Posts Tagged ‘Italy’

Today we traveled to Capri via Rome and Naples. The train portions were fine, just busy and a lot of getting up and down to let people in the seats next to us. Rather uneventful. We didn’t have time for breakfast because we left Venice so early that we were literally starving when we got to Roma Termini. We had an hour before our next train left so we tried to find something to eat at the station. Both sit down restaurants were packed and the lines were long. That left only McDonalds. I know….but we had to eat something. Let me start off by saying that I truly love a well-made Big Mac. love love love. The (McDonald’s) food we had in Rome was not well-made. I’d go as far as saying if our McDonald’s tasted like the Rome McDonald’s, I’d never eat it again.

We got back on the train to Naples and arrived on time. Naples is not a clean or reasonably nice city. It looked seedy and scary and there were piles of trash all along the streets. People ignore red lights and walk where ever they want. The cab driver kept looking at me cringing in the back seat and saying “its ok, its ok, safe safe” as he weaved into oncoming traffic and aimed for pedestrians in the way. To be fair, he did give them a warning honk. I am fairly certain that for part of the ride to the harbor, we were on the wrong side of the road. The twenty five minutes we spent in Naples was more than enough. There is a HUGE castle just next to the main harbor that is quite impressive, but I can’t imagine wanting to stay around to take a tour. I know that sounds harsh, but Naples is not really tourist friendly.

We boarded the huge ferry to Capri (it held cars in the lower part) and climbed to the second level. There were about 200 seats up here. The weather was not pleasant, it was storming and the sea was choppy. The next hour was horrible. I won’t brag, but I do pretty well on boats, I like the water (just not the stinging, biting things living in the water) but this was a disaster. The boat was rocking up and down and side to side and we were having to hold on to our seats to stay in them. It felt like we were on a horse not a boat. You know it’s bad when a crew member falls down. The janitor fell over while changing the garbage bag. Now seriously, couldn’t he have chosen a better time than that to change a smelly rotting garbage can? People are rolling around in the aisle crying out for Jesus and this guy is wrestling with a damn garbage bag??? About 20 minutes into the ride, I started looking around for the bathroom, but I knew I would never make it. Eventually I calmed down enough and was only visibly nauseous (instead of visibly and audibly). Poor Jose never likes boats because he once took a school trip on a cruise during a tropical storm and spent more time in the bathroom than eating. If I had felt better, I would have taken a photo of him on this boat ride. Picture him leaning with his head pressed all the way back into the seat, sweating like a pig and crying for his mommie. Oh wait, that was me.

So after a long hour, we arrived in Capri! yip.e. I could have been in the Garden of Eden and cared less at this moment. Now I know how the Pilgrims felt when they landed at Plymouth Rock. After we were outside and sucked in huge gulps of air (and boat diesel) we started walking toward the funicolare (the tram up to Capri — no pics –sorry I was not yet together – check that link for now)

We got our tickets and waited in line for the funicolare to arrive. There was a huge white dog waiting near us. As the doors opened the dog followed Jose into the cabin and laid down underneath our seat. Cute.

Capri is lovely, but hilly. Thankfully, we didn’t have to walk too far to find our hotel. We got settled in — the room is very white and sterile, but that’s ok; the bathroom has really nice tiling.

We did not want to relive our last evening in Venice with no dinner, so we headed out right away to find somewhere to eat. We chose a restaurant based on the menu options. It was a bit fancier than we usually choose, but we weren’t sure how late the places were open. Dinner was an experience. I disliked the service — a few waiters descending on you at different times, pushing wine and food options and hovering too much. I was secretly hoping the food would not be that good. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t complain. The food was excellent! We had insalata Caprese (how could we not???) with the best tasting mozzarella! – Check out that shiny plate!

Jose had an amazing pasta with shrimp, no kidding the best tasting shrimp I have ever had. They were sweet and juicy and W.O.W. tasting.

I had ravioli with a lemon cream sauce that was delicious too. (Capri is known for their lemons – so I had to have lemon!)

We walked back through town and everything had closed for the night. It was still drizzling and cold, so we headed back to the room to update the blog and get to sleep early. Tomorrow, we are planning on going to the Blue Grotto if the weather is good, and the chairlift to Monte Solare in Anacapri.

Buona notte!

This morning we woke up to a nice breakfast in our room. At 9am there was a knock at the door and this was outside. The cappuccino and the brioche were tasty.

Today we had a dilemma because the weather was supposed to be horrendous — 35-40 degrees and raining. So we wore a few layers and decided to hit the streets — er canals. We crossed the Accademia bridge and walked to San Marco square. We were going to tour the bell tower first, but the line was already too long.

Our second stop was the Doge’s Palazzo. We tried to get reservations to the “secret itineraries” tour, but couldn’t get through on the phone due to the holiday weekend. We were interested in touring the prison in the basement more than anything else. Here the line was too long also, we decided to hop on a vaporetto to Murano to see some glass factories. The weather was perfect, sunny and no rain in sight. Thank goodness!! The boat ride was terrific and Murano was very quaint. They have a lot of glass flower sculptures all over the main road. Here are a few pictures of them:

I saw a lovely pair of ladybug dangly earrings for 19 euros, but decided against it at the last minute. I probably should have bought them! We spent about an hour walking around Murano, didn’t get to see a glass blowing demo but Jose tried his best to climb into one of the factories to see a demonstration, but I was able to drag him back down.

The weather was continuing to hold out so we wanted to get back to San Marco square asap. We hopped on another vaporetto and were back in a flash.

The line for the Doge’s Palazzo (Doge was the head of the current ruling family) tour was empty, but we were starving so we ran through a maze of streets to find a pizza shop we saw the night before. It was delizioso! We had proscuitto, funghi, and formaggio and an orange Fanta (the second best selling soda in Europe – behind Coca Cola).

We got into the palazzo and headed right for the stairs to the prison. You were asked not to take photographs inside the palazzo so we didn’t. But I really wanted too! Here’s a link to a flickr site with some *illegal* pics of the prison. The prison was very creepy, dark and cold. I can’t imagine being stuck there for the rest of my life. Apparently the prison was in use through 1930 and the doge could throw anyone in there for whatever reason for as long as he liked. yikes! Here is a picture of the “Bridge of Sighs” (take from the outside) This is the walkway to the prison, where legend says that the prisoners would take their last breaths of fresh air and sigh mightily before being taken down into the depths of the prison. *shudder*

This picture was taken through a wavy glass window looking oustide the Doge’s Palazzo.

Outside, it was a little cloudier, but we got in line for the bell tower tour. We waited for about thirty minutes. The views were incredible and we made it out of there before the ear splitting bell tolls. Here are some pics of us at the top of the tower having some fun!

**Alicia — skip this paragraph if you are reading this**
There were so many pigeons in the square and they are very friendly. Vendors sell corn (laced with bird birth control to limit the population) to feed the birds. They will land on your arms if you hold them out.

On the way back to the hotel, I was walking in front of Jose down some narrow streets. I stopped to drool over some chocolate-y pastries in a shop window. From behind me he starts saying that his head feels weird, it was getting heavy and starting to hurt. I turned around and he was not behind me anymore. I could hear him calling my name and I followed his voice into a small courtyard. This is what I saw:

Now it’s about 5pm and here is where we made the mistake of the day. Last night, we were at dinner until 8:45 and there were a lot of people still milling around places eating. So we decided to go back and defrost ourselves, take a short nap and then go to dinner. We woke up around 7ish (oops!) and realized we still had a lot to do!!! We had to visit the Rialto bridge, take the full vaporetto tour and eat dinner. So we grabbed our handy Rick Steves Italy 2007 book and took off running. It was FREEZING!!! but according to the maps, the restaurants we chose to try were close to the Rialto bridge. RIIIIGHT.

We spent over one hour walking down lonely, dark, scary streets before we found one of the restaurants.

And they were not taking any more diners. Every other place was closed. Every. Other. Place. Even the really expensive, last resort places, and the cheap, nasty fast food places. When we finally gave up on dinner, we walked over the Rialto Bridge and took some pics. Did I mention it was about 35 degrees? (see photo below –that’s me AKA Rudolph). side note: While the Rick Steves book has come in handy many times, the hand drawn maps leave a lot to be desired. Be sure to pair them with a detailed map from the city you are visiting. You’ll be thankful you did.

So moral of this story, Italy may come across like a late night kinda of place, but they all pack up and go home by 10. It was now 10:15 and we had nothing to eat for dinner. All the stores were closed, the restaurants were closed. We had two pastries left over from the day before and a half of a bottle of water. Big Spenders, I know. Funny thing is that neither of us was dying from hunger, so it wasn’t too bad. This was dinner our second night in Venice — Y.U.M.!

The night ended on a great note for Jose. We have not seen a TV since we’ve been here and Jose loves to watch late night European TV. They have the most bizarre game shows and QVC-like tv. As we were settling in to eat our dinner pastries, this is what was on TV: United States Curling!!!

Curling and pastries for dinner: he was a happy man!

Tomorrow is a travel day, we are heading back to Roma to catch a train to Napoli to catch a ferry to Capri. These are photos taken early in the morning as we left Venezia. It was sunny and gorgeous! Look at this lovely city!
Rialto Bridge at 7:30am

Enjoy!

We arrived in cold, rainy Venice (are you sensing a pattern here?) this afternoon around 3:15. It was a nice train ride; I slept through most of it. Everyone in a while I would look out the window at the lovely countryside and be lulled back to sleep. ahh peaceful! I’ll be honest, I was not too excited about coming to Venice but I thought it was one of those places everyone has to go once. Two seconds after getting out of the train station my mind was changed. I LOVE VENICE. I love the buildings, the canals, the big stone streets, the quaint bridges…all of it. I’ve already decided we’ll be living here at some point in our lives. Jose is not aware of this, but he will be once he reads this blog.

We got a bit turned around taking the wrong vaporetto. TWICE. Finally we got on the right one and it was very intense. Basically, it’s this huge water taxi that stops at various locations and lets people on and off. In our case, more people were getting on than off and we were soon very crowded…on a boat…with lots of luggage. Do you see where this is going? NO we didn’t tip over, but a few times the boatmen did have to yell to have everyone move to the left or right. I think we had almost 175 people plus crew on that boat at one time.

We got to our stop and managed to get off the boat without falling into a canal and proceeded on our way to the hotel. We had excellent directions and were there in about five minutes. We were completely spoiled by our room in Florence, but this one is much smaller. We have a crazy staircase with a rope banister that leads to a small hallway.

It’s incredible how they manage to squeeze things in. Here are a few pictures of our room/hotel.

We dropped our stuff off in the room and went to San Marco Square. We decided to take a traghetto across the canal instead of back tracking to the bridge and then walking all the way back to the square area. So we get to the traghetto stop and I thought it was going to be a speed boat, but no it was a gondola. I am pretty sure any joe with a gondola can charge 50 cents EURO to take people across the canal. How would we know? So we just climbed in; scary, huh? Two other people got on the gondola just before us and there was no place to sit because it was raining and the edges and seats were wet. Without warning, the traghetto starts to move and I lost my balance. I almost toppled over the edge. So I crouched all the way down and stayed that way the entire 1 minute ride. Here’s a picture of my almost death machine.

I think next time will be better because I know what to expect. Jose stood up the entire time….my balancing act stinks.

We took a quick tour of the square and tried to take the bell tower tour,but they had just closed for the day. the cleaning guy was the one who told me the tours were over. He kept yelling 45, 45 45 to me over and over. I think he was trying to tell me that the tours ended 45 minutes ago..??

On to dinner…so on our last day in Florence we stopped at the sandwich shop to get some food for later that night. One of the “brothers” asked where we were going next and gave me a restaurant recommendation when he found out we were going to Venice. So we thought we’d do some research, check reviews and put it on the list. Thank goodness we did, because it was a terrific meal. It was about a five minute walk from our hotel and we got there a bit before they opened. By the time the doors opened at 7, there were about 20 groups in line. We had a reservation (always have your hotel make one for you…more on that tomorrow) so we were seated right away.

We hadn’t had lunch yet since we’d been traveling all day and we were very hungry. We had some scallops au gratin that were good.

I had a bowl of pasta e fagiole soup, which was more like a creamy bean soup…ala lentil, instead of the veggie one I was expecting, but it was tasty.

Jose ordered spaghetti with shrimp which was excellent.

We also shared a pizza…..nice crust and very tasty.

For dessert, we had torta della Nonna (grandma’s cake) and it was SOO GOOD. It had a cream layer with tasty cake…yum.0. We also had a Bellini (peach nectar and proseco)

and a vodka, lemon sorbet drink that was good too. Wow that’s a lot of food!!!

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel. It was sooo cold out. On the way down the dark street, we ran into the guy who checked us into the hotel. He was leaving for the night. Apparently, there is no one there at night, just the guests. We think there was only one other person checked in while we were. I didn’t want to think about it too much!

Tomorrow is supposed to be cold (40 and rainy) so we’ll see what we will be able to do. There’s the Doge’s Palazzo, Murano, San Marco’s Square, the Campinile and Basillica if possible, then dinner and the Rialto Bridge. We have just about vetoed the gondola ride because of the cold, but we might take a tour on the vaporetto late at night.

Buona Notte!

This was our last full day in Florence because we are leaving for Venice tomorrow morning. We left early and it was beautiful this morning. It was about 56 degrees, windy and really sunny. This was encouraging considering the freezing rain from yesterday.

Interesting local interaction of the day: On the bus, I was standing by the middle doors and an older lady wearing nice clothes, hair fixed and a lot of make up leaned really close to me and said “blah blah blah marco” while pointing at my face. At first, I didn’t know she was talking to me (there’s a language problem on my end) so I was just kept looking at her. She did it again and pointed more vigoursly at my face. So this time, I said “scusi????” and she repeated herself gesturing wildly. I had NO IDEA what she was talking about. I was just about to start saying “no parla italiano” when Jose suddenly said “ohh those are Blu Blockers” as she stepped off the bus. Jose fills me in that he thinks she was either asking me what kind of sunglasses I have, or what designer they were. Apparently, in the fashion capital of the world, my $15 Blu Blockers from Walgreens are quite eye catching. What do you think?

We got off the bus at the train station stop and started walking. Our plan was to go to the Uffizi Gallery (we foolishly did not reserve tickets because we weren’t sure when we would be able to go), have another sandwich or two from I Fratellini (see yesterday Part 1), walk across the Ponte Vecchio bridge and tour the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens, go have dinner and head home. Riiiight. This is what actually happened today:

We got off the bus and started walking toward the Duomo, it was so lovely today, there were horse carriages out and a TON of people.

As we were walking between the Duomo and Baptistery it was very windy and a huge gust of wind blew a lot of things around. Suddenly, I heard a loud, high-pitched barking- yapping and down at my feet a small yippy dog was rolling around tangled in its leash, literally doing somersaults. The people with the dog were laughing at the poor thing as it was rolling over and over. How often do you see a dog rolled over by the wind??? Too bad I was not camera ready

I was surprised considering how this is not exactly peak season just how many people were in Florence. So we made our way down a Via Calzaiuoli to Piazza Della Signora where there was a sighting of a member of the Umbrella Brigade!!!!!!! This time I was prepared and camera ready.

This piazza is full of statues including a copy of David in it’s original location (I think!)

There was also a state of Perseus holding Medusa’s decapitated head. This was quite familiar to me because my dad has had a mini version of this statue in various locations in his home for as long as I can remember. It was nice to have a friendly reminder so far from home!

Jose and I walked all the way to the back of the line for the Uffizi Gallery and settled in for a long wait.

I occupied myself by taking pictures of the river and its surroundings, a small car (as many times as I have seen them, they continue to amaze me), and we took a few pictures of ourselves.

I was lucky enough to catch another member of the Umbrella Brigade!

I won’t embarrass us by saying exactly how long we stood in line, but it was more than one hour and less than three.

Finally we get inside the museum and quickly realize that neither of us really cares for renaissance art…ugh B O R I N G. We did walk through a tunnel that had many paintings of violent acts. That was a bit disturbing: stabbings, decapitations, impaling, and a huge shield of Medusa’s bleeding head. EW – We did walk through about 70% before we had to get out! I’m really more of an Impressionism fan, and Jose prefers cave paintings.

Those of you who know me well, know that I have issues with public toilets (also called Water Closets {WC} in Europe), but I really had to go. Near the exit was a unisex bathroom, which I approached with caution. I opened one door and it was not pretty, so I moved to the next one. I wish I had been able to photo what I saw. It was a toilet with a lid and no seat, kinda like a urinal that you can close, and it had running water. shssssh sshhhhhsssh nonstop. There was no way in hell I was going to use that thing. So I turned around and went back. Closer to the exit there were other signs for toilets. So I tried again. This time, I had to walk through a barricade, around a corner and I came to a stairway that was made of metal mesh leading into a dark, dungeon-like basement. It was moist and smelly. Hell NO. So, I turned around again and went back to meet Jose. “I’ll wait” I said (just like when I was seven and went camping with Dad and Val {for three days} and realized there were no toilets).

So our plan is now way off track AND the weather is now cloudy and chilly again — and I really have to go to the bathroom. So we cross the Ponte Vecchio bridge and get mobbed by literally a thousand people.

We stopped at a trendy place called Open Bar for lunch, decent but overpriced. We had a mix of crostini, salad and spinach ravioli in a bechemel/tomato sauce.

oh, and in case you were wondering, the bathrooms here were clean and nice.

- Chris

——-

Chris is going to bed so I’ll finish writing this post for now… – Jose

After stopping at Open Bar we decided to go see the Boboli Gardens which were next to the Palazzo Pitti. We thought they were just some free gardens behind the palace so we went over there to check it out. So we get there and all we see is this huge fortress of stone and no entrance to the gardens. At this point we were completely museumed-out so we just wanted to see the freaking flowers and get the hell out of there. We walked along the castle to find some sort of opening to the gardens. Suddenly in the far distance we see this gate and green stuff behind it. That must be the secret entrance we thought. So we rush over there, after taking a couple of lion photos, and this is what we find….

So OK fine, we’ll go see if we can get some sort of cheap rate just to go to the gardens since we don’t care about the 45 museums inside the Palazzo Pitti. So we head over to the big entrance in what must have been 40mph-dog-flipping-winds. We get to a guy that is working at the entrance and he starts telling me “Prego?! Prego?!”. I can’t stop thinking of bad spaghetti sauce every time I hear that. So after a short spacing out, I remember that the tickets were at another window about 400 feet away (how convenient). So we finally head over there and see a sign that says, access to the gardens 50% off! So we were like yeah!!! Then Chris reads the fine print, the offer is only good for EU citizens. So we ended up not paying the 50 bucks to see a few flowers. It was already almost 5pm and we were both freezing (we are having totally freakish weather) so we decided to head back to the center of town.

On the way back we see freaking Gandalf from Lord of the Rings selling some paintings by the Pitti Palace. We tried to do a “take a photo of me next to this boring wall” just to get Gandalf in the shot but the tricky wizard evaded us every almost time. This is the best photo we ended up with.

Side note: there are a lot of vendors around here, selling mostly illegal items. They carry around large sheets filled with either knockoff purses, sunglasses (no Blu Blockers apparently), or umbrellas when it’s raining. We saw about 6 of them completely pack their stuff and pretend they weren’t selling a thing as a couple of cops walked by the area. It was quite a sight.

We went back to I Fratellini for a couple of more sandwiches which we took back to the inn. After a short nap at the Inn we headed over to “Pane E Olio”, a little local place recommended by our inn keeper. We were originally going to Trattoria Sostanza but didn’t really want to deal going back to the city again since we were cold and tired.

So we took the bus outside of the inn and headed over there. It was a cute little restaurant with only about 10 tables inside. It was mostly filled with Italians so that’s always a good sign. We had a wonderful waiter who knew English enough to explain all the menu items. Before I forget, all the places we went to had the nicest waiters around. Really nice down to earth people who weren’t being nice just to get a better tip. Chris had some sort of cod dish and I had spaghetti with clams and mussels. Chris’ dish was really good even though it didn’t really photograph that well.

Here’s me eating my dinner.

For dessert we got a ‘chocolate flan’ which was not really a flan by any American standards but more like a Morton’s legendary chocolate cake aka a chocolate lava cake. It was really good. Chris had an apple cake which was also great.

After we got the bill we asked the waiter to call as a cab. It’s common practice in Florence to just ask your waiter for a cab and they’ll call for you and tell you how many minutes till they arrive. It’s a really nice touch that lazy people like me can really appreciate.

That was pretty much our day. We are traveling to Venice tomorrow. That’s the only stop in our trip that doesn’t have internet access so it might be a couple of days until we post something new. There might be a chance that someone is “sharing” a wifi connection near our hotel room but I wouldn’t expect that to happen for sure. So we’ll talk to you in a couple of days (maybe Tuesday night the earliest).

Nina, if you happen to be reading this blog, we pet Irina, the inn owner’s cat today. She really likes us and would like to take part in an exchange cat program. So pack your bags, cat!!!

- Jose (and sleeping Chris)

It was still raining when we left for dinner tonight, so we took a cab instead of the bus, which stops right outside the gate of the inn. However, we would have had to walk quite a ways in the cold, pouring rain from the bus stop. We went to another Rick Steves recommendation and it was a great choice. I think it has been the best meal we’ve had here (limited they may be). It’s called Trattoria Icche C’e C’e. We had a wonderful dinner that was very tasty. The owners, Gino and Mara, were cooking and serving and would come out and talk to the diners throughout the meal. We had a terrific waitress who gave us lots of suggestions.

In the end, we had Insalata Caprese – which was not spectacular, but it was good.

Jose’s primi piatti was gnocci with a quatro formaggio sauce – I am not a huge fan of gnocci, I find that it tends to be very heavy, but this was incredibly light and very flavorful. Excellent choice.

Mine was Spaghetti al Ragu – From what I understand, this is a bolognese sauce except when it’s served with spaghetti it’s called “ragu” and when its with penne or tagliatelle it’s called “bolognese”…not sure how accurate that is, but that’s what I was told. Either way, it was very very good. It looked like it was going to be dry when it first came, but the sauce soaked into the pasta and there was still a lot of it on the bottom of the plate. The spaghetti itself was cooked to perfection.

For our secondi piatti, Jose had Tuscan stew, which had no description at all, so we had no idea what to expect. This is what he got:

It was incredible. The sauce was very flavorful. It tasted a lot like my grandma’s gravy and the meat was tender. The meat had layers of carrots and celery in the middle.

I had veal scallopini with a limone sauce. As you can see from the picture, I was took excited to wait for the camera and I started eating it right away. It was tangy and savory and excellent.

For dessert, we shared a panna cotta with strawberries. It was very good, completely different from the one we had last night but still good. We also sampled the limoncello, which I thought was going to be much sweeter. It had quite a kick! We finished the evening with a cappuccino.

Our waitress took a very nice picture of us before we left. This is definitely a place we’ll come back to if we visit Florence again.

Tomorrow, we will be going to the Uffizi Gallery and the Boboli Gardens and a bit more walking. It’s late, so I’ll leave you with this:

Buona Sera!
C