Florence

Florence was really impressive! We only had a day and a half day in Florence and needed about two weeks to see everything.

Just like the rest of our trip in Italy, our focus was on the food. :) The hotel recommended a restaurant for us and we ended up going there both evenings because it was so good. The front of the restaurant was like a small, old shop/grocery store and it opened up to a very large area in the back. It is amazing how many people they can pack into these restaurants in Italy. Once again, we covered our little table with plenty of plates heaping full of delicious pasta. Our favorite was rigatoni with lots of cheese and a red sauce. It seemed so simple, but was sooo delicious. I think all of the Italian food was getting the best of me though because I wasn't feeling well by the end of the trip and Michael ended up finishing most of the food.

We walked along the river after dinner on our first night in Florence. This bridge has apartments and jewelry shops built on both sides of its street. It used to be all butcher shops and produce until the King demanded that they be removed. He had to cross the bridge to get home every day so he wanted to see "pretty things" not dead animals hanging from the shops.

Since there was so much to see and we had such limited time, we decided to take a tour of the city so we at least made sure we caught a glimpse of all of the must-see things. One advantage to traveling during the off season, private tours!

One of our first stops on the tour was here to rub the nose for good luck. Munich has lions' noses to rub for good luck, I guess Florence should have good-luck-noses too.

After passing through numerous areas of the city with statues everywhere, our tour led us to the Duomo of Florence which was beyond impressive.

This postcard gives you an idea of how big the Duomo is compared to the rest of the city around. The first stone of the Duomo was laid in 1296 and was not completed until 1436. It was the 3rd cathedral built in Florence and was supposed to be the largest cathedral in the world until the plans were modified to make it smaller.

It was the first 'octagonal' dome in history to be built without a wooden supporting frame. To complete the dome the architect developed a revolutionary technique, he used interlocking bricks that supported themselves as the dome was being built. No matter where I stood, I could not get the entire cathedral in one picture!

The cathedral's facade was demolished in 1587-1588 and was bare until the 19th century. In 1864 a competition was held to design a new facade and was won by Emilio De Fabris. Work was begun in 1876 and completed in 1887. The huge bronze doors date from 1899 to 1903.

The red, white, and green marble was really beautiful.

The Dome's paintings form the widest, cyclical mural painting with sacred subjects, that is known. A surface of 4.305,56 square yards of paintings executed up to a height of 90 meters.

The mural was really beautiful and had so much detail through out.


A 24 hour clock in the Duomo

Piazza della Signoria was one of may impressive Piazzas in Florence. It really is an amazing sight to see so many statues all in one place.

More statues at Piazza della Signoria

The Rape of the Sabine statue was really cool. Rape refers to kidnapping and the statue is about the Romans stealing the women from neighboring Sabine to be their wives.

Our final stop of the tour was to see David and the rest of the Gallery of the Accademia. Before seeing David, we saw some of Michelangelo's other works. Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to build his papal tomb. Included in the monument plans were 40 marble statues. Part of the exhibit leading to David includes the four unfinished slaves meant for this papal tomb. The unfinished statues reveal eloquently Michelangelo's sculptural process: the figure would be outlined on the front of the marble block and then Michelangelo would work steadily inwards from this one side, in his own words 'liberating the figure imprisoned in the marble'. Our tour guide told us that some people believe he meant to leave them unfinished because it showed them struggling to escape.

I thought David was going to be just another thing that I would be disappointed in, but happy to say I had seen it. I was wrong. David is really impressive. Pictures do not show how big he really is. The hands and feet really had a lot of details in them. We were definitely not supposed to be taking pictures, but after seeing it and being so impressed how could you not?!? They had people standing everywhere looking out for people with cameras so I blocked their view as Michael tried to take a picture with the camera still half in his pocket.

Finally a great shot!

After that much sightseeing, it was time to fill our stomachs again! We wound our way through tiny side streets to find this gem. As you can see, they serve meat here! There were no menus. A guy that appeared to be the owner or at least the manager came up to our table and just started rattling off a bunch of food and we said, "Yes, please!". More and more plates of meat and an assortment of strange things just kept coming. They slices most of the meat on this table that was right across from us. The meat hanging from the ceiling was everywhere in the restaurant. Decorating your restaurant with your food is one interesting approach to interior design. We left the restaurant being more than full.

We headed over to the river to walk off our feast of a lunch.

The bridges and buildings formed cool reflections along the river.

Before dinner we took one last stroll through the city in the rain.

Carousel at Piazza della Repubblica

We had a great time in Florence and I would definitely be up for going back.

Pisa - ehhh not so impressed

We stopped in Pisa on our way from Cinque Terre to Florence. Seeing the leaning tower of Pisa is something we decided that we couldn't miss out on. Looking back on it, I would have rather had another day in Florence, but at least we can see we have been there!

Pisa is far from the most beautiful city in Italy and we even managed to strike out on our lunch.

It was cool to see, but I think the rest of the trip was so impressive it all just over shadowed Pisa and its leaning tower.

Michael holding up the tower...


me trying to push it over...

and if you can't push it over or hold it up, you might as well just lift it out of the ground.

After a couple hours in Pisa, we were ready to go to Florence.

Cinque Terre - Corniglia, Vernazza, Monterrosso

Day 2 in Cinque Terre was incredible. Our goal was to get to the 3 remaining villages before dark. We knew this was going to be a challenge with the amount of time the two of us like to spend taking pictures and eating!

Looking back at our village, Manarola, on our way to Croniglia

At the top of 382 steps that we climbed to get to Corniglia. Thank goodness there was delicious gelato waiting for us there.

Streets are a little small in Cinque Terre. Not too much room for anyone to have a big front yard.

Lemon trees in Corniglia

Breathtaking coastline on our way to Vernazza

Plants seem to grow well here...

More beautiful coast

After doubting ourselves a few times on which trail to take, we finally got a glimpse of Vernazza, the most unique town of all five.

Vernazza was my favorite.

Michael is cleaning up before our well deserved lunch break.

Nothing like a great Italian food and wine after a long hike.



1 Limoncello for Christa = 3 Limoncellos for Michael



Lunch, a bottle of wine, and 4 limoncellos later... we both needed to find the restroom. I apparently need to travel more because this was my first experience in a bathroom like this. Peeing in the woods would have been more comfortable.



Streets were a little wider in Vernazza and the town was a lot busier with tourists.



We had coffee down near the bay and at the far end of the town. We ate twice in this town!

As we were leaving Vernazza, we got stopped by a movie production. They were filming a scene on the trail and blocked all of hikers. Neither of us were very amused with this because it was cutting into our time to get to the last town before sunset. The wait was worth it though. This was my favorite view of Vernazza.

Ciao! Vernazza

After a long hike through the dark forest, we finally made it to Monterrosso. It was pretty all lit up at night, but that was about as good as it got. After seeing Monterrosso, Michael and I now refer to this region as Quatro Terre. The other four towns are so impressive and Monterrosso is overly touristy and not as authentic. We walked through the town and after not being impressed by the over-priced restaurants, we found the next train back to Manarola. Just to make sure we still ate in every town though, Michael bought beer from a vending machine, gross.

Once back in Manarola, we enjoyed another monumental-sized dinner of pasta, wine, multiple baskets of bread for our parmesan and olive oil.

Cinque Terre is an absolute must see for everyone. I wish we had more time here and I can't wait to go back another time to do more hiking and of course eat more!

Cinque Terre - Manarola and Riomaggiore

Day #1 in Cinque Terre

A quick summary of Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is 5 villages connected by hiking trails and railroad, but with very, very few roads. It is a part of the Cinque Terre National Park that is located on the northwestern cost of Italy between Genova and La Spezia. It has become a tourist attraction for the fantastic hiking and beautiful buildings built up along the rugged coast line. http://www.cinqueterre.com/eng/


Our train left Milan early Saturday morning for Manarola. Once in Manarola we followed the directions that the hotel gave us, "Walk through the tunnel. Turn right and we will be along the way." Exact addresses are hard to come by in these villages.

Our room had a deck that looked out over the village. I have no idea what the people on Trip Advisor were talking about when they said that the hotel owners were not nice. The lady offered us coffee while we waited for our room to be ready and her husband was very friendly as well.

Another view from our deck.

Bottle of the most delicious olive oil ever made. They definitely put something in there to make it addictive.

At lunch, Michael and I discovered we could survive only on bread, fresh parmesan and olive oil. We always needed multiple baskets of bread at our meals. Olive oil and pesto are both made in the area of Cinque Terre so we made an effort to consume as much as possible at every meal. I got a pasta and lobster dish with delicious lobster, but the pasta was even better. Who would have guessed! Michael had gnocchi with pesto and whatever else was on the two other plates that ended up on our little table. Though out the trip we had this recurring issue of no room for all of the food that we ordered to be placed on our table.

We set out on our first hike to Riomaggiore. What a beautiful path long the ocean! The walking path is the arches on the top and the railroad goes through the bottom arches in the wall.

Can you find Michael? That man climbs everywhere.

I wasn't willing to go as far.

After Michael finally rejoined me back on the trail we had only a short work to Riomaggiore. We were walking up this rather steep street and getting quite out of breath, but not as much as this guy. He has his own tactic to surviving the hike which involved the loudest breathing ever combined with a bit of whistling/wind tunnel noise we had ever heard.

After navigating our way through some narrow alleys, only large enough for one person to walk through at a time, we made our way to a small cafe for drink. Great view of the ocean.

Riomaggiore - on our way out of town

Stopped for a great view of the town as we were leaving.

We saw people swimming in the water so Michael thought he would test it out. COLD! was the only comment I received.


I found these fun purple things on the ground that looked similar prickly pears from when I grew up. We used to pull them open and there was fluffy white stuff instead. I decided it would be fun to jump on one to pop it open. Instead of fuzzy white stuff, Purple liquid shot out everywhere! Michael just shook his head and kept walking. I stayed away from the purple things after that.

We decided to continue beyond the town into the rest of the national park. The path was literally on the edge of the cliff for a portion of the walk. It then turned into the woods for awhile and we had to climb up tricky stairs that were made of logs or tree roots.

The sun began setting so we started navigating our way back to Riomaggiore in the dark.

There were not any other hikers on the trail. The only other person we saw was this fisherman that was not quite ready to call it a day yet.

By the time we finished dinner it was pitch black out so the walk back to Manarola was interesting. Isn't the city beautiful at night though?

Day #1 in Cinque Terre was complete. The next day we planned to hike to the other three towns.