Day 9 Pisa & Florence

It was raining this morning when we got to Pisa, pretty hard too, which made taking photos a miserable pain. We got a tilted shot glass from a souvenir shop and then scuttled back to the tour bus.

Then we actually circled back to Florence. The city pretty much still uses the old stone roads from the medieval era so there's no room for any of the large buses to get into the city. This meant we had to park outside the city and then walk aaaallll the way inside. It was a long walk. Then, we got to the extremely overly-gilded Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral/duomo (yeah I googled the name) of Florence (made of white, green, and pink marble!) and were handed over to a local tour guide.

We then went to the Galleria dell' Accademia (more google) to gawk at the works of Michaelangelo, including the famous statue of David. No photos allowed, unfortunately.

After that we went to another chapel place supposedly interring Dante's wife & favorite mistress. And then swung by the city center/offices which are housed in the old Medicci palace. Then the Basilica of Santa Croce cathedral (yay google again) which is supposedly more famous for the people interred there - Machiavelli, Galileo, some other dudes I forget, and Michaelangelo (whose body was stolen back from Rome).

After that we took a long drive to Rome, where our hotel for the last day is going to be. Tomorrow we will tour Rome, and then the day after we will be departing for the US.

European Tour - Hotel Comparison

I figure I've seen all I need to see of all the hotels we've been staying at on this tour to give a ranking of them. Unless there's something really abnormal at breakfast tomorrow, there's not likely to be anything that will change my mind. Now, given that I haven't been noting down the names of the various hotels we stayed in, other than noting that all except the current/last one were local brand names and not international chains, I'm going to reference them by the city instead. I guess they can serve as a starting point in the city comparison that I'll do later.

So here they are, from best to worst.

1. Paris - Had everything, including complementary slippers, which no other place had. Also had the most fluffiest bedding/pillows.

2. London - Best breakfast of all the hotels, with the most choices and omelettes!

3. (just outside of) Florence - Only downside was that the water pressure was a little weak but that seems to be true of all of Europe. The keys were heavy brass keys instead of normal keycards, but I'm not sure if that's supposed to be on purpose as a flavor thing. WIFI was a wee bit fidgety but not too bad, and the service was really good/responsive. There was no cable TV, but I don't watch TV so it doesn't affect me.

4. Lucerne - Only downside was that the WIFI was only available in the lobby and seventh floor. However, since the room we got was on the ground floor right next to the lobby, I could still get online from the room. :)

5. Milan - Main complaint here was that the staff was pretty unresponsive and took forever to get around to servicing you even when you're the only person at the counter.

6. (just outside of) Venice - Only place where there was no flatscreen TV in the room but the old style TV. The front desk could not provide any adapters for US style plugs into Italian style outlets. There were stuff that was broken in the bathroom such as the step-button thing to open the trash can lid. Also, breakfast only had one warm dish and that was eggs.

7. Rome - This was the only US brand hotel - Holiday Inn. Also no adapters available at the front desk. Only hotel that didn't have a safe either (wtf!). WIFI is 14 Euros per 24 hours so I may or may not even be able to post something tomorrow. Also, the power went out for like 5-10 minutes while I was in the shower just now, which was awwkwaaard... EDIT: Also, the walls are paper thin and it's hard to sleep while listening to your neighbors talking and watching TV.

Some general notes...

Breakfast in general in Europe seems to suck a lot. There appears to be no attempt at all to make it "international". In London we started with warm dishes at breakfast including eggs, sausages, ham (bacon-like), potatoes, omelette station. Then in Paris it was just eggs, bacon, sausages, but at least they had some yummy croissants that are a specialty of the French. In pretty much everywhere in Italy there was just eggs and bacon. In the hotel outside Venice in particular there was just eggs, and that was it for the warm dishes.

I can't believe a lot of these hotels which are in tourist hot spots can't go the one small step further and offer something like pancakes or waffles (for US tastes) or something Asian-y to cater to the burgeoning Chinese tourist population. It seems to be very backwards to me. Or perhaps ethnocentric? Or maybe they just don't care about food as much as the Chinese do (going by any international breakfast offered by a Chinese hotel in a major city...)

Chinese is the new international language

I figure since I might not get net time tomorrow night, I might as well write down some of the thoughts that have been swirling around my brain these last few days.

China is a rising power and a rising economy, everyone knows that. This of course means that a greater and greater number of the population are able and can afford to travel abroad. Given China's population, this means that even not accounting for ethnic Chinese but non Chinese citizens like me, there are large numbers of Chinese-origin people pouring out into the world into all the tourism hot spots.

So it's not too much of a surprise, even though it's hilarious, to turn around on the plaza of the Arc d' Triumph and see a sea of black hair and Asian features. Or to be walking along the streets of Venice and hear someone yelling Mandarin behind you, and then get overruntaken by yet another huge mob of mainland Chinese tourists and their very loud tour guide.

It's the little things, however, that really surprise me. The fluent chinese that are being spouted everywhere I go, for example. One of our tour guides in Paris is a fluent Chinese speaker. I also heard it from a waiter at the Moulin Rouge, who admits to have picked up all his vocab from just serving Chinese customers - no extra classes needed. Ok, these are pros, you might think... Of course, then you hear the mother tongue from the gondola rowers in Venice, and the ice cream shop vendors in Florence... the freaking street vendors and gypsies throughout Italy speak functional Chinese well enough to freaking haggle prices and flatter marks.

They also speak it with a more natural/correct mandarin accent than my ABC cousins, who have been taking Chinese classes for a few years now. That's kinda sad, actually.

Now - food for thought: If you go to any caucasian-run store in, say, Golden Gate park, you probably won't get far (I think, I could be wrong nowadays). And while London had a Chinatown, I didn't encounter any vendors who spoke Chinese. English is already the foremost international language. And it's the French (who are supposedly culturally adamant about not going English) and the Italians that are picking up Chinese "liek whoa". Could there be a deeper meaning or correlation there? Is the world going to end up being English versus Chinese for official international tongue in a few decades? In terms of population, I like our chances.