Days 28-29: The Five Seaside Towns of Cinque Terre

After leaving Florence, we made a pit stop in Pisa to see the famous leaning tower.  This tourist trap is one that I didn’t mind seeing since I had never been to Pisa before.  We left the station and walked across the whole town to get to it, following the masses on the way to the landmark.  When we arrived I was surprised to find that it was actually very beautiful and interesting.  We did the usual tourist thing, pretend to be holding the tower up, and then headed back to the train station.  The stop in Pisa really doesn’t need to be long at all.  Just enough time to see the tower, and maybe go to the top if you want to wait in line.

We made our way to La Spezia after Pisa and settled into our bed and breakfast after waiting for an hour for them to let us in.  I guess they forgot what time we were arriving!  We headed out to try and find a place to eat some food, however the seafood restaurant that was recommended to us was closed by the time we got there so we had to settle on another.  Luckily we found a keeper and Ally couldn’t stop raving about the lobster ravioli we had.

The next morning we headed to the train station to buy our Cinque Terre card (8.50 euros) which would give us access to the trails that tie the five towns together, as well as the trails.  We got off the train in Riomaggiore, the first of the five towns, and began our hike from its seaside location. According to the pamplet, it takes approximately five hours to complete the entire hike that spans nine kilometers (about 4 miles).  

The first section of the hike, and the easiest, is the Via Dell’Amore or the “path of love”.  It is marked by a gate with a heart on it and all along the slate paved seaside path are locks brought from all around the world and chained to the sides of the path.  This 20 minute walk is very easy and scenic as you snake your way along the coast until you get to Manarola.

We decided to look through the town first, said to be the least changed of the five towns since tourists began showing up.  The pasta shops were our favorite, filled with homemade pastas, sauces, and other foods we almost had a hard time leaving.  The next walk from Manarola to Corneglia was also easy, however it ended with a walk up 368 stairs to the only one of the five towns that isn’t on the water.  We took a short break before decided to venture out to complete the first hard stretch of the hike that was to take an hour and fifteen minutes to Vernazza.  

Said to be the most beautiful of the five towns, Vernazza sure was difficult to reach.  We could have taken the easy route and gone five minutes by train, but we were feeling adventurous and wanted to walk the entire trail.  At first the walk didn’t seem too bad, until we reached the first steep climb.  It seemed to go on forever, uphill, downhill, uphill, uphill some more, oh wait even more uphill (isn’t Vernazza supposed to be on the water?) The walk, while tiring, was worth every second and every drop of sweat (or bucket) when we reached got a glimpse of seaside Vernazza.

We decided that we earned our lunch and luckily found a restaurant right before it closed its kitchen.  After replenishing, we contemplated taking the easy way out and taking a train to the final city, Monterosso, however we decided that we had come too far to quit early and began our trip down the two hour trail.  The final leg of the hike spanned three kilometers (about a mile and a third) which was shorter than the walk to Vernazza, but took almost an hour longer to complete.  As you could imagine, this hike consisted of climbs and made its way around cliffs and the trail was only wide enough for one person for much of the way.  We walked up the terraced hillside past olive orchards and we thought we made a mistake venturing out on the last trail until we reached the peak.  The view was almost as amazing as the feeling of being able to finally walk downhill!  We felt like we caught a second wind when we first caught a glimpse of Monterosso.

We decided that our prize for walking the entire trail was going to be a dip in the Mediterranean on the only sandy beach of the five cities.  The water was perfect and cooling after walking the entire day in the heat and we took our time floating around until catching a late train back to La Spezia.  We cooked up some Trofi, the specialty pasta of the region, that we bought in Monterosso along with some red pesto for dinner and relaxed on our balcony before going to sleep to catch our 6:40 a.m. train to Marseille.

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Days 26-27: Camping Out in Florence

Who turned up the heat??? So far Ally and I agree that Italy has been the most beautiful, and painful country we have been in.  The temperature hasn’t been the only bad part, although it has been in the high 80’s to 90’s, its the humidity.  And for whoever thinks we should be used to it after spending four years in Georgia, you never get used to humidity.

When we arrived we took a 15 minute bus ride up to Piazza Michelangelo where we arrived at our hostel for the next two days.  However, hostel is a broad term in this case as it was a camp site with a private two person tent.  Now, we weren’t exactly roughing it (there was a solid frame to the tent and it was more like a little outdoor hostel room) but it was probably as close as you can get to camping before whipping out your canteen and singing songs around the campfire.  The part that made it miserable was the heat.  We couldn’t escape it and it was hotter and muggier inside of our tent so we had to take turns standing outside where there was at least a little breeze.

After relaxing the first night we decided to go into the town and explore a little.  The walk down to the city center from the hostel was a very scenic and easy 15 minute downhill trek.  We first walked past the Piazza Michelangelo where you get a perfect panoramic view of the entire city and surrounding mountains and valleys.  It is also home to one of the three statues of David, this one a bronze replica.  The path took us down to the old wall of the city where we walked through and played “pick a road” while trying to figure out where we wanted to go first.  

We ended up going to the famous Ponte Vecchio first and did a little window shopping at all of the jewelry stores.  Next we headed to a little market where we did some shopping and picked up a few souvenirs.  After negotiating a few prices we felt that we came away with a few good gifts and thought it was time to actually do some sightseeing.  

By the time we reached the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, also known as Il Duomo, we were already drenched with sweat and had to wait in the line that stretched around the side.  Surprisingly, we didn’t have to wait that long to go inside and see the beautiful red, white and green marble cathedral.  Inside is beautiful, however the most amazing part is the dome.  It was the largest dome in the world until St. Peter’s in Rome was built and has a painting on the inside that is beautiful

After seeing Il Duomo we headed out for lunch and walked around some more of the city streets.  We passed by a few leather markets and stores before finally calling it a day because of the heat.  We recommend going to the Uffizi gallery and many of the other museums in the city, we just decided to save the entrance fee.

We met some friends back at the campsite and watched the World Cup final between Spain and Holland.  The crowd was surprisingly well balanced with people from both countries coming out in packs.  It was interesting to see just how many Spanish and Dutch people were actually in Florence.  The game was a very intense one and, for whoever watched it, showed how soccer can be an interesting and intense sport to watch even though it was scoreless for almost the entire game.  

After the game we walked back to Piazza Michelangelo to view the city at night and went back to the tent to sleep before heading off to the next city, La Spezia.

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Napoli: The Birthplace of Pizza

Instead of using our Eurail Pass for the train ride from Rome to Naples we decided we were going to buy our tickets to save a day on the pass.  We needed to save a travel day somewhere on the trip because as we realized the first day of the trip we would have used 16 days when we only were allowed 15.  Surprisingly the tickets to Naples were only 10.50 euros each (about the same as the reservation cost of our trip from Naples to Florence!)  Now that we had that speed bump out of our way we could enjoy our trip in Napoli.

When we arrived at our hostel we were very hesitant because the front door was a large wooden door that had a bunch of little buttons for the various apartments.  The door was covered in graffiti and there was a little cut out of a smaller door.  When the gate buzzed we crawled our way through the midget door with our backpacks and ascended two flights of stairs to find our accommodations for the next two nights.  We were absolutely surprised to find that the hostel was by far our best so far!  We were able to get our own private room for cheaper than some of the previous places we stayed and the room itself was larger than all the dorm style rooms we’ve been in.  The only problem was the lack of air conditioning.  We both took showers and got caught up on our blogging while we were getting ready for dinner.

The first thing, and basically the only thing, we wanted to do was eat some authentic Pizza from its birthplace.  We were recommended to visit Gino Sorbillo by both our travel guidebook and our hostel manager.  Ally will inevitably dive into that tasty adventure in her food post so I’ll leave all the juicy details to her.  I’ll just add that it was the best pizza I’ve ever tasted and one of the best bargains ever.

The next day we planned to make a trip to see the ruins of Pompeii. We slept through our alarms and ended up getting a late start to our day, which wasn’t as bad as we originally thought.  That day in Naples was a citywide strike of almost all transportation.  We walked to the metro station down the street and found that it was closed.  The station was only one stop from the central train station so we figured that it wouldn’t be that long of a walk.  We got the basic direction of the station and set off to get to the train to Pompeii.  About an hour later we finally reached the train station!  When we arrived at the station to buy our tickets, we encountered a line and the gates to go down to the platforms were all closed.  All of the trains were closed and on strike!  We had already bought our tickets (we still don’t know why he sold them to us) and we had to wait another hour to board a train after they resumed running.  Thankfully, the strike must have discouraged several hundred people from visiting the ancient ruins of Pompeii because we were shocked of how few people were actually there.

The story of Pompeii is tragic as the ancient Roman city was completely wiped out by the 79 A.D. eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.  The city was covered by several meters of ash and the buildings, artifacts, and some of the people were actually encased in the hot ashes and entombed until their discovery in the 18^th century.  It was interesting to walk through the city and see how big is actually was (walking through the entire city took over three hours).  The most interesting part for me was that some of the bodies were on display throughout the city.  People were found in the same position they were that fateful night trying to evade the destruction.  One of the bodies could even be seen with its mouth open almost screaming!  Another interesting part was a dog that was found in a hardened ash mold.

We explored the entire ancient city where mosaics and paintings could still be seen.  The vivid colors of paintings were still visible and almost all of the buildings were surprisingly well intact.  We walked to the ancient amphitheater where we were all blown away by how large it was.  We walked down a long, dark corridor that opened into the ground floor of the antiquated arena and I almost felt like I was back in time.

The trip to Pompeii was a very interesting one that I would recommend to anyone and I’m only disappointed that we did not get to go to Herculaneum, a less excavated site similar to Pompeii.  I heard that it is less touristy and has equally interesting sites.  However, due to the strike and our short amount of time we were able to have at the ruins, we had to leave that until the next trip.

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Days 22-23: All Roads Lead to Roma

The road to Rome was a long arduous one that had Ally and I leaving Slovenia at 2:30 a.m. We sat around the train station for about five hours since we couldn’t go back to the hostel.  After finding a cafe that was open 24 hours right next to the train station, we settled down and surfed the internet until the time came to catch our train.  The first leg of our trip took us back to Venice where we had a connection at 7:04 a.m.  We thought that we would be able to catch at least a little sleep on the train but for some reason the late train coming from Budapest was completely packed, even our reserved seats had two people sprawled out in them.  After kicking them out of our spot, we were quickly joined by two other passengers making sure that we had absolutely no leg room.  On top of all that, we found ourselves sitting next to the ONLY people talking during the whole trip, I could even hear them through my earplugs!  A girl in the same car as us even had a seizure/vomiting episode that scared half the train.  Needless to say, we did not get any sleep.

We got a few minutes of sleep in right at the end of the trip when we woke up at the Venezia Mestre station.  This is the second and smaller of the two Venice stations, we thought we still had to go to the main station until Ally quickly looked at our tickets, we realized we needed to exit and we jumped off the train just as the doors were closing.  With our close call out of the way we could finally relax on the next train to Rome, another four hour long journey.

We arrived at the Roma Termini station and wandered around trying to find our hostel.  When we arrived we set our bags down and headed towards the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps while our room was being prepared.  When we returned, we took a nap and decided to take it easy and make a much needed trip to the laundromat.  We bought some cheap sandwiches and wine and had a picnic on the Spanish Steps after.

The next morning we woke up and set out to explore the ancient city and the Colosseum.  We walked from our hostel in the 90 degree heat and humidity and by the time we reached the Ancient City, we were dripping wet.  We ran into a girl who was selling tickets to a Colosseum/Forum tour for only 20 euros each, which included the 12 euro entry fee and we got to skip all the lines.  We were sold.  

The Colosseum was home to many games throughout the history of Rome and was first used as a political propaganda tool.  It was built in only 8 years by slaves and was completed in 80 A.D.  Many people are familiar with the Gladiatorial Games that occured in the arena, however these were fairly rare events and many of the games consisted of animal fights.  Animals were brought from all corners of the Roman empire to battle against humans and sometimes even other animals.  There is a legend of a game where 20 African elephants fought 100 lions!

Next, we headed to the Forum which was the center of the Roman life.  All trade, politics and business was conducted at the Forum and every road from the empire lead there, hence “all roads lead to Rome.”  We re-learned the story about the brothers Romulus and Remus who were raised by a she-wolf (the symbols of Rome) and saw Palatine Hill which was the supposed place that Romulus defeated his brother to found the city of Rome.  It is also home to every single Roman emperor and is how we have the words palatial and palace today.

One of the most interesting parts of the tour was about how many of our current marriage traditions come from ancient Roman history and culture.

• After Romulus founded the city, he needed to populate it, so he threw a festival to honor Neptune and invited the men and women of the neighboring Sabine community. After the Sabines, who had never had wine before, were drunk, the Roman men captured the women and carried them inside the city walls, ready to populate the city of Rome. This is where the tradition of carrying your bride over the threshold comes from.
• In Roman tradition, shaking the hand of a woman in front of a group of people made a marriage legally binding. This is where a man asking a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage comes from.
• Before christianity and the story of Adam and Eve, men were considered to be the more evil of the sexes, so the man would stand on the left side of the altar when getting married, because “left” was associated with evil. The latin word “sinistra” means left, and it is also where the adjective sinister originated from. Christian cultures have since changed this tradition because of the association of Eve eating the forbidden fruit and becoming the evil sex.

We explored some more after the tours and crossed the Tiber river into the less touristy Trastevere neighborhood.  We stopped for a drink at a small pub that was recommended to us in our guidebook, Ma Che Siete Venuti a Fa.  Little did we know that this little pub (only 16 taps and probably 10 bar stools) was voted the number one beer bar in the world by Rate Beer.  Ally and I have actually been to the number 11 place, Trappeze Pub without even knowing it as it is in our college town of Athens.

Later that night we went out to eat for our anniversary and went to the Spanish Steps after Spain beat Germany in the World Cup semi-final.  We danced around and sang with all of the red and gold clad Spanish fans before heading back to the hostel exhausted.

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Day 18-19: The Expensive, Watery Labyrinth that is Venice

Our train to Venice left Interlaken early in the morning and took about six and a half hours after switching trains in Spiez and Milan.  When we arrived we were surprised to find that our hostel was a mere five minute walk over the Ponte degli Scalzi and down an alley.  Considering it was a scorching day out and we were sweating bullets the walk couldn’t have been any easier.  After settling in to our room (which was actually four blocks away from the main hostel) we decided to spend the rest of the day exploring the Sante Croce Sestiere region where our hostel was located.  The Absolut Venice hostel is on the complete opposite side of Venice from the famous landmark of Piazza San Marco, so we decided to leave that until the next full day.

After exploring for a while and stopping in a market to buy ingredients for dinner, we stumbled upon a little wine store that was selling wine from barrels.  We could get a liter of various types of wine from reds, whites and prosecco for as little as 2 euros.  They fill the wine into plastic water bottles which made us feel like we were drinking bootleg wine.  We decided to get a liter of prosecco to go with our dinner.

After dinner, we decided to head out and explore with the locals and catch the World Cup games.  We caught up with the hostel run pub crawl after the game and decided to join them for their trek to a beach for the late night beach party.  However, this trip turned out to be quite the adventure.  After what seemed to be a 45 minute water ferry to an island on the outskirt of the city, we walked for another 15 minutes across the island until we reached the Adriatic Sea.  After making this trip we decided it would be a waste to not go in.

The trip back was even more of an adventure as we were now soaking wet, with no towels, and it was almost three o’clock in the morning.  Our guide must have taken us the longest possible route to get home because we got off the wrong exit on the water ferry and walked almost 45 minutes through various neighborhoods and alleys of Venice.  For anyone who has never been to Venice, the city is a labyrinth that even the locals get lost in.  Ally and I felt like Hansel and Gretel, needing to leave bread crumbs to help us get back to our hostel.

Good news about traveling in Venice is that every major landmark is posted with an arrow on almost every single street corner.  You’ll never know exactly how long it will take for you to get there, but at least the locals are giving the tourists a chance by pointing them in the right direction.

The next morning we checked out of our hostel, put our bags in storage and headed out to explore the rest of the city before our 9:20 train to Slovenia.  We took the water taxi around the outside of the city to Piazza San Marco instead of walking the maze through the middle.  When we got there we decided to go up the bell tower for a panoramic view of the city that cost us 8 euros each, not exactly a cheap choice.  Afterwards we wondered the streets searching for the Rialto market and the Rialto bridge and got to do some shopping.

Then it seemed like someone turned up the heat on the oven because we began to roast.  I never thought that I would want to be out of a city so quickly.  After exploring every major site in the city, despite not being able to travel to the surrounding islands to see the glass-making, we searched desperately for something to take up some time before our train.  We went out to eat at a little restaurant that our hostel recommended.  We thought it was going to be a cute little family style place and the looks of it disappointed.  However, the small portions and fairly high prices made us second guess the advice.

We made it to the train station with plenty of time to spare for our four and a half hour journey to Ljubjana, Slovenia.

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