Dennis Kioko

This article is part of a series of my visit to different European cities. Read about my visit to Barcelona here. 

Like Milan, Madrid is another capital city with not much to offer, unless you are a football fan. However, unlike Milan, Madrid does have some soul and even prides itself as the gay capital of Europe, which is a title that Berlin also claims.

My transport option from the airport in Madrid was the subway, which I found dependable. Alighting at the Plaza De Espana, I slightly got lost before making my way to the Nemrut restaurant for a late lunch and early drink, followed by laundry at the highly recommended Open Wash Lavandería Autoservicio. It is more automated than my other laundry at Milan and I had learned not to shrink my clothes, yet, the setting I chose was not as satisfactory in cleaning my clothes.

This post is part of a series of my Eurotrip. Read about my trip to Nice by clicking here. 

From Nice, I caught a flight the next day out to Barcelona. This time, the flights were cheaper than the trains and the buses took too long. I also found out I happened to be lucky in that this was not one of the weeks that Vueling delayed a literal thousands of flights.

Important to note is that if you want to have fun flying cheap between Schengen countries, then ensure you only have hand luggage. The queue to check in luggage can be horrendous, and so can be the costs. So, travel light. It is cheaper to keep laundering a bag of clothes than to pay for check-in luggage.

Nice is a couple of hours drive from the French-Italy border, but not far enough for you to bid goodbye to the undulating Alpine hills that drive into the sea (See my last post on Milan here).
The Nice bus stop is interesting enough situated at the airport - and you can even walk into the airport and explore different options to get around, such as helicopters. Should you not be aware, Nice airport also serves Monaco, which is a rich-people place which also hosts a Formula One track. 
Nice was undergoing some transport expansion with a new tram track at the airport, but which was not set to be operational until 2019. So our option to the city, 7 kilometres away, was a Metro bus which required you to buy a ticket inside the airport terminal.

As I have pointed out from my previous post on Florence (which you can read by clicking here), Milan makes a great destination for city planners and architects, but anyone else would be wasting their money here. There is a bunch of interesting buildings starting with the Bosco Verticale, which is a pair of vertical forest towers near Garibaldi. The area around Garibaldi was re-developed as the last millennium came to a close and has rightfully won a bunch of awards for the Piazza Gae Aulenti.

It is confusing though for a visitor trying to walk around the area, as I ended up walking into a tunnel with little provision for pedestrians rather than walking through the square. Google was not so clear on walking directions and neither is the design of the pavements intuitive enough to account for those trying to follow the highway when walking.

Firenze is the city that the Renaissance is said to have sprung from, though it is even disputed whether a renaissance actually existed or it merely exists in our imaginations, given the benefit of hindsight. The renaissance was supposedly this period where Europe began prospering economically thanks to the emergence of trading and literature. It is said to have begun with the rich textile trading families of Florence.

My journey from Rome to Florence was meant to be on a train, probably Trenitalia (You can read about my experience in Rome by clicking here). But then, there is Rail Europe’s badly designed website which increases the possibility of making a wrong booking time when you are booking a series of rides. And so it happened I had booked an evening rather than morning train.

From Venice (you can read about my experience by clicking on this link), my next destination was Rome, which I caught by a cheap high-speed train from Mestre to one of the two main trains stations in Rome. As I have already mentioned, high-speed train travel in Italy is cheap and comfortable, even more than in Germany.
The same though, can not be said for public transit in Rome. I was quick to notice that the ruins were not the only crumbling bits in Rome. In fact, with a lot of restoration work ongoing, it can be said that the ruins are in a far better state than the roads which have potholes here and there - but do not be mistaken, they are not like the potholes in Nairobi which at just the right speed, will ruin your tyres and suspension.