Made plans to start in Milan and work our way south without too much planning and fly home from Rome. For the most part, the lack of planning was great. This was mid October 2010. Our only goal was to have gelato in every city that we traveled through or stopped in. Sometimes we had more than one gelato a day and no regrets!
Milan in two days
Not much to see in Milan but it’s a nice and clean city and city of fashion. Great shopping here. Didn’t see the models catwalk on the streets as I heard I would. Maybe it was the time of the year. Milan doesn’t offer much in terms of sight-seeing but worth a visit. Must check out the Duamo of course. Gorgeous cathedral and fun square to hang out in. There’s also a very expensive Galleria of shops where you can spend a pretty penny. Did great gloves and boot shopping. When I recently traveled to Spain, I must say Italy wins for shopping, fashion, and quality hands down.
We did visit the Opera house and the room that houses the original The Last Supper of Leonardo Da Vinci in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Unless you have a burning desire to see this painting, I’m not sure it was worth the $25 ticket. We were ushered into the room and allowed to stare at it for about 10 minutes. No pictures of course.
We took the train from Milan to Venice. I do recommend against purchasing the multi-day travel packages for the train unless you are traveling long distances. It was more expensive than if we had paid for each individual trip separately and we didn’t use it for the full 7 days. So plan carefully and do your calculations. We also didn’t know that we were excluded from certain sections on certain trains and got ticketed on one of our trips. The penalty was another $20-30 bucks and the train police was quiet unpleasant. Avoid them at all cost.
Venice – one the most adventurous parts of the trip
With Gondola driver
Probably my least favorite city in Italy. Most over-rated. It’s expensive and dirty. San Marco Basilica and square of course are beautiful but … We showed up to Venice without any hotel reservations. DON’T DO THIS.. LOL, especially if you are arriving on a weekend. We arrived on a Friday night at 11 with our two big suitcases. Everyone we asked for a room, laughed at us. A man, pretending to be a hotel agent, in the train station played his part well and told us he found us a room for rent in a house with an elderly couple. When we arrived – into the parts of Venice that tourists don’t get to see, for good reason – we realized that the room was being shared with another traveling student and it was filled with smoke and stench. The elderly couple was ill and were renting the room for extra money.. but the smell of smoke, dirt, and medication was so nauseating that we were willing to sleep in the train station.
On top of the San Marco Basilica
We took our chance and started to walk the strip, stopping in every hotel and asking for a room. One hotel staff actually took the time to call around for us because he felt bad for us. We eventually found one but he could only give us one night. It wasn’t a great hotel but the guy at the desk took a liking to us after showing us an attitude at first. I still remember that the hotel smelled like cabbage to me. We didn’t like the first room they gave us and luckily (sort of) they had another one in the halls behind the kitchen and cafe. It had a window to the garden so it smelled better. We managed to stay a second night but the manager wanted to charge us more because it was a Saturday night. Thanks to the charms of my cousin… she woke up early Sunday am before the manager got in and while our buddy who worked the night shift at the desk was still there, and she got him to reduce the charges for us and we checked out before the manager got in. We learned our lesson and went to an internet cafe and booked a hotel on tripadvisor for our next destination, Florence.
BTW, the service in Italy is awful. Most, but not all of course, are rude and unpleasant. I mostly found this with the female servers and shop keepers of course.. since we were two ladies traveling. I had to throw my attitude back at them many times and this seemed to work.
Love Florence!
My favorite city in Italy. This was my second visit to Italy and Florence is still my favorite place. The history and the charm of Tuscany can’t be beat. We spend about 3-4 days here and took a side trip to Siena and the Chianti region.
We covered most of what Florence had to offer but three days is not enough if you really want to go to every museum and enjoy Florence. We climbed the 414 steps to the top of the Giotto’s Bell Tower for a spectacular view of the city, enjoyed the fascinating Duamo, visited the Uffizi museum and took in the sights at the Ponte Vecchio (bridge). We feasted on gelato, cappuccino and pastries. If you’ve ever traveled to Italy (up to early 2000’s) you know that what we call pizza, is not really Italian. I realized on this trip that the American pizza has taken over the tourist industry there. Around all the touristy areas, we found restaurants that had included the American style pizza on their menus and guess what most people were ordering.. geeeez! It’s Italy folks.. eat some traditional dishes. We did.. soooo much of it.
Duamo in Florence
You will also quickly learn that each museum hosts one famous piece of art that is a must see. Therefore, as tourists, you must visit every museum and see the additional *(&*^*&^&^%& zillion pieces of art that 80% seem to be of Jesus and some portraits of people whom you don’t care about. Each museum also charges a nice euro fee that equals about $20-30 each. We had become so exhausted from walking and the zillion museums that we would speed walk past most of the art to get to the piece we wanted to see. Spend five minutes in front of it and nod and walk. Fun, no? It is….
climbing to the top!
Me on Ponte Vecchio
We stayed at a very charming hotel near the Duamo, Hotel Centrale. It was a three star hotel, that we found while in the internet cafe in Venice and wasn’t so sure about it. But we loved it so much and it was so reasonably priced that we continued to extend our stay there each night from 2-4. The room was huge, clean, and have a remodeled bathroom with marble tiles all around it. The staff was friendly, the breakfast was also great and the use of the internet was free. The only reason this hotel was a three star is because it didn’t offer all the amenities, such as room service but in quality it was much better than some of the four star hotels we stayed at during our trip. So read the reviews on Tripadvisor seriously. That is how I select hotels and I do provide reviews as well.
More of our trip including Siena, Chianti, Verona, Pisa, Rome, and Pompeii coming up later this week.
Travel Diaries 