Italian adventure

Saying goodbye to the beer in Munich wasn’t as sad for me as it was for Dan and James as we were moving into wine country to begin our adventure in Italy through Venice, Rome, Florence, Pisa and Cinque Terre.

After the rainy Oktoberfest weekend, we were excited to travel through the Austrian Alps (where there was snow already in September) and over the border into sunny and warm Italy. I knew I was going to love this country as soon as we crossed the border, as we could see grape vines everywhere!

We arrived at our hostel in Venice and were very excited to have showers for the first time in a couple of days since Oktoberfest – it was seriously the best shower I have had in my life – as well as sleep in proper beds.

Although Dan and James were pretty tired (*cough* hungover *cough*), my constant demands for ‘wine, wine, wine!’ meant we headed out for a slice of pizza and my first glasses of house wine. I also had my first taste of pistachio gelato, which was the beginning of my once-a-day gelato habit in Italy.

Venice was one of my favourite cities on our entire European trip.  I loved the beautiful warm weather, wandering around the streets and over the bridges and canals, cruising along on the water bus and of course the food – pizza, pasta, gelato, wine and espresso. We enjoyed a couple of days of wandering the streets and soaking up the sunshine.

Bridge over the Grand Canal

Gondaliers in one of the smaller canals

The streets were tiny!

After Venice we boarded the bus again to Rome, and the three of us decided to pass the long bus ride with a bit of competition – the song game. Some of you that know us may also know this game – when a new song begins on the radio the first person to name the artist/singer gets a point. As our busabout driver was playing non-stop Triple J hottest 100 all day, it was a fierce competition. I’m sad to say that I was the loser and ended up buying Dan and James drinks in Rome, which was quite depressing considering I missed out on songs by some of my favourite artists, like Washington. We also watched the movie ‘Gladiator’ on the bus which made us excited to see the Colosseum in Rome.

The saying goes ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and you definitely can’t see all of Rome in a day. On our first day we did a ‘bad-ass’ tour through the Vatican with our Canadian guide Justin. It was fascinating to learn more about the history of the Catholic church, St Peter’s basilica and Vatican city. We explored priceless art in the Vatican museum and finished the tour wandering through the Sistine Chapel and St Peters. Another highlight of the day was visiting Justin’s favourite sandwich shop – he insisted they were the best sandwiches in Rome. We would argue we had probably the best sandwiches in the world – Panini with crushed olives, semi-sundried tomatoes, salami, olive oil, rocket, smoked cheese and chilli paste – snackdown! I also joined a massive line at the ‘best’ gelato shop and wasn’t disappointed!

Inside the Vatican museum

Dan doing a freaky levitation photo in front of St Peters

We enjoyed the Vatican tour so much that we did another tour with the same company the next day to explore ancient Rome. We learned about how Rome was founded and saw Palatine Hill, the Pantheon and the Colosseum. The Pantheon is one of the architectural marvels of the world – no one knows exactly how the Roman’s built the massive cement dome roof, or how it manages to stay up. In fact, even with today’s modern architectural and engineering expertise, it is apparently impossible to recreate.

Inside the Pantheon

I managed to 'ice' James in the middle of Rome - pretty impressive I think. Although I'm a bit worried about the inevitable retribution that will probably occur sometime...

The Trevi Fountain - legend says if you toss a coin over your shoulder you will return to Rome

We spent the next day visiting the Colosseum, Palantine Hill and the Roman forum. The Colosseum is bigger and more spectacular than you’d expect – it only took seven years to build over 1500 years ago and it is still standing. You can walk through and see underground where there used to be chambers and cages for animals and slaves. The activities the Romans used to run in the colosseum were quite brutal – criminals sentenced to death were eaten alive by lions and crocodiles in front of the crowd, gladiators used to also fight and kill criminals. It was the biggest source of entertainment for the Romans as they enjoyed free entry for an all day show.

Inside the Colosseum

Our next destination was Florence in Tuscany. On the way there we stopped at a little Tuscan village, and on our busabout guide’s recommendation, decided to try Panini con porchetta (pork sandwich). Dan and I found a little local deli and walked in to find two older men beaming at us. It was clear they couldn’t speak any English, so we ordered in Italian and watched as one of the men jumped up to make our sandwiches. We realised the other old man was just a local and a customer, and he started patting us on the back and speaking to us in rapid Italian. We started laughing and smiling, and I said ‘l’englese’ (English) to show him we couldn’t understand. Neither this or the shopkeepers laughter and ribbing about the fact we only spoke English did not deter him from chatting to us for about 10 minutes and even following us down the street when we left!

Visiting other countries does show you how much people love Australians. A lot of locals seem to assume straight away we are English, but usually when they ask us and we say ‘Australian’, they get very excited and start chatting about how much they love Australia, even when most of them have never visited. In Rome we even had a shopkeeper tell us to visit his cousin’s restaurant in Lygon Street in Melbourne!

After arriving in Florence we headed out for a night tour around the city, a leather making demonstration and a meal. We had a good night with other busabouters drinking beers and cocktails and watching people from a Contiki bus sing karaoke. For those of you who have been on a European tour, you may know there is a bit of rivalry between passengers on Contiki, Topdeck and Busabout – we busabouters think we are a bit superior as people on Contiki are usually only 18 and get wild absolutely every night (busabout is a bit more independent and chilled out). So it’s always quite fun when we arrive at a hostel and see other tour groups.

While in Florence we also enjoyed a wine tasting tour through the Chianti region, which is wine connoisseur’s heaven. I don’t really like red wine, but absolutely loved the Chianti red wines as well as other farm produce like extra virgin olive oil, bread, jams and cheeses. 

The Duomo in Florence

Beautiful vineyard in the Chianti region

We were excited to leave Florence and travel on to Pisa and Cinque Terre. We stopped for about an hour in Pisa for the obligatory photos of holding up the leaning tour. The number of tour buses that roll into Pisa every minute is crazy, and the footpaths around the leaning tour are absolutely packed.

Doing the tourist thing in Visa

We arrived in La Spezia, our gateway to Cinque Terre in the middle of the day. Cinque Terre is made up of five villages along the rocky southern Italian coastline, and is one of the most picturesque places in the world. Dan and I splashed out and had a really nice room for two nights with a balcony overlooking the ocean in Monterrosso, which is the largest of the five villages.  We spent our first afternoon on the balcony drinking a four euro bottle of wine we bought in Chianti and eating green olives and chips. After feeling a bit tipsy from the bottle of wine, we headed into the old town for dinner where I had another ¼ litre of wine and we feasted on the best meal we had in Italy – pesto pizzas, chocolate pie and espressos.

Afternoon snack on the balcony

On our second day in Cinque Terre we headed down to the beach early in the morning and hired beach chairs and umbrellas. There is a day-long walk you can do through the national park to each of the five villages, but we were more than happy to lounge in the sun all day, drink cocktails and eat focaccia and gelato! We also swam in the Mediterranean sea, which was really salty but so clear. You can see from the beautiful photos below just how clear the water was and how breathtaking Monterrosso is – I promise it is 100 times more beautiful than the photos!  

The beautiful clear Mediterranean sea in Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre was a fantastic way to end our Italian Adventure before we headed onto our last two destinations before heading back to London – Nice and Barcelona.