Italy

If I were to write this entry in my typical blogging fashion, which is to capture all details with a charming and sarcastic wit, this would be really really long. So instead I will try to do a somewhat abbreviated recap, and post pictures, and add some extra description here and there were needed.


Justin and I just got back from Italy for 10 days.


Friday, August 17 - took a flight from GVA on FlyBaboo, a small Swiss regional airline which Justin and I now refer to as "Monkey McFurrypants Air." The plane was a 50 seat prop plane, the stewardesses served tomato focaccia, salami foccacia, and nutella foccacia, and a little Ford focus was seen next to the plane loading up the waters and unloading garbage. McFurrypants indeed. We arrived late in Florence and headed to bed.


Saturday Aug 18 - Slept late. Ran out to grab a slice of pizza (the worst pizza we had in Italy for the record) for lunch. Got some delicious gelato (1 - Straciatella, also known as chocolate chip), wandered on Ponte Vecchio. Wasted an hour in line at the Ufizzi playing 20 questions and decided to postpone. Went to the huge, windy Boboli gardens where Justin actually requested a picture with a statue there. Grabbed a glass of prosecco. Napped. Went to dinner at Trattoria Zaza!! Got gelato (2 - chocolate) but it wasn't that good so I threw it out. a horrible thing I know.


Sunday Aug 19 - Got up a little earlier. Ate paninis for lunch (cold and annoying), then went to the Duomo, inside and up the tower for fantastic views of Firenze. Headed to Ufizzi gallery. We both agreed - worst museum ever (renaissance art is not really my thing). Got a strawberry gelato (3) which was terrible and I threw it out. Stopped into Academia to see David and his fine self - truly impressive and cool. Rest of that museum is somewhat pointless. Went to dinner at La Giostra. BEST RESTAURANT EVER!!! It was sooo good. I will detail in full because it was so good. Cozy dark place with lots of photos and Christmas lights in the middle of nowhere. We walked in and sat down and immediately heard a *pop!!* and were poured glasses of champagne. After ordering, we were presented with a huge plate of completmentary appetizers which included: roasted zucchini filled with ratatouille, roasted eggplant, marinated red bell peppers, liver crostini (tasted like a taco - I did not know it was liver when I ate it), little spinach balls, cherry tomato with buffalo mozzerella and baby bruscettas. MMMMM! Justin got a spagetti like pasta with white truffle oil and mushrooms (like a super duper mac and cheese), I got ravioli filled with brie served with finely sliced, fried artichoke hearts and cherry tomatoes. Why hasn't anyone else thought of ravioli with brie before??? We split a beef filet with porcini mushrooms and asparagus parmigiana (asparagus with a big piece of melted parmigian cheese and breadcrumbs). All with a delicious chianti. Seriously, the best resaturant ever, which made up for our terrible lunch and gelato that day by far. And it was recently named "best restaurant in Tuscany."


Monday Aug 20 - Day trip to Siena. Great pizza slices for lunch sitting in the Piazza. Went to the Duomo there which was really cool. Climbed a teeny tower for excellent views of Siena. Chugged a Guinness and caught the train back to Florence. Went back to LA GIOSTRA. Again, I must detail...got the champagne and free apps treatment and got the same wine. Instead we got starters...Justin got prosciutto with mozzerella and it was the most beautiful, bountiful plate of proscuitto ever. There was not a trace of fat on any of it. I had what could be my dream appetizer - mushroom carpaccio, an entire plateful of finely sliced mushrooms, served over an entire plateful of finely sliced parmigian cheese. Oh man. Then we split a plate of grilled veggies, and he had a very mushroomy tagliatelle, while I had rigatoni that was served with a sauce that combined tomatoes with a pesto like base. So so good! After we walked around and got gelato (4 - Coco).


Tues Aug 21 - Check out and head to Cinque Terre, stopping in Pisa on the way for pizza and to see the tower. It really does lean, pretty badly. It's really funny. It was kind of rainy but no matter. 2 hour train to Cinque Terre (Monterosso). About 5 minutes out, we pulled out of a tunnel into bright light, and below suddenly I saw the huge, blue Ligurian sea, the bluest blue you could imagine, crashing against the cliffs below us. It was just stunning. We got to our hotel, walked around, had a drink at "Bar" and then found our way to a local restaurant where we had the local trofie pasta with pasta and a huge bowl of spagetti mixed with piping hot, fresh clams, mussels, squid and shrimp. Two ladies next to us asked our waiter (who constantly said "ciao" or "prego") about two wines on the menu, to which he answered, "The difference between the two is very very small, but this-a one is much more better." After went to an American bar called Fast Bar and talked with some fellow travelers.


Weds Aug 22 - Got up to a sunny day for our big hike. Train over to Riomaggiore, town #1. From there it was an easy 20 minute walk along a path to town #2, Manarola. 45 minutes later, after climbing a huge steep staircase, we were in Corniglia. After that the trails became much more difficult, narrow and rocky. 90 minutes of huffing and puffing took us to Vernazza where we stopped for a lunch and had a "pesto festo" - pesto pizza, pesto pasta and bruchetta. Cinque Terre is where pesto is from and it was delicious. After lunch we continued on another long, rocky trail all the way up and then all the way down. Finally after another 90 minutes, we arrived home in Monterosso and immediately jumped into the sea for a celebratory, refreshing swim! The day was gorgeous with huge, spectacular views, and it started raining only once we arrived home.

Thurs Aug 23 - Cloudy in the AM, took the train to Manarola to do a little shopping (local artwork) and then jumped into a big swimming "lagoon" just below town. We were the only people brave enough to swim, but the water was not very cold. We then hopped back on the train to Monterosso and had a cheap focaccia lunch. Just as we finished the sun came out and we spent the rest of the day sunbathing, swimming, reading and relaxing. On the way home we stopped in a local shop to sample a bunch of limoncello and pesto (and bought a bunch too). For dinner that night we had a pizza and wine picnic by the sea under the moonlight...que romantico. Even more, we had music...some local Italian teens blasting their winamp with a strobe light down by the harbor. Very odd but entertaining!

Fri Aug 24 - early departure from Cinque Terre at 730 am to Bologna. We walked around and ate Bolognese! Then back on the train to Venice. When I stepped out of the train station, I was in shock. The place is just like you see in the movies, and the canals to my surprise were actually fairly clean looking. Did you know Venice is actually a huge archiapelago of like 180 islands all connected by bridges? And it is also sinking. The first floor doors of a lot of houses are rotted out becuase of the rising water levels, so everyone lives on the second floors now. Anyway, Justin did an excellent job navigating us to our hotel, where we had a huge old room with a big glass chandelier - fancy! For dinner we headed to a local pizzeria and then had a few drinks on a "back street," a little canal next to our hotel.

Sat Aug 25 - We slept late and then went to St. Mark's. Justin was SO excited to see my reaction to hundreds of thouands of pigeons. And my reaction was - sheer terror and disgust. I could not believe people pay money to let pigeons land on them! Disgusting! I was constantly ducking into Justin's arm to shield myself from fly-bys. The Basilica was really cool inside and very ornate. We also went up the neighboring tower for excellent views of Venezia and the little surrounding islands. Afterwards we wandered around the streets getting lost and did a little shopping (and eating gelato #5, vanilla, the BEST vanilla ever). We found a little wine bar called "Ruga Rialto" and had several glasses of cheap, delicious wine and some cichetti (little appetizers, in our case, fried calamari). The total was only 10 euros! Then we went in search of a "gondola gondola." The first two guys we met did not want to bargain. The prosecco we had bought for the ride was getting warm, and we were beginning to despair when we found a guy near the Rialto bridge who agreed to our price. It was around 7pm so the light on the city was beautiful. Our gondolier told us a little about the city and softly sang in Italian, asking "It's romantic, yes?" It was a great way to see Venice and nice to just be together with Justin in our little boat. At night we wandered back to St. Mark's where to my relief, there were NO pigeons, and we got to see several small orchestras playing in the square, each at different restaurants. The music was beautiful, but we didn't actually sit down for drinks. The menu informed us that one glass of champagne was 29 euros plus a 4 euro coperto for the music....no grazie!!!

Sun Aug 26 - Went to the Doge palace in the morning near St Marks, which was actually one of the cooler old palaces/castles we have been to on our travels. There were some crazy prisons inside. Afterwards decided to head to Lido and see the beach. It was ridiculously hot so we immediately got gelato as soon as we arrived (I had watermelon sorbet...which counts as 6). The beach was actually really beautiful with a lot of people swimming...not sure how clean the water was really, but it looked very clean. We waded in the water for a while too to cool off. Made the mistake of coming back to Venice on the #1 Vaporetti, also known as the "slow boat" and we almost passed out from sitting in the hot sun so long (I did actually fall asleep for a while). Wandered around, made another stop at Ruga Rialto for wine, meeting a not-so-friendly black cat on the way, who later was snuggled up next to the booze bottles in the bar. We ate on the grand canal for dinner which was a gorgeous setting. The people next to us were taking photos of themselves and I, stupidly, decided to make a face in the background in one of them. I have unfortunately done this several times, mostly at bars with really really annoying people taking pictures, because you can just run off and they won't know who it was. Well obviously I wasn't thinking, because these people were right next to us and realized it was me. They started laughing and pointing, and finally Justin broke the ice by asking if I had ruined their picture, and we ended up chatting with them. We offered to take another, but they declined, saying it would be a nice memory!! That's the last time I do that. We went back to St. Marks again to listen to a little more music, and then got gelatos on the way home (Pistacchio, really good number 7!)

Mon Aug 27 - Time to leave. We just got up and dragged our suitcases over like 18 bridges until we reached the bus terminal to head to the airport. Fortunately, we were able to extend our trip a little longer by having a great Italian lunch at the Venice Marco Polo airport (which is VERY nice by the way) including gelato (chocolate with nuts beat out hazelnut...it was a close race).

So, that is pretty much our trip to Italy. Perfetto!! Magnifico!! You can check out the photos, which will probably take less time than reading this blog, here:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=5lax6oc9.3x5jx9y9&Uy=-oek8o2&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&UV=587492437627_948867815505