My Italy trip

Overall, the Italy trip was still a sucessful one. However, I think the trip can be shortened to 7 days haha. We overestmated the time we can spend in each places. But there were a lot of things worth mentioning in Italy.

Venice - A beautiful city for couples, not for young travelers ha!

It is really beautiful there, but only limted to a number of tourist spots, esp the St. Marco Plaza. Of course you can not compare the casino in Macau to Venice. The scenery here was much nicer. There were canals running through the whole city. If you have money, it is good to travel on a boat or ferry. But that really cost a lot. Taking a ferry for one time costs 6.5 euros!

Venice used to be a very important city for trade both with the west and the east. It traded with Britian as well as China. Becasue of this reason, Venice is famous for the glass making industry as it combines the technique of the East and West

St. Macro Plaza

Florence - Beautiful acient city, the origin of Renaissance

It has great art museum in Florence - the Uffizi and the Academia. I did go into the museums but personally I think the one in London is better coz there are more explantion on each painting/statue. In Academia , there are the most famous statue placed inside - David.

You can observe the artist was paying great attention to the muscle/ structure of the body, forming a very realistic body shape of a human. This is very different from the arts before Renaissance.

Nice scenery from Michaelangelo plaza

Rome - City with great history and food!! I like it the most.

I like the Coloseum the most in Rome. It is the most amazing buidling ever. A building standing here for over 2000 thosand years still remains very good in condition. Coloseum was built by the Flavian family, first started by Vespasian and completed by Titus. After rule of rude emperor Nero, Vespasian wanted to showed the difference from Nero. He built an the existing Coloseum on the man-made lake of Nero's palace, making it a place to entertain the public. The public also has a chance to see the emperpor in person, enjoying the match together.There were different kinds of match happening in the arena, man vs man, man vs wild animal, wild animal vs wild animal. The gladiators include free men, prisoners, slaves etc.

Trevi Fountain
I like this statue the most

Very very nice Gelato - Only 2 Euros! (near Vatican city)

This is an extremely good gelato shop that I want to recommand to everyone!You can choose three tastes and they will add some cream on the top for you. The ice cream is freshly made and you can really see the seeds of strawberry in the ice cream!! See the map below!

Pizza

Seafood Spagetti 10 Euros

Snowing in Netherlands

When I arrived at Einhoven Airport, snow was everywhere.

There was snow everywhere when I came back from Italy! I never imagined Netherlands having so much snow in winter! The snow statred to melt today, making it really difficult to walk. Sometimes you just stepped in the soft snow and fell into the hole!

Prison Break in Prague

It was fine when we were having our wonderful holidays in the first two days. We bought a day pass for transport, obeying the transport regulations. The day we are going to leave Prague, we planned to not to have a day pass ticket cos we were just staying here for a few hours more before going to the airport.

Everything seemed fine until we went for the last metro trip. When we went downstair and wanted to take the metro, two officers came and asked us for the tickets. We did have tickets. One without stamping and another one expired. Of course, the next thing they asked was fine. It was 700 Kronc, which was about 30 euros. That's a lot to us. We started to run away. Since we did not have so much money, the officer asked us to go to ATM machine to take it ( the Bankamat). The machines were just located besides the meto entrance. Jacky clever was the first one to run. The two officers therefore paid much attention to him. Right after his running, I ran too. And I turned out the only sucessful person to escape fine among my frineds! :)

Berlin trip

It must be my most exciting trip so far. We left for Berlin on 26 morning. And we were so happy to have Chris to be our driver and guide. Everything was fine in Berlin, where was a very special place.

After WW1,Germany was required to pay a heavy fee to the victorios power. The fee, in my view, was not fair as the amount was so huge that it could never be repaid. This, as a means to weakened Germany forever, finally led to the rise of Nazism in German. In 1920s, German experianced a republic period, which we called the Weima Republic. The republic, however, is so weak when facing the economic crisis during the period. Hyperinflation resulted. Later, the Great Depression made US stop paying financail assistances to Germany. It was under such circumstances extreme ideas, such as Nazism, was developed.

In 1933, Hitler was elected the chancellor of Germany.Hitler then later eliminated its components by blaming the communists for burning down the parliament.

In 1938, Hilter acquired the German-speaking area in Czech becasue of the appeasement policy of Britian.

1939, WW2 started when Hitler invaded Poland.

When WW2 finished, the Soviet Union and the allies reached an agreement to divide Germany in two parts. The western part controlled by the allies while the eastern by Soviet Union. Together witht the eastern European countries, East Germany and Berlin became communist countries. Iron Curtain emerged.


Berlin wall in West Berlin: Berlin wall was built as a result of the large amount of people fleeding from East Berlin to West Berlin. It was a wall encircling the West Berlin to prevent people entering West Berlin illegally. The wall was not very high. But at the top of the wall, there were circular pipe to make it slipery for people to catch on.


East-side Gallery: The longest continuous Berlin Wall in East Germany. Artists painted on the wall to show their hope and feelings towards the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989.

Brandenberg Gate: There were many gates like this in the past. Due to warfare, it is the only one exist now. It used to be the entrance of West Berlin. (We were standing in East Berlin in the photo.)
Jewish Memorial site: Hitler considered Jews as a inferior race and carried out a large scale genocide in the territories. Jews were restricted to wear badge on thier clothes to show their identity. They were not allowed in professional jobs. Later on, they were sent to concentration camps called ghetto. Over millons of Jews were killed in posion gas chamber and concentration camps.

Very cheap to eat this traditional meal here. 12 euros