Sunday, March 6, 2016

Two Weeks Travelling Italy, Malta and Finland

Using 2 weeks periodic vacation this time to go to Italy (Rome, Venice) including Vatican City and San Marino, Malta and Finland.

My itinerary:
29 January - 1 February 2016: Rome including Vatican City, Venice, Rimini and San Marino
2-4 February 2016: Malta
5-12 February 2016: Finland

The itinerary was a bit strange, I know, but my company paid the flight tickets with a certain budget, so I could fly quite a lot.

My first main purpose was to see the Northern Light.
Since I went to other Scandinavian countries last summer, so I decided to visit Finland this time, after seeing the famous igloo glass hotel photo, Kakslauttanen.
Finally I didn't stay there, but in another igloo glass hotel in Luosto, after seeing review at the internet.
Unfortunately, Northern Light is still in my bucket list since the weather was not on my side.
However, my friend and I, enjoyed our trip much due to many first time experiences, such as husky sledge, reindeer safari, snow mobile safari, Ice Breaker, Snow Castle (including sleeping in Snow Hotel and dining in Snow Restaurant), and ice fishing.
We were fancied also by eating reindeer meat for the first time.

As an event big fan, I also adjusted my trip to see the Carnival of Venice.
This famous festival was a month long, but the main events were on weekends.
So I scheduled one weekend to be in Venice, and was able to see one event called Festival of the Maries, including the parade of 12 pretty girls and the flying of one girl.
However, the most interesting part was watching people on the street, coming from all over the world, wearing fancy baroque style costumes and masks.

Visited Rome too, to visit Vatican City, as the revenge as 17 years ago, I couldn't enter since I had no long pants with me.
San Marino, another micro state inside Italy, the country of three towers, the oldest republic in the world, was conveniently located between Venice and Rome, so I visited here too, was happy since it offered spectacular views from its two towers.

Flied to Malta too, since it was one hour flight from Rome.
Malta existence was exotic for me, partly due to some of Games of Thrones shooting locations.
A mix between Arabic and Italian cultures.

Below listed the links for 3 blogs on my trip this time:
1. Italy: Rome, Venice, Vatican City, and San Marino
http://joelitaly2016.blogspot.qa/
2. Malta
http://joelmalta2016.blogspot.qa/
3. Finland
http://joelfinland2016.blogspot.qa/

Carnival of Venice

The first tower of San Marino

Reindeer sledge, Lapland, Finland

The street of Valletta, Malta

St. Pieter Square, Vatican City
the old town of Tallinn, Estonia
My favorite five this trip:
1. Watching street costumes at the Carnival of Venice
2. Husky sledge in Finland
3. Views from the two towers of San Marino
4. Walking tour in Rome
5. Wandering around in Valletta


2 comments:

Silvy said...

Nice pictures. I am happy you had fun and save trips.

Pathfinder said...

Indeed you had a great experience in your tours from the way you express everything in this blog. Having taken your time to design this blog and even written something interesting on it really tells a lot. I appreciate it. since you've mentioned San Marino and I'm from Vietnam I'd wish to share this to people over there: They can always visit my country Vietnam anytime though there isn't a Vietnam embassy from there. They can always apply for the Vietnam visa online. Everything one needs to know about the online process of application for the Vietnam visa is listed on such websites:


http://www.visa-vietnam.org
http://www.vietnamvisa.fr