Honeymoon Part 5: Cinque Terre

The third part of Italy we visited was Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre stands for "5 lands" and they are found along the coast of Italy. It took us 3 1/2 hours to get from Florence to Cinque Terre. which was a little rough because our trek came the day after my little bout with food poisoning our last night in Florence! When we finally arrived at our hotel, we discovered that they had "lost" our reservation! At this point, all we could do was laugh. Luckily, they put us up in an apartment across town which was owned by this adorable couple who ran a wine bar downstairs..and it ended up cheaper than the hotel we were going to stay in. In the end it worked out fine.

Our apartment

 Once we were situated there, we were starrrving. So we went and got ourselves some amaaazing pesto, which Cinque Terre is known for:

Our second day we decided to do the major hike between the 5 towns. We set out at 9am and I was determined to do the full 5 hour hike between all five towns.

Let me tell you this was a HIKE. Tons of stairs, lots of narrow steep walkways with no guardrails. This was a workout and a half.

But then you'd get these beautiful views like this and it was all worth it!

After an hour and a half on the first part of the trail, we started to see the second town below!

We stopped in town for a panini and powerade.

After some time in the first town, we started on the next part of the trail to Corniglia

Stopping to take in the view:

We started onto the third part of the trail between the 3rd and 4th town. After walking for a bit, we hit a dead end! That part of the trail was closed! I guess there was some rain damage, or landscaping issues that made the trail unsafe to hikers! I was so upset....we literally only had 1 hour and 20 minutes left of our hike and now we couldn't do it! We went all the way back to the previous town to try and get a train or boat back to our island. Well....of course, that town was the ONLY one that didn't have a boat service to and from it, and Cinque Terre was experiencing a train strike between 9-5 that day. We were pretty much stuck. I guess in the end, a few trains were sporadically running...so we caught one to the next town over and took a boat from there. which was very nice and worth the trip.

In one of the towns

So even though we didn't get to do the last two parts of the trail, we still hiked for 3 1/2 of the 5 hours!!I'm proud of that and won't let it get me down too much that we didn't do the full thing.

That really was the bulk of our short time in Cinque Terre. That night we had a wonderful dinner and watched a live band perform Italian music while many of the locals danced by the water. It was our most relaxing night yet, which was good because we had a FIVE HOUR commute to Venice the next day....

Honeymoon Part 4: Pisa, Lucca and the Jersey Shore?

The day after our cooking class we got a much later start to our day than we had planned. We still went ahead with our trip to Pisa and Lucca...but we were rather rushed in both locations because of it.

We went to Pisa strictly to see the leaning tower...because...that's why you go to Pisa. So we took the requisite "I'm holding up the tower pictures" and went on our merry way.

Then we went to Lucca. Sadly, Lucca was a little disappointingly boring BUT we did have the BEST lunch out of our entire two week stay in Italy!

Amazingly thin, crunchy pizza!

Foccacia...what Lucca is known for!

Very windy atop Tower Guinigi

Walking along the walled path of Lucca

Train Station

That night Chris and I were a little bit cranky and tired after dinner from our long day of traveling. As we headed back to our hotel, I noticed some very bright lights outside the corner of my eye. I turned my head to see a ton of video cameras and lights...and then I saw Pauly D's hair from the Jersey Shore. "OMG Chris!! It's them!!" to preface this story, my dad had emailed an article to me that very morning which mentioned that Snookie and J-Wow had been in a car accident in Florence while they were filming for the next season of the Jersey Shore. Florence isn't that big and we still had 3 more days there, so we were kind of on the look-out for them to begin with. Well, turns out they came right to us! Here the boys were, filming at a restaurant right outside our hotel!

Pauly D, Vinny, Ronnie

 

For the next hour and a half, we watched them order their food and eat while we basically hung out among the Crew and security guards for the show. They travel with QUITE a pack...altogether there were at least 20 people on crew and security duty while they were filming. We weren't allowed to use any flash, so our pictures came out pretty blurry, but they're still pretty good. Chris talked to an Italian Security Guard for most of the time...we were hoping that if we made friends with him he'd let us take a picture with the guys, but they are under contract while filming not to pose for any photos while on location. Bummer.

The most entertaining part of the meal was when Ronnie kept burping extremely loudly and pretty much had the entire restaurant, staff and their crew laughing so hard because it was completely obnoxious and happened every few minutes.

At one point, two young (drunk) girls from America came up to the crew and immediately started signing waivers so they could be on the show. They wanted to be seated right next to their table...well they took so long talking to the crew and signing their waivers, that the guys started to get up to leave as soon as the girls started to sit down. No bother to them though..they just proceeded to follow them down the street. Well...that didn't go so well for them. The boys told them numerous times to leave them alone and that they were terrible people...so the girls eventually backed off, rambling on about how rude the guys are and that they were never watching the show again. Right.

We witnessed a lot of different things during our time watching them. Some people from Florence came up and had no idea who they were, or what they were filming. I tried explaining it to an older Florentine couple who came up and asked me who they were and I became more and more uncomfortable as I was trying to explain/partly justify them.

"See...they're Italian, and they usually hang out at the Jersey Shore. And...they're obnoxious...but now they're famous, well..in America. They mostly party a lot...and they're filming here now! These are just the boys...the girls are somewhere too, two of them already got in a car accident yesterday..."

They literally were staring at me blankly like..."Is this for real?" They asked me what station this show appeared on. I said "MTV" and she looked at her husband and said "Oh! You like MTV" and he said "Yea...but I only watch the music videos, I usually don't enjoy any of the shows I've seen on their station" so I said "Yea....well....you won't like this show either."

They thanked me and went on with their night probably to listen to a live musician on the Ponte Vecchio bridge, as I ashamedly stayed behind to soak in more of the culturally brilliant MTV film crew...I'm not proud...

A few minutes later, some drunk Italian men walked by shouting Italian Curse words and saying things like "Go Back to America!" When a crew member followed them to make sure they were leaving their general vicinity, they threw a glass at him. It was pretty incredible: the general feeling I got from the local Italians there was that they were NOT happy the Jersey Shore was filming in Florence.

At one point, Mike the Situation was smoking a cigarette pretty close to us....he and Chris exchanged a manly head-nod, and that was the extent of our interaction with them.

The two girls on the left are the drunk girls chasing them down the street

We followed them for a few minutes before we realized we were officially stalkers, and decided we should probably go up to bed for the night. Altogether, it was QUITE the successful day!

Honeymoon Part 3: Florence TWO

My favorite day in Florence was the day we took our "Wine and Cook" class with Accidental Tourist. Chris and I, along with 6 other people were picked up at a meeting point in Florence at 9:15am and then driven up the hills of Chianti to a winery.

View from the Winery

Wine Cellar

We got a whole tour of the winery, and were shown how Olive Oil and Wine are made. After that, we had a wine and olive oil tasting!!

We tasted several different wines, ate lots of bread drizzled in olive oil and salt and had a fantastic time mingling, and talking to the others in our group.

After that, it was time for the cooking part of our day! Only one other woman stayed on for the cooking as the others had only signed up for the wine tasting. Our tour guide drove us, and Pat (the sweetest woman EVER) even further up the hill in Chianti to a quaint house with the most spectacular view.

We then proceeded to make homemade pasta from scratch in the cellar of the house. 

Chopping the spinach for our ricotta/spinach ravioli

 

Pat was just about the sweetest woman I had ever met.
We had a great time with her that afternoon.

Our completed Ravioli!

Now making fettuccine!

Chris taking the ravioli up to the kitchen for cooking!

When we went upstairs, the woman who lived there, Christiana, had made us asparagus frittata, bread salad, and olive tapenade bruschetta! All of which was amaaazing (Except I'm allergic to olives so I didn't have the bruschetta)

Christiana's kitchen...so adorable! Hanging out with her, Pat, and Jesse!

Serving us our homemade fettuccine! she served it with oil,
cherry tomatoes and a bit of chili pepper

 Then she made us dessert of homemade whipping cream with fresh strawberries:

And hand-pressed coffee with whipping cream

 This was the view from where I sat at the table....can it get any better than that?

So relaxed, happy and FULL!

Me, Christiana, and Pat

I couldn't get enough of this view!

I was very sad that our day had come to an end, but before we knew it Jesse told us it was time for him to drive us back down to Florence. I would recommend this tour to anyone going to Florence, it was totally worth it!

Link to Accidental Tourist Website