May 31 – Florence
Somebody got to go shopping today!! I am in love with this place! If the flight weren’t so far, this would be the ideal girls weekend getaway. I got new shoes & a belt today. Super excited about those purchases. Hopefully more to come!

We were super busy today. We found a room at Hotel Alassandra. We quickly hit the streets to see the Duomo (climbed 412 steps to the top of the lookout) and the view was spectacular. We then moved on to a museum to see Michelangelo’s Statue of David. I know, you must be wondering….yes Steve went happily along to the church & the museum today. He did run out of gas during my shopping rampage, so I think I’ll return to the market by myself in the morning.

This is the view for our hotel window. Yep, it rings. On the hour & just because we’re lucky, on the half hour too! They say it stops from 9pm to 9am so that’s a relief.

Having wine & cheese as we figure out our dinner plans. Lovely city!

Tomorrow we take a bus to Siena & we will be renting a car. Super excited for the driving experience & sites of Tuscany!

We’ve decided to head to Florence today. Off to the train, wearing my new jeans 🙂
Now…if I can just upgrade my shoes, I’m set! Florence has a famous market, that should do!

Lucca has been beautiful. The city is surrounded buy a wall from the 14th century.

The top of the wall is a beautiful trail for running, walking. It’s quite wide & has plenty of space, probably as wide as a typical city street.

There are beautiful churches and plazas throughout.

Cinque Terra was very beautiful. We were able to get to all 5 of the towns in the region.


We quickly adjusted to the Italian way of eating! Gelato, pastries, spaghetti, lasagna, calzone, panini, seafood, tiramisu, spritz, pizza, wine, wine & more wine. We’ve been taking in more than our fair share, for sure. However, each day we’ve been hiking from town to town. The trails are very difficult, but the sites are amazing. Each is approximately 2-3 miles & the elevation change is significant. We rented a room in Vernazza from a beautiful old Italian lady that didn’t speak a stitch of English. The negotiation process & the instructions from her were quite confusing. Not sure we understood everything, but she really wanted us to make sure & turn out the lights. Our dinner the last night in Vernazza was the best we’ve experienced so far, and that is saying a lot because the food really is incredible.

Dinner is a different experience than we are used to. The restaurants are quaint little places where people gather to talk to others & enjoy good food & wine. Each evening we pick a place & are seated at a small table, very near others. Conversation is simple because you are virtually dining together since your tables are no more than 6 inches apart. It’s been a very fun experience and w e’ve met several couples from all over the world. Everyone’s been nice, other than a couple of crabby locals.

Last night we met 2 others couples while doing our laundry. Even doing laundry is a time to visit & have a drink.

They weren’t even doing laundry, just thought it would be a good place to hang out for a while. They were from Paris & Portland, very fun people. We are actually traveling to Lucca today based on the high recommendation from the French couple we met last night.

We just arrived in Lucca and found an open B&B (in the pouring rain). We’re heading out to explore the city today & move on to Florence tomorrow. Hoping the weather warms up a bit!

Bye for now!

This region is absolutely stunning. We hiked today from Monterossa to Venazza. The weather wasn’t great so we hiked in a bit of rain, but it didn’t ruin the day. I was a little whiny with my 40lb backpack, but we did quite well overall.

Thats about the dorkiest outfits I’ve seen. Craziest thing….everyone wears the same thing!

No shopping for us, as we would have it, our pathetic wardrobe is perfect for the region. All hikers look the same. However, when we leave here, we shall shop 🙂

Vernazza

Time to wake up Steve from his siesta & eat pasta or seafood.
Arrivaderci my friends!

So this is short (and cheap) since we don’t have wifi at this fancy joint tonight. Can’t complain too much as it is on the Mediterranean Sea. I’ll just tell you that today’s gelato choices were chocolate & tiramisu. Quite lovely.
Buona notte my friends!

We finished our last night in Venice with a gondola ride & pasta dinner at a local restaurant.

A perfectly romantic evening.

Steve & I were both glad we took the short route though. Riding a boat after a few hours of pub crawling makes one tired! We left & headed straight to dinner to share another bottle of wine.

So tomorrow begins the real adventure. We have no idea where we will be or what may come of the day. We believe we are heading off to the Cinque Terra region, it looks beautiful. We located the train station today so we believe we know how to get out of this place. Where we are headed is a little more vague.

Ladies…listen up!!! Anyone tries to tell you to dress for comfort while traveling in Europe is an idiot!! We will be stopping within the next two days to replace my (Steve’s too, but don’t tell him) entire wardrobe. You can pick out an underdressed American from a mile away. Don’t be that guy (or gal)!! We won’t be after I’ve displaced everything we’ve brought. Sometimes it is a little embarrassing to be such an American….

Well they love to drink wine here!! Good news for us 🙂

The beauty is hard to describe.

Days 1 & 2 in Venice can be captured with one word….LOST!  Oh my, Venice is hard to navigate. We’ve spent a significant amount of time lost. It was kind of a novelty at first, but it wears on you after many hours of wondering. Nonetheless we stop frequently to local places to have wine & appetizers. We even occasionally look at the map…not that it helps any.

The food is incredible. This is last nights dinner.
We spent last evening in a pub crawl, enjoying as many local places as we could.

Today we visited St. Marks Square & Rialto Bridge. Managed to find a SIM card in our walkabout, so that was helpful.

It’s now siesta time (Steve is actually snoring as a type).
Looking forward to another fabulous dinner tonight. May even go big with pasta!
Ciao!

Thanks to a great friend, we were able to borrow these backpacks for our adventure.

Supplies!

Wonder if I can fit everything I need for 3 weeks into one one these?…..

From the reading I’ve been doing, pickpockets can be an issue in Europe, especially Italy.  So I ordered these fancy little money belts for us.  It seems a lot like a fanny pack….Steve wasn’t really impressed 🙂

Thanks for checking out our blog!  We’ll see if I’m able to manage this to successfully share our European adventure with you!

20th Anniversary – August 1, 2012

We are celebrating our 20th anniversary with a backpacking adventure through Italy, Greece & Turkey.  We decided to embark on this adventure without any itinerary.  We have our airline tickets, but that’s pretty much it.  We will arrive in Venice, Italy on May 25th and depart from Istanbul, Turkey on June 14th.  Everything in between will be unplanned.