’t have light rail because renting a car would have been more work, more money, require more focus and we would have had to try and park!  We also undoubtedly would have gotten lost along the way, which does not lead to happy travels.  With the train, we simply bought our tickets (online or at the station), found the train, got on, and vegged until we arrived at our destination.  No security hassles, long lines, or boarding procedures were required!


Sri Lanka was the polar opposite of Italy.  The rail system is pretty old and quite slow.  Almost every train we took was over crowded and in some, we didn't even get seats for most of the trip.  We ended up sitting on the floor/standing for nearly five hours of a seven hour train ride.  It was also harder to find our way around the stations to our trains because none of the announcements were in English.  Despite these challenges, the trains were incredibly cheap, authentic, and had amazing views, but I'm pretty sure hiring a driver would have been more enjoyable.

I know the US in in a budget crisis of sorts now, but expanded light rail in the US would definitely improve the overall public transportation system.  How is it that we can get around in Cairo, Milan, Florence, Pisa, and can moderately suffer through Sri Lanka without cars, but can’t imagine living in the US without one?  Somewhere along the line, our priorities have gotten out of whack.

Kandy: Views from the Train

After several great days in Colombo, we were ready to move on to Kandy.  This was the easiest and nicest train ride we took the whole trip and the only reason it was so much nicer was because it had assigned seating.  We took an early morning intercity train between Colombo and Kandy because it was going to be faster than a train that stopped a bunch along the way.  Almost all of the ticket sales for the train system are done un-electronically so each station has a certain number of tickets they are allowed to sell for each train and class.  Unfortunately, this results in massive overcrowding of the trains, and the intercity train was the only one we took that had any kind of computer booking and as a result wasn't overcrowded one bit.

The train moved surprisingly quickly compared to everything I'd read online, but the scenery was beautiful.

Flood irrigation.

Walking through the fields.

Like I said, the scenery was beautiful.

The scenery from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya was even better, but you'll have to wait a few days to see that.  The train ride only ended up taking a couple hours so we got to Kandy early enough to do some sight seeing that day after we found a place to stay and had a lovely disaster of a time finding the guesthouse.

Check out the rest of our Sri Lanka travels:

Colombo: Beira Lake and Gangaramaya Temple 

Colombo: Dehiwala Zoo

Summer Reading

Colombo: Viharamahadevi Park

Colombo: National Museum

Colombo: Fort

Keeping it Alive by Trying New Things

Repetition leads to routine and this easily slips into a comfortable rut, which is hard to break out of.  Having routines and being comfortable with life isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does tend to act as a barrier to new and unknown activities.  Our trip to Italy was filled with chances for us to break out of being comfortable and try new things.

On our trip we:

Rode buses around Florence
Visited more than one city in a single trip
Bought train tickets five minutes before the train left
Learned a few key phrases in Italian
Visited a city with no metro

The only reasons we didn't do things like this in Athens or Cairo are because it made us (mostly me) uncomfortable and seemed too hard to do.

In almost every case we were wrong; they were relatively easy and added a lot to our trip.

Riding buses in Florence really made getting around easier and saved our tired feet on more  than one occasion.  It was pretty easy to figure out where to get off the buses and finding bus stops was doable, although a bit harder.

Splitting our time between multiple cities ended up being a great idea. While we easily could have spent the full nine days in Milan or Florence, seeing both provided a more well rounded experience of Italy.  Milan was much less touristy and was much more big city feeling whereas Florence was probably prettier than Milan, but the tourism was obvious and everywhere.

The train tickets ended up being a bit of a funny story too.  I was trying to navigate the ticket machine while Steve bought stamps from the train's newspaper stand, when the machine just froze.  At that point I figured we were stuck waiting for the next train, when the machine kicked back into gear and acted like nothing was wrong. By the time the tickets printed we had less than five minutes to make our way to the train.  All of the trains between Pisa and Florence do not have assigned seating, but the machines do sell 1st and 2nd class tickets.  Since we'd spent all day walking around Pisa, we decided to get the 1st class tickets so we'd have more space to spread out.  So not only did we have to rush to the train, we also had to rush to find the first class car.

Basic logic tells me that if first class tickets are sold, there must obviously be first class seating.  Not true.  We ended up hopping on almost at the last minute perterbed that we weren't able to find the first class seating.  After we got back to Florence, Steve walked the length of the train and realized there wasn't any to begin with!  For future Florence to Pisa travelers beware of the first class tickets!

Picking up on words like ciao, buona sera, grazie, and other simple phrases made it just a bit easier to talk to people and it made it more fun.  It didn't take much to get the hang of it, although this was much easier to do because we have experience with French and Spanish, which seemed to help a lot.  This would have been (and still is) much harder in Cairo for example with Arabic.

Finally, visiting a city with no metro had me in knots.  I had no idea if it would affect the quality of our trip, resulting in seeing fewer sites because we'd have to walk more, but in the end this was great.  Florence was small enough that it really didn't take long to get from one place to another, and it inspired us to try out the buses.

Not every trip can be packed full of new and exciting things to do, but adding a couple in definitely spiced up our trip!  We (I) got over some silly travel worries and realized that almost anything isn't actually that hard to do.

I don't know what kind of new adventures we'll strive to have on our next trip (in May!) but I know that we'll try and fit in some new and some old travel activities.

Follow our journey:

Travel Plans are Never Final

Different Ways to Travel

How We Get Ready To Travel

Italy Day 1

Italy Day 2

Shopping in Italy 

Keeping it Alive by Trying New Things

Italy Day 3: Part 1

Italy Day 3: Part 2

Pack and Move

Or check out our Italy tag!

Italy: Day 1

We have another glorious trip to tell you about, and we will be doing it day by day, just like with our Athens trip.

Getting ready to leave Saudi Arabia was much more laid back than our last two trips.  We basically know exactly what to pack for our travels at this point, so most of it got done the day before we left.

Our first day was mostly travel, with our flight leaving about 2300 from Jeddah.  The Jeddah airport was packed again with travelers coming and going from pilgrimages.  Thankfully, we got through with relatively little trouble and made it to our flight on time. We had another layover in Cairo where we bought into the VIP lounge for some much needed sleep before heading out for Milan where we arrived around one in the afternoon. Well, that isn't really true, we landed in Malpensa and took a one hour train ride to Milan. The Malpensa airport was a big mess of construction, so we didn't take any pictures, but the Milan train station was a beautiful marble hall with a vaulted glass ceiling.

 We went straight to the hotel, which involved getting rather turned around for awhile trying to figure out what street we were on. We had a little bit of trouble after we got to the hotel, because they had lost our reservation!  The room was available for three of the four nights, but we had to go stay at another hotel on the third night in Milan. It was called a one star hotel, but it seemed pretty much just like a hostel to us.  The biggest hassle with the lost reservation was having to move luggage and unpack so many times.

Dinner was great, but we ate pretty early so we had the entire restaurant to ourselves.  We both got pizza, but the menu was only in Italian so we had to guess at the toppings we were picking!

Exhausted from the traveling, we zonked out early in preparation for our first full day in Milan.

Follow our journey:

Travel Plans are Never Final

Different Ways to Travel

How We Get Ready To Travel

Italy Day 1

Italy Day 2

Shopping in Italy 

Keeping it Alive by Trying New Things

Italy Day 3: Part 1

Italy Day 3: Part 2

Pack and Move

Or check out our Italy tag!

Travel Plans are Never Final

A mere week ago we announced that we had plane and train tickets to spend spring break in Milan and Florence.  We had spent several hours comparing flights and hostels before settling on this city combination over other options like Rome or Rome/Florence.

During a late night, early morning epiphany while browsing through the delightful travel blogs that grace the internet I realized that we were going Italy and we weren't going to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa!  How this fact managed to escape me for so long is unknown because it is definitely one of the iconic Italian destinations.

I immediately needed to see if this problem could be rectified without completely trashing the planning we'd done so far as those plane and train tickets would be a pain in the rear to try and change without paying out some fees.

Thankfully, Google Maps taught me that Pisa is quite close to Florence and the Italian Train Service reservation system sells the train tickets from Florence to Pisa for a mere $17 for both of us.  For a price that low, how can we NOT go to Pisa for an afternoon?

The distance between Florence and Pisa is only about 85 km, which is only about 50 miles.

The train ride to Pisa is about 90 minutes each way, which is short enough to enjoy the Italian countryside without feeling like we've been traveling for hours on end.

My next concern was that getting to the tower, which is actually the bell tower for the Pisa Cathedral, from the train station would be too long to walk.  Taxis in Italy are apparently expensive so we won't be relying on them as a way to get around.  Thankfully, it's only  a 10 minute walk from the train station, which is absolutely perfect.

The cathedral and the baptistery have small entry fees but that won't make much of a dent in our travel budget.

We still need to decide if we want to take a guided tour that lets you climb up to the seventh floor or if the 17 Euro ($22) price tag for each ticket might make this an expensive disappointment like when we went to the top of the Cairo Tower in Egypt.

If we decide to go, we'll probably heed the advice of Why Go Italy and buy our tickets in advance online, so that we don't have to waste time standing in line for tickets.  Apparently the lines can be atrocious during the summer season, but since we're going in early April I have no idea what the crowds will be like.

Moral of the story, travel plans are never set is stone and having the flexibility to change them can mean great rewards when you add another awesome destination.

Anyone have an opinion on climbing the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Is this something we can't miss?

Follow our journey:

Travel Plans are Never Final

Different Ways to Travel

How We Get Ready To Travel

Italy Day 1

Italy Day 2

Shopping in Italy 

Keeping it Alive by Trying New Things

Italy Day 3: Part 1

Italy Day 3: Part 2

Pack and Move

Or check out our Italy tag!

Cairo Day 6: Alexandria Part 1

The writing style might be a bit different today, Steve is writing it.

On day 6 we went to Alexandria. We went to the Roman Amphitheater, the Alexandria National History Museum, Fort Qaitbay, a little "aquarium", and Pompey's Pillar.

We managed to wake up early enough to make the 8am train to Alexandria (just "Alex" to the locals), from the Ramses train station. Tickets were very cheap, 35 pounds, about $6, per person each way. The trip lasted about an hour and a half. Immeadietly after walking out of the station in Alex we bumped into a group of students from our university. We chatted a bit and went over to the Roman Amphitheater with them. The acoustics were pretty good, and there was in impressive line of standing columns (does it become a row if it falls over?).

The view overlooking the Roman Amphitheater

Steve in front of the theatre seats

Standing columns

Corinthian column detailing

Then we went off on our own to look for the Alexandria National Museum. It was quite difficult to find, we ended up walking about for half an hour, and then just taking a cab to the address we had. Finding a taxi driver that spoke English was difficult, much more so than in Cairo, and the one we did find had never heard of the museum.  On the way the driver stopped to ask several  people how to get to the museum, but we eventually navigated our way there. This little museum is almost the opposite of the Egyptian Museum; everything was wonderfully displayed, well explained, and well taken care of. The museum itself looked fairly new, housed in a converted mansion. The planning for the museum was excellent, even using the wine cellar as a sort of tomb, with a sarcophagus down there. The greco-roman artifacts were very interesting, and on the top floor there were artifacts from the early Islamic period.  Unfortunately, photography wasn't allowed, so no pictures from there.

Then we took a cab out to the tip of the peninsula beside the harbor, to Fort Qaitbay. The fort, which was built a long time ago, is really big. It was crowded with locals, who only pay about 50 cents to get in, and some of the younger boys took great interest in us. One group of tweens just wanted to test their English curse words on us.

The Harry Potter transport van we saw outside of the fort! So cool!

Exterior of the Fort.  It was very impressive.

Entrance to the Fort.

Tiling on the floor inside the Fort.

View of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina from the Fort.  Unfortunately we didn't get to go due to time constraints, however we heard later it was closed because of Eid.

Steve looking dashing in the Fort.

A very common question in Egypt was "Where you from?," and I had gotten bored of ignoring people, so I started naming off the moons of Jupiter. This led to some confusion, and so it was that one young boy became convinced that my name was "Ganamie" (a mispronunciation of Ganymede). I decided that his name should be Stanley, and his two friends should be George and Micheal. It was pretty funny to argue with them about their own names. We had a really good time humoring these boys for almost an hour. Here is an example of how the conversation went:

Stanley: Hey Ganamie! How you like Egypt man!? You have a good time?
Ganamie: Yes, we are enjoying ourselves pretty well. How are you?
Stan: OH MY GAWSH! It is so beautiful here! You like WWE?
Gan: Huh?
Stan: WWE, John Cena, The Undertaker, Triple X!
Gan: Oh, like wrestling? No, not really.
Micheal: Hey! Look! (gives me a thumbs up and a big grin)
Gan: Ha Ha, very good! Shouldn't you be in school?
Stan: OH MY GAWSH! No way man, school is no good. Hey, take our picture. You know Obama?

One group of boys who followed us around inside the Fort.

George, Michael, and Stanley clammoring to follow us on the Fort grounds.

They followed us around wherever we went. I had to tell them that Abby was "my woman", and "no, don't touch her, she is mine" in order to get them to give her some space. Eventually they got themselves in trouble with the security by climbing on the crenelations, and we lost them in the crowds.  We had several other photo ops with the locals while at the fort, it was like a day of being a mini-celebrity.

A group photo with some of the boys.  The two in the middle are Stanley and Michel.  George is behind Stanley's elbow, and the other kids just jumped in when they saw us taking a picture.

Another view from the Fort. 

The Fort was so crowded.  This is the pier outside of the fort.

We tried really hard to get more photos of both of us together on this trip!

Our trip to Alex ended up being jam packed full of awesome fun and pictures, so we'll have to finish the day in the next post!

Catch up on the rest of our trip:
Holy Mother of Chaos
Cairo Day 0
Cairo Day 1

Cairo Day 2

Cairo Day 3: Part 1

Cairo Day 3: Part 2

Cairo Day 4

Cairo Day 5