Florence, Pisa, Cinque Terre, & Venice

FLORENCE 6/7-6/9

Early in the morning, we took the metro to the train station in Rome. We forgot to share that the metro is really convenient and makes it easy to get around Rome! We then took the 3.5 hour train to Florence, sleeping for most of it. We arrived in Florence and headed to our Airbnb. It was a great find! It’s a cute one bedroom with a lofted kitchen and a little patio where you get a rooftop view of Florence. The owner even left us a welcome basket with cookies, pasta, pesto sauce, and water!!! We headed out quickly to check out the Medici Chapels (the accent is on the third syllable not the second!). We learned a bit about how important the Medici family was (created the first bank) and read a pamphlet on the chapels. The chapels are in the San Lorenzo Basilica. Shortly after, we headed to the Accademia Galleria. This is where Michelangelo’s David was and WOW!!! We had discussed how we aren’t that fascinated by sculptures and prefer paintings, but once we walked into the room we were mesmerized. It is so much bigger than you would think and there is so much impressive detail (like veins on the arms and hands). Photos do not do it justice! We stared at it in awe for at least 15 minutes. We also made sure to check out Michelangelo’s prisoners, as well as other famous paintings.

We then got a quick lunch (Caesar salads!!) before heading to our tour of the Uffizi gallery. As you can tell, we had to get all of the sight seeing stuff in today! The tour was great! Our tour guide, through Artviva, showed us all of the important pieces and explained them to us. Once again, Grace needed those art history notes!! The gallery is in the old offices of the Medici family (Uffizi means offices in Italian). All of the work in the museum was owned by the Medici family. We also found out that their medieval castle had a covered bridge to get to the Uffizi and then had another covered bridge (Ponte Vecchio) over the river and to their new palace. Anyway, the art! When you first enter the second floor, it's a long corridor of busts, sculptures, and portraits. We saw paintings by Michelangelo, Raphael, Boticelli, Leonard da Vinci, and others. Important paintings we saw are The Birth of Venus, The a Birth of Venus and the Primavera, The Annunciation, Doni Tondo, and The Battle of San Romano.

After our 2 hour tour of the art gallery, we rushed over to Il Duomo to climb it. Definitely recommend scheduling this in advance because you don’t have to wait in line! We climbed all 463 stairs and had a beautiful view of the dome (close up to the fresco on the top of the dome of the Last Judgment by Giorgio Vasari) and the basilica from inside, and then a beautiful view of Florence from outside. Of all the churches we have seen, the Duomo had the prettiest facade (colorful with greens and pinks), but Monreale still has the prettiest interior.  After this, we’re sure you can tell we were very tired. We headed back to the Airbnb for some R&R.

Next, we headed to dinner. We first walked over the Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge. We then got dinner at Zeb, another rec from @Maddie! We each got a two course meal (and decided it would be our graduation dinner splurge thanks @moms and dads! Lol). We ordered the pear ravioli, the pesto spaghetti, the peposa (traditional short rib dish), and the stuffed zucchini. We recommend all of them! Stuffed from dinner, we hiked up to Piazza Michelangelo with a bottle of wine for a great view of the city (thanks @Maddie for planning our trip!). It started raining a bit so we headed back down (after a pit stop under a tree for cover) to the city and hit up some bars...Americans everywhere!

Emily making rice cake with peanut butter and banana on the train. 

Pisa 6/8

After sleeping for just under 7 hours (woo!) we hustled over to the train station to do our first day trip excursion. We headed to Pisa to see the leaning tower! It is definitely leaning! And seeing the base up close, it is crazy that it is still standing. We learned that it was even constructed after they realized the tower was leaning due to one side sinking into the earth. We spent our time walking around the tower trying to get a good photo “holding up” the tower.... soooooo many people doing the exact same which was expected. You will see some of them in our photos below. 

Tuscany 6/8

After seeing the tower (we didn’t have time to go into the baptistry to hear the acoustics due to a ceremony, thanks @papanewt we tried), we headed back to Florence to make our wine Tuscany tasting. During our 5 hour tour, we were very sleepy. So while everyone was enjoying the pretty countryside during the bus ride, we were asleep. Oops! It was a very rainy visit to Tuscany but luckily we checked the weather and brought our rain jackets. We went to two vineyards Panzanello and il Molino di Grace and tried 3 types of Chianti wine from each. We got a bottle from the second vineyard! We then had some free time to walk around Greve, which was fine but it was still raining. Once we got back to Florence, we headed to our Airbnb to cook the pasta that the owner gave us. We had delicious pasta with pesto, tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese (which we bought in Greve). We enjoyed dinner over the bottle of wine with a great view of Florence from our Airbnb.

Cinque Terre 6/9

The next day, we had to wake up at 5:45 am to make it to our 7 am tour of Cinque Terre (thanks @em's mom for finding this for us). (Are you exhausted yet??) It takes about 2.5 hours to get there from Florence, so it was an early morning. As we're getting closer to the meeting point, Emily pulls out the confirmation sheet and DUN DUN DUNNNN it's for yesterday!!! *jaw drop* We couldn't believe we just did this. We head to the meeting point anyway and explain the situation. They call HQ and there's room for us!! Thank you @travel gods. After the long bus ride to La Spezzia, we took a quick train to the first town, Manarola. We had about 30 minutes here to explore. We walked along the water and saw the pretty-colored houses on the cliffs. Unfortunately the travel gods were tired of us messing up, so the weather was subpar with lots of clouds and some rain. Afterward, we took the train to Vernazza, where we spent an hour exploring. We sat on some cliffs and watched the tumultuous water almost take people out with the huge waves. We then saw groups of people take a certain path so we decided to follow. It took us to a great lookout spot with a little "castle," basically a cylinder made of rocks. Next, we went to the final town of our tour, Monterosso. We opted in for the scheduled lunch and had seafood salad, pesto pasta, fish, and tiramisu, yum! We then went and laid on the beach because the sun had finally come out. We were on the private beach and just collapsed on the sand with our day packs on. Two people came up to us and asked, "Do you guys know if you're allowed to be doing what you're doing?" Lol we said we didn't know but they hadn't said anything yet. These two ladies then laid out a towel to tan 5 feet away from us. The lifeguard came over to them and told them they couldn't do that on the private beach. But he said nothing to us! The ladies said it's probably because you're Americans (...) and we said no it's probably because we have just collapsed here and he doesn't want to deal with us and figures we won't be here long. Our journey continued with a nice ferry ride to see the 5 towns from the ocean, which was nice! We arrived in Portovenere, where there was a castle where a wedding had just occurred. We got some gelato and enjoyed the views. The tour was now over and we headed back to Florence.

VENICE 6/10-6/11

The next morning, we took the high speed train to Venice and watched the Gladiator. Once we got to Venice, we took the canal ferry to our hotel. Compared to our other modes of transportation in other cities, this was definitely the most expensive, costing us 20€ for 24 hours. A big thing to note in Venice: IT IS HOT. Definitely the hottest and sweatiness we've been. So anyway, we first went to Murano, the island off the coast known for glass blowing. We walked into stores and a factory to see how glass blowing is done. Afterward, we traveled to Burano. The ferries/boats between the islands are very very crowded. People kept cutting us in line and not listening to directions, so Emily decided to take charge. She stood by the entrance, and asked people where they were going. Burano- end of the line. Venice- go through to another area. People took her seriously and listened and even asked her questions about how long it would take. She would look at her watch and give them a time. Everyone in line for Burano actually thanked her, happy to have made it on the boat and not had to wait another 30 minutes for the next one if people had cut. We have video of this if you would like to see. Upon arriving in Burano, we looked to get lunch but couldn't help but instantly admire all of the pretty-colored houses. We preferred Burano over Murano. There were pretty side streets and great insta locations at every turn. We got salads and sandwiches for lunch and even a slushie. We soon had to leave because we couldn't handle the heat. Getting back on the boat was much easier, but it was a decently long trip back to Venice. After freshening up in our hotel, we simply walked around. We haven't done that on our trip yet!!! Just walked around with no destination. After seeing some sights (Rialto bridge, Saint Marco, bridge of sighs), we sat outside of a restaurant and each enjoyed an Aperol Spritz (everyone drinks them). We got a late dinner and walked around some more. We went to the Magnum ice cream store and got to choose the toppings and flavors of our own magnum ice cream bars! (@Maddie we really aren't reinventing the wheel here, thank you for having a blog we can follow haha.)

The next day we slept in until 9 am, having gone to bed around 11 pm. It was glorious. We felt very refreshed. We made our way to St. Mark's Square to sit out at a cafe. This is where we are finishing writing our blog. We just witnessed a feisty seagull land on someone's milkshake and spill it over! Why the seagull thought that was a good landing spot we do not know, but wow there are too many pigeons and seagulls here. For the rest of the day, we plan to walk around some more, get lunch, and get our last gelato in Italy. We have a few train rides to make our way to Nice and Monte Carlo. The train strike in France begins tomorrow, so wish us luck!

To Be Continued,
Emily & Grace