The rest of Italy

On our last day in Florence we went to the two famous museums, the Accademia and the Uffizi. The Accademia is where Michelangelo´s David is, and it was amazing to see. I never realized how huge the sculpture is! The rest of the works there were not that interesting though. The Uffizi is considered to be one of the best collections of Renaissance paintings in the world. And I'm sure that I would have loved it if I were a fan of Renaissance art, but I actually found it to be rather monotonous.

That night we had a great pasta dinner in a restaurant recommended by Rick Steves, the writer of our guidebook, to whom we are greatly devoted and even talk about as if he is travelling with us. For example; "Rick Steves said we should go to this museum in the morning." "I´m going to try the rice gelatto because Rick Steves recommends it." It was pretty funny because we saw about 4 other tables of Americans with a Rick Steves book in the restaurant. He never steers you wrong (unless you have the 2006 version like we did, and the gelatto shop he recommends has since closed.) But he is right about everything else, even the bus that my camera got stolen on! He said bus 64 is full of pickpockets, and I should have listened.

Anyway, the next morning we got up at 4:45 am to catch a 6:10 train to Cinque Terre in order to maximize our time there. For those of you who dont know, Cinque Terre means Five Lands in Italian, and it is basically 5 little towns on the coast of the Mediterranean connected by hiking trails, and trains for the less adventurous. By the time we got there, got our luggage stored and bought stuff for a picnic lunch it was about 11:00. Adrian, Dave and I started off the hike at the fifth town, Monterosso, because we heard that the last 2 sections are the most difficult. That proved to be very true. We started off by immediately ascending nearly 300 rough-hewn stone stairs. I was worried that the rest of the hike would be that difficult and I wouldn't make it. But fortunately there weren't too many more stairs and while it was difficult, the beautiful views definitely made it worth it. I definitely can't describe how gorgeous the Mediterranean was, I will just have to let my pictures speak for themselves (whenever I can get them posted, the internet isn't working in my apartment.)

Cinque Terre was by far my favorite place that we visited. It was so nice to be out of the city and get some exercise in a natural environment. I also loved the little town we stayed in that night. It is called Biassa, and in order to get there we had to take a bus that only came every 2 hours. The bus took us up this mountain side that was too steep to go straight up, so the road curved back and forth. We went back and forth so many times in this huge bus that felt like it was hanging off the mountain that Dave, Adrian and I were all questioning where the heck we were going. But we got safely to the top and ended up in this quiet little town where all of the locals were so friendly. We ate a little local pizza place for dinner, then went back to the hostel and basically just went to bed, since the town was dead and we were exhausted.

The next day we got up at 5:45am to get a 7:10 train to Venice. Lets just say we had some problems getting there. We nearly missed the first train, then we had to transfer 3 times, and at the last transfer we got off one stop too soon and had to run about a kilometer across a town called Prato in order to get what we thought would be our last train. But when we got to Venice the train stopped at the wrong station so we got on another train to go to the right one, which we thought we had bought our tickets for initially. Turns out we hadn't, and got fined 26€ by the conductor for what would have been about a 2€ ticket had we known to buy one. But we finally made it to Venice at about 1:00 and after checking in to the hostel we started our sightseeing.

The first thing we saw was the Doge's Palace, which is where the ruler of Venice lived, the houses of government met, and prisoners were kept. It was a really interesting place to see, especially since they had good descriptions of each of the rooms. It also contains the largest oil painting in the world. By that night our strenuous pace was catching up with us and we were pretty tired. So we just made dinner and then sat by the grand canal. The next day was our final day in Italy, and we started off by taking a "vaporetto" (water bus) to the island of Murano, where Murano glass is produced. We got to see a demonstration, then walked around and looked in all of the showrooms. When we got back to Venice we went in to St. Mark's cathedral and looked around, then we headed to the Peggy Guggenheim museum. It is her private art collection, housed in her home of 30 years. The art there was more contemporary and interesting than everything else we had seen all week, and I think everybody enjoyed it the most. That night we were all so exhausted that we didn't want to walk too far to find a restaurant for dinner. So when we got out the door of our hostel we saw a Chinese restaurant and decided to go in. Pretty poor decision I must say, since it was the worst Chinese food I have had in my life. But I guess what can you expect from Chinese food in Italy?

The next day I went to the airport and after a long day of traveling arrived back in Madrid. It was a very exhausting, but extremely memorable trip.