After a very rough overnight ferry trip from Croatia, we arrived safely in Italy! My Mum and her partner (Robert) are living in Florence for 4 months so Ange and I went straight there for some family TLC, a place we called home for about 2.5 weeks! The villa that they are living in is just gorgeous! A typical Tuscan farmhouse, surrounded by olive groves, with wild deer, pheasants and cinghiali (boar). They are on a hill with a beautiful view over the Southern end of Florence from the terrace. And although it is only about 7km from the centre of Florence, it is so peaceful, with the closest houses about 200 m or more away! Ange and I had our own room and our own area of the house, complete with a bathroom and a study which proved very useful as while we were there I found out that I passed my PhD! So I spent quite a few hours in the study preparing my thesis for its long distance final submission!
We spent 5 days relaxing in Florence, visiting markets, churces, cathedrals, nearby Tuscan villages and of course sampling the many culinary delights at various osterias, trattorias, ristorantes and pasticcerias! Italy is certainly a place of indulgence! Every region has its own typical dishes, that you just have to try! Torta della Nonna was one of our favourites from Florence, which is a custard and almond-type tart! Ribolita, a "re-boiled" vegetable soup was another favourite, especially when it was cold and rainy. Unfortunately we did strike some bad weather here, we even saw snow on our way to the Le Cinque Terre! Pisa was a washout, but we dealt with it by having a long lunch (so hard) followed by a fly-by visit to the leaning tower. From there we headed to Cinque Terre (this time there were 3 of us as Mum was able to come on a mini-holiday for a few days)! We stayed in Vernazza for one night, the most beautiful of the 5 fishing villages! We also stayed in Riomaggiore (the first of the 5 towns). There is a 9km walk that stretches from Riomaggiore through all of the 5 villages. Unfortunately it rained for the first 2 days so we couldn't walk the whole trail, but on our last day, the skys were blue as blue and the sun was shining so Ange and I set off on the trail and finished it in the record rime of 4 hours! We even had enough time to have lunch and take a boat back before taking our train to Lucca to meet up with Robert (and Mum who had left Cinque Terre earlier that morning). Just before we caught our train we randomly ran into Kate and Stevo (2 friends from Melbourne)! That was crazy! They'd just arrived and they were staying in Italy for a week so we organised to meet them in Venice and spend the weekend together!
Lucca was another beautiful walled Tuscan town. And it's the perfect place for sightseeing as it's so easy to go everywhere on foot. It was fantastic visiting all these places with Robert too, our own private art historian! After Lucca we all returned to Florence to recover from our holiday within our holiday (tough lives we're leading). Mum spoilt us with delicious cooking and we basically just vegged out for another 5 days with the odd trip into town to visit a museum or shop at a market! My brother joined us in Florence for the last few days of our stay so we had a great big extended family dinner! Then Nick, Ange and I headed to Venice for the weekend to meet up with Kate and Stevo! Venice is one of the most beautiful cities in the world! We all went for a gondola ride and even managed to get the gondola man to serenade us while we sipped on Italian red wine (out of gelati cups I'm afraid) and passed under the Rialto Bridge at sunset! Venice was teeming with tourists (mostly Italian ones though which was refreshing) as it was a long weekend. We got lost numerous times wandering the little side streets. A lot of laughs were had... dancing in the street with strangers, singing in piazzas, eating at probably the worst place in Venice (how on Earth does one end up at an "Italian restaurant" that is run by Asian people)? Let's just say that the kitchen consisted of 3 microwaves and Stevo couldn't work out whether his "tomato sauce" on his gnocchi was Watties or Heinz!
We returned briefly to Florence for 1 night after Venice to farewell Mum, Robert and Nick which was a bit sad. We're now flying solo for the rest of the trip! But we arrived in beautiful Rome this morning, with a whole new set of adventures ahead of us! Our hotel is just around the corner from the Colosseum which we explored this afternoon! The weather is perfect here too! We'll be in Rome for 3 more days, then we're off to Spain for 3 weeks!
