We’ve been in Italy now for a couple of weeks. Our time here started with four days in Cinque Terre, followed by three in Florence. We did a quick reshuffle of our itinerary to chase the sun and get out of the rain, so after that we trained to Tuscany for four days (but still managed to hit a fair amount of rain) and then three days in Rome. We’re now in Naples, where pizza was born.
There are so many fun memories to choose from. In Cinque Terre, we got the last room in town, a small attic spot that was the hotel storage area. Every day we’d come back from our afternoon adventures and something would be very different about our room. One day they added an extra double bed and two nightstands. The next day they took them all out and gave us an extra table. Another day, they left us with not even our own table and we had to use a table in a neighboring storage room to write. Our room situation was always a surprise—and we loved that quirky turn of the hotel.
In Florence, we got a lead on a good (and not overpriced) jewelry store and I became the proud new owner of a beautiful crown bracelet. It turns out that the bracelet was specially ordered last year by the author Dan Brown’s wife when they were filming Inferno in Florence. She bought some other pieces of jewelry from the shop but never came back for the bracelet she’d ordered. For me, it was love at first sight—the bracelet is now my favorite souvenier that we’ve picked up thus far.
In Rome, we attended the Pope’s weekly address and went on a guided tour of the Vatican. It was a hot day, so we had on our fair-weather finest. I was in a long sundress and sandals; Mac was in a thin short-sleeved shirt. At lunch we got sunburned; two hours into our tour we got caught in a torrential downpour as the weather made a quick change. It was raining so hard that the streets and stairways were flooding. We didn’t have an umbrella or rain coats, so we ran through the rain from building to building at the Vatican, getting completely soaked in the process. Rain was running down our faces; it looked like we’d taken a shower while fully clothed. All we could do was laugh—I think we’ll always remember that downpour.
Here are some of our favorite pics from the last couple of weeks. I’ll post more soon.
Mac enjoying wine hour in Cinque Terre
Our favorite dish from the whole trip: spaghetti carbonara from Restaurant de Eraldo in Monterosso, Italy
We loved that dish—and the restaurant—so much that we kept going back
Just one of the amazing views from hiking Cinque Terre
Some of the signs we see in Italy just make me smile …
Mac admiring the Duomo (Florence)
Nighttime in Florence
Touring the Colisseum (Rome)
Wonderful blog!! Wonderful pictures!! My son and his fiance are going to Europe, including Italy, for their honeymoon. I’m forwarding this to them. Thank you! And, keep having fun!!!
It looks like you two are enjoying your adventure to the fullest! Thanks so much for sharing!!