Month: September 2015

Connecting Flights in Istanbul Means No Visa Required

Melody1 Comment

There’s mixed information about whether a visa is needed for Americans and Canadians to connect flights at Istanbul and since we experienced it this morning we’re letting you know now you do NOT need a visa if you are connecting flights so long as you…

do NOT go through passport control. A lot like Monopoly. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do not follow the signs for passport. Instead, merge into the long queue (line) where it says INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS. You will go through security, again. 

It’s a trend in “Europe” that you will not see a gate assignment more than two hours before your departure time. Once you clear security, you fall into the absolute madness that is Ataturk airport. People swarming, dozens of languages and dialects, exclamations, babies crying, people laughing, tourists touristing… This airport is something else. I’ve never seen such a cosmopolitan sample of people. Every face a different ethnicity. I found myself invigorated. Like all of the world came to meet here at Ataturk airport.

If you arrive more than two hours early, you won’t have a gate, but there’s no shortage of things to do. You can people watch. Most people sleep. Turkish airlines is notorious for taking off at 3 or 4 in the morning.

And that’s it! We were really happy to find a Costa coffee and a long row of chairs where we plopped down and passed out for 5 hours.

Once you awake, CHECK THE SCREENS because there’s a good chance your gate has changed. They shuffle planes here more frequently than a poker dealer shuffles cards. Mark had his wits about him and discovered our plane had parked ten gates away so we did a little bit of running ourselves to get through the tide of people.

If you have a layover longer than five hours, there’s a tour group that will give you an abbreviated tour of Istanbul. If you DO want to do this or you want to explore Istanbul on your own, you will  need to get an e-visa at the airport. Continue reading here.

Mark and Melody

24 Hours In: Things We Learned in Copenhagen

Melody1 Comment

Actually, things we wished we knew.

Note: Nudity and questionable language.

1: That our hotel had complimentary shuttle service to AND from the airport, so we didn’t need to spend $40 for two tourist transport tickets.

2: Google maps is as helpful as a foreigner giving you directions in a foreign language. It doesn’t have the correct coordinates for the free walking tour- not even close. It also incorrectly estimates travel time between destinations. This is the second time it has lied to us.  Think it has a bone to pick with free walking tours.

3: If you’re looking to go to Malmö, Sweden, because you also love the idea of lunch in one country and dinner in another, the last bus BACK to Denmark leaves at 6pm. Color us disappointed. Also, that ticket there and back is 100 Danish Kroners (DKK).

4: Don’t tip here. They make enough money, honestly. And there’s a service fee included basically everywhere anyway.

5: I wish we knew about the lack of authentic food. Totally disappointed by the mass Americanism and English speakers/ signage everywhere. It just felt too close to home. Not exotic enough. Perhaps we’re a bit jaded from Finland. We felt cheated, culturally. Remember how I was lamenting the absence of fried chicken and peanut butter? Both of these are here. I don’t even know what Danish food actually is. Where is it? I had a croissant with jelly in the middle. I was told that’s a Danish. They say a good measure of a city is by its food: I’m underwhelmed by a KFC and a two story Burger King. /rant

6:  Public nudity is acceptable, maybe as a spectacle but even still. Sitting in the über touristy part of Nyhavn and this (drunk) guy runs out of a party bus and swan dives into the canal. Cool right? I thought so. Then dude reappears, totally naked, runs through a crowd and jumps into the water again. People start half clapping, mostly staring, some laughing. Dude gets out of the water and just kinda walks back to the bus with his bros slapping his ass and grabbing his balls. Maybe a bachelor party? Can’t tell. That’s Copenhagen for you.

The bus in question. Feast your eyes on the naked man off the side.

7 Golden Rules to Surviving the Colosseum

Melody1 Comment

In a universe far, far away, the Colosseum isn’t a hive swarming of tourists without deodorant. It isn’t in an awkward stage of half renovation where one side of the amphitheater looks completely fake and the other is a historic wonder of the world.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in that universe. I’d love to visit the Colosseum in those circumstances. Begrudgingly sometimes I go to such iconic places because it seems to make every life that visits it so. much. better.

The Colosseum is impressive. It is worth visiting. Because I know you’re going to go, here’s seven survival tips to make it much more enjoyable.

7. If you’re going between April and October, go to your Dollar Store/ Poundland and buy handheld fans. 

Otherwise you’ll melt. Honestly. Imagine a human current that takes you to different places and you’re shuffling along (and not in the cool way). There’s no way to not sweat. Bring a handheld fan and not only do you get to keep cool but you also get to accidentally hit stupid people that intentionally block your photo.

6. Toilet before you walk.

Toilets are by the audioguide pickup which is really inconvenient to get to once you’ve started walking around, that is. You have to walk downstairs (or through a hallway) and then you have to shuffle and scoot past the people that are trying to enter and shuffle and scowl at the people crowded around the audioguide pickup because the concept of a queue is lost here.

5. BYOB. Water bottles, that is.

I did mention it gets atrociously hot. Put some water bottles in the freezer and take them with you in your satchel/ man purse/ backpack and by the time you get into the Colosseum you’ll have about half a bottle of water to drink.

4. Buy your tickets here. Don’t be a dimwit and think you want to buy them at the door. Breezing past all of those people makes you feel like:

happy leo

And who doesn’t want to feel like that?

3. Pack a 4-liter bottle of patience. Or maybe just bring a flask to tolerate the very annoying groups.

You know, the kind that everyone loves that amass a group of about 20-30 people and then STOP RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WALKWAY AND DECIDE TO GIVE A TEN MINUTE DISSERTATION ABOUT BRICKS.

2. Go to this restaurant to escape the crowds and the heat. 

Lovely, jovial older Italian gentleman who cracks jokes and has a sweet smile. They have little croissants for 3 euro and some really good espresso and Mark ordered lasagna which was divine and then some. Oh and for all my fellow AC-loving Americans, they have real air conditioning!

1. Get up at 7am and take the first uber there around 8am. 

Thank God Uber is here! The Colosseum is worth losing sleep to get even an hour without the droning and humming of the mid-morning tourists.

If you would like a quick look at the interior, from our perspective while we visited, see below!

Ciao, beautiful people.

It’s Okay! You Can Skip the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel

Melody3 Comments

I can’t believe there’s not more blogs promoting this. I really don’t understand why it’s on so many people’s life goals lists (Please tell me in the comments). It’s like millions of people suddenly become devoutly Roman Catholic and suddenly care about the lineages of the popes, what the popes wore, what they did and didn’t do, who they did and didn’t kill, and an even greater number of people pretend to really, really like art.

If you’re not on a pilgrimage to fulfill a religious preoccupation, you can skip the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel for any of the following reasons:

It’s expensive

16 euro if you dare wait in the queue (are you insane?) or 20 per person if you pay online. It’s a 4 euro convenience fee to pay online. You still have to stand in a line to pickup your tickets from the ticket counter. Then you shuffle.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.

And sweat, sweat, sweat. This is Italy which means there’s no AC in this building. It’s very old and AC is new. I’m not sure where the 4 euro fee is going, but it’s not going into cooling the building where the average number of visitors is more than 15,000 a day. This isn’t an area with wide walkways or an air current or even somewhere to stand off to the side. Throughout the entire walk through the museum, shuffle shuffle shuffle, which reminds me, I can remember taking exactly six real steps. There’s nowhere to really admire artwork, so actually,

It’s visual overload. 

Every room is ornately painted or carved from baseboards across the ceiling. EVERY. ROOM. You begin walking and trying to take in the beauty and enormity of the artwork, but you can’t because these IDIOT GUIDES and their flock of 20-30 something tourists walk right in front of people that are clearly trying to take a picture or admire artwork. You ask them, mi scusi, a photo? and you get the most disgusted look and a 15% chance of someone actually moving. Two hours later, by the time you get to the Sistine Chapel, you are so tired of seeing 16th century art that your eyes kind of glaze over and Michelangelo’s famous painting The Creation of Adam, becomes an actual snoozefest. Speaking of Michelangelo…

The Sistine Chapel is last room of the entire museum. 

And you’re supposed to be silent. All the signs before you enter tell you to 1) cover your shoulders, 2) cover up your super cute mini, AND BE QUIET. “Silence” is universal. But thousands and thousands of morons can’t keep their mouths shut and they keep whispering. So the guards shout SHHHHHHH! across the chapel and people think it’s funny so they keep talking. Again, you shuffle, and the museum guards make you shuffle in a particular direction. If you don’t shuffle that way you’ll be forced that way. Shuffle shuffle. All the sitting room will be taken, so you stand in a crowd of people that are smelly and sweaty and you just stare at the ceiling. No point in taking a photo. The ceiling is so tall you can’t zoom in far enough with any camera to get a fair picture of Adam and God. Speaking of which..

Take a picture of the Sistine Chapel and be prepared to get thrown out.

No one ever said #ShamelessSelfie with Michelangelo is a good idea. Signs have a picture of a camera with a line through it. No photo. And what do these idiots do? Hold their camera up above their head and try to take a picture, then act all surprised when they’re approached by a guard. Are you serious? How daft do you have to be?!

After you finish the Sistine Chapel, you’re guided through the histories of each Pope, what they did wrong and what they did right (all in Italian of course). At this point you’re just ready to leave. You came, you saw, you pretended to be Catholic or you pretended to know who Raphael was, and then you leave.

Want to have a good time at the Vatican? Don’t go. Just don’t. 95% of the people who go there are better off somewhere else.

If you insist on going, here’s my sage advice:

  • Buy the ticket online and deal with the 4 euro/pp convenience fee.
  • Enter the “group with reservations” line.
  • Go through security, put your bag on the line, and go straight to the left where it says tickets.
  • Show the wo/man your phone, get your tickets printed out.
  • GO UP THE RAMP. Do you really want to be stuck with a bunch of smellies on the escalator? No, you don’t.
  • Finally, at least pretend to be interested in something other than the Sistine Chapel, and divert if only for a moment to another room. We enjoyed the “Modern” Gallery right before the SC entrance.

Ciao.

24 Hours In: Surprised and Culture Shocked in Naples, Italy

Melody1 Comment

Italy marks country number 14 and I may be speaking for myself but I am currently experiencing a severe culture shock. English is not widely spoken (it wasn’t in Finland, either), the four-hour breaks in the middle of the day are NOT a joke, and the laws of driving, walking and living are merely suggestion. Here’s a list of observations after 24 hours that have been doubly frustrating for us, so hopefully you come away from this read more enlightened with a better chance of enjoying your time.

Dining

It’s extremely difficult to find someone that is willing to speak English out the gate. It seems that most people want you to fail at Italian so they can get a good laugh before they attempt to help you. Once you sit down, it’s a 1 euro fee (per person) to occupy the space. At a higher end restaurant, this can be up to 2 euro. It seems through experience that you’re expected to know what you like to eat straight away, and order drinks and food at once. At one restaurant, we were told to reuse our water glasses for the wine because it’s “tradition” to drink wine and water from the same glass (Can anyone actually confirm this?).

Once you order, expect to never see your waiter again. American expectations of hospitality: How are you doing? Do you need anything else? How is the food/ drink? are completely absent. Let me say it again. You will not have a waiter come by and ask you if you need anything else. EVER. I read in an Italian culture blog that their perspective is to leave you alone until you need something; however, this is only really effective if you can actually find a waiter to flag down.

You eat, you drink. Every restaurant we’ve visited sets bread on the table. If you eat the bread, it’s another charge of 1 euro per person.

Then you receive the check. There was a bill yesterday that literally read: Pizza, 50. Pizza, 8. The total was 58 euros. Every restaurant must provide an itemization of what you ordered. Demand it if they don’t. In our case, we asked for it because all we wanted to see is that the waiter understood our order. Turns out he was right, but I was charged an additional 2.5 euro because I wanted my chicken grilled, not fried. 😦 

Activities and Things to Do

Sunday: Only a few restaurants open after 2pm. Some stores open. Not much. I was told bars started opening up after 8pm. Supermarkets and grocery stores also closed on Sunday. If you want to do anything in Naples, don’t arrive on a Sunday.

Monday: Actually, don’t arrive on a Monday, either. Apparently there’s NOTHING open on Monday. If you want to visit the Naples National Archaeological Museum, it’s closed. Want to check out the Bourbon Tunnel? Closed. Want to understand the history of the Catacombe di San Gennaro? Closed. Want to unfold the history of LAES – La Napoli Sotteranea? Color me surprised – that’s closed as well. Turns out that reviews on TripAdvisor are useless if you plan on visiting anything of merit on a Monday.

Tuesday: If you’re dead-set on taking a day-tour to Pompeii, Herculaneum, or Mount Vesuvius, odds are you’ve checked out the tours offered by Viator. Turns out they run tours every day except for Tuesday. That’s the day we wanted to go. Need to go to Pompeii, Herculaneum or Vesuvius anyway? Your best bet is to rent a car from the Napoli train station and hope for the best while you drive yourself. Haven’t done this yet – will report on it after 9th September.

**NOTE** Booking tickets to Pompeii online so you can go it on your own? You can only do so if you have an Italian address and an Italian equivalent of a social security number. Not Italian? Sucks to be you (and us) – you’ll be lining up at Pompeii to get your ticket at the door.**

Wednesday – Saturday: All I can say is that from about 12:00pm – 4:00pm, it’s slim pickings for food, cappucino, or a glass of wine. We’ve been here for nearly a week and still haven’t adapted to the 4 hour absence of food that isn’t gelato or espresso or pizza.

 Accommodations

Our Airbnb has been good to us so far. Space is so limited here that there isn’t even a place to put a clothes drying rack on the balcony. You have to let it fly freely in the space away from your balcony. No big, right? Until one of your clothing items falls down to the concrete overhang on the ground floor. No worries, says Mark, I’ll go get it. So he walks down to the ground floor, braces himself against the CONCRETE OF THE OVERHANG, and guess what? The concrete holding up the building actually COLLAPSES. It collapses. Are you kidding me? Not to mention Mark free-falls 7 feet and now has a lovely bleeding gash about 2 inches across. Also, if the place has an elevator be prepared for world’s smallest. It fits two people and two carry-on bags. That’s it.

Lifestyle

Drivers in both scooters and cars will run you off the road. They run the show. Pedestrian right of way? That’s funny! Smokers (of real cigars and cigarettes) abound and they have no problem letting you know about it on the exhale. Train rides, unlike Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Finland, Brussels, the Czech Republic, or France, are ridden with conversation and children yelling and running up and down the aisles of the train. If the quiet, near-silence on the trains in other parts of Europe gives you anxiety, don’t worry, because that quiet won’t exist here.

NOTE: There was also a protest today. Apparently the Napoli mayor is really sticking it to the Prime Minister. It was a peaceful demonstration that lasted about 6 hours with some rhetoric sprinkled in.

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That’s Naples after 24 hours. Tomorrow we’re picking up a car and driving ourselves to Pompeii. Taking adventure to an entire new level.

Ciao.