More Random Things...

Amy and I packed for this 16 night trip using only our backpacks (no luggage). It meant packing light and making sacrifices. The primary thing I've learned on the way is: 1) don't go easy on the number of socks (I only brought 6 pairs), because you have to double-up each day based on the amount of walking. Opportunities to wash clothes have been limited, and we are both struggling with sock recycle and stinky feet. Makes giving Amy those late night foot rubs difficult. Eww! Here's a shot of Amy and I all packed up waiting for a train. Not too shabby for a couple of American Tourists.


Speaking of light packing, let's talk about shopping. When we were originally estimating the cost of this trip, Amy said I'd spend a lot more than her because I'd be doing more shopping for souveneirs. Yeah...so that's not happening. As soon as we left Rome, Amy turned into a shopping fiend! Help! I've filled up about a shoebox worth of stuff so far, while Amy's filled up an entire dufflebag. I'm scared of what more she may accumulate over the next 3 days in Venice. Here she is in front of the numerous wine shops in Montalcino and at the famous Florence perfume store, doing her thing. I will say that she has bought hardly anything for herself, mostly things for other people. She's definitely thoughtful of those that can't be here with us.


Once we got to the hilltowns of Tuscany, the wine began to flow. Each town seems to have its own specialties. Montepulciano and Montalcino (don't check my spelling) definitely had some amazing red wines. We got to tour the wine-making cellars of a master wine maker in Montepulciano. A shot of me inside with some of the barrels and Amy with the master, Adamo (who didn't speak a word of English, but I got the feeling that he was hitting on Amy).


Unfortunately, all the wine also meant I struggled on the final walk home most nights. My dancing in the streets wasn't due to that wine buzz, it's because I had to go! To get to our B&B in Orvieto (pic below), we had to walk through an olive orchard in the dark with a flash light. Unfortunately, I had to personally baptise that orchard a couple of times. Luckily for you guys, Amy was laughing too hard and it was too dark for her to get a good pic, but she still tried. Guess I need to learn to hold my wine.


We're both very self aware that we've been pigging out on this trip with all the great food everywhere. You guys know that I can put the food away, but Amy's keeping up with me. Some nights, I've had to ask her if she wants to finish my plate for me. Here's a pic of her loading up the table and the two of us out to dinner in Florence (well, not exactly, but close enough).


While we were in Montepulciano, we went to see the local church. I can't recall the historic significance, but it was pretty amazing little place. One of the locals told us that if you stand directly under the center of the dome and clap, that you'll hear the echo of your clap as much as 18 times. We waited inside until the church was empty and then gave it a try, and the result was pretty cool, just as he had told us. Making noise in a church isn't normally appreciated, so I kept expecting a nun to run out from behind the altar and yell at us. There was also some amazing scenery around the church (representative of the views all around Tuscany on our drive).


Alright, that's all for now. We'll post some more on Venice when we have a chance. Hope all is well for everyone back in the states!

Tuscan Hill towns take 2

We are in Venice now. I got up early this morning (so unlike me) and am letting Chris sleep in while I blog. We left the Tuscany area 2 days ago but I wanted to share some fun stories about our adventures there. So, we got into Orvieto (our hill top town we stayed in for 3 days there) on this past Sunday morning. We spent the day in Orvieto, checking out the town-really pretty with a gorgeous huge church. The next day our adventure began. We picked up our rental car-a stick shift car. I had practiced driving stick about 5 times over a period of a few months (thanks to my coworker Brent for being my drivers ed teacher and letting me drive around the work premises several times in the company truck!) and thought I would be prepared. . . wrong! So, one thing I wasn't quite able to practice was driving through the sharp hills of Tuscany with tons of traffic. I was awful. My car stalled several times on the hills was tons of people right behind me, honking at me. I was horrified and about to cry and cursing ALOT! I got better as the day went by and we were able to take a day trip to Civita. Civita is about 30 min drive from Orvieto. Beautiful, tiny hilltop town, that you have to reach by an elevated bridge, this place is so serene and sweet with sweeping views of the hills around. Chris & I really loved it. For lunch in the town, I had some brushetta (it was yum) and Chris had a mixed plate of meat, pretty much each of our staples during the trip.

After Civita, I managed to drive us to the town of Bolsena on Lake Bolsena . . . without stalling the car once. The lake views were really nice and peaceful. We headed back to Orvieto afterwards. We hit some traffic on the way home & I freaked out again. I told Chris we were heading to the car rental place to return the car. I had enough. Luckily, we were able to talk the girl at the rental place to give us a car with automatic, which sounds silly to Americans, but is actually really rare in Tuscan Italy. We got a minivan!!!!!! I told Chris I was done with driving for this trip and that he would have to drive!!! So, he drove the minivan!!! It was so funny. I told him I felt like we needed like 3 kids in the back of it to get the full effect of the minivan!!! Just kidding, we're not ready for that yet!!



Anyway, the next day-Tuesday-was one of my favorite days of the trip. We drove from Orvieto to Montepulciano 1st, about a 45min drive. This is a Tuscan hilltop city famous for its Vino de Noble red wine. This is also where the Tuscan scenes were filmed for the Twilight series movie Eclipse. Chris thought that was pretty cool. We hung out in the town center and then went to sample some of the wine. It was pretty good. After Montepulciano, we drove to Montalcino, which is famous for its Brunello red wine. The drive took about 30 min and is one of the most beautiful drives in Tuscany, absolutely gorgeous views and in all directions.



We loved Montalcino because of the wine and the peacefulness there. Whereas Montepulciano was touristy and kind of crowded, Montalcino was quiet. We went to a recommended wine store there and sampled 6 wines, 3 affordable Brunello wines and 3 totally not affordable red wines. All of the wines tasted really good, but it was really cool how the expensive wines (from $100 to over $200 US dollars a bottle) were so smooth and buttery. We had sooo much fun doing this.


We are in Venice now. We got into Venice yesterday around noon. We did so much yesterday, yet we didn't even feel rushed. We did a tour of the grand canal and St. Marks Square, we went into the top of St. Marks Square Belltower (while the bell was ringing-so loud) for beautiful views of the city, toured Frari Church-a beautiful Franciscan church with a nice painting by Titian at the alter and where is he is buried. This was important to me since Titian was one of my favorite artists. Last night we were going to top our night off by relaxing in St. Marks Square but we got there and the square was flooded with water from the high tide. We heard that this could happen but is was kind of cool to experience this. People were taking their shoes off and walking around in the water. The water was up to their shins. It was cool.

Today, we are going to tour St. Marks Basilica and the Doges Palace. The Doge was the ruler of Venice back when Venice was the leading city in Europe, around 1300-1500 I think.

Hill towns of Tuscany

So we are now in Florence. Chris and I had a one day whirlwind tour of Florence yesterday, seeing the city which is the birthplace of Renaissance. Such a fascinating place. We took the train from Orvieto (our town of stay for the previous 3 nights) and got into Florence at around 10am. We checked into our hotel here and went straight to the Duomo, the main church in Florence. Its dome was modeled after the Pantheon's Dome in Rome. A beautiful church on the outside.



Next, we shopped around for souvenirs for people, mainly Italian scarves-poor Chris. At one point Chris had about 6 scarves in his hands for me. I joked that I was going to take a picture of him and put it on the blog. Next, we walked across the Ponte Vecchio, a famous bridge here.

Next, we went to the Ufizzi-an art museum with some of the best Renaissance art anywhere. We spent about an hour in there, saw some beautiful art. Chris and my favorite was the Birth of Venus, by Boticello. Next, we went into St. Croce Church, a church that is under most toursits' radar here. I am not sure why because this is the place where Michaelangelo is buried. he has a wonderful tomb, intricately carved with, fittingly, some sculptures around it. This man was extraordinary. Seeing the Sistine Chapel, his Pieta in St Peters in Rome, and David (which I will talk about in a bit) I couldn't help but think this is the person in history I would have wanted to met the most. We learned a lot about him this trip, several being that he did his work himself, instead of hiring a crew of men to help him AND that he did not make plaster versions of what he wanted to sculpture to look at while doing the actual sculpturing. He worked from his own vision and came up with it as he went . . . After St. Croce, we went to see David at the Accademia. This piece of art is the single most amazing piece EVER (in my opinion!) I left me speechless and my eyes even teared up . . . even after seeing it a few years ago. Chris too thought it was absolutely amazing. The sculpture is about 14 feet tall. It is in its own room-the rooms dome above it was designed to show this art off at its best. You just circle around it in awe of how Michaelangelo could have down it. It took him 3 years and he started at the age of 26, I believe-so young. It looks so lilfe like-his ribs, his muscles, his legs. Michaelangelo studied cadavers to understand the human body. This was actually forbidden because during that time, people thought it was messing with God too much. Leaving this beautiful piece was so hard. As we were walking away I kept looking back, wanting to get another glance and another glance. Chris pretty much had a to pry me out of the place. Last night was very relaxing, just took a stroll in the city and saw the city at night.

So, Chris has become an afficionado of gelato. He loves it and we had to capture a pic of him and one of his favorite things here


This morning we are taking a train to Venice for our last leg of the trip :( We are there 3 nights and then come back.

I will have to blog about Orvieto and our hill town experiences later. We have to catch our train soon.

Amalfi Coast - Wrapping Up

Since it's late, we have an early train out to Orvieto tomorrow, and Amy says I'm writing far too much anyway, I better wrap things up with the Amalfi Coast.

Amalfi Coast - Taxi Tour: We took an awesome personalized tour from Sorrento to Positano, Amalfi, and Rovello. All coast towns that are very close to living in paradise.

Amalfi Coast - Capri: We took a boat ride to the island of Capri, and the chair lift to the top of the island. Unlike the rest of the chubby tourists, we hiked down the mountain instead of taking the chair lift back down, which was pretty unique. Weather was nice, path wasn't too difficult, and the sights were amazing.


Amalfi Coast - Pompeii: We visited the city ruined by the nearby Mt. Vesuvius, which you could see off in the distance. Unfortunately, ran out of time and couldn't go to the top of the active valcano, but the city ruins were very impressive.


To sum things up: we saw some awesome sights, ate at some great places, and had some truly amazing experiences here. Sad to be leaving.


G'night all!

Random Things

Apologies for the tons of new posts (and the few more to go). We're about to head to Tuscany tomorrow, where we expect to have limited internet access, so I'm trying to catch up our blog up to the present while Amy is sleeping. I tend to not need as much sleep as she does.

A few random things I've learned about the Amalfi Coast:

1) The dogs are seriously like residents here. They go out in the morning and wander around the streets all day, catch scooter rides with the locals, go right in the open-door restaurants, act snobby towards the rude tourists, and then come home at night. The locals even protect them from new police that come in and try to enforce the crazy pet laws. Here is a shot of Amy with the mayors of Positano and Sorrento:


2) The legal driving age is 4.


3) The cats have no fear of heights.


4) Amalfi has a local who's career is fishing the hats of tourists out of the marina (we were eye-witnesses).


5) The men like blondes (notice the thumbs up). They all think Amy is from Holland.

Amalfi Coast - Arrival

This morning we hopped a couple of trains from Rome to our next destination, the Amalfi Coast! Which, according to Amy, has some very cool sights but is a more laid back leg of our trip, which I'm looking forward to after Rome. The trains were not as bad as expected, supposedly very bad for pick-pocketers. Not a problem at all, thanks to my awesome shoulder bag! No!!! It's not a man-purse! It's like half a backpack that goes on my back and has a single shoulder strap that goes across my body. Again...NOT a purse!

Our home base on the Amalfi Coast is in Sorrento, which supposedly is a huge tourist location for the British every year. There are a lot of them around, and they have English Pubs here to accomodate them. Our hostel here is pretty sweet. Really not a hostel at all, exactly like a hotel, nice room, our own bathroom. Good internet access here, which has allowed us to get rolling on our blogging. Unfortunately, there is a college group of kids here from UNC-Wilmington, and they have the hotel computers on lockdown 24-7. And they're partiers, in trouble with the hotel staff after the first night. Ahh...those were the days.

This first day has been very relaxed. Nice weather, nice stroll through the Lemon Grove Garden (this place is famous for the lemons), nice walk to the marina, and an excellent dinner at another of Rick Steves' recommendations Ristorante Delfino. We had calamari, sea bass, and seafood risoto, all magnificent and not too pricey. Amy finished off the night by mixing with the locals and doing some Karaoke. Awesome day!

Rome - Departure

Our last day in Rome started off with a nice surprise. We slept in and the lady that was renting us her place forgot that we booked 4 nights instead of 3 and let herself on in at about 8:30am. She got a nice surprise since I was sleeping in the nude. Just kidding...or am I? *looks around innocently*

Being that Rome was so exhausting, we decided to take it easy on this final day. So we layed off the heavy walking and took some cabs around to a few of the smaller sights we hadn't seen yet. Amy wanted to do the quick Dolce Vita stroll in the morning, which takes you through the shopping areas. She really wanted to see the Rome "mall" and go to Zara, which seemed to be just another store to me, but she loved it. She didn't buy anything though (let's hope this pattern holds true for the future!).

Went to St. Peter in Chains, which holds a Michaelangelo statue and the chains that supposedly held St. Peter before he was crucified. Then got to see Villa Borghese, which Amy talked about below. Basically a two level mansion with a freakin TON of art. Amazing that it was all privately owned for such a long period. One level held paintings (blah...), while the other held sculptures, which were very cool (quite a few of Bernini's famous ones). Couldn't get any pics though, no cameras aloud. Amy does love this place. Awesome to see her so excited as we walked around.

So reading through this blog, I'm sure you've been asking yourself one question...what about the food??? Up until this point, we've been eating at typical local restaurants, trying to find hole-in-the-wall places here and there, eating pretty inexpensively (normally a pasta and glass of wine). All very decent food, but I'd say nothing spectacular. We finally broke that trend and decided to go to Rick Steves' top recommended restaurant in Rome, Ristorante il Gabriello! We didn't have a reservation, but figured we'd try to just show up and get a table, and we did! The food was incredible. Definitely a great final meal in Rome.

Pics above of Amy in the Roman shopping mall and outside of Villa Borghese.