Italia part 1 (Cinque Terre/Venice)

I've been looking forward to the Italy portion of my trip for a handful of reasons including food, warmer weather, beautiful scenery and more food! Another huge reason is also because I'm finally meeting up with Blake. For the few of you that don't know Blake, he is one of my best friends who inspired me immensely to do this trip.

He has always wanted to do something like this and we talked about it constantly while we lived together a few years ago. He would always be randomly looking at tickets to exotic destinations and I thought he was crazy. Well that craziness is now my reality. So when he found out he would be traveling to Munich for work we decided to meet up in Frankfurt and fly to Italy to hike Cinque Terre for a few days.


It's fitting that I share a portion of this trip with Blake in one of the most stunning places in Europe. Our trip started with me yanking Blake out of his taxi as he arrived at the airport, rushing to the ticket counter to pay an extra 40€ (because we both failed to check in before-hand), and then booking it to the gate. Once in the air I finally got to say hi to Blake and then we started cracking jokes.


We were making fun of Ryan Air (our extremely budget airline) and how there were advertisements everywhere, how they sold lotto tickets, and the funny safety signs (like 'remove fake teeth in case of emergency'). We arrived in Pisa, got a bus to Lucca, stayed in Lucca one night, went purse shopping for Blake's wife the next day (hope you liked it Whitney),


then we caught a train to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is a national park which connects 5 cliffside towns by various trails which all have indescribable views. We arrived in one of the 5 beautiful towns, Vernazza, looking for lodging. We saw a sign for 'camere' (lodging) which said 'ring


bell, take two steps back and look up.' A few minutes later we had rented a small room with a queen size bed from an Italian local named Serggio...can you say honeymoon in Italy?! The next 40 hours were spent hiking while seeing dream-like scenery and eating Italian food at will.There was a picture everywhere you looked wether eating or hiking.


At one point of the hike, however, I stopped and just stood there soaking in one of the most striking scenes I had ever seen. My jaw literally dropped. I come around a bend high on the mountain and all of a sudden there are endless vineyards as far as you can see starting from the top of the mountain almost all the way down to the Ligurian Sea. The contrast in color was incredible and the vineyards seemed almost fluorescent.


To top it off, near the sea, one of the colorful towns (Manarola) was being lit up by the sun waiting for us to arrive. One of our other ongoing jokes was that the waves of people hiking through Cinque Terre (mainly Americans) had a Rick Steves travel guide. Rick Steves pretty much put this place on the map and he very much appeals to the older traveler (like lonely planet appeals to a younger generation).


For about 10 minutes, however, I had this part of the park all to myself. Call it luck, call it whatever, but it was an incredibly peaceful moment I will never forget. When I finally snapped out of it I went to look for Blake and wouldn't you know it, he was doing the same exact thing in his own spot those same 10 minutes...


Blake, thanks for making the start of Italy memorable and I'm glad we were able to laugh it up in Europe. Maybe you can find a client in Asia or Africa somewhere?


After Blake took off I had no idea where I was going to go next. I sat there on a rock by the Vernazza pier, on my birthday, knowing I could go anywhere in the world. I considered some crazy options as I continue to fiend being near some body of water but eventually I decided to skip Florence (probably a bad decision) and opted for a more logistically


conservative option...Venice! Water is what I wanted and that's what I got. The first thing I saw when I walked out of the train station was the grand canal...and a million tourists! I read that Venice is extremely confusing and maze-like and given my track record with getting lost I felt it was inevitable I would get lost. So, with my pack strapped, I just started walking aimlessly as the sun set.


After two or so hours of walking, 2 slices of pizza and gelato I figured it was time to find a place for the night. I somehow found a local who was renting out a room and took him up on it. It was humble and tiny but compared to sharing a room/bathroom in a hostel it was luxury. I also used the birthday excuse to get a further discount! I spent the following day walking all over Venice and surprisingly not getting


lost once. Just like Cinque Terre there was a picture to be taken everywhere. It was cold so the canal traffic and the canal smell, wasn't as evident as usual. There were plenty of people around however. The Venice marathon was going on and like every marathon the approach to the finish line is always a very exciting area so I hung out there for a while.


For all you runners this one looks very cool! I walked for hours, took the water taxis to different parts of the archipelago, ate gelato and just watched time go by. I also noticed how cool the gondoliers were. They acted almost like rockstars. They all sported aviator sunglasses and hung out next to their gondolas like a fighter pilot would be next to his plane.


At 80-100€ a ride I can definitely see why they strut around the canals. Although I was there by myself, I easily see why Venice is considered one of the most romantic and interesting cities in the world.