Italian Adventures

As some of you may know, I recently spent 10 days traveling through Italy during my Easter holidays. Though we didn't experience the most ideal weather, it was still definitely a trip to remember!

Jill, Jill's boyfriend Matt (who came to visit!), John and myself caught a plane to Milan on a Wednesday afternoon in March, and landed in sunny and warm Milan just over one hour later. From this point on we became extremely skilled at navigating through foreign routes of transit in very limited time spans -- definitely a little stressful, especially when you don't know where train stations are and when you're not exactly sure where the bus you are on is going to take you.

In Milan we caught a bus to the train station, then took a train for three hours to a town south of Milan: Levanto. We had not had a decent lunch, and had not had any dinner at this point so were very cold and hungry and tired. We found a vending machine at the train station which refused to give us food OR change -- not a nice start! We did, however, manage to get directional help from a nice Italian family who was picking up family members from the train station. They told us to catch the next regional train, and showed us where to buy tickets. Italians seem to be much friendlier than Austrians!

We were on the regional train for about 45 minutes before reaching our final destination at about 11pm: Riomaggiore, the southernmost village in the area of Cinque Terre, which translates into Five Lands. Cinque Terre is a beautiful place on the coast of the Mediterranean which consists of five towns that are connected by a beautiful trail system. While navigating the small steep streets of Riomaggiore, we feared that the room we had booked for ourselves wouldn't be open because of the late hour. However, upon reaching the hostel, it was discovered that a key and note had been left for us hanging on a nail by the door. Thank goodness!

We spent the next two days in Cinque Terre -- the first was spent hiking along the trail between the five towns, and I have no proper words to describe what we all saw that day -- such a beautiful place! You'll just have to look at the pictures.

On Friday we left Riomaggiore and caught a train to Firenze -- Florence! I had heard many wonderful things about Florence, but arriving there in the dark and the pouring rain made the city not quite meet my expectations. Saturday, however, dawned sunny and cool, and we spent the day exploring the city and wandering San Lorenzo Market.

Easter Sunday wasn't as pleasant. Usually Easters in Florence are busy and filled with outdoor events and parades, but we woke to pouring rain and thunder and cold winds. Completely miserable! Our Easter dinner consisted of bananas and nutella sandwiches -- didn't quite meet up to the big dinner that normally happens at home! Being stuck inside our hostel room didn't quite help either... we all got a very bad case of cabin fever and finally braved the torrential rain in order to get some new atmosphere!

Needless to say, we were glad to leave Florence on Monday morning -- the city is beautiful, but with the rain and insane amounts of Easter weekend tourists, it sort of left a bad taste in all of our mouths. Our train from Florence took us to Siena, which is south of Florence and in the heart of Tuscany. Our hostel was 20 minutes outside of the city so we had to hire a taxi to take us there. The day had started out sunny, but while driving through the twisting roads of Tuscany, it began to rain... then snow... then hail. The driver was in complete disbelief, as were we -- Italy is not supposed to get snow in the Spring!

Our hostel ended up not even being a hostel: it was a place called "Castello di Selvole", and was a huge farm that produced wine and olive oil (of course!). It has been a working farm since around 1000 A.D. and has been in the hands of the same family that whole time! The main manor house was destroyed by soldiers from Florence in 1500, but it was rebuilt soon after and the family still continues to live there! We stayed in a little villa on a hillside surrounded by rows and rows of grape vines.... incredible! Our little house was lovely, however it was clearly built for hot Tuscan summers and not freak snowstorms in March, so we were bitterly cold. There was pretty much zero insulation. BUT we did have a fireplace, and managed to get a roaring fire going right off the bat!

We really enjoyed our stay -- not only were we staying in an amazing location, but we were blessed with better weather for our next day that was spent in downtown Siena, checking out PIazza del Campo and all those other pretty places! Plus -- the place where we stayed offered free drives from the train station in Siena to the actual Castello -- great news for a group of 4 Dutch kids!

On Wednesday morning we left for our final destination: Rome! We caught a bus from Siena that took us through some of the most beautiful places in Tuscany, I think -- it was incredible! Endless green hills, huge villas sitting atop high slopes... it felt like we were in a movie or something!

We caught a train in Chiusi-Cianciano (Italian towns are so fun to say!) and arrived in Rome in the late afternoon. What a big, busy city! And not as clean as I'd imagined it... very dirty and smelly, actually!

We dumped our belongings at our hostel and after a stop at the grocery store we made some dinner, then went for a walk downtown to check out some of Rome's finer features by night. We were very impressed by everything -- the whole character of the city seemed to change once we arrived in the central downtown area. A lot cleaner, classier, and refined -- but still kind of touristy! That night we found a gelato factory down the road from our hostel which was apparently the oldest gelato factory in Italy -- and not only were there millions of flavours, but it just happened to be half price day! So we all got very very large amounts of gelato for 1.50... that pretty much made my day!

More good news... on Thursday we went to get a Roma Pass which lets you into all the main attractions in Rome for a cheaper price, but discovered that the week we were there was "Culture Week" and all museums and attractions were free... this plus the gelato made up for our miserable stay in Florence! So that day was spent going through the Coliseum (amazing!) and the Roman Forum area. It then rained which put a damper (haha!) on the rest of our day... but we waited out the rain in a cafe which was also very enjoyable!

On Friday we went to Vatican City! We went into the museum to look at the endless frescoes and the Sistine Chapel -- it all seemed very surreal to be standing on the spot where Raphael or Michelangelo would have been painting! We also wandered around St. Peter's Square and into the Basilica -- incredible! We unfortunately, however, did not see the Pope.

After dropping in on a couple other famous places like Trevi Fountain and the Borghese Gardens, we dragged ourselves home, ate, and slept soundly...

Saturday morning we packed up and headed for home -- it only took every form of transportation known to man! Train to airplane to bus to subway to streetcar.... to home!

A lovely trip -- but I was very glad to get home to Vienna again! And despite the charm of Italian cities, Vienna is still my favourite!

Enjoy the pictures!

Cinque Terre:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2202561&l=36e5d&id=120807213

Florence:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2202581&l=fe7c7&id=120807213

Siena:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2202766&l=fc1d6&id=120807213

Rome:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2202796&l=d818d&id=120807213