Italia

October 2018: Current situation – we’re living in the South West of France, with an amazing family! But we’ve snuck off for a quick week-long trip to Italy…since it’s Europe and everything is literally SO close!

Our rendezvous in Italy got off to a tricky start (see my blog post about our travel day from France to Italy). But, we are now in Rome and after a full night of rejuvenating sleep, we are ready to go exploring!…

Rome has my heart. It’s the second time I’ve been here and the beautiful character of this place means I’ll be back again sometime soon! The bustle, the people, the colour, the art, and of course the food and amazing wine….I am in heaven! We only had three days in Rome, so we had to go into ‘full tourist mode’, which is something we generally like to avoid while travelling. (We usually like to spend at least 3 to 4 weeks in a country to get a real feel for it, so we are treating our one week Italian extravaganza as a ‘taste tester’ so we know what we’d like to do when we come back again.) We sped up our pace (which is generally pretty relaxed….some would call it a ‘dawdle’) and enjoyed every waking minute soaking up this incredible city.

We started every day in Italy the same way….coffee! Then proceeded to be fully fledged tourists by walking around and taking a lot of photos of the immensely detailed and awe-inspiring buildings, statues and fountains that grace so many of the ancient Roman piazzas. We even did the ‘hop-on-hop-off bus’ which, as cliche as it may seem, is a wonderful way to get your bearings in a new city and to see a lot of the main attractions quickly.

Over the next three days we ate our body weight in pizza and pasta and drank at least an Olympic sized swimming pool worth of amazing Italian red wine. It’s crazy how different the wine in Italy tastes compared to the wine we’ve been drinking in France!

We spent our time in Rome seeing the big ticket attractions (the mighty Colosseum, the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain) and also just getting lost wandering through streets, finding little restaurants to eat at and others to just sit, enjoy a wine and watch the world go by – Italian style. We also spent a day soaking up Vatican City and all of the magic that lives there! The Sistene Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica were truly breath-taking and honestly I think I appreciated it so much more this time than my previous trip in 2011. Maybe it’s something you need to soak up a few times before really grasping the intensity of such a masterpiece….or maybe it’s because I wasn’t hungover…guess I’ll just have to go back again to find out.

We caught the train to Florence, where we had a blessing in disguise with the guest house we’d booked. Turns out the room they had allocated to us had a plumbing problem, so they (in very very broken English) explained that they have another place we can stay for the night, until they fix the problem. Turns out, it was a massive apartment in the most amazing location…with a washing machine and kitchen woohooo!! Dan and I decided to share one bag for our trip to Italy, so we packed even lighter than usual….meaning we ran out of clothes pretty quick…so the washing machine was a very welcome treat!

Florence had a dream-like vibe to it. Although both Rome and Florence both felt quintessentially Italian, they also both felt very different to each other. We were a stone’s throw from the Cathedral of Florence (which I could have simply sat and stared at all day) and tucked away in a little alley. There were small shops scattered throughout the alley ways selling Italian leather goods and delicious gelato! Lucky for us, the sun was shining (even though it was October) so gelato was on the cards every day! We also ate the best cheesecake of our entire lives here in Florence….it was truly divine!

We visited the Uffizi Gallery and got our art fix for the day (I’m not even going to try and describe how incredible this place was…you’ll just have to see it for yourself). We wandered along the river admiring the orangey tones of the buildings and soaked up the view of Florence from the Piazza Michelangelo. Florence was perfect!

Next stop, Venice – or Venezia if you’re Italian. We caught the train from Florence to Venice – such a great way to get around Italy, if a little pricey! We only had one night here, but basically two full days.We both adored Venice – I think we got lucky with the weather (sunshine and mild temps) and the low tourist numbers while we were there. We had a gorgeous little room right on the Grande Canal, with a little balcony where I sat for over an hour, with a cup of tea, in the early hours of the following morning, watching the amazing floating city come to life. I even got to admire the Rialto Bridge for quite some time without the view being spoiled by a single human being! It was such a special morning.

We spent the two days exploring the city’s canals, alleys and bridges. We ate and drank like royalty and even bought a rare souvenir (a pair of murano glass scotch glasses – we ended up sending these back to Aus from France…very heavily bubble wrapped). I also spent a lot of time in the Accademia Di Belle Arti (another amazing art galllery) while Dan chose to get lost (literally) in the alleys. As we explored, we would often stop in at little bars and cafes and order the famous Aperol Spritz and we ate so many super tasty pizzas and also the Venetian specialty of spaghetti in squid ink sauce – it was so good!

We left Venice and headed back to Rome for one more night of Italian feasting before flying back to France.

Italy, we’ll be back! But for a month next time….with a car, a map and no real plan….our favourite way to travel!