After having to cancel a trip to Europe in the summer of 2020, Toren, our friends Kaylee and Chaston, and I waited for a dip in COVID-19 and found one a few months after vaccinations rolled out! Our original plan (Dublin --> Edinburgh --> London --> Paris --> Amsterdam) didn't seem possible with anticipated COVID-19 border shutdowns, so we switched up our plans.
So, in September 2021, we went on what the locals told us was the classic American itinerary in Italy:
Rome --> Florence --> Venice
Exactly one week before leaving, Toren and I had to evacuate our home due to Hurricane Ida. We left at 9pm to drive east toward family and luckily beat the bulk of the evacuation traffic. Once it became clear our airport would still be shut down by the time we had to leave for Italy, we headed back to clean up our house, which still didn't have power, and then drove to catch what was supposed to be the second leg of our flight from Houston.
The flight was thankfully less chaotic, except that a woman had a medical emergency onboard. EMS came when we landed in ROME, but she didn't go to a hospital. We didn't see much, but it looked like she had passed out and was just drained after waking back up.
We met up with Kaylee and Chaston right outside our gate, and we walked through customs without even noticing it; with nothing to declare, we were able to just walk right out of the airport. We got a car through our AirBnb host and went for a scary ride through Rome. The streets were so small that people had to move their cafe tables out of the way of our big van.
We went to 433 for dinner and got some fantastic pasta and pizza, followed by gelato at Frigidarium. It was really good, but I made a mess that was so big that we called the Piazza di Pasqino the "Olivia gelato incident square" from then on.
We started the next day bright and early to get to Piazzo Barberini for a 9:30am free walking tour. Our tour guide, Pedro from Brazil, wanted to be Indiana Jones and showed us around for about 2 hours.
Next up was the St. Ignatio church. Pedro told us that the art was to teach people about religion even if they were illiterate. Interestingly, the church has several illusions, including a dome and some of the marble columns. They are painted because that was a lot cheaper and still looks incredible.
Outside was a sweet elephant statue that we passed by a few times every day. The elephant is the strongest animal, so it was given the responsibility to hold up the obelisk, which represents knowledge. Apparently the artist, Bernini, positioned the elephant so that its backside faced the headquarters of one of his critics, Father Paglia.
We grabbed lunch at Tonnarello. It's a super popular restaurant, but we had no problem being seated at 11:30am.
One of my absolute favorite parts of traveling is wandering into random churches, and the Santa Maria della Vittoria and the Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio (and surrounding areas) did not disappoint!
We dressed up a bit for dinner at Er Faciolaro. We had a reservation, but that didn't seem to matter! We had to wait a bit to sit, but the waiter gave us some champagne and ushered us into our seats as soon as he could with exclamations of "Brother! Sister!" We ended the evening with tiramisu and cannolis at Two Sizes.
Monday started with another trip to the Pantheon, since we couldn't go inside the day before. We went at about 9am, which worked well, as the line became massive as the day went on. It was unusual but kind of nice to see something so empty and massive.
Kaylee grabbed some gelato (her new favorite breakfast), I got a croissant, and then we headed to the Colosseum with our 10:35am Rome City Pass tickets.
 |
| This is where we really started noticing and taking advantage of the free, cool water throughout Rome. |
Next was the Free Classical Tour, starting at the Palazzo Venezia, with our tour guide Marco and just one other guest in the group. Marco walked us through the Monument of King Vittorio Emmanuele, Capitoline Hill, the Market of Trajanus, the Forum Romanum, and around the Colosseum.
We had a late lunch at Chicco di Grano and split some bruscetta and pizza.
It started getting really hot, so we ducked into the beautiful Basilica of San Clemente.
The Monti Free Walking Food Tour in the Monti district, which was the most populous district in ancient
Rome. The tour started at 4pm with Bruno, two Estonian women, and an
American couple who left after half an hour because they just wanted to
drink, not eat.
Our first stop was Forno da Milvio for pizza! Kaylee thought her pumpkin and sausage pizza was weird but good. The guys got potato pizza because, "Why wouldn't you put carbs on your carbs?" according to Chaston.
Dessert was gelato from Gelateria dell'Angeletto.
After a lovely walk, we ended our tour at the Complesso del Vittoriano at the Palazzo Venezia and walked around the Capitoline Museums.
The night ended with a walk through the Palazzo Altieri and, exhausted, went back to Two Sizes for dessert. We somehow lost our Airbnb's wine opener, so we had a little adventure buying a new one and enjoying the rest of our evening.
We got up bright and early on Tuesday to head to Vatican City!
We arrived at about 8:15am, and there were no lines. It was €8 to walk up the 500 stairs to the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, but we payed an extra €2 to take the elevator to skip the first 200 steps. Still, 300 skinny little steps in sloped hallways nearly took us out of commission for the rest of the trip! Up in the dome, we could see mosaics that you can't really see from the bottom. The views were great, but none of us were sure it was worth the effort. Chaston and I wouldn't recommend going up, Kaylee thought it was worth it, and Toren said it would only be worth it for people who are already in shape.
The inside of the basilica was beautiful and HUGE.
Kaylee in particular loved La Pietà , below on the right.
We had some time before our timed entry at the Vatican, so we stopped at Giuly's Cafe for "first breakfast" before walking through the museums for an hour and a half to get to the Sistine Chapel. None of us had any idea there was so much more to the Vatican than the chapel! We weren't allowed to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel, but honestly, it was a little underwhelming compared to the majesty of the rest of the Vatican museums.
Everything in the Vatican was so busy. Each piece of art would have been incredible alone, so it was almost overwhelming having each one right next to each other. That was Chaston's favorite thing about the Sistine Chapel, the sheer amount of artwork. Toren's favorite was The School of Athens Painting, and Kaylee loved the first Rafael room in general. My favorite was the map room with the shiny, golden artwork all along the ceiling.
The one thing that felt out of place was the contemporary art, though it was nice on its own!
We felt close to dead on the walk home, so we grabbed gelato at La Mela Stregata (The Poisoned Apple) and headed back to our AirBnb for a quick rest before heading back out to the Musei Capitolini. I was super excited to go because I have a souvenir of the Romulus and Remus wolf statue from when I visited Rome as a child.
We really wanted to see the Roman Forum, so we rushed over there as the sun started going down. The guys loved it, and Kaylee was glad we went in even though she and I had to rush through it. I'm not a huge fan of ruins, but I suppose I'm glad I didn't skip it.
We met the guys for a snack at the beautiful cafe attached to the museum, Caffe Doria. It was expensive but worth the few minutes of rest. 
Dinner followed soon after at Terra di Siena, where we enjoyed the warm night.
On Wednesday we took the 1hr 45m train from Rome to Florence aka Firenze! Our first stop was our AirBnb, which was about one story higher than we were happy to walk up every time we went home with our sore feet. The view was great, though, as it looked over the Duomo.
We then went to the Galleria dell'Accademia to make sure we were able to see the statue of David. Despite everything breathtaking we'd seen so far, David was still incredible. "Nor has there ever been seen a pose so fluent, or a gracefulness equal to this, or feet, hands, and head so well related to each other with quality, skill, and design" -Giorgio Vasari
At 3pm, we met Linda (we loved Linda!!) at the Piazza della Repubblica for our Florence Food and Wine Walking Experience. No one else signed up for our time slot, so it ended up being a private tour. We went to a bunch of different places, including Migone...
Our last stop was Gelateria delle Passera, where we got gelato and exclaimed over this cute little kitty.
Linda dropped us off at the Piazza della Repubblica as the sun went down.
We stayed in the square and had some snacks at Caffe Gilli, another famous chocolate cafe. On our way to dinner and drinks, we ducked into the Chiesa di San Salvatore in Ognissanti...
...and rounded out the day at Sesto on Arno at the Westin Excelsior.
The next morning, we started our Discovering Florence Walking Tour at the Santa Maria a Nouvella. No one else signed up for our tour slot, so it was just the four of us and our tour guide Vincenzo. The Dominican church, built in a Romantic style (which usually has only a few small windows so a person will feel judged by God) currently has only five monks remaining.
Florence has almost 200 wine windows from the 16th century when people could bring their own bottle to purchase inexpensive wine. The idea of these wine windows came from the 1300s, when smaller windows were installed to allow commerce to continue during the Black Plague. Only about a half dozen of these wine windows are still operational today.
The next stop was the Duomo, the main religious building in the city, started construction in 1296, but it wasn't complete until 150 years later.
Next, we visited the famous Uffizi Gallery! The sprawling museum houses one of the most famous collections of Renaissance art in the world.
Exhausted, we headed outside to the Fermino Bistro for the most incredible pie. So incredible that here's an extra large picture of it 😄
That led us straight to the Pitti Palace museum and Boboli Gardens.
I convinced the group to take a taxi up the hill to La Loggia at the Michelangelo Plaza. The food was okay, and the music was odd (American oldies?), but the view was lovely, even if the replica of David was under construction!
Friday morning, we took the two-hour train to Venezia, often ranked as the most beautiful city in the world!
We brought our luggage to Ai do Scaini for a spritz and some lunch before settling into our hat-themed AirBnb. And I may have gotten a little lost trying to find the AirBnb by myself...Really, all of us should have known better than to let me try to find it alone!
The Libraria Acqua Alta is bookstore that hangs over the water and has adopted a bunch of cats to keep the customers company -- what else could you want in a store??
The next stop was the Chiesa di San Zaccaria, which was initially built in the 9th century.
Then it was time for one of our most anticipated events, an Italian cooking class with the company Cesarine! We had a bit of a miscommunication regarding where to meet our Cesarina, but we were able to call to get connected. Our translator/teacher was Lin, an American who had lived in Venice for years, but our hosts were Patricia and Adriano, who we communicated with mostly through emphatic gestures and facial expressions!
They taught us to make spinach ravioli, linguini, and teramisu from scratch.Then the seven of us ate the delicious meal together on Patricia and Adriano's roof. They really wanted us to sign their guest book, which we did with the names Patricia called us: Olivia, Kaylee, and our husbands Thor and Chaise 😂
We needed to get COVID tests before our flight home, so the next morning, we found an Italian Red Cross to get them done. The wait was long, but when we got to the front of the line, our check in person was none other than...Lin, our translator/teacher from our cooking class the night before!! She recognized us as well, and we had a little chat about her various volunteer commitments. Then we got some pastries for breakfast from Majer.
Then we headed out for our last day of touristing, starting with the incredible St. Mark's Basilica, which started construction in 1063. We paid a little extra to see the Pala d'Oro inside the basilica, which was nice but probably not worth it, at least in my opinion.
We then headed next door to Doge's Palace, built in the 1300s and turned into a museum in 1923.
Doge's Palace was another BEAUTIFUL museum, and we spent a lot of time admiring the ceiling. Here, we were definitely just admiring the ceiling, not desperately taking a moment to rest our feet.
Attached to Doge's Palace is the Bridge of Sighs, so named because it was said prisoners would sigh crossing it as they got their last view of Venice before their imprisonment.
After lunch at Ristorante Beppino, we headed back to the Bridge of Sighs for a photo op.
Next to St. Mark's Basilica and Doge's Palace are the Correr Museum and the National Archaeological Museum of Venice.
We spent the rest of our whirlwind afternoon popping in and out of churches we came across, which is one of my absolute favorite parts of traveling! Apparently I didn't get the name of the first church...
...and the second was the lovely St. Maria's.
On our way to dinner, we decided to finally take a touristy, expensive, but definitely a highlight-of-the-trip gondola ride!
We had dinner at Trattoria Pizzeria da Gioia and our last night of gelato at Venchi!
Our very last day was filled with a store kitty sleeping in a shop window (definitely the trip mascot!), a sad sight of a plaza filled with litter, and lovely sunrises views, and a train ride to the airport and home.
Overall, we had an amazing trip together! And it only took me two years to write this blog post...sorry to everyone I promised it to earlier!!!
A few last words from this trip:
"Drink water, you're dehydrated"
"Don't forget to look up!"
This trip will definitely go down in the books as one of the most exhausting I've ever taken (and probably will ever take), and my Fitbit quantified it for me.
Sept. 3: 9,703 steps for Houston --> Frankfort
Sept. 4: 7,315 steps for Frankfort --> Rome
Sept. 5: 28,718 steps in Rome
Sept. 6: 25,720 steps in Rome
Sept. 7: 27,274 steps in Rome
Sept. 8: 18,988 steps for Rome --> Florence
Sept. 9: 16,746 steps in Florence
Sept. 10: 17,820 steps with Florence --> Venice
Sept. 11: 22,890 steps in Venice
Sept. 12: 8,048 steps for Venice --> Frankfort --> Houston --> New Orleans
No comments:
Post a Comment