June 17: Time to move on to the next Italian City on our Itinerary (yea I know I’m a dork), Florence! We decided to get up early (about 8 o’clock ☺) because it takes a little while to get out of the floating city Venice. We took a boat bus to the parking garage outside of the city (Since there are no roads). Once we loaded the car we were off! FYI - Getting out of Venice is a little easier than getting into Venice, and nothing was as bad as getting into Florence!
We had a few directions that we could take, but decided to the follow the one that was titled “Easiest”! HA! Easy is not driving in Italy especially in the City! The directions said that we would have to drive through a pedestrian zone to get to our hotel! We had to register the car with our hotel every time we drove in or out the pedestrian zone. I think driving on walking streets made Eric a little nervous before we even got to Florence. We made it into the center of the city when we got lost… we thought that we were in the right place (pedestrian zone) and the street name matched what the directions showed, but the area didn’t seem drivable? But we all agreed that we would give it a go! Once we got on the sidewalk street thing an Italian guy came up to our window and told us that we shouldn’t be driving on this sidewalk. He said he had never seen anyone drive on this sidewalk/street! He went on and said that there was a large street in front of us with a big curb and that we should back out. At that moment a Taxi drove up behind us and eventually in front of us. He was obviously in the wrong area as well, but the look on the Italian man’s face was classic…. He swore that this was the first car he had seen drive through this area. So we considered ourselves the leader! We followed the Taxi and took the curb and got the hell out of there before the Polizia showed up! Eventually we found the correct street and pedestrian zone to drive through to the hotel. This was very stressful and made Eric and I very happy that we had train passes for the rest of our travels.
Once Denese, Eric and I got to the hotel we were ready to do a walking tour of the city (no car)! We walked down past the Dom to the Accademia. Then we walked back towards the Babtistry & Dom to the Piazza della Republica! Here is where The David once stood, and many other statues. We walked on past the Uffizi Gallery to the Ponte Vecchio. It was a great night for the walk, and we got some good sunset pics!
June 18: The city was closed down on Monday so we tried the driving thing once more and headed south of the City for Siena. Once we got out of the city on the freeway we saw on the map that we were passing the Chianti wine country area. Denese had mentioned that it would be fun to do a little wine tasting and we all agreed to get off and spend the day in the sun with the grapes! We took some local roads and found some vineyards along our way. The first winery was very cool… as was the lady working inside. She spoke pretty good English and explained many of the wines to us before we tasted. It was 4 Euro, but free if you bought a bottle of wine (some bottles were only 4 Euro). We must have tried 6-7 wines and an Ice Wine Liquor. They just keep getting better (go figure ☺) and Denese bought a couple of bottle of wine.
Then we grabbed lunch at a recommended restaurant (from the lady in the first winery). It was very good and cool to be in the middle of Tuscany eating lunch. We stopped by one more winery after lunch. This winery was very small and family owned. Here we got a bottle of wine and Denese bought a bottle of olive oil. After our wine tasting Eric drove us back to the hotel in Florence (we didn’t get lost this time). We grabbed some pizza for dinner, drank some of our wine, and played cards!
June 19: We have a busy day today… we have appointments/reservations for the two popular art galleries, the Uffizi and the Accademia. The Uffizi was first on our list and holds many very famous paintings. It is in chronological order which helped us understand the progress of artists technique. Eric read about the many paintings in our Rick Steve’s tour book. The book was very helpful since none of us were Art History experts! Then we went across the river to tour the Boboli Gardens…. It was a nice place but not worth the money. It was very very hot and we had to walk across the city to the Accademia. We stood in line even though we had reservations…. Eric took a picture of some graffiti on the wall (check out the picture). We got into the museum and saw “The David”, and other unfinished works of Michelangelo. The unfinished statues were very cool, you could see how each figure was magically emerging from the huge rock.
As if walking around all day was not enough we decided to a restaurant about 35 minutes away via walking. It was a very nice evening, but still a bit hot.. The restaurant was called Trattoria Sabatino, and the food was great & cheap! If we would have know about this place earlier (we read about it in our book) we would have eaten here every night!
June 20: HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIC! Today is Eric’s 30th Birthday! We are going to have a full day of site seeing again! We left Florence at about 11 AM. We are planning on stopping by Pisa on our way to Riomaggiore (Cinque Terre). It took longer than expected to get to Pisa due to traffic, but was more than worth it. We walked to the Leanning Tower Square. There is a large church and babtistry in the same square. We took our pictures like all the other tourist in the area. The tower has been leaning since construction started. Three architects worked on the tower and each tried to change the leaning by tilting the remaining layers. Recently they sucked a lot of earth out from the other side of the Tower and inserted tons of led to try to counter the leaning. It costs 15 Euro to go to the top (we didn’t do it).
We grabbed lunch in Pisa then started driving to The Chinque Terre! We got to Riomaggiore and got to our room! Our room was up about 79 stairs (these stairs were about 1 foot up each) they were very very very steep! Poor Eric had to carry all our bags. Denese, Eric and I went down to the small marina where Eric and I rented a double person kayak. The water was so nice and blue. We checked out a cave near by and did a little swimming off our kayak. On our way back we saw some other people cliff jumping. So, I got the urge and climbed up to jump off! It looked much higher than 30 feet once I got up there! The local boy that rented us the kayak was up there and he showed me what to do. He even counted to 3 for me…. he counted to 3 about 10 times before I actually jumped. I was shaking all over for about 15 minutes! HA! So then we went to the beach to dry off a little before we went back to our room.
Denese and I took Eric out to dinner for his Birthday. We ate by the water at a cool little bar that had amazing food. Denese and Eric had a Pesto Lasagna, later voted the best meal of the whole trip! Good timing. We went to Bar Central to have a few drinks to celebrate E’s big day! Denese had a Margarita, and E and I had beer (would stick to wine next time). We had a great night and climbed up our stairs before we went to bed.
June 21: Eric and I woke up early so that we could start hiking before the hot sun came out. It was raining very lightly when we went to Bar Central for our croissant in the morning. We went to the Train Station and bought our hiking passes with the local train pass (to get back). We set off to hike all five towns of The Cinque Terre! The total distance was about 9 km passing through Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and ending at the resort town of Monterosso Al Mare.
As we started to hike the path was stone covered and very nice. It only took 20 minutes to get to the first town of Manarola. We thought to ourselves that this was going to be a very easy hike. The path to the next town was a little harder with some slight climbs and many man made stairs at the end leading up into Corniglia. The weather continually cleared as we hiked.
Next was the town of Vernazza. This was the longest (distance) hike between towns with many stairs (very rough… not man made). E and I were tired by the time we got to Vernazza… we had taken so many stairs up and down (I could feel it in my legs). E was going strong, but I was a little tired. I think I was still sore from all the walking in Florence. E kept me going with positive motivation!
As we read about the last and most difficult path we were warned that it was dangerous and extreme in some areas. This was the only path between the two cities for years before the roads were made. The sign said that this hike should be done early in the morning or later in the afternoon when the sun was not too hot. With some doubts, we started the hike. Actually we started the climb, hundreds of stairs. When we thought we were going to get a break we climbed more stairs. Then it leveled out for a few minutes and from then on it was up and down on a very narrow path. When people would pass we would have to hug the wall unless we wanted to walk on the outside of the path that dropped down to the ocean (take a look at the pics, there was no rail). On our decent into the city of Monterosso Al Mare I herd something to my left in the vegetation. I saw a snake behind the chain-linked fence right beside me. I noticed it’s green head in the air and I started flying down the stairs towards E. A man coming up the path going the other way didn’t believe me and started making fun of how scared I was. He started poking his head into the fence and calling for the snake. They were funny, but it would not have been funny if the snake would have answered the call! Anyways we finished the hike in 4 ½ hours, but we had more stairs to get into the city and beach area. Then we had the best lunch by the water on this patio outside. Once we walked around the city we caught a train right back to Riomaggiore to meet up with Denese.
Eric passed out, and Denese and I went to the beach to read. Then we ate dinner at the little bar below our room (79 stairs down). We all got Pesto Lasagna to try to relive the previous nights dinner. This lasagna was very good but not the same as the night before when we celebrated E’s Biday! All in all we were very tired and went to bed after a game of Rummy 500!
No comments:
Post a Comment