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Rome to Milan 👠

June 28, 2018

This was more of an unplanned bonus day over anything else because our main job was to get back to Milan for our flight back to the US. We left our Airbnb pretty early, got to the train station, then boarded the train to Milan. I think the train ride was about 3 hours long, so actually pretty fast. While in Milan we used a subway for the first time this whole trip, and Alex said it was his first subway ride overall. The hostel was actually pretty close to the train station anyways, though, so it wasn’t a long subway ride. We decided to go out and walk around Milan instead of wasting our last night in Italy by sitting in the room and texting. I hadn’t planned anything in advance for Milan, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found that a big park and a castle were within walking distance to our hostel. We just strolled around the park and walked through the middle of the castle. Nothing major, but it was relaxing. We also took a short walk over to the Duomo of Milan, but didn’t go inside. Dinner consisted of seafood pasta that wasn’t too exciting, but we did have a super delicious piece of tiramisu for dessert. After dinner we took a leisurely walk back to the hostel and got gelato one last time for our last night in Italy. We enjoyed the relaxed, local feel of the area our hostel was in. Many people were out in the streets getting gelato and sharing drinks together in the cafes.

Overall, I think this trip was amazing and I’m so thankful I had the chance to go. I feel that some parts could have maybe been planned better, but I think the vacation was great nonetheless. The pasta was so good, and I’m really going to miss the nightly gelato! We got to see so many famous and beautiful sites in such a short amount of time, and nothing can compare.

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Rome 🏛

June 27, 2018

Rome seems like such a cool city with so many great things to do, and I really wish we had more time here. It’s definitely another location that I’ll need to come back to in the future. Our day here definitely had some difficulties that I will explain later. Parts of the day were great, while others were pretty bad. We got off to a good start by making it to a walking tour around Rome with the most significant sites including the Pantheon and this one beautiful statue of four gods that I can’t remember the name of. The dome of the Pantheon is apparently even bigger than St. Peter’s Basilica which I found incredible. I also thought the history of the structure being changed from pagan to Christianity over time was very interesting. As for the river of the four gods, I just found it so relaxing to watch (see in pictures). The tour overall wasn’t great because the woman just wasn’t as engaging as our past tour guides and I couldn’t hear her very well, but we still appreciated the history. After that tour was when the trouble began. I wanted to stop by the Airbnb really quickly to pick up some more cash when I found out that Lindsey and Alex had left the keys inside. I had left the apartment slightly earlier than them that morning to go buy train tickets, leaving it to them to grab the keys on the way out. After contacting the Airbnb host, we learned that we could come back later when the doorman was available to get back in. We just moved on with our day to lunch, which turned out to be expensive and not that great. After that was a very long wait for a bus ride over to the Coliseum. By that time, it was already probably 4pm and we needed to be back at the Airbnb by 5:45pm to get back in the apartment. So we sped through the Coliseum in about 30 minutes flat. I really appreciated the immense size of the building, and I thought it was funny how alike it is to our sports stadiums today. I could just imagine a hot dog stand over in the hallways or something like that. Lindsey and Alex both really enjoyed it too, and we wished we had more time to explore, though we did get a good overview. By that time, we had to start heading back to the Airbnb since it was pretty far. We found the buses were so full that I ended up separating from the other two. My phone was on low battery, I left the WiFi device with them, and I came to find out I had gotten on the bus in the wrong direction. It was all horribly frustrating, besides the bus being more packed than I’ve ever experienced in my life. Not a single other person could be put in. However, we did all eventually reunite back at the Airbnb safely and get back into the locked room. To cap off the day and put things back on the right track, we got dinner (pasta again, of course!) then some more gelato. We got the gelato from our favorite chain in Florence, so it was delicious again of course. We also stopped by the Trevi Fountain and did a bit of souvenir shopping. A beautiful last real vacation evening in Italy! 🇮🇹 💕

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Florence to Rome Part 1

June 26, 2018

Today was actually a really quick train ride to Rome so we accomplished a lot despite the traveling. Our Airbnb was conveniently close to the train station, so it was super easy to pack our stuff up, go out to the city for a bit since our train didn’t leave until noon, grab the stuff shortly before the train ride and walk straight over to the station. No worries at all about where to store luggage if we happened to have a lot of time before our train! We enjoyed the sandwich shop from the previous day so much (and it was so cheap) that we walked back to grab another set of sandwiches to enjoy for lunch on the train. Once on the train, I realized the sandwiches were quite strongly scented for the other passengers, but we enjoyed them nonetheless! I think our train ride only ended up being about 1.5 hours or so, then we were in Rome. Our Airbnb host gave us great directions to her apartment which consisted of a 30 minute bus ride. Her apartment was definitely in a more residential area, though very close to the Vatican City. The area felt nice and safe which we appreciated. We were ready to go back out around 3pm and weren’t going to waste any time in Rome so we walked over to the Vatican City. I had been reading online different accounts about 2-hour long ticket lines, don’t go on Wednesday’s, etc. so I wasn’t sure what we were going to find, especially since the museums closed down at 6pm. In the Vatican City we came to find one of the more annoying things about Rome that we also saw in Florence: there are so many tour companies saying “Do you have tickets? Do you want to skip the line?” Probably about 5 of these salesmen confronted me before we made it to the actual ticket line. We used the salesmen to our advantage since we weren’t actually sure where the ticket line was, so we talked to them a bit. They wanted us to pay €35 each to go on their tour. I knew actual tickets were much, much cheaper so of course, we ignored them and walked on. Contrary to the stories I read on line, we probably waited about 20-30 minutes in line then paid the student discount of €8 each (regular €17 for everyone else). It was the best deal of the whole trip! I’m assuming the line went so fast since the museum actually closed in about 2 hours from the time we entered. However, we felt that 2 hours was the perfect amount of time for us. We really wanted to see the Sistine Chapel, so the rest of the museum was a bonus. Lots of ancient works of art were housed in a spectacularly painted palace, which I came to find out were artworks collected by past popes. We particularly enjoyed the palace aspect of the museum since walking through the halls was just so grand. The Sistine Chapel was at the end of the museum, and although it was amazing, I must say that I was let down a bit. The frescoes covering all of the walls and ceilings were so intricate and had so much going on that I could stare at them forever, but there were just so many tourists, and it was so crowded and noisy that the magic disappeared a bit. Museum curators also kept yelling over the loudspeakers “Silence please!” But that didn’t stop any of the noise at all. After admiring for a bit, we decided to head out to see St. Peter’s Basilica. I decided to try a tip I saw online: leave through the right exit instead of the left to avoid queuing in line again for the basilica. The right exit was technically for tour groups, so we kind of pretended to be a part of a tour group on the way out. I’m not sure if the guards actually cared or not, but it worked! We made it without waiting in any extra lines. I think that cathedral is one of my top favorites of cathedrals I’ve seen (only behind La Sagrada Familia in Spain). St. Peter’s was just so massive and richly decorated that I don’t even know how to describe it. Probably the size was the most amazing aspect. It made me feel tiny inside a structure that probably covers multiple football fields. We walked around in there for a bit until about 6pm when we were getting pushed out for closing time...

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Florence to Rome Part 2

June 26, 2018

We were all very pleased with our Vatican City experience because it worked out pretty perfectly. After that, we grabbed dinner nearby (pasta again of course) then ate some gelato in the oval area in front of St. Peter’s Basilica while admiring the fountains and the statues. It was a beautiful end to the day. Alex and I agreed that we would probably never eat gelato in a more special location.

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Florence!

June 25, 2018

I really love a lot of things about Florence. There are so many things to do, so many museums to visit, so much history and culture. Unfortunately, there are also horrendous crowds. As I think I mentioned in the last post, our Airbnb was about a 2 min walk from the Duomo, so of course, we started our day there. As I came to find out, much to my disappointment, we wouldn’t be able to see the inside of the Dome because tickets needed to be scheduled in advance. Not even a line-up for people who didn’t book in advance! It’s very difficult to book so many day-to-day details for a person like me who has never been to these places. In any case, we ended up climbing to the top of the bell tower of the Duomo which had an excellent view of the city and was only slightly shorter than the Dome. We also visited the inside of the Baptistery which was pretty beautiful! Though I can’t say it was more beautiful than the outside of the building. We never ended up going inside of the cathedral itself because the opening times and massive lines didn’t work with our schedule. Luckily, our tour guide later on said it wasn’t worth it. We headed from there to the tour site which happened to be super close (our Airbnb was in a really convenient location!). From there, the tour guide showed us some of the more hidden sites in Florence and told us a lot about the history, and forms of architecture. She also recommended this famous sandwich shop which you could really tell was popular among everyone with its long lines. After we got out sandwiches, we could see why it was so popular. For only €5, it was a huge sandwich with pretty fancy meats, cheeses, and toppings like sundried tomatoes, eggplant, truffle spread, and artichokes. It was probably one of the best sandwiches of my life! I’m not sure of the exact toppings on mine, but I enjoyed it. Unfortunately, next door was a famous gelato shop that we couldn’t eat at since it was closed. As we moved on with the day, we ended up also visiting the museum housed in the Medici families prior house/the political building of Florence. There was yet another tower climb there with more spectacular views, especially of the Duomo. The museum itself had examples of the old apartments where the family members lived with the fancy frescoes and wall hangings. We have been finding it so insane how opulent these palaces have been, and just how much detail goes into even a single tile on the ceiling. After the museum tour, we ended up heading to Ponte Vecchio (the oldest bridge in Florence) which we came to realize that we had already walked across the night before, but didn’t realize it because it was covered in shops. We ended the night with dinner at this cool marketplace (Il Mercato Centrale) that reminded me of Grand Central Market in LA, or maybe Anaheim Packing House. We shared a fresh pizza and some gnocchi with a butter/sage sauce. We also purchased a bottle of red wine from their wine bar and shared that. Everything was amazing, especially the gnocchi which was stuffed with cheeses. To end the night, we grabbed gelato from the same location as the previous day since we had enjoyed it so much. Our day in Florence was wonderful, and I would definitely love to visit again some day since there just wasn’t enough time to do everything that I wanted to. We did get a good overview of the city though, I think.

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Cinque Terre to Florence

June 24, 2018

Even though we had to travel today, I think it was still a relaxing and beautiful day. We spent the morning in Vernazza since our train to Florence didn’t depart until 2:40pm. We spent the morning and afternoon in the swimming area. I felt like a local Italian- riding the train to the beach, doing a bit of shopping, grabbing some local lunch there. We all went for a swim and the water was pretty cold, but I’m happy that I got to swim in Italian waters at least once this trip. We had some super delicious focaccia for a snack while hanging out. Mine was a local speciality that was basically just hot cheese. I’m not even sure if there was bread in there? But totally delicious! And for lunch we got some fried calamari and anchovies, which are also a specialty of the area. Once it was time, we gathered up our things and headed over to the train station to jump on the train to Florence. Everything worked out pretty smoothly I think, though the train felt pretty slow for such a short distance (2.5 hour ride). Once in Florence, we actually found our Airbnb really easily because it was about a ten-minute walk from the train station. We are so close to Piazza del Duomo it’s insane! You can literally see part of the cathedral right outside the front door of our building. We settled in then headed to dinner. We had pasta once again, of course. Mine was a very interesting cheese and pear type of ravioli. After a nice dinner, we walked over to Piazzale Michelangelo since I had read it was a great place to look out over the city. Luckily for us, those reviews were completely correct! We wanted to watch the sunset and that would have been great besides two things. 1: lots of stairs once again! (Little did I know those would just be the first set of stairs in Florence) and 2: We just happened to come on one of the biggest celebrations in Florence: St. John the Baptist’s Day. Unfortunately, that meant that the Piazzale was shut down in order to shoot fireworks off of the terrace. Sure, we could see the overview of the city still, but just not as good as with everything blocked off. We didn’t want to stay there for the fireworks because we would have to wait about 1.5-2 more hours and we were already tired, so we decided to walk back. Along the way we stopped for what ended up being the best gelato of my life. I believe it was a chocolate shop that also sold hot chocolate, espresso, candies, etc. My gelato had candied hazelnut on top with a chocolate base and it was just so rich and creamy. It was a really wonderful way to end the day! I wish we could have had enough energy to watch the fireworks, but we were just too tired.

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Day 1 in Cinque Terre (Riomagiorre)

June 23, 2018

Today was a lovely day full of hiking and nature. The Cinque Terre National Park is amazing! We all agreed that it was strangely similar to California, probably because of the weather and foliage. The views, however, were not like anything found anywhere else in the world I’m sure. We started off the day with a shuttle bus ride down into Riomagiorre and picked up a few warm croissants to have along with some fresh apricots. We then purchased our trail/train passes and hopped on the train to Monterosso, our starting point to hike the 5 cities. This seemed to be the most touristy city of the 5 with lots of bars, sandy beaches, and umbrellas set up for hire on the beach. The hike between Monterosso and Vernazza (city #2) ended up being a lot more strenuous than I expected. I somehow wrongly came to the understanding before this trip that the hike was a nice, easy, paved trail along the sea cliffs. WRONG! The trail started off with an uncountable amount of rock steps straight up the cliff side. I don’t think I’ve ever climbed so many steps in a row before. Our thighs were pretty much destroyed after that, but luckily the hike was never quite as bad. Sure, there were a lot more huge up and down stair climbs, uneven rock trails, and winding pathways, but it was never as bad as that first descent. Or maybe we just got used to hiking. Anyways, the hike took us through beautiful scenery out to overlooks of the next village. We kept looking back to the previous village to see how far we had come and the distance was amazing! When we arrived at the second city of Vernazza we were pretty tired from the first part of the hike so we ended up getting a calzone and some focaccia sandwiches with cheese, pesto and tomatoes. All very fresh and delicious! We sat by the water for quite a while after that just resting and napping. Once we were ready, we started on the next segment of the hike to Corniglia (city #3). Corniglia ended up being the only city without access to the water. It was super high up on a cliff, which actually saved us the work of climbing down a bunch of steps after the hike. However, once we decided to head to the train station there were SO many steps to get down it was insane! That must have been the reason there were so few people in Corniglia. Nobody wants to climb those steps all the way up! Finally, we briefly road by train to get to Manarola since the trail between Corniglia and Manarola was shut down. In all, we probably did about 3.5 hours of hiking but we did see all of the cities! To end the day, we ended up eating pizza by the sea in Riomagiorre, our original city that we are staying close to. Overall, I think my favorite city was Vernazza just because of the feel of the city. It’s not one of the biggest cities, and the shops seemed the cutest. I also enjoyed its swimming area the most. We plan on heading back to Vernazza to swim and relax before our next city: Florence!

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