Where to begin? Well, for starters I am just going to be completely honest and admit that I was a tad dissappointed by Italy. Rome knocked my socks off. I mean literally everything anyone has told you about the city is true....its romantic, its ancient, its holy, its...ROME! The place is amazing, we had such a great visit. I guess when we visited Cinque and Florence, I was expecting them to be a little less touristy then they ended up actually being. For instance, Cinque has tours come in daily from Siena and Florence, so all of a sudden around noon a hundred tourists come flooding in to the small villages all wearing the same matching hats...annoying! As for Florence, I wish I did our whole visit differently. Since I really was looking for some peace and quiet, what I should have done was stay outside of the city, somewhere quiet like Chianti, drink wine all day, then make a day trip to see the sights in Florence. Instead, we spent all four days shoulder to shoulder with everyone and their mom that decided to visit Florence in August. Another downfall was the price of food. Italy had by far the most expensive food out of all of the countries we have been to yet. I mean, come on, a girl cannot survive on pizza and pasta alone! And even that was expensive.
Now, I realize from the comments above you would probably think we had a horrible ten days in Italy. But even though it was not what we expected, we still had a really good time in each place.
I'll start with my favorite- Roma! First off, we stayed in an amazing place in the Vatican City area, Colors Hotel. The room was huge with a flat screen tv, a fridge, and the most amazing crown molding I have ever seen (I know I'm a dork, but check the room out below). Plus a really good breakfast that is included in the room price. When checking in, we found out the front desk worker's mom had just moved to Durham, NC (where my family lives), so she was super helpful with recommendations and even mapped out a walking route for us that she takes her own family on when they come to visit. By the end of our first night we had literally seen all of Rome, which was good because we did the Vatican the next day and just walked around and relaxed that night.
We stumbled upon an amazing restaurant on our first night, called Il Fico. I am only including the address because out of all the cities we have visited, Rome is probably the most likely for anyone reading this to visit, so here ya go- Via di Monte Giordano, 49. Their eggplant parmesan and carbonara are out of this world and the prices are the cheapest you will find around Piazza Novano. Plus, the restaurant is situated on this really quiet cobblestone street and has really cool outdoor tables lining the road across from it. Needless to say, it was very romantic and we ended up heading there both nights.
After our stay in Rome, we headed up for 3 nights in Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera. Cinque Terre literally means The Five Lands and it consists 5 small villages strung along the coast all connected by a 10 km hiking trail. Matt unfortunately was sick during our entire stay so he spent a majority of our stay in bed. I did the hike to 4 out of the 5 villages starting in Riomagiorre, the village we stayed in. Here's the view from our room below.
The trail from Riomagiorre to Manarola is the easiest and is known as the "Love Walk". Here's Manarola below..
....then Corniglia....
After Corniglia the hike gets a little more strenuous but you get amazing views along the trail.
next is Vernazza...
Then the trail ends in Monterosso, which is the most touristy spot of the villages so I just decided to stop in Vernazza. We spent the other days laying on the beach and relaxing. Matt started feeling better just in time for our train to Florence, which I will post about tomorrow.
Hope you all are doing well, miss you all!
geez! have you had a bad meal or shady place to stay in YET? looks like the perfect vacation!
ReplyDelete