|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| Despite the long flight and 2 transits, we were so excited about arriving in Rome, the eternal city! But our excitement clearly wore off when we saw the wondrous beds in our first hotel. We left Singapore on a 0055 flight on Emirates, and arrived in Rome at 1900. You can imagine how long we travelled for. Believe it or not, after a nice hot shower, i fell asleep. My first day. In Rome. The dream city. I. Fell. Asleep.
Nevertheless, we more than made up for it on our first actual day! We went to St. Peter's Basilica, the Colosseum, The Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Piazza Del Popolo, The Pantheon. Got drenched in Italian Rain and that! How fortunate to have experienced wet weather on our first day! The base of our jeans were soaking wet, my crocs were flooded with water and squeaked everytime i took a step...oh the (kill)joy!
Before I continue, I have to highlight that it gets dark only at 2130 or thereabouts. It's summer my friends.
After exploring Rome the entire day, we ended up arriving back at the hotel at 2030. We didn't even realise it till after my nice hote shower (again) and I looked at the time. Eeps... I was TIRED! I told my sister...'I'm gonna take a nap, wake me when you're done with your shower so we can go out for dinner'...
The next thing you know, it's the next morning.
Jet lag. I swear! I didn't mean to keep falling asleep even before it got dark!
Next day, before we headed to the beautiful city of Venice...we popped by the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. Of course the only thing we noted about the Vatican Museum was ... there were so many beautiful sculptures of...Babies. With. Geese.
Don't ask why.
And we almost broke our neck trying to see the gorgeous paintings on the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.
The 6 hour bus ride to Venice was so reminisce of our long transit to Rome, and instead of admiring the beautiful scenary on the way there, we slept. Again.
Did you know Venice was famous for their glassware? We went to a glass blowing show, and there was this macho man blowing glass! Wow wee! How exciting! Just as they were going into their famous sales pitch on how indestructible their glass was, we fled in search for handsome stripy shirt gondoliers! Whoever goes to Venice to see a glass blower?
To our dismay, our illusion of handsome gondoliers was just that...an illusion. We abandoned that idea for the famous deep fried mozzarella with prosciutto! Now THAT was just heavenly. Along with my seafood lasagne and grilled zucchine. Awesome.
After wondering around all day and night in Venice...we had a good rest. BUT the difference between THIS NIGHT and the PREVIOUS nights is that...we slept AFTER it was dark! HA HA...what an achievement!
I need to add a side note again. You must know, also, that we get up at 6ish every morning. We are following this Trafalgar tour on the first few days and the schedule is hectic to deaths.
We headed to the gorgeous lake county, to Lake Garda and spent the night there. As beautiful as it was, we didn't do much. We walked around the lake...and froze our butts off. And wondered a while longer...and it started to drizzle. Now we're wet and cold. But the scenery is still wonderful. I take pictures of the cute ducks and ducklings. We're still wet and cold. We're waiting for the damn shuttle bus to take us back to our hotel. Shivering. Cold. Wet. We try to take our minds of the cold. We take pictures of ourselves.
Finally, we are back at the hotel. We've hardly socialised with our tour group because we keep sleeping so early! Tonight, we try. We made friends with this 2 American girls from New Mexico. Jamie and Samantha. They're so nice and sweet! They are my age (or 1 year younger? I don't remember) and they are both married to each other's best friends! How sweet.
But in fact, we also made friends with another pair of sisters who were travelling together! Christine (another Christine!) and Fiona from Sydney. They are hilarious! I loved hanging out with them they are so funny!
I thought that the entire tour group was kinda old fogies. I was WRONG!
Now that we have friends, the tour was getting more enjoyable. As we headed the Tuscany, we got TRICKED into signing up for 2 optional tours!
The first one was to San Gimignano. It was gorgeous, I admit. It is this old medieval town that had very steep slopes. My lungs cried out for air! Repeatedly! (Ying, I hope you understand how I felt. I'm really quite fit. Really.) But anyway, I really thought I could see sunflowers and frolick in them.
Oh well. At least they had the world's best gelato there. Seriously, they won some world competition twice in a row. I had the champagne-grapefruit flavour. Yums.
The second option tour was a dinner described something like this 'magical dinner...chianti hills...under the stars...free flow wine...chianti vineyards'. Wow, doesn't that sound great? For EUR60? Such an authentic experience! Well, we drove 10 mins out of the city and arrived at this shitty restaurant by the road. I don't want to elaborate but I can dare say I've had BETTER DINNERS FOR LESS THAN SGD120 thank you very much!
(P.S. do not go on any optional tours regardless of how good it's described)
...to be continued!
| | |
| thanks for singing this song tonight. i love it.
请让我靠近你轻轻对你说
别让我每个夜为你受折磨
是多么不容易才默默放手
为了我就当作这次为了我
别让我因为你被回忆折磨
而空气凝结了我们的脸孔
我别无选择
就算我们之间有什么问题
依然想念着你
虽然被放弃
虽然我愿意
就算我们之间有什么难题
黑夜我还想着你
心碎人孤寂
虽然我愿意
再让我靠近你轻轻对你说
当我说我要你从此好好过
是真的否则我怎么肯放手
为了我就当作这次为了我
赐给我你现在幸福的笑容
别让恨冻结了我们的脸孔
请你做选择
就算我们之间有什么问题
依然想念着你
虽然被放弃
虽然我愿意
就算我们之间有什么难题
黑夜我还想着你
心碎人孤寂
虽然我愿意
心碎人孤寂
虽然我愿意
就算我们之间有什么问题
依然想念着你
虽然被放弃
虽然我愿意
就算我们之间有什么难题
黑夜我还想着你
心碎人孤寂
虽然我愿意
(心还想着你) | | |
| I think i haven't eaten so much in one night....
Went for seafood dinner at turf city and had bamboo clams, lobster + noodles, prawns, fish, fried rice, rainbow clams,etc.etc... and because i went with a group of zl's guy friends, i didn't want to lose out since we were splitting the bill evenly... i just whack! haha...might not have been such a good idea?
but strangely enough i still wasn't t-h-a-t full, so after meeting my girl mates + dear even who brought krispy kremes for us from HK, i continued my food intake, had a donut AND a fro-yo @ the same time...
and sarah joined us after, and gave us the super sought after corn chocs which she bought from japan, which we were so curious about for so long. and of course i ate that too.
but i'm still not full.
cui | | |
| I didn't have a camera, so I don't have any pics to show how fun my trip actually was! But try to visualise this!
day 1
We touched down, headed to shangri-la Far Eastern Plaza and jumped for joy when we saw our darling Even whom we haven't seen in ages. But she didn't really wanna let us hug her cos we were kinda dirty from that 4 hour plane ride...
after washing up a little bit, we headed off the ShihLin YeShi (night market).
We walked around a little and finally decided on this deep fried bread with ham and cheesy thing in it. No idea what it was, as Qi and Even were doing the purchase.
Leen and I walked around and decided to get a Da Chang pao Xiao Chang (big sausage wrap small sausage) where the big sausage was actually glutinous rice shaped like a sausage. Quite cute, rather tasty, extremely filling. Good thing we shared.
We walked around a little more and found this dian-xin shop and sat down for some hong-you chao-shao (??) red chilli oil wanton. yummylicious!! I'm still craving for that! and I forgot the other thing we ordered...wasn't that good.
After that we headed to the shopping area...and happened to walk past the super famous JI PAI! But the que was so long we vowed to come back for it. After doing heaps of shopping (Jaime, Leen, Qi and Even...not me i hardly spent a thing the first night. my resolve was quite strong then.... ..... .....), we were so tired we ended up not buying any JI PAI (XL sized chicken cutlet) and headed back to hotel.
day 2
Even had to work so Qi, Leen, Jme and I headed out to WuFenPu wholesale area early in the morning! (this morning we actually woke up the very earliest, think 10am?) but we reached that shoppping area and everything was CLOSED! cui.
We had a roadside stall with a very nice aunty but the cold noodles and xiao long bao was so-so only. but we took a picture with her and she was really nice!
After getting our usual bubble-tea/coffee, we strolled around everywhere and finally the shops opened at 1pm.
We spent SOOOOO much money here and most of us spent more than half what we brought...leaving less than half our money left for the next 3 days.
Heading back to the hotel we met up with Even again and headed to the more disappointing Rao He Ye Shi - supposedly a tourism market. We hardly bought anything there and went home with the least buys of the entire trip. We had dinner at this beef noodles place, where their ZAO PAI noodles had the most awesome soup! Slurp! My girliemates bought a whole lot of necklaces from here! As Jaime and I sat there watching them buy, we managed to pick out some buys for ourselves, and let Even and Qi do the bargaining. As ordered the snow-ice mango and strawberry dessert cos the guy there was quite nice letting us sit there for ages.
day 3
Ahhh...Saturday, dear Even doesn't need to work. But instead of heading out together, she was sooo tired she decided to sleep in. 4 of us headed to XimenDing and slurped up a bowl of Da Chang Mian Xian each from Ah Chung (Big intestines MeeSua). Later we bought a heap of shoes from a shop recommended by Aileen, who bought quite a few pairs there the last time.
After getting tired, we tried to head to this San Xiong Mei (3 brother sister) snow ice shop (again recommended by Leen) but were waylaid (actually we stopped outselves haha) by road hawkers! After buying some ji pai, sotong and taiwan xiangcang, we finally reached our destination! WOW! the snow ice here was yummmmmy! and so was the tang yuan with tou hua!
We went to this department store after and hung out there for ages buying masks, pads, clips.etc. Mostly we were just nua-ing...messing up the store.
At night, we went to Taipei 101 for dinner and clubbing, with Rob (even's boss) and we found the dinner slightly unappetizing but nevertheless enjoyed the dinner. Rob showed his kindness and amazing strength by scooping the ultra frozen zi-ma ice cream for us. He later showed us how humourous he was by pretending to climb up a hedge, which was a decoration in the shopping mall. Qi has a picture of that.
This was our longest day and we went to club at Room 18, a supposedly famous celebrity club. I'm really quite lazy to talk about it already cos this is gonna be one of my longest blog entries in ages. But we had really yummy real fruit alcoholic drinks and the redbull girls were pretty and the bartenders were cute.
day 4
Jme had left at 5 am in the morning and i had stayed up to chat with her till she had to go. i was so tired by then and i woke up at 1.30pm. tried to wake the others but managed to wake them and finally headed out at 3.30pm. U'd never guess where we went today...WUFENPU again! with Even this time so it's kinda a different experience. She brought us to this alley we didn't see that day and we managed to get 100NT buys! What good deals. For those of you who don't know, this is a mere $4.53.
When we were done, it was already dark out and we were tired but headed to XIMENDING (again this time with Even), and had this duck dish for dinner recommended by a taxi driver. It was rather good. After walking around and buying more stuff and Even buying these pretty sparkly shoes, we had the MeeSua again, but we ALL shared one bowl.
After all that shopping, we found ourselves checking out th PARTYWORLD building!! got us a room on th 6th floor (with our very own toilet!!) and sang and paraded our new buys! what convenience that toilet gave us! hahahaha!!!
day 5
no time no time! we woke at 12.30pm and bia to eat YONG HE DOU JIANG. We tried the salty dou jiang with egg and it was actually pretty nice! I'm glad we had the guts to try that....
and then it rained, but we got ourselves a cab to SOGO and bought a whole lot of food souvenirs before rushing to the hotel and airport to make our way home.
The End.
| | |
| Last Friday, my dear and I went to L'angelus for dinner. This place is tucked in a cosy corner in Club Street. We had a booking for 7pm (and while I was booking, I had intended for 7.30pm, but the guy on the other end of the phone was like "oh I am afriad if u come at ze seven-zhirty, eet ees very rush for me, my next booking eez at 9 o'clock, can u come earlier?") and from 7pm till 8ish while we were there having dinner, the place was rather empty... So I had French Oignon Soup for my Starter (quite yummy), and Zhilun had Escargots (he ate it all so quickly it must have been yummy too). For mains, I had Duck Confit (2nd best in Singapore, 1st Best still being the duck confit at Sage), and Zhilun had lamb...that was so-so I guess. Soon, we were really full, and only had space to share a dessert between the 2 of us. Warm chocolate cake there is REALLY Fantastic! On another note... This monday, I was supposed to start the "apple diet", where you eat apples every day for 3 days. Before you know it, Tuesday I was down with the cold...and Wednesday I was down with a full on 38.6degrees fever. Today, I am still home despite my doctor giving me MC for only yesterday because I think the medicine he prescribed really SUCKS. My fever hasn't gone down, and NOW my throat actually hurts. Usually when I'm this sick, I visit the doc, take his med for one day and i'm completely well the next day. But think cos he didn't give my antibiotics, it's taking longer for me to get well. I hate being sick...i'm missing out on fun stuff cos i'm sick... supposed to go watch my boyfriend and his basketball team thrash another team last night, but missed it. Supposed to go have dinner with my ex-colleagues at Marriott tonight..but gonna have to miss it. Hope i'm well tomorrow, cos I'm supposed to go have another good dinner with my dear... | | |
|
