Europe - Curious Karibella

2024-04-17

A City Under A City: Rome and Ancient Rome

Wile in Italy we went to Rome! Who wouldn’t? In Rome we stayed in a quieter part of the city that was more residential. The place we stayed was really close to the Vatican but far from everything else. You might be thinking what is the Vatican?? This is what I said when my mom told us we were touring it.

Vatican City

The Vatican is the world’s smallest country. It is one city situated inside Rome. It’s borders are defined by a wall that was completed in 852 AD but was added on to for a little less than a thousand years. Inside we went to the Vatican museum, the Sistine Chapel, and later (on a different day) St. Peter’s Basilica.

In the Vatican museum we visited a lot of statues and paintings. There were hallways lined with ancient statues and intricately painted ceilings! One of the things we saw was a humongous bath tub (bigger than a hot tub), possibly belonging to the infamous Nero of Rome. We also visited the famous Raphael rooms. The large rooms that he painted over more than a decade. My favorite of the four, was the room with a wall painted with science on one side and across from it a wall depicting God and heaven. On the floor, there was the latin word Semper which means always or united forever. Showing that science and religion can go together! Right before we went into the Sistine Chapel, we learned a little bit about it. Our guide told us that Michelangelo was a sculptor, but the pope, in his time, asked him to paint the Sistine chapel, and he agreed. Entering the Sistine Chapel took my breath away. The entire place is painted from floor to ceiling! The front wall is a stunning blue with so many figures on it, all looking like they are moving. The ceiling was filled with so much detail that it made it hard to look at. All the characters hanging out up there was really cool to see. However, St.Peter’s Basilica beats the Sistine chapel in coolness by a lot.

If you want to visit St.Peter’s Basilica definitely go really early in the morning. Like be there before it opens. We went a few minutes after it opened and there was still a line as long as a line in disneyland. When we exited about an hour later there was a line stretching 3/4 the way around St. Peter’s square!! So, go in the early morning.

After we made it past the line we walked in and let me tell you, no matter how much you prepare yourself to be impressed by the size of the building, it will impress you more. It is just so huge that I wondered how could they possibly have built it! It is big enough to have several masses at once! There were two going when we were there. The domes are all so intricate and extravagant! It felt a little weird to be in a place that was so grand. It was also really cool to be above St.Peter! He actually got to hang out with Jesus so being that close to his grave was pretty awesome. Honestly if you travel to Rome you have to see St.Peters Basilica, it is really crazy awesome place!

The Colosseum and Ancient Roman Forum

Remember the Title? A city on top of a city? Well, I was talking about the Ancient Roman Forum. Just like Herculaneum the forum is surrounded by modern buildings on all sides. We were walking along a street and someone says look right. And sitting on the right is just a couple football (soccer) fields of ancient ruins! We got some amazing gelato right before our tour and then entered a city from thousands of years ago. The forum in any roman city is the center, the marketplace, the place for speeches, and religious ceremonies. The forum of Rome was Huge! The funny thing nowadays is that since everything is like 2000 years old a lot of buildings and structures have crumbled over time so on the ground there is just chunks of buildings and stone pillars or part of a wall. Some stone pillars were even being used as benches!

We walked through part of the forum on our tour but we were heading to the palace/fortress/hill. Our guide was calling it a hill with a building on it but it looked more like a building the size of a hill or a building made out of a hill. It was crazy to think that the intricate stone walkways were made by hand thousands of years ago. At the top of the hill palace was a gorgeous garden and a modern house built on the ruins by some princess a couple 100 years ago. after we walked by that, we headed toward the…….

Colosseum

Okay, the Colosseum was very cool, but it looks alot smaller from the outside than you would think. The cool thing about it is how sophisticated the system for it was. You had to have a ticket to enter and that ticket would correspond to a gate, section and a specific seat. The seats are gone now so it was really hard to imagine how thousands of people could have fit into the Colosseum to see games but apparently they did. There is a lot of stuff I learned so I am going to put it into list form.

Gladiators were not rich free men, they were slaves.
Slaves were not allowwed to see the games
Poor people were in the uppermost sections then women in the middle and then rich people in the bottom. The Romans had the backwards idea that women could not handle the sight of the games.
The reason the colosseum has only half of its outer wall is because there was an earthquake that felled half the wall and the material was quarried and used to build other buildings.
The romans had elevators in the floor! Ancient Elevators!!!!
The myth that the king decided whether or no the loser died with a thumbs up or a thumbs down is probably not true.

The whole time while i was walking thought eh colosseum i kept thinking, “how did they possibly build this???” It’s like so crazy that ancient people were so so so smart!

Photos From Rome

2024-04-15

Driving in Italy: BEWARE

If you plan to go to Italy consider re-taking drivers ed. In Italy, drivers really love to use their imaginations on the road. For example, on the Amalfi coast the only road to get to anywhere is about the width of an american one lane road. The Italian drivers like to imagine that it is a two lane road and they use it as such. I might be over exaggerating a little bit but driving in Italy was CRAZY!! Having a big car will probably result in scratchest but there were drivers with huge busses going down the tiny roads. Getting a smaller car will probably be very beneficial.

So the lesson here is: 1. Don’t drive, 2. Drive a small car or 3. Use your feet or take a train.

2024-03-302024-04-15

What to know about Pompeii, Herculaneum and Climbing Mt.Vesuvius in Italy

Climbing Mt.Vesuvius

Climbing Mount Vesuvius in Italy is possibly worth it. It depends on how good of a driver you are,\, and how long you can hike. My mother is a fantastic driver, and I have attempted one of the 7 summits so the hiking was not going to be an issue. I still did not make it to the top! All due to a serious lack of information on the most widely used library: The Internet! This is why people say don’t trust the internet! Here is my recommendations:

Go early in the morning! There are so many benifits of this! You dotn have to hike in the heat, there are less crowds, and probably more parking!
The parking is FREE but it’s not actually free because the park service gave some guys a permit to charge people for parking. You also have to pay for a parking spot ahead of time Dont park at the very top of the road right before the entrance because it is for busses only.
Try to drive a small car because Italians like to pretend that one lane roads are two lane roads and they use them like two lane roads. Your car might get scratched FYI
You have to have pre-purchased a ticket online to get onto the trail. To get a ticket you have to go to this website:https: //www.parconazionaledelvesuvio.it/en/visit-the-park/the-paths/the-great-cono-2/ and buy a ticket for a times slot the day before. Each time slot only has 10 tickets available.
If you are not a bus and you park where everyone else parks, it is a very long walk up to the start of the trail. I would suggest having someone drive everyone in your party up to the entrance, drop everyone off and go back down and park. The person who drives everyone probably wont get to climb the mountain but if they do, they will have to climb almost double of what the other people climb.
The bus ride that is offered by the parking guys in vests is $15 per person and you have to already have a ticket for getting into the park. The bus ride may be worth the money for some people but I would recommend just walking or being dropped off.
The roads up are very windy and small and alot of busses go up them. Have the best driver of the group behind the wheel to avoid collisions.

Pompeii

Pompeii is mind blowing! Walking on a road that looks perfectly intact while knowing that it is 2000 years old is crazy! The intricacy of life in Pompeii and the Roman empire is very fascinating because we often think that everyone was not as smart back then but they were super smart! There was plumbing in pompeii! Not plumbing like ours today but they had lead pipes and running water in houses. I would 100% recommend having a guided tour, you learn so much more! The tour company we used was Askos, our guide was great and we learned so much! Some fun facts were that romans used urine to clean their clothes. They also had the coolest fountains. The fountains around the city were landmarks used as meeting places.

Herculaneum

Herculaneum is not well known, probably due to its size. Herculaneum was a port city resting closer to vesuvius than pompeii. Because it was closer to vesuvius it is much more preserved. There is wood from it’s time as well as many other artifacts. The sad part is that since it was buried under 50+ feet of ash for thousands of years people forgot about it and built towns on top of it. The small section that is visible today is really cool but it is a shame that a large portion of it remains buried under homes and roads. For pompeii you need a whole day and a tour guide. I would recommend going to pompeii first so you learn all about the life style and then go to herculaneum without a guide. It is small enough that it’s just better to wander around the city. It was rather quiet when we went so we usually were able to go into each building with just our group. There is a garden for reading and relaxing as well as caves demonstrating how they excavate buildings. I found Herculaneum more enjoyable because we got to run around the city “discovering” everything and use the information we learned in pompeii to deduce what the buildings were for.

2024-03-212024-03-22

Yayyyy! We made it!

Wow! We made it to Switzerland!

After the most chaotic day of travel I have ever had in all my years of travel, I actually made it to my destination, which is pretty impressive to me! I will write more about that when I have more time, but for now, let me tell you about the Swiss airport and Swissair.

When we got onto the Swiss airplane, they welcomed us and celebrated with us that we actually made it and we went to go find our seats. When I sat down in my seat, I just sat there laughing, but almost half crying because I could hardly believe that we made it.

The service was very good and we got great food even in economy! Sleeping was not so good for me, but I made it through the night OK. When the plane started descending, they handed out Swiss chocolates which was quite the treat because it’s very hard to get European chocolate in America unless you go to special stores.

Going through customs in the Zurich airport was the smoothest customs ever! It took us about five minutes and we didn’t have to get our checked bags and re check them! We just showed them our passports and moved right through. It was very nice.

We stopped for a moment to catch a breath and find out whete to go. It turned out that we had time before our next flight so we wnet to get some chocolate.

I have very good memories of swiss chocolate from when I was little. When my mom did her masters program she did it out of Lausanne Switzerland, right on lake Geneva. We lived in Lausanne for about two months when mom had to do in person parts of her program. Me, my siblings, and my dad had many adventures in and around lake Geneva.

We bought two chocolate items. One was a bar of raspberry chocolate and the other was a box of real looking fruits that we thought were chocolate. We were most exited about the fruits but when I bit into a strawberry it was not chocolate. I thought it was cake but we google translated the ingredients and found out that it was mascarpone, which is sugar. It was…. Interesting. It tasted ( no joke) like play-dough! I think most kids know the taste of play-Doh. Honestly, it smells so good! When you’re like five years old and making little play-dough pizza it is really hard not to just try a little bit!

Now as I write I am sitting and waiting to go to the next gate. The next flight will be like 45 minutes. Stay tuned for more updates on my Europe trip!

P.s Here is a funny joke about switzerland.

Border Agent: What is your favorite thing about Switzerland?

Traveler: I don’t know, but the flag is a big plus! 🇨🇭

Wasabi Plant Moment

At lunch I had a plate with carrots, sweet potatoes, onions, green onions, and micro greens. The micro greens were the last on my plate and I usually eat them plane. I started munching on a little pile of them and about 3 seconds in…. Ahhhh I was so surprised!! These were no micro greens!! It was like wasabi in a plant!! I was not polite enough to finish eating them because they were the second most unpleasant plant that I have ever eaten.

My Lunch. The green stuff is the Wasabi Plant like thing. ( It’s not really a wasabi plant)

2024-02-24

Why Not Be Kind and Help?

On this very day, two years ago, the citizens of Ukraine woke up to find their lives changed completely. In only a few hours, every normality was gone. That morning, there was no breakfast, no getting ready for school, and no playing while waiting for the bus. There was only confusion, danger, and explosions. Two years ago, mothers had to flee with their children to foreign lands. Fathers had to leave their families to protect their country from the people coming to kill. People gave their lives up for their families, friends, colleagues, neighbors, their country, and for freedom. People lost their lives trying to escape from hell. Trying to get un-trapped.

For two years now, this has happened. Over and over. Normal humans like you and me die every day, some trying to give the sweet gift of freedom. Some just trying to survive another day.

The fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, best friends, wives, and husbands live each day wondering what will happen the next. What world will the next generation have to raise families in? What place will they grow old in? Will they even get to grow old?

If you know that people (Just like you and me) Are living that way and have been for a long time. How can there be any excuse or reason not to help them? Why have we not jumped up at the chance to aid them? Yes, there are lots of excuses to be made, lots of ways to get out of aiding the others in our species, but still, why wouldn’t we? Why have we (the world) stooped that low? Why do people refuse to be kind and refuse to help? I don’t have a straight answer to this except that I think we let ourselves forget. Therefore, there is nothing to be done except to remind ourselves over and over. So this is a reminder to you. Today, go and show outstanding kindness to someone, help a cause, and promote good. Even if you do not choose to help Ukraine today, choose to help someone.

Three Quotes for You

“No one has ever become poor by giving.”
-Anne Frank

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
-John Bunyan

“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.”
-John Holmes

20 Days In Mariupol

Below is the trailer for a documentary called “20 Days in Mariupol”. It is a documentary about the start of the war in the port city of Mariupol, located in the east side of Ukraine, near the border with russia. Mariupol was one of the most dangerous cities at the start of the war. Now, it is a ghost town. The trailer is jolting because it sharply shows how real the first days were. It shows such strong emotions in people. I encourage you to watch the trailer and, if you can, watch the movie because it really shows how scary it was. It shows so why we are obliged to care.

Ways You Can Help

If you are interested in helping someone today, here are three recommendations.

Donating to a GoFundMe
Buy a meal for a homeless person.
Spread joy by giving compliments.

If you would like to help Ukraine today here are some recommendations.

Come Back Alive – This fund helps Ukrainian soldiers by financing hospitals, mending gear, and fighting disinformation.
Hospitallers – This is a volunteer organization of paramedics helping people in need on the front line.
Initiative E+ – Provides evacuation and assistance on the frontline for military and civilians.
Spread awareness about what is happening in Ukraine – This requires no donation of money. It only takes you telling people the truth about what is happening in Ukraine. Since we have the internet nowadays, false things can spread very quickly, and helping to spread truth helps fight lies.

Thank You For Helping

To all: You have helped others, you have been kind, you are a great person, and you deserve praise for what you have acomplished. But if you feel that since you have helped, you no longer need to help, then let me tell you, never stop helping. If you think about it, if every human was always kind and helped at every chance they had, then really, people would not need to want for anything because somebody would always have their back.