Travels Abroad, Part 4: Italia
Most people I've talked to about... well... the world, seem to agree that Italy ranks pretty high on the Cool Place List. I'd have to agree, but not for the obvious reasons. While my experiences with the country were limited, I think I've figured out the key to finding the Italy we all dream about: avoid big cities!
Milan was depressing and so concrete. Florence was an absolute swamp of tourists. Look, I made a good one taking a puddle shot of H:
I did see the David, climbed to the top of Giotto's Campanille next to the Duomo, got a glimpse of a Tuscan countryside from the Piazza Michelangelo, and sampled real hot chocolate. But even after tromping over what felt like miles of cobblestone streets, we still couldn't find a restaurant that was not full of Americans. We weren't the only ones who suffered from the tourism either:
Instead, the Italy I recommend is a little further off the beaten path. H, who spent her semester in Cortona, an authentic hillside town an hour south of Florence, can attest to that as well. Might I suggest Cinque Terre, a cluster of five little fishing villages perched on the side of a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. You can only get to them by the laid-back Italian train system, and the best way to travel between them is to hike the footpath which connects them. I stayed in a rented room in the tiny second village, Vernazza, which looked a bit like this:
It was a most restful stop at the tail-end of a semester which saw me in a different city every weekend. The best part about Cinque Terre was that, while there were a quite a few tourists, they were almost all Italian and I didn't have to say "Basta!" to any touchy-feely men. Capped off our stay with an evening that went something like this:
Most people I've talked to about... well... the world, seem to agree that Italy ranks pretty high on the Cool Place List. I'd have to agree, but not for the obvious reasons. While my experiences with the country were limited, I think I've figured out the key to finding the Italy we all dream about: avoid big cities!
Milan was depressing and so concrete. Florence was an absolute swamp of tourists. Look, I made a good one taking a puddle shot of H:
I did see the David, climbed to the top of Giotto's Campanille next to the Duomo, got a glimpse of a Tuscan countryside from the Piazza Michelangelo, and sampled real hot chocolate. But even after tromping over what felt like miles of cobblestone streets, we still couldn't find a restaurant that was not full of Americans. We weren't the only ones who suffered from the tourism either:
Instead, the Italy I recommend is a little further off the beaten path. H, who spent her semester in Cortona, an authentic hillside town an hour south of Florence, can attest to that as well. Might I suggest Cinque Terre, a cluster of five little fishing villages perched on the side of a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. You can only get to them by the laid-back Italian train system, and the best way to travel between them is to hike the footpath which connects them. I stayed in a rented room in the tiny second village, Vernazza, which looked a bit like this:
It was a most restful stop at the tail-end of a semester which saw me in a different city every weekend. The best part about Cinque Terre was that, while there were a quite a few tourists, they were almost all Italian and I didn't have to say "Basta!" to any touchy-feely men. Capped off our stay with an evening that went something like this:
VIEW 22 of 22 COMMENTS
Vernazza looks wonderful! Did you have icecream? Italian icecream is amazing. And there are roughly a bajillion different flavours. mmm...