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Published: January 10th 2010
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After Kenya I met up with my favourite brother for a few weeks travelling around Italy, visiting the following places: Rome-Napoli-Amalfi Coast-Siena-Florence-San Gimagnano-Pisa-Cinque Terre-Milan-Como-Venice-Perugia. Our trip around Italy was absolutely fantastic, despite getting off to an onimous start, ie. Liam getting hit by a car. We were trying to cross the road when a car started reversing out of nowhere. He saw us, but kept going anyway and backed straight into Liam. Very nice welcome!
Rome was a great place to start the trip and was almost overwhelming because of its many amazing sites. We saw the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and Palatine, the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona, the Pantheon and the Spanish Steps. Another highlight was visiting the Vatican. St. Peter's and the Sistine Chapel were extremely impressive and nearly managed to restore Liam's faith. Unfortunately St. Chris didn't get the opportunity to further his religious education... of all the places I should have taken Chris in Italy - and I forgot.
Next stop was down to Napoli. Spacconapoli, the old town, was a fantastic place to wander round. It also provided the best pizza we had in Italy - da Michele's restaurant. In Napoli we first encountered
the strange Italian obsession with wearing purple. At least every second person was wearing some sort of purple garment. More often than not they were dressed from head to toe in purple... hope it catches on elsewhere!
We met some very interesting characters in Napoli, included the guy who shared our room at the hostel. For three nights we were woken up at various stages by his sleep-talking. Not just sleep-talking, but long, passionate monologues, almost bordering on singing. Unfortunately it was all in Italian, so we didn't understand any of it, except one long slightly-pained cry of 'Jesuuuuuuuuuuuu!' in the middle of one night. Liam attempted to record him, but he was laughing too loudly so nothing came out.
From Napoli we did a day trip round to the Amalfi Coast and Positano. We had a great day, seeing some beautiful scenery and some great little towns along the coast. Amalfi has a great beach, despite the water being absolutely freezing. Liam did some very dramatic squeals because of the cold, but that was after rescuing me from a near-drowning experience (after lowering myself into the water from the pier to test the temperature, I was unable
to pull myself back up again due to a certain absence of any upper-body strength, and had to be pulled out by my bro), so I can't get too stuck into him.
Next we got the train up to Siena. Siena was a very beautiful (if extremely steep - fortunately we discovered the public escalators before we climbed too many hills) town, particularly as it was in the midst of autumn. Liam and I got slightly carried away spotting all the autumnal tones and vistas throughout Italy. Highlights of Siena were the Piazza del Campo and the Duomo.
After Siena we spent a few days in Florence. There we saw all the sites including the Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo, Uffizi art gallery, Galleria d'Academia which contains Michelangelo's 'David,' and walked up to Piazza Michelangelo for great views over the city. We also hit up the leather markets where we honed our bargaining skills and got Liam a leather jacket. Clearly he was looking very suave in it - we walked past one man who said very breathlessly, 'Oooh, I like your jacket!' From Florence we also did a couple of day trips - to San Gimagnano (which was
beautiful, but unfortunately it rained all day) and to Pisa.
Cinque Terre was our next stop and was my favourite place in Italy. We stayed in a great place in Riomaggiore overlooking the sea. The highlight was walking round the coastal trail through the five towns. The towns are pretty spectacular, with houses built into cliffs on all sorts of odd angles. In Cinque Terre Liam also developed a love of grappa...ask him about it!
The next day we headed to Milan. We arrived there ten euro lighter after both being fined five euro for not having a ticket on the train. From Riomaggiore we had to go one stop to change trains at La Spezia and thought we'd be alright to just get tickets there. Unfortunately the ticket inspectors were onto us. We did, however, manage to convince them not to fine us the 50 euro each they were threatening - must have been Liamy's charm.
We had a brief stay in Milan in order to do a day trip to Como. I surprisingly really enjoyed Milan, despite not exactly fitting in with its stylish image. Como was great and would have been even better had
it not rained all day. No George Clooney sightings either which spoiled the day slightly. We did a cruise along Lake Como which was very nice, with its backdrop of snowy mountains.
From Milan we went to Venice. Highlights include:
- Wandering around the streets and getting thoroughly lost. Not so great when we were trying to find the gelati shop we'd been to the day before.
- Seeing the sites around Piazza San Marco.
- Going on a ferry ride along the Grand Canal and out to the islands of Murano and Burano. Murano is famous for its glassware and we saw some really nice stuff there. Liam and I were also particularly interested in the lace industry which Burano is renowned for, but it was the coloured houses that made the island one of our favourite places in Venice.
- Absolute lowlight was trying a spritz, which is one of the most popular drinks in Venice. It tasted much like I imagine petrol would. At least while we were trying it we were distracted from how disgusting it tasted by the old woman at the table next to us who had taken her dog out for
lunch and was sharing her spaghetti with him.
Last stop before heading back to Rome was Perugia, in Umbria. Perugia is a nice little town set atop a hill and has great views and lots of nice streets to walk around, as well as some of the best food we had in Italy. Finally, we got the train back to Rome, probably about ten kilograms heavier after smashing so much pizza, pasta, gelati and faggotinis (it absolutely made my day to discover that the Italians have a food called faggotini - excellent name!) everyday.
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