When in Rome...

When in Rome...

1. Sleep in a train station.

It happened. Our first meltdown/breaking point, kind of. But It was a horrible day that led up to it!  Because our train left Cinque Terre for Rome at 1am and we had no where to go until then, we hung out and slept in a cold train station in Cinque Terre waiting for the train.  The station was really dirty but we were so tired and cold we didn't care - we put down a sheet we brought and bundled up in just about every article of clothing we brought and tried to get comforable...to no avail. Neither of us had gotten sick on this trip until that day..a cold was brewing and my nose was running like crazy! Which made things worse.  The other crappy part was that the train left at 1am and arrived in Rome at 4am and we didn't know where we were going to go once we got into Rome!  We got in and realized The cheaper hotels were far from the train station which required walking, metro-ing, and lugging our huge bags around to get there and the first two we went to were totally booked! Our phone and ipad both had dead batteries so we couldn't even look anything up!  I don't even remember how we got in that situation haha, typically we at least book a room the night before and make sure everything is charged!  We were so tired and didn't know what to do or where to go and felt like we couldn't take another step so we dropped our bags and collapsed on a random street.  Neither of us moved for a while, totally exhausted and defeated...I'm pretty sure We looked like homeless people sprawled out on the ground, super dirty from the train station and hiking the previous day, we probably could've put a cup out and collected change.   Haha but Robby took charge and found a place, while I continued to be homeless and immobile.  My man!! So after a miserable morning on no sleep and snot faced, we got checked in late that afternoon and went straight to bed and slept for 12 straight hours.  Definitely got our money's worth from that hotel! Rome was off to a rough start but seriously after that 12 hour sleep we felt AMAZING the next day and ready to conquer!  

2. Stay in crowded hostels..

That first night we got a pretty nice hotel with a comfy bed and a private room, we deserved it! The rest of the time it was 10 bed dorm room style which is the best way to go in Italy! Not only is it waaaay cheaper (in a place like Italy costs add up quick) but it's fun and you meet people from all over! I hav no statistics to back this, but I'm pretty sure Italy is the #1 tourist country in Europe.  Tourists are everywhere and you are even charged an additional "tourist tax" each night you stay in a hotel, first time we had seen that!

Eat amazing gelato

Rome had The best gelato I have ever tasted from anywhere in Italy, the USA and even in Afghanistan!  we had gelato ATLEAST once a day...maybe even twice...or three times..

3. See the Collusium (My FAVORITE!!)

The collusium is incredible.  I loved being inside of it and imagining what went on 1500 years ago.  I learned so much just walking through it and reading signs.  I knew that gladiators fought there and that they made spectacles of killling prisoners, but there's a lot I didn't know.  They have huge underground passageways where the gladiators got ready, practiced, etc and they also had full on sets down there that were brought on stage as well as animals wandering that were going to be used in the show.  Some of the entertainment included Greek and roman plays where they had the prisoner they wanted to kill play the main character in one of the tragic plays who dies in the story.  That way the play totally took on reality when the character was actually killed on stage as part of the play.  How crazy is that?!?! Another form of entertainment was setting up the stage to look like the wilderness and having a "hunter" come in on one side and have animals on stage on the other and have the audience watch as the hunter hunts his prey.  I guess the sets for the plays and the hunts were very elaborate....seems so crazy to me!!! Everyone went to the Collusium, rich, poor, old and young!  The entertainment was free because they wanted everyone off the streets for a while, helped reduce crime.  Ironic that watching people die was a way to reduce street crime. 

There's No floor so you can see the tunnels!

I got in trouble for this one.

4. Make your own pasta 

Like I mentioned in the Florence post, most the pasta we bought was sub-par and overpriced. So we stopped buying it.  At any hostel that had a kitchen we would make our own pasta dinner! This was the best thing ever because the pasta you can buy in stores is cheap and they have some amazing sauces! Pair that with some fresh bread and arrividerche!! (still don't know what that Italian word means but we used it for everything, it's fun to say) Somehow our homemade pasta was way better than anything we bought...maybe we are just dang good chefs and didn't even know it til now.

5. Walk til you feel like crawling...everyday...And soak up the history! 

They say if you're not careful, Rome will eat you alive.  We experienced some of that the first day there. But every other day after that was full of adventure, sightseeing, and learning.  This history is incredible and it's amazing to see buildings dating from the first century!  So much to see which is amazing, and exhausting!  By the end of everyday we were so worn out, our feet hurt, and our brains fried.  But we LOVED that about italy.  Not a dull moment and when you do finally go to bed you sleep better than ever!

Tired feet...Robby's shoes are falling apart!

6. See Saint Peters Bascillica and climb to the top of the dome for an amazing view of Rome!

This is the church honoring st. Peter and it is said that it is built on the location where he was crucified upside down and also that his remains are under the church.  The church was beautiful and you can climb to the top of the dome of it to get an amazing view of all of Rome!  Super cool 

View from The top!

7. Hang out in the Sistine Chapel with the Pope. 

This is the Popes personal chapel.  Unfortunately we didn't see him, But the chapel was pretty. Michealangelo painted the ceiling and a full wall of it and it is incredible!  I loved the painting he did that covers a full wall - its called the Great Judgement and it depicts Christ on judgement day with people who are being saved and some that are being cast into hell.  Apparently Michealangelo drew one of his enemies on the hell side- haha!  Really powerful and beautiful, here's what it looks like 

8. Take pictures of all the random, old Statues and monuments everywhere

A cool fountain 

At some ruins in the Forum..no pictures please!!

The Spanish Steps

9. Make a scavenger hunt for your friends who are going to be there in two weeks

We had friends coming to italy a couple weeks after us so we wrote a couple notes and hid them conspicuously in areas we knew they would go!  It would be amazing if they were still there and the first note gave them a riddle they had to solve for directions to the next one which was hidden with a sack of gold coins worth $2M!!!!! They wish...

10. Get the heck out before you spend all your money...

Now on to Greece!

The Cinque Terre - Italian For the Most Beautiful Scenery Youll EverSee but You Better Be Willing to Work For It

They say that all the best things in life are those worked hard for.  Is that how it goes? or is it the best things in life are free? now I'm not sure...but we definitely had to pay a good chunk of money to get to this side of the world and see Cinque Terre as well as pay a national park entrance fee once we were there, so not free but it was one of the best things in life!! And we had to work for it, all the amazing views that we saw had to be hiked to. And we only had one full day there...so we had to work HARD and fast.  

Cinque Terre is a beautiful chain on the Italian Riviera with 5 cute and extremely unique cities all on these huge cliffs in a row overlooking the ocean.  A big part of the charm of the cities comes from the lack of corporate development and modern settling.  The cities are all connected through either a small train, boats, or hiking walkways, no cars can fit on the roads between them. 

Our hostel was in the first of the five cities, Riomaggiore.  We stepped off the train and I was amazed at this city! Everything is an uphill climb but the colorful old buildings were so enchanting and then the fact that they overlook this awesome teal water makes it the most beautiful city setting I've ever seen.  All the buildings there are kept the way they've always been, the hostels are a little weird because due to the housing codes they can't do much renovating. So there was definitely no Internet and it was mostly like sleeping in a cave than anything.  

Street outside our hostel

But we had a kitchen so we could make a home cooked meal the first night we got in!  We bought pasta and the BEST hot chocolate mix in the world that we haven't been able to find since! It's seriously thick like pudding and the chocolate is the perfection of European chocolate standards.  Good thing we stocked up on 6 boxes! We made room for it in our bags by throwing away stuff that wasn't as important like all our pants, toothbrushes and underwear. (random thing too, the only other guy in our hostel turned out to be from Costa Mesa and lived about one mile from the house I lived for the last 3 years before we got married- the world just keeps getting smaller)

Who wants somma dis?!

The next day we wanted to do the full tour, hike from City #1 Riomaggiore through all the cities to the last City #5 Monterosso.  The whole thing is supposed to take around six hours if you're just going from one part to another but considering how much we love to stop and take pictures and how many breaks robby needs to catch his breath (jkkkk) we knew it would take much longer!!

The first part of the hike is called "Lovers Walk" and it's across this stretch completely on the edge of the terrace right by the water starting in Riomaggiore and takes you the next city.  At the end there's a bridge that has a ton of locks on it because, like the bridge we found in Slovenia, it's a tradition to put a lock on it and throw away the key so your love lasts forever!  Robby did this walk a few years back with one of his guy friends, not the lock part...i dont think... But he always told me how romantic it was with Jonah then but he was excited to come back one day with his wife.  That's ME!! So we brought a lock and carved our initials in it and were excited to put it on the bridge!

Well we got denied.  Sadly a couple years ago there were some landslides that ruined part of the area and even killed a few people.  Lovers Walk was completely closed off and so were the entire trails from city #1 to #3.  We were so bummed! We did still put our lock on this gate in front of Lovers Walk that everyone else started a trend of doing so we still got to put our love on lock down. Whewww now we can rest easy.

   

Since the trails were closed we had to take the train to city #3 (Corniglia).  You would think less hiking would be a blessing but really the only way to get the awesome views was to do the hikes! Going the train route you definitely couldn't see as much.  So since we couldn't snap the best shots of the first couple cities here are some beautiful ones that others have gotten that we stole and will pretend that we took them and in 20 years we will probably forget that we stole them And really believe that they are our memories.

City 1 - Riomaggiore.  This is the city we stayed in.  The colors!

City #2- Mannerola.  This is the city you'd stumble upon after strolling Lovers Walk.

City #3 Corniglia.  This is where our adventure began and this shot was actually taken by us.  As we hiked toward city 4, Vernazza, we could look back and get some good shots of it! The hikes through the first two cities are actually pretty easy so we started the hiking just as it got a little tough.

More from the hike...the water is sooo pretty!!

Lots of hilly areas but each time you turned a corner and saw a new incredible view it was always worth it! We made it to city #4, Vernazza, which is my favorite! Maybe I'm bias since it's the one we explored the most but check this out!!

The view as you are entering the city from one side

The view from the other side of Vernazza as you're walking to Monterosso! Sooo amazing!!

It was around 2pm by the time we got to Vernazza and once there we walked around the city, got some pizza lunch and strolled!  

We left plenty of time before sunset for the biggest hike to city #5, Monterosso...or so we thought...

Apparently the hike to Monterosso is supposed to take around 2 hours...if you take the shorter coastal route.  However, unbenounced to us there is another, much longer route that basically takes you up to the top of a mountain, then around and down...for a total of about five hours.  Well somehow we got on this trail! And after 1.5 hours of our calves burning excruciatingly from An extremely steep uphill climb that not even "Calf Ripper X" could prepare you for (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB0GO7Md0eM&feature=youtube_gdata_player)!  we finally saw a sign that made us realize that if we continued on this path it would be another four hours before we reached the fifth city and well after sunset!

So we had to turn around.  I wanted to cry but there was no way either of us was going to continue on what felt like 90 degree climb for any longer only to miss the cool views during the day!  The best we could do now was go back down, find the coastal route and walk as much as we could to see as many views as possible and then catch the train back to the first city.  The other catch was that we had to be back to the first city by 7pm to get our bags because the baggage storage place closed. We had stored them there because we checked out of our hostel and were catching the Midnight train to Rome!  

So we back tracked and then found the coastal route and walked that as far as we could before needing to turn back for our train.  We weren't able to get a great view of Monterosso, the last city, (this is the best I got, still so far away!)

We got some rad shots of Vernazza as we were walking away from it towards Monterosso though. These were some of my favorite view points so I'm sooo glad we finally found our way...

Vernazza behind us!

Yeah I put this picture in again, it's one of my favorites of the whole trip!

Next time we won't be so ambitious and go off without asking for directions although so many times that makes for an even better adventure!! Just not this time...

I loved loved loved Cinque Terre, i think it has been the most beautiful stop on our trip for me because it has amazing natural beauty coupled with some charming architecture which is my favorite mix! The Time crunch, the closures, and the hansel and Gretel stint totally gave me plenty of reasons to come back there! so please invite us if you ever decide to go! 

Italy Is Not for the Weary

I don't even know how to write about Italy.  If I write about all of it we will have a blog the same length as the Gone With the Wind screenplay.  And I can only think of one person who would want to read that, and that's my sister, Anna.

Our first stop was Venice.  Shosh was heading to France so this is where we parted ways.  We were sad to say bye to her and the van, it had been really fun hanging out with her!  But it was time to get romantic, one on one in Venice.  Because that's what you do there!!  And let me tell you, nothing says romance like taking a bus outside the city and staying in half of a small trailer on two separate cots on a campsite.  Hahaha really that's where we stayed our night in Venice and let me tell you...it was awesome!  But before we hit the campsite we wanted to explore Venice- duh! We had our giant backpacks on our backs so we had to pay some super rude train attendant to watch them for the day.  Seriously he was ridiculous, it made me so mad!  I was looking forward to going back to get our bags because I wanted to say something to him haha which I did. You know, in McIntire fashion.  The funny thing is that he spoke little English but he knew enough to be really rude to us.  So after we got our bags I said something to him...calling him something in English that I won't repeat...nothing thaaat bad but it was hilarious because I don't think he knew what it meant and it was the first time he smiled at us and just looked at me and said thank you. I didn't know whether to feel vindicated or jipped that he didn't understand what I said.

That was the only negative part of Venice and although I heard Italians can be really rude this was the only bad encounter!  Anyway Venice is everything you imagine it would be.  So cute!!!!! We walked the cute city set on water, ate some delicious pizza and gelato and just soaked it in!  The gondola rides are almost 100 euro...no thanks ill go to the fake Venice in Las Vegas for that! But it was so mesmerizing to watch them.  We did do a boat ride at night from one side of the city to the other which was amazing, the city lights up at night and the reflection on the water is beautiful! Also at night there are a ton of little orchestras playing outside of restaurants. Although I had heard and now know that a lot of the food in Italy is overrated, we did find the best pizza we have ever had at this place called Crazy Pizza! It was delicious and we made sure we got it both days we were there!

It almost looks fake..but I promise this is real Venice not the one in Vegas!

This picture cost me a bruised knee so I had to post it! Seconds before this I ate it on the slippery steps and got a little wet all in front of people who were dining outside on a terrace haha!

The city was so cool at night but so difficult to capture on our camera..

Craaaazzyy pizza!

Best pizza ever!

Like I mentioned we stayed at a campsite just outside the city,  it had such a cool feel to it! Lots of young people and even though it was a campsite you had multiple options.  For lavish campers you could get a cabin, then they had little half trailor things that we did, and then of course tents.  This place was actually pretty popular and even a guy we met in Slovenia a couple days before said he had stayed there and loved it.  It was unique and pretty awesome in our little half trailer on the outskirts of Venice 

Home sweet home was the door on the left!

Other enticing options 

Our place even came with romantic love beads hanging from the doorway

We explored more the next day but in the late afternoon caught the train to Florence!

Florence is a rad city and the birthplace of the Renaissance era. That fact is so embraced there and you see it In everything!  I loved the vibe and the beauty there but to be honest the day and a half we spent there is a little bit of a blur.  Here are some highlights of our stay:

1.  Getting off the train and walking down the street and straight into this guy....what the?! Amazing building called The Duomo (an old, giant cathedral)

2.  The Accadamia.  This is where the beautiful David statue by Michelangelo lives.   Ive gained so much respect for this artist since visiting Italy.  He was so extremely talented!! Not only could he create these masterpiece sculptures, but he could paint too!! See Sistene Chapel in my future Rome post.  His sculpture of David is Massive and seeing how perfectly detailed it is, it's awe inspiring to think of him chiseling that out of one huge stone hundreds and hundreds of years ago.  He was super humble too, he always attributed his abilities to God and said he was only as good as God allowed him to be.  What a guy.  I thought it was funny that one of our audio tours made sure to point out that Michaelangelo was actually a very ugly man.  I guess you can't have everything?

We weren't allowed to take pics in there but Robby was sneaky and got these beauties for you

3.  The gelato!! More deliciousness!!! They had kinder gelato!! Kinder!!! Do you know what kinder chocolate is?? Oh and hazelnut and nutella gelato too of course. We couldn't stop! Remember how I brought stretchy pants?

Yeah thats hazlenut lipstick hes wearing and it looks great!

4.  The Uffizi museum.  This was a really cool museum that has some amazing pre-renaissance and Renaissance paintings from painters such as Leonardo DaVinchi, Rapheal, and some Michelangelo.  Pretty much all the ninja turtles represented! It was really cool to see the transition from pre renaissance to renaissance, going from flat paintings to paintings including depth and 3D.  One of our favorite paintings, "The Birth of Venus" was here.  No pictures allowed in the museum but here are some of the cool paintings they had there.

Birth of Venus

My favorite "La Primavera" or springtime 

5.  The incredible view of all of Florence from Michelangelo park.  Worth the hike up!

6.  The sub-par pasta.  It had to be done...I HAD to eat pasta in Italy even though I've heard it's whatever. We went to a place that had great reviews and the pasta was good...but not amazing.  I would have to say that I prefer the American rendition of Italian restaurants...Maggianos does it right!

7.  The farmers market! This thing was where locals got their produce and meats and it was incredible and was huge, rows and rows of it! I have a love for farmers markets and finding exotic fruits and this place was the jackpot!

Florence has a really cool feel to it in that it is a very artsy and beautiful city that's pretty big, but still has a small feel to it.  You can pretty much walk anywhere! I loved it and would love to go back one day when we have time...but the Cinque Terre was calling our name. 

Ta ta for now Firenze!