The Farewell Tour

It's really crazy to think that a year ago yesterday, I first arrived in Bologna, Italy (especially since I'm still trying to finish writing the posts about my whole trip). I still remember the bus ride from the airport. I was so excited, but the streets between Aeroporto G. Marconi and Via Ugo Bassi did not exactly have the picturesque Italian charm that I had expected. The layer of two day-old, semi-melted, brown snow scattered over the sidewalks and the fact that all the shops in town were closed for the holiday, La Befana, didn't exactly help either. Luckily, my six month stay made up for my initial disappointment when I felt like Italy was not the country I had hoped it to be. Italy turned out to be a lot more complex than I ever gave it credit for - a lot more than just hillside towns filled with men who drive vespas and Italian mothers who can cook up delicious pasta. It's still just amazing for me to think about how lucky I am that I got to have such an incredible experience to really get to know a country that I love so much.

And now pictures from my last days in Italy. My brother, Jimmy, came to visit, and we went on a pretty crazy whirlwind tour of Italy. We had about five days to cram in as many sites as possible (before going to GREECE), and we saw A LOT. Venice, Bologna, Cinque Terre, Pisa, Florence, Rome. I said that I planned this all out to make sure Jimmy could see everything he wanted in Italy during his short stay, but it was also a chance for me to see everything one last time (and the first time for Cinque Terre) before going back home.

Jimmy's first calzone in Italia.

Venezia.

Cinque Terre. This turned out to be a highlight of Jimmy's visit and one of my favorite places in all of Italy. Yes, I skipped through most of the Venice pictures, because I've posted plenty of pictures on Venice before, so to avoid making my dad wait even longer to read this we'll just skip ahead to some new stuff, va bene?

Jimmy was still very jet-lagged and slightly sick. Up to this point I felt a little bit like a personal trainer encouraging him to do some more sight-seeing (Come on! We're almost there! Two more steps, and we'll be at St. Mark's Square!), so I wasn't sure how he'd make it through the 10km trek and up over 600m. Turns out he was the one ahead of me the whole time which you might not guess by looking at this picture.
Riomaggiore, the first of the cinque terre, or "five lands." The hiking trail connects five separate towns along the Italian Riviera and has beautiful views from steep cliffs perfect for plummeting to your death if you slip along the way.
Jimmy hasn't seen the steep cliffs yet.
Via dell'Amore. Turns out Cinque Terre is quite the romantic vacation spot. This led to many incorrect assumptions. "No, no, we're brother and sister."


Cinque terre tra cielo e mare. Five lands between sky and sea.

Manarola. The second town! The beginning of the trail is deceptively easy.


Corniglia. Third town. Still pretty easy...
Wandering off into the wilderness.

Vernazza. Ok, I took out a lot of the crazy trek up to this point which included about a million stairs. Wikipedia says it's only 368, but as all professors say, Wikipedia isn't exactly the most reliable source, so let's just go with about a million.

Finally! We made it to Monterosso! Luckily for you, I have chosen not to include the picture of me from the end of this hike. We amazingly completed the whole trail including Gatorade and picture breaks in about five hours. Wikipedia says this is possible, but don't let it fool you. This was a really great feat. Wikipedia, stop belittling our accomplishment.

No time to rest. The next day we headed to Florence. Here's our old good friend, the Duomo.
This time, there were a lot more people around.

Piazzale Michelangelo. Another great hike. It was cool to come back here since I'd last seen this sweeping view of the Tuscan hillside and the city and Florence back in February when everything was a little gloomier.

Roma! This city was no less impressive a second time around.

St. Peter's Basilica. I'm pretty sure I said this before, but wow, it's a massive church. It's really hard to take it all in.

I know it's a lot more than just a beautiful country, but it's impossible for me to look back and not just think, "bellissima!"

Giro d'Italia con i miei

As per the terms of the I-live-in-Italy-and-travel-for-six-months-sponsored-by-my-parents agreement, I showed my parents around Italy in April. These are some of the pictures I took.

Milano. Every Italian will tell you that Milan is just an ugly city, but I was surprised to find that some of it is very beautiful. It doesn't have all the old world charm of other cities (in large part because it was bombed to pieces in WWII), but it still has some nice sights as well as a beautiful train station and a pretty good (for Italy at least) metro system.

Milano Centrale.

La Galleria. A nice place to oogle the window displays at Prada or buy an 8 euro espresso.

The Duomo.
Inside the Duomo.

The roof of the Duomo.

Venezia

Our gondolier was named Roberto (I think), and, like most gondoliers, followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and great grandfather with his career choice.
The Grand Canal. Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp were filming The Tourist while we were in Venice, but unfortunately, we never got to see them. We heard that the camera crews were often around the Grand Canal, but we didn't even get to see them.
Piazza di San Marco.


One of the days, my dad and I got up at the crack of dawn (not exagerating) to catch the sunrise and an (almost) empty St. Mark's Square.
Il Campinile.

The classic shot. It had to be done.

Pisa. Eh. Not my favorite Italian city. You get there. There's the tower. Take a picture with your hand up. You leave. Basta.

Ok, so I took one extra picture.

Lucca. Lucca is a city close to Pisa in Tuscany, and it's a lot more charming. We did the very popular bike ride around the ramparts which was really fun.

Pompei

Napoli. It's funny to me that it seems Italians are a lot more afraid of Naples than Americans. It's known to be a pretty chaotic city, but it seems that everyone disappears when it rains, including all the notorious pick-pockets, so we didn't see any of that.

La Pizzeria Trainon. Pizza was born in Napoli, and while the exact pizzeria where it was invented was closed on Sunday, we still had delicious pizza at this place.
After seeing me take lots of pictures of their kitchen, one of the waiters took my camera and had me pose with the chef. This is what makes Southern Italy so great.

Capri. Angela told me that she thinks that everything Capri has, each of the Aeolian island has...except there are seven, and there are fewer tourists. Even after being to Vulcano (one of the Aeolian islands), I still enjoyed Capri.

Our crazy boat driver navigated us through this. Pazzo.

Ercolano. I was really surprised by Herculaneum. It's overshadowed by Pompei, but I really preferred Herculaneum. It's preserved better, and there is a lot more ancient art.

Roma. It was really cool to see Rome after having lived in Italy for three months. What really surprised me though was just how big everything is. It's amazing too just how old many of the sights are, but I just was not prepared for all the giant structures...the Coliseum, the Pantheon, St. Peters. It may be a bit chaotic, but I really like Rome.

The Spanish Steps.
Piazza del Popolo.

The Pantheon.
The Coliseum.


The Victor Emmanuel Monument.

The Vatican

We came on Wednesday and caught the end of the Pope's address to the public. It was a historic speech because he addressed the sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church, but disappointingly, all I could understand was when someone started listing the many schools in attendance that day.
Swiss guard.
A few hours later, after everyone had cleared out of the square.
The Vatican Gardens.
Inside the never-ending Vatican Museum.
That's where I live in Bologna! Formerly called Bononia.
St. Peter's Church. Like everything else we saw in Rome, it was amazing just how massive this place was.

The Vespa Brigade.
The Roman Forum. My parents' trip happened to fall during Culture Week in Italy. This was great for us because we got free entrance to all government sights, and we got to see a performance at the Roman Forum. Et tu, Brute?

I was really glad to get the chance to tour Italy - even for the cities I had already seen. It's funny - my roommates (who are Italian)tell me that I've seen more of Italy than they have. I guess that's just how it goes though. I've probably traveled a lot more in Italy than I ever have in California, but I hope to fix that when I get back.