Day 15 - Varenna - Milan

             We had the most amazing breakfast at the hotel.  It was the best “breakfast included” at any place we stayed.   We were a little bit out of our element as all the other hotel guests were dressed in suits and ties and we were in our travel clothes.

Our clothing matches perfectly with that of the housing behind us.

            After wandering a bit this morning, we meet Luca for our Water Taxi tour.  Luca was all business.  Although young and handsome, he was serious and not much of a joker (nothing like Bernardo).  He had a script and an agenda and he stuck to it.   I suppose a good comparison of Southern and Northern Italian personalities.  His boat was nice and I’m sure he had taken many fancy tourists out on a ride.  One of the best pictures of our trip was of our group that he took looking back on the beautiful, colorful buildings that lined the water’s front in Varenna.  We headed south on the Lake enjoying his dialogue of the lake and the extravagant properties that lined its edge.  The highlight of the boat ride was when we stopped and took a tour of the Villa Balbianello.  It was an amazing place.  Two familiar movies, Casino Royal and Star Wars II had memorable scenes from its gardens over looking the lake.  We enjoyed this relaxing way of seeing Lake Como and enjoyed its grandeur.

Standing where Anakin kisses a queen Amidala from Star Wars II

amazing mansions along the water's edge

            For lunch we went to a place Luca recommend – the same place where he has dining the night before when Lara had called.  Rather than relaxing after lunch we decided to make our way back to Milan.

Just making sure we get the right kind of luck, spinning on the testicles of the bull.

            Since John had been to Milan several times we put him in charge of our dining experiences.  After getting settled in our hotel, grabbling a gelato, wandering around by the Duomo and window shopping once again at fancy shops at the Galleria, we headed off on our trek to dinner.  And it was quite the trek.  We ended up in a trendy dinner area alongside a canal.  There were several restaurants to choose from.  Ours was good, not great, but we had a nice big table around which we could all enjoy each others company.

            This was the first hotel we had where our bathroom was not in our room.  We had a shower, but no toilet.  Our toilet was just outside our room, lucky for us.  But it still required walking into the hallway in the middle of the night if one needed to.

Day 14 - Vernazza - Varenna

            Lucky for us we had time for a nice sit down breakfast before our longest journey of the trip to Varenna on Lake Como.  We had one of the best croissants with ricotta that we’ve ever had.  The owner of the restaurant made it very clear that no eggs would be served for breakfast in his establishment.

            Our train leaving Vernazza was late this morning and we barely made our connection in Siestre Levante.  We arrived in Milan and then transferred again to continue up the side of the Lake Como to Varenna.  There were some stunning views out the windows.

            Varenna was quiet.  All the summer tourists were gone and everything was closed.  We found our quiet hotel and had a few minutes to wander around before dinner.  We enjoyed the gardens of the hotel and strolled the quiet streets.  Bellagio to see how things were in that fancy town.  We got there a bit late and many of the shops had already closed.  We enjoyed window shopping and looking at the highend shops.  There must be very fancy people watching that goes on here.

relaxing before dinner

We meet for an early, relaxing dinner on the water’s front.  We didn’t have much of an agenda so we decided to catch the boat to

            After we returned to Varenna we decided to make arrangements to take a water taxi ride the next day along the lake visiting villas and learning about the different homes along the lake.  Since Lara got the job for all Italian speaking requests – she made the call to Luca.  As she was on the phone, she noticed a gentleman leave his table at a restaurant to take a phone call and walk outside.  It took a couple of minutes, but Lara quickly realized she was speaking on the cell phone to the gentleman, who by now, was only a few feet away from her.  Like what was mentioned earlier, there were not a lot of people in town.  Lucky for us Luca, the water taxi owner, was one of them.

Lake Ferry

Varenna's water front properties

Day 13 - Vernazza - Corniglia - Manarola - Riomaggiore - Monterosso

            Today was our hiking day.  We started our day with a nice cup of hot chocolate and a pastry.

 We loaded up on some fruit and snacks for our trekking.  The cities of the Cinque Terra are all connected with footpaths.  Some are direct and flat and hug the ocean while others climb into the mountains and then fall back to the ocean.  We had planned to stick to mostly the flat, easier trails, but unfortunately all of those trails were damaged due to rockslides.  We started out our trek by heading straight up the mountain.  It was a great work out with a scenic view.  Imagine walking stairs for 90 minutes straight.  Our thighs were burning.  We visited Corniglia and walked through the town.  The towns were tiny.  You could see the entire town in about a 15 minutes walk.  Our next town was another straight up, then straight down adventure to Manarola.

 
            Our hope was to take a boat ride from Riomaggiore, the town furthest south, to Monterosso, the town furthest north, but the water was to choppy and no water taxis were running.  Instead we jumped on the train and headed north.  Our final walk/hike for the day was Monterosso to Vernazza.  We arrived in Vernazza just as the sun was setting and once again enjoyed the postcard sunset.

            For the first time of the entire trip we couldn’t come to a consensus for dinner so we split up.  We enjoyed pesto pasta and pizza with the Ludlow’s down on the Harbor outside.  While we were dinning we could hear the 2 couples next to us speaking in English.  Then we started hearing things like ward, missionary, church, and realized they probably were LDS.  Sure enough, next to us was a missionary couple serving in southern Italy with their friends who had come for a visit.  Small world.  We went to bed that night exhausted.  Since we had to switch apartments, we moved our stuff up to an apartment near the top of town and the train station.  Trains can be very noisy!

Day 12 - Florence - Vernazza

            Our first stop this morning was the Medici Chapel, only minutes from our hotel.  We had already passed this building several times in the past couple of days.   We especially enjoyed the carvings of dawn and dusk by Michelangelo.  Then we went to the Bargello Museum, which was first an old fortress and then the civic center of Florence.  It houses statues and artifacts, among which are famous statues from Michelangelo and Donatello.

Michelangelo's Dawn and Dusk

Bargello Courtyard

Dontallo's David

            We gave ourselves a few minutes longer to shop and linger in Florence and Eric and I returned to the Mercato Centrale to get our prosciutto sandwich. 

At 1:00 we met at the hotel and headed out of town.  I’m sure our group looked a bit funny as we rolled our suitcases down the street to the main train station.  We’ve been lucky enough that in every place we’ve stayed we can walk from the train station to our hotel.  Walking is the best way to get around these Italian cities.  We took a longish ride to La Spezia on our way to Vernazza.  In La Spezia, I’m ashamed to admit, we had McDonalds for an afternoon snack. 

            We finally arrived in Vernazza around 6:00.  This is a 1 stop, 1 street, coastal down on the hills falling into the Mediterranean.  Our guidebook said that’s is easiest to just find a room to rent when you arrive in town.  What the guidebook didn’t say was that finding 4 rooms is a bit trickier and that one should arrive before 6:00 p.m.  Needless to say it was a scramble to find 4 rooms. 

Leaning out the window of the Real Estate Office trying to find rooms

Our first night in Vernazza

Lara started at the top of town talking to store owners and such working her way down to the end of town.  By the time she headed back up the street the store-owners were helping her look as well.  People were coming out of the woodwork and letting her know that their friend might have a room.  With the help of Francesa, the owner of the Gelateria, and a local travel agency she managed to get 3 rooms for 2 nights and then another 2 rooms for us for the 2 nights.  We would have to switch.  It was a bit of a panic, but something we laughed about the next day.

            We managed to get in a quick walk to the top of the city over looking the ocean.  The lights, in combination with the colors of the buildings, were amazing and just like a postcard.  Our dinner that night was an adventure that proved to be really good.  The specialty of the area is anchovies, which ended up being really tasty and milder than one would think.  We also had a seafood risotto that was really good.

            Our room for the night was a small room, tucked away up a narrow ally, that’s more like a walkway than a street.  You walked right into the 1 bedroom area directly from the alley.  It was quaint and fun.

We got the perfect night lighting for these pictures.

Day 11 - Florence

            We had our nice little breakfast that morning in the Graham’s apartment.  It was lovely for us, but probably not so lovely for them since they felt they had be dressed, pressed, and have their bed made.

            We took the short walk to the baptistery and looked at the Ghiberti’s bronze doors. It was these doors that issued in the Renaissance.  After that, we got in line to climb the dome.  It was an amazing view, first of the inside of the Cathedral, and then second of the city itself.  The inside of the cupola has art that just makes one wonder how anyone could be up that high painting.  The view from the top was amazing and the red tiled roofs are the perfect picture of Florence.  The day was gorgeous. 

Looking over Florence from the Duomo

We spent only a few minutes enjoying the chapel then excited to the piazza lined with artists selling their products.  We enjoyed looking at their art and even purchased a small piece to take home.  Lara had to translate the artist’s technique to Eric which was a very rough translation at best. 

View from the Cupola of the Duomo

After our time at the Duomo we headed to San Lorenzo’s library.  This library was designed by Michelangelo and was awesome; from the staircase that lead into the library, to the reading benches, to the wood work.  What an amazing craftsman Michelangelo was.

            We gave ourselves a little bit of free time to grab lunch at the Mercato Centrale  and then we meet up again to rent bikes and see the rest of Florence on our nifty purple beach cruisers. 

A little treat after our picnic

Don’t get the wrong idea, these were very run down beach cruisers and only cost us $5 to rent for the afternoon.  Lucky for us there were 8 of us so the odds of being hit by a car were 1:8.   We also could just lock all 8 bikes together wherever we wanted without fear someone would take our bike.  This was a great way to speed up our afternoon in the city.  We first road to the Palazzo Vecchio and enjoyed a short visit there.  Then we cruised by where Michelangelo’s home would have been, marked today with a small plaque.  After that we went to the Santa Croce church where Michelangelo might have gone at night to perform disections.   We saw the burial places of Rossini the composer, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Galileo.  After our visit to Santa Croce we took our self-guided tour through the city streets, of course we stopped for Gelato first.  Then we crossed the Arno in search of the Piazza Michelangelo. 

Picking up our bikes from the train station

Over looking Florence for Piazza Michelangelo

We climbed to the top of the hill and enjoyed another perfect look of the city, this time with the river and Ponte Vecchio in the foreground.  We made it back to the Galileo science museum with only about 30 minutes to spare so we did the race through version of the tour.  Lucky for us we had time enough to see Galileo’s finger that has been preserved and is on display next to his inventions.

            Before dinner tonight we enjoyed a big shopping spree and loaded up on cheap scarves, leather purses, soccer shirts with a splurge on a leather brief case for Eric.  On our way to dinner we ran into the Sister missionaries in the area and their investigator.  Other than at church it was the only missionaries we saw.  For dinner tonight we had the best dinner of the entire trip.  The food was melt-in-your-mouth good and everyone agreed that their dish was exceptional.   With the exception of the pizza in Naples, this was the only time we walked out of dinner and had no critical comments about part of the meal.  It sounds like we are turning into food critics.  I guess that’s what Italy does to you.  No day would be complete without a night cap of Gelato.  On our way back to the gelateria by the Duomo we poked our head into a chapel that was having an amazing organ concert.  It was relaxing to sit and close our eyes for 15 minutes and listen to someone play this amazing instrument.

Day 10 - Florence

            After our experience with a forgetful Italian tour guide in Rome, Lara decided a reminder call to our tour guide for the Uffizi would be appropriate.  Unbelievably, he was in Rome and would miss our appointment for the morning.  Lara felt like she was relieving her mission all over with cancelled appointments and flaky contacts.  Lucky for use we had the Florence pass that would get us into the Uffizi without the line so we headed out anyway and rented an English audio guide and gave ourselves our own tour of the museum.  It was general conference Sunday this day so we gave ourselves a church “bye” with promises to listen to all the talks when we got home.  The Uffizi is one of the best art museums in all of Italy.  We easily spent 2 hours in there enjoying the art and gratefully it wasn’t extremely crowded.

            It was a double dose of art museums today as after the Uffizi we headed to the Pitti Palace.  To get there we had to cross the Ponte Vecchio, however, because it was Sunday many of the shops were closed. 

We paused to look at all the locks of love that had been put on the bridge gate and locked forever (until the city has to cut them off for the next round of tourists, because there are too many). 

Once again it was our good fortune to go to the very front of a LONG line.  It was free day at the Pitti, but lucky for us because of our passes and Lara’s Italian we made our way to the front.  In Italy especially, lines are optional, and if you waste your time in line, there are plenty of others who just elbowed their way to the front.  Today we did just that.  The Pitti palace was amazing.  We saw lots of Rubens, Titian, Caravaggio, Lippi and other well-known painters.  After a couple of hours of art we exited into the amazing Boboli Garden that seemed to go on forever.  With a bit of huffing we made it to the top of the hill and were rewarded with an over look of the Tuscan countryside.

Boboli Gardens

Countryside from the top of the Boboli Gardens

            Lunch today was at a tasty pizzeria.  Not as good as the pizza we had in Naples, but the second best pizza we had on our trip.  It was crowded which was a sure sign that it was good.  Lucky for us we found a very little round table to squeeze the 8 of us around.

            After lunch we enjoyed a short walk around the Oltrarno neighborhood.  The Santo Spirito church was closed so we made our way to the Brancaccio Chapel. We enjoyed looking at the 3-sectioned frescos by Masaccio.  It was comfortable to sit down on the steps, inside the chapel and on the benches and just relax for a minute.  After all our art sight seeing today it was time for gelato.  We found a nice gelateria located near the Ponte Vecchio.

            On our way back to our hotel and central Florence we decided to take advantage of our Florence museum pass and see a Picasso exhibit that was in town.  It was fun to look at such dramatically different art than what we had been seeing thus far in Italy.  We also took a quick peak at the Orsanmichele Church.  It was fun walking down the main shopping drag in Florence and seeing all the fancy people out for an evening of strolling, window shopping, and eating.           

            We actually had a little bit of time before it would be dinner time, so a few of us found a laundry mat to catch up on some laundry and write our missionaries.  The Brunkens, Grahams, and we all have missionaries out right now so we needed to get our letters done.  It was nice to have underwear that was dried in a dryer and not on a string in the bathroom.

            After dinner that night we found an all natural gelateria right by the duomo.  We are now pretty much expecting to have gelato twice a day.

Day 9 - Siena - Florence

            Eric and I got up early to get a pastry and another excellent hot chocolate.  Katie and John got up early and took a run.  After our pastry breakfast we headed to the Pinacoteca Museum by ourselves for a quick look.  The art was mostly early Christian Byzantine art from 12^th – 15^th centuries.  It was enjoyable, but only needed a quick visit.  By 10:00 we met our group at the Campo in front of the tower, and what has become to be the normal, Sara (or could have been anyone else) showed up with morning pastries and treats for everyone to try.  I love trying all this new food.  It’s an equally enjoyable part of our Italian vacation.  We climbed the tower (without Jeff) to a great over look of the city. 

The top of the Civic Center Tower

Siena is a very quintessential, Italian looking city.  After going up the tower at the Campo, we headed over to the Duomo di Siena.  It’s a very pretty church, the piazza out front is small and not nearly a gathering place like the campo.  The marble is the same white and dark green marble that we saw in Orvieto and what we will see in Florence.  In this particular cathedral, the striped stone is on both the inside and the outside of the church.  .  It does catch you off guard to walk into the striped interior of the church.  The art in the church was interesting; including a Michelangelo sculpture paired with sculptures of other artists.  The Michelangelo stuck out as superior even to the untrained eye.  As we left the church and entered the Duomo Museum it was interesting to see what would have been an extension of the nave.  It looks almost like a false wall extending out into the piazza. Down the steps we entered the baptistery and enjoyed the frescos on the wall. 

            After our Duomo visit in the morning, we found a quick pizza for lunch and enjoyed it sitting in the sun on the campo ground, just like everyone else.  As if we were sitting on the beach or on the grass at a park.  We decided to take the quicker, express bus to Florence so we grabbed our luggage and started the climb to the bus stop.  Gratefully we found the right bus at the right stop and enjoyed a comfortable 1 hour ride to Florence.  

         

            We arrived in Florence mid-day which was nice and checked into our very cute Hotel Pucci Residencia.  Katie and John scored the upstairs honeymoon suit with tons of room.  Since the breakfast area was crowded, we enjoyed breakfasting in John and Katie’s room each morning, which unfortunately made them feel like they had to make the bed each day.  Even though we didn’t score the honeymoon suit, our room was very nice and comfortable.  After getting our 3 day Florence museum card we headed to the Medici Palace right across the street.  After the Medici Palace we went to the Academia to see Michelangelo’s David. 

Even though I’ve seen the David before the magnitude and immensity of the statue still caught me off guard.  It was mesmerizing, I just wanted to sit and stare at him.  I can only imagine what the Florentine’s thought when the statue was wheeled through the streets of Florence to the Piazza Signore where the statue had it’s first home.  We also enjoy Michelangelo’s prisoners that line the hallway leading up to the David.

            After our museum visits we relaxed in the open air market, finding souvenirs for ourselves and our kids.  Dinner was a fun, family owned restaurant with an energetic waiter.  We enjoy our first oso bucco here.  After dinner we sauntered back to our hotel which was only a block from the Duomo.  We found a gelataria with some tables on the street and enjoyed our gelato, talking in the shadow of the Duomo.