Jess Nick

Well, here we are in Nice! We have been busily setting up life for the summer on the French Riviera for the past few weeks. It was wonderful to say goodbye to our last hotel for a while and move into an apartment finally. The most exciting things were hanging our clothes (I saw the bottom of my bag for the first time in 3 months!), making a home cooked meal and not having to sit through another buffet breakfast!! We have been working our way through the list of every-day things to do and set up, like getting mobile phones, gym memberships and finding places to shop. We are living in the Old Town in Nice, where there is a fresh market right near us that's on every day which is awesome. It's also a ... read more

Jess is writing things down on a map for Venice so it’s Nick writing this blog to you all. Here goes… After a short and easy, 2 Hr train ride from Milan, we arrived in Sirmione. There are three main lakes in this district and we are right down the bottom of the most eastern lake, Lago di Garda. Its quite large, as you can see from the photos, but our hotel was only a short cab ride from the station thankfully. We were advised that we had bought the weather from Milan with us and that the next few days were going to turn sour, so we headed out into town right away with the sun still out. It was super busy when we arrived into town but luckily for us, there was not too ... read more

The Cinque Terre are five towns on the western coast of Italy that date back to early Medieval times. The towns are Monteroso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manerola and RIomaggiore. The most unique feature of these towns are their steeply terraced cliffs which are dissected by a complicated system of fields and gardens. The cliffs and contours are so amazing that some scholars have compared the low stone walls to the great wall of China! We stayed in Riomaggorie, the second oldest town. It was started in the 8th Century by Greek settlers fleeing persecution. Full on! We arrived on Tuesday 10th April and had the pleasant surprise of being upgraded to a sea view room. It was more the ‘sea view’… It was literally overlooking the sea!! We woke up on the first morning, planning to do ... read more

On Tuesday 3rd April we went to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It was lucky we pre-booked tickets as the queue was incredibly long! It’s very busy here being Easter weekend!! The Uffizi Gallery is important not only because it holds some of the world’s most precious artwork, but also because it was one the first museums to ever systematically organize items for public viewing. Originally it was built as a magistrates office, and then in 1581 the top floor was transformed into a gallery. Most of the artworks were acquired by the Medici family – the lords of Tuscany at that time. It’s hard to believe that the likes of Da Vinci and Michelangelo hung out in the very halls and rooms we were in last week!! Once you enter the building and climb the ... read more

Luckily Nick is well practiced at cliff side driving and hair pin turns, as all of the above were present in our drive to the Amalfi Coast from Naples. It wasn’t just the roads that were a challenge however… Turns out the “it’s so easy” advice we received from everyone is not so accurate. We got lost and drove north half way to Rome instead of south to the coast. What should have been a 1 hour drive ended up being a 3 hour drive! Maybe that idea of taking a road map we had in Albania would have been good! Next investment item for us? A GPS!! The stress of the drive was quickly relieved however when we arrived at our picture-perfect place in Positano – the “pearl in the pack” of the towns that ... read more