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| Florence (with hiking back packs) |
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View of Florence before
entering the Tuscany region |
Italy was part one of our two week honeymoon tour back in October of 2013. As you may have noticed we have a theme of traveling in October. Let's face it, October is the best month out of the year, its the month of my birthday (October 25), has my favorite holiday (Halloween), the leaves change in my home state of Michigan which peppers the forests with beautiful colors the entire month and for the most part, you can enjoy good weather all over the world. I would also like to add that this was the first two week vacation I had taken EVER. And just for reference we are about to take another two week trip to Scotland at the end of July 2014 (stay tuned). I want to say how incredibly fortunate Sarah and I feel to be able to explore the world in this capacity and also have the time to do so, it is truly a gift we do not intend on wasting.
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| Vineyard during Vespa tour |
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Well deserved beer in Florence
after the Vespa tour |
Another theme you may notice in my entries is that they orbit around movies. The cinema is a particular hobby of mine and I spend more time than I would like to admit capturing every minute detail of my favorite movies. When it comes to travel nothing pleases me more than to visit the film sites of my favorite movies, it becomes even more exciting if there is no mention of the site and I have to seek it out by other means (usually by seeking the help of locals). A good example is (in my Greece entry) the scene at the end of the first Jason Bourne movie where Matt Damon's character finds the woman he had been traveling with on an island running a moped / cafe shop. The location was Mykonos, Island off the coast of Greece in the Aegean Sea. The film site was in a place called the Sea Satin Restaurant right in front of the famous windmills, one of my favorite movie film sites (more details in my Greece post).
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| Piazza San Marco |
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| Venice at night |
Our first leg of the trip landed us in Florence, which is a vibrant city full of many options depending on your cup of tea. Carrying our trusty lonely planet guide we started scoping out the quality B&B's in the area. We made our way into the heart of the city towards our B&B of choice (
The Hotel Accademia). The sun had already gone down and we had our first experience of the emerging Italian night life. As we started to learn, in Italy people stay up very late and dinner time starts around seven, eight and even night o'clock. Our B&B was down this series of cozy narrow cobblestone streets, warmly lit by the emerging pubs and cafes. For us Florence was really just a base to get to the surrounding country side, specifically the Tuscany region. Sarah had a particular interest in renting a Vespa in Florence to go cruising out through the Tuscan valleys from winery to winery. So I had the pleasure of giving it the good old college try by test driving it in the Florence traffic. Now I will be the first to say that driving is not the best in Abu Dhabi, but driving in Italy was not much better by comparison. After I navigated us out of the city, it was smooth sailing along the country roads with nothing but greenery and vineyards to look at. We did make a quick stop at a scenic look out of
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| Smaller Venice Canal at night |
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| Grand Canal |
Florence (which was beautiful) before we made it to our first winery. Riding out to the Tuscany region is a wonderful experience that I would highly recommend. We stopped by three or four wineries throughout our Vespa ride and made many pit stops to just sit and look at the beautiful views. While in Tuscany I also found my favorite wine to date, I describe it as "life changing" in the world of wine tasting for me. We found this wine at one of our stops at a winery called
Terreno, it was classified as a Super Tuscan and the name was Momento Massimo. If you are ever in this region and love red wine, you must go here and try this wine, you will not be disappointed. I bought a bottle for the road and enjoyed it frequently throughout the day (a small glass at 9 a.m. on a train, a splash for lunch and finished it off at dinner in Piza) as I kept it corked and stuffed in the side pouch of my hiking pack (using hiking packs was the second stage of our evolution to become the most efficient travelers, it was better than hauling a role away, but was still not the most ideal way to pack).
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| Venice |
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| Pisa |
Following Florence we decided to make our next stop in Venice. For my first movie reference of the post, this is where they filmed part of the movie
The Italian Job. It was absolutely beautiful to visit, seeing Piazza San Marco (which is this huge square with a giant clock tower) by itself makes the trip to Venice worth it. I would also recommended arriving to Venice in the evening, we just happened to take a late train from Florence and had the pleasure of seeing a calmed down, less touristy version of Venice as we rounded the city to our port in a water taxi. In the evening San Marco square has a series of outdoor restaurants that welcome you from your water taxi drop off point with the beautiful sound of live piano and violin classical pieces being played throughout the warmly lit square. It was very romantic and lucky for us the late Italian night life kept us from missing our dinner in front of restaurants with these great performers. Following dinner we made our way over the small passage ways and crossed our series of bridges to get to our Venice B&B (
The Bel Sito Hotel). We only spent one day in Venice, touring some shops and having lunch in a waterside restaurant overlooking the Grand Canal. We were happy to arrive in the evening as Venice is very touristy during the day, mainly because that is when the cattle gates to the massive cruise ships open to unload thousands of Hawaiian print shirts and fanny packs with their all you can eat buffet colored wristbands attached (It is not surprising if you do not hear an Italian accent all day, did you notice I do not like cruisers and cruise ships?). This is yet another reason why Sarah and I prefer to escape large cities as soon as possible for more culturally authentic samples of countries, because if there is a port, there might be a cruise ship and that could ruin your day. Sarah and I both agreed that we would have a different overall opinion of Venice had we arrived in the middle of the day versus our romantic arrival in the evening.
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Sarah & the best vino
ever (La Mescita, Pisa) |
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| Chinque Terre |
We had a recommendation from some fellow travelers back home to visit the region of Chinque Terre, which is this geographically rugged portion of the coast on the Italian Riviera. We were fortunate enough to make a pit stop in Piza since it was on the way to visit the famous leaning tower of Piza. The town of Piza itself is quite clean with the standard well kept historic European look to it. The tower which is part of a large cathedral (The Piza Cathedral) it towards the back of the city. A fact to which I was unaware at the time is that you can actually buy tickets to climb to the top of the leaning tower. The climb is interesting and at times it is hard to keep your balance as you are walking at an angle most of the time, but the view and experience in general is worth it if you are in the area. After the climb we had a bite at a local restaurant called
La Mescita which was delightful, the manager of the shop even let me finish the last of my Momento Massimo with my meal and gave us complimentary Limoncello (an Italian lemon liqueur) shots for dessert. We spent a night at the
Royal Victoria Hotel in Piza and in the morning started off to Chinque Terre.
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| First look at the Colosseum |
When we got off the train in Chinque Terre we had a short walk through a tunnel and up some stairs before we were able to view the classic picture you always see of the rocky coastline peppered with terraces colored with an array of bright pinks, oranges, reds and many other contrasting varieties. Trains are the only way to get to the "five lands" of the region as you pass through tunnels carved into the rocks. We decided to only spend a day here as there way not much else to explore after viewing the scenery, also it seemed to be the "Florida" of Italy and by that I mean there were lots of people in the age range of fifty to seventy years old. Not that it was a bad thing, but its popularity with the senior population speaks to the limited activities of the area. If you enjoy the relaxing beach type vacation for a long period of time, Chenque Terre would be a good option.
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| Saint Peter's Basilica |
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| Inside the Colosseum |
Following Chinque Terre we bought our train tickets to make the long night journey down to Rome. I had been longing to see this amazing ancient city for many years. I have had dreams of the day I would look upon the Colosseum. When we arrived we took a subway tunnel to the exit labeled in Italian "Colosseo" (guess what that means!). We got off the train and walked up the stairs to street and I became speechless. The Colosseum slowly reveals itself as you climb the stairs from the subway, hundreds of lights shining on every detail. I knew it was big, but as I am sure everyone knows, pictures typically never do anything true justice. I must have stood frozen, staring at the Colosseum for thirty minutes (maybe not, but it was one of those frozen in time moments) until Sarah led me forward to find our hotel at a very late hour. We came to our hotel to find that they only had one room available (we stayed at the
Hotel Smeraldo) and it was a single bed about the size of a standard military issue cot. We were confused as to why it was so busy in Rome, but we were about to find out the next day.
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| The Pantheon |
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Pope Francis walking out
of the Basilica |
After a semi-sleepless night of synchronized turning on our single bed (we had to coordinate our roll overs to avoid "nerd" tossing the other person onto the floor) we woke up to plan our exploration of Rome. We only had one day before beginning our second part of the trip in Greece, so we decided to cover the mostly the Vatican. I was pleased to see many of the Tom Hanks
Angels & Demons movie film sites as we walked though the city. Rome is incredibly rich in ancient history and the unique part about it is that many times you see ancient ruins integrated with the modern parts of the city. There are cleared areas all over the city where established ruins from the Roman era are located and also many new sites being excavated (these sites are often discovered by construction workers during renovations). When we arrived at Saint Peter's Square in Vatican we wanted to do two things: go through Saint Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel (the Pope's official residence in Vatican City). Sadly we found out the day of that the Basilica was closed off so we were only able to see the Sistine Chapel. The Chapel was amazingly beautiful with only natural light to illuminate the paintings the encircle the room, no cameras are allowed in this place. The only setback is there is a bottle neck through the fenced off area and it was extremely crowded (we found out why later).
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| Castle Sant'Angelo |
Following our tour of the Chapel we made our way back to Saint Peters Square where an even larger crowd was gathering. At this point you could not even get in to the main part of the square without going through a metal detector. After seeing this I was curious if we could penetrate the layer of security to get in to the square, so we tried our luck and sure enough we passed through. We slowly began to realize why the Basilica was closed as we learned there was a ceremony about to take place. My theory was that we were about to see the Pope and to our surprise towards the middle of the program Pope Francis walked through. So we were unable to see the Basilica, however we traded it in to see the Pope so I thought that worked out nicely. After the ceremony we walked down to Castle Sant'Angelo (also a featured scene in
Angels & Demons) and over to the Pantheon (built in 126 AD) which comes from a Greek word meaning "common to all gods".
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Sarah prepping for our flight
to Athens, Greece |
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| Post Rome Tour |
Italy and specifically Florence and Rome were amazing for us. Our short week left much more to be discovered in a return visit (I could have spent months in Rome). Italy is rich in culture, heritage, and ancient history. The local Italians are extremely friendly and very fun to get to know. It is likely we will be making a return trip to Italy in the not so distant future to cover yet another unexplored portion of the country.
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