the hitchhiker's guide to italy.

Such a perfect Italy trip, you say? It was! Thankfully we had some entertaining mishaps along the way too so we aren’t in debt to fate too much for hookin’ it up.

Also thankfully for you because now I can teach you all from first-hand experiences how to confront such Italian traveler’s dilemmas!

Scenario 1: You arrive in Venice only to find the lights in your hostel are turned off. On your walk there, some of the stores were closed. It appears to be a siesta sort of thing. Naturally, you go get some pizza. When you ask the pizza lady about this seeming siesta she tells you things open back up at 3:30. So you wait in front of the hostel until 3:30…4:00. There is no sign of life at your already booked and paid for hostel.

Uh Oh.

What to do: Pay 2 euro for only 15 minutes of Internet at like the only Internet café in Venice. When you check your email you will find out that three days ago (when you didn’t have computer access because you were traveling) the hostel emailed and said they all of a sudden had to close. We regret to inform your reservation can no longer be held because we are sketch. Thank you for your understanding. Next, walk around for an hour with your giant backpacks in the most expensive Italian city and attempt to find a place to stay. Give in and pay 100 Euro for a hotel. When you get home check to make sure Motel Sketch reimbursed you.

Scenario 2: You have a flight booked from Venice back to Rome from where you will fly home. You ask the receptionist at the fancy hotel you were forced to pay for how to get to the airport. You hike to the bus she tells you and buy the tickets for the appropriate time. At the spot where the bus is supposed to be it’s not. You ask another bus driver and find out that bus just decided not to come today. The next bus is after the time your flight leaves.

Uh Oh.

What to do: Stand awestruck (as if you haven’t seen enough of how Europe operates by now) and frustrated and try to figure out if it is cheaper to miss flight to Rome and go by train or to pay for taxi all the way to small airport to try and make the flight. You will then conveniently be approached by a Californian girl from UCSB who is studying abroad in London and her visiting boyfriend, as well as a New Zealand girl, a girl from New Mexico, and a native Italian girl who conveniently studied abroad last year in Australia and thus speaks English. They are all conveniently in the same situation as you! While you talk about what to do, the bus driver of the bus that is not yours will then back into a metal sign pole almost killing you all. After that, the Italian girl will talk to random lady with a van in the parking lot. She will offer to take you all to the airport in her random van for 17 Euro each. Sweet!

Scenario 3: Because your last experience didn’t teach you, you ask the hostel receptionist in Rome how to get to the airport for your flight home. She tells you the bus, which you get on. You ask the bus driver like a good traveler if he goes to Fumiccino Airport. Si. After a while you ask which stop is the airport. The last one. Jerk. You get off and hike back to the stop you should have gotten off at. You don’t see the airport but you start following the signs toward it...the car signs. The sidewalk ends and the road really is just for cars. It eventually takes you to a curved merge onto a highway with absolutely no pedestrian space. The bus went to Fumiccino the area not the actual Fumiccino airport. You are stuck in the middle of three fields, one restaurant, and two closed auto shops in rural Italy where no one speaks English with a flight home out of an airport you cant get to in like an hour.

Uh Oh.

What to do: Attempt to hitchhike. When that doesn’t work, start walking toward where you think a main street is. Ask a random guy at a random little gas station if you can pay him to drive you. When that doesn’t work, keep walking with your giant backpacks. Run into the Italian version of Wal-Mart and (crying) explain to lady at the information desk in a combination of English/hand gestures/Spanish (hey, closer to Italian than English/Italian verbs you know that you need to call a taxi to get to the airport. When she nicely dials the number for you she will idiotically hand you the phone...as if you will be able to speak Italian to the taxi operator you just weren't able to with her. Look at her with a look that says are you kidding me?/please help! She will take back the phone and talk to the taxi operator for you. Wait out front of Italian superstore for taxi. Pay 20 Euros and arrive at airport in time for flight.

Printed 2010 Macbook Air Press; Madrid. Copyright Don & Alyssa Inc.

italian leftovers.

When places are just so pretty getting cool pictures just happens!


Where else would you find intense pasta in the drugstore.

never gets old.

After the romantic gondola (which you can bargain down from 100 to 50 euro if you are savvy and cool like us) all there is left to do on the small island Venice (literally) is eat, walk around, look in a store of beautiful glass crafts, look in a store of incredible masks, cross one of the 2000 mini bridges, and repeat.

But it's all so beautiful the pattern just never gets old.





The gondola men are all buds. Some charge extra for singing and commentary tour (again, not if you are savvy and cool like us). They yell "OW-AY" whenever they come up to a turn in the narrow canals so that the Venetian version of Titanic can be avoided.


The glass is famous from the nearby island of Murano.


You are literally surrounded by thousands of masks as you walk down the streets in Venice but you can tell the plastic tourist version from the unbelievable hand made combinations of materials.


Here is the little alley shop with no sign we stumbled upon where I bought my super authentic, hand-made, long-awaited, first of many I hope, Venice Carnival mask from Ivan the mask maker.


It's awesome! You will have to ask me to see :)

no words.

There are literally no words to describe the magical beauty of our next stop in Italy - Cinque Terre.

So just follow these trail markers and take an (unedited) visual hike for yourself.












There is an Italian tradition of "locking your love" with a small lock. There were hundreds hanging on the metal hearts at the start of the trail, and hundreds more (like ours) on random fences along the way.



It was the most gorgeous place I have been thus far in my life.

over the bridge we go.

After hysterically running around for three days trying to see all the sites of Rome, Florence was the perfect change of pace.

A couple big sites made it an interesting city, but left plenty of time to wander the streets and bridges, making it possibly my favorite city in Italy.

Checking off the few major sites started with the Uffizi museum. We got in the seemingly hours-long line but then looked in our guidebook and realized we could get tickets in advance for a certain time at an office across the street. Score!

We wandered around and then skipped the line into the museum. The religious art is impressive, but got repetitive.

Then we climbed the Duomo. At first glance, the cathedral plus its additional museum building look like a pink and green cardboard theater set popping out of the middle of the city. 300 something stairs later we got our Florence view.

The next day we went and saw the David. I went in thinking, “Alright, whatever, we have to go see this famous statue 'cause we’re here.” But it was not over-hyped in the least! It was incredible. You couldn’t take pictures, but this one is from online. Can you see the veins in the forearm?

Every detail was unbelievably to the tee. We were in awe standing looking up at this perfectly smooth, huge, muscular guy, yet with emotion in the face... I can't believe someone back in the day had the skill to make that from a block of marble by hand. And it's not like a painting where you can just paint over if you mess up! His hands did look a little big to me though...

A copy of the David is in the Piazza della Signoria (where it originally stood) with a ton of other awesome statues.

The second night we went to the Piazza Michelangelo. This plaza was a hike to get to but the view of Florence with the sun setting topped being on the Duomo. And no Entrance fee! It was absolutely gorgeous. Another David statue hangs out here. Bronze this time.

Wandering around Florence we kept seeing amazing looking little places to get pizza and pasta. But of course when you are actually hungry they all seem to be hiding. We ended up going to the same place for lunch and dinner ("our place on Corso").

It was so good and cheap. We got two pastas and a calzone because everything on display just looked so good. Needless to say we were stuffed.

To top it off, the lady (who recognized us from our lunchtime visit) then decided to give us free pastries! Did we still go to gelato? Guess.

The best part of our two days in Florence was that our hostel was separated by the Vechio Bridge from all the sites, so every morning and every night we crossed the beautiful, romantic scenery; guy playing slow music on the guitar included.

epic.

Our trip in Rome started off with an epic line to get into Vatican City. By "epic line" I mean it was long enough for me to have read an epic (Homer, Odyssey, whatever) 3 and half hours. And we only got there fifteen minutes after it opened!

Once we got in it was an overdose of ancient Rome. Statue after statue. I'm convinced everyone in that time must have been a sculptor. With the exception of a few farmers and the royal family. Even though each statue itself dropped a little on the epic scale surrounded by a hundred similar ones, the sheer amount of them that there were made up the epicness.



We saw the Sistine Chapel, which, I have to be honest was a little overhyped. We were crowded into a room with five hundred other people, necks craned all the way back, listening to the guards yelling (ironically) for everyone to be quiet. The famous central image with the fingers of the creator and created almost touching gets lost in the overwhelming amount of other panels and detailed painting that cover the ceiling and walls. There's so much it's hard to focus on anything. Obviously it is epic the amount of work Michaelangelo put into his fresco, though.

The other part of Vatican City we saw was St. Peter's Basilica. We climbed hundreds of stairs and looked down into the enormous church. It was way high. Then we climbed even higher for a view over the city.


Next we wandered some of Rome's plazas, by the bridge, and over to the Pantheon.


Next stop: the Trevi Fountain. This massive structure is definitely at its most incredible lit up at night.


The tradition is to put your back to the fountain and throw a coin with your right hand over your left shoulder and make a wish. I don't know what more you would need to wish for than standing in front of such an epic site glowing at night.

Our second day started with the Spanish Steps. We went early at the perfect time before the tourist swarm. Score!

Next we went over to the Roman ruins/Roman Forum. This gated park is where Rome shows off its most ancient and epic stuff (as if you can't find enough of it just walking down the street).

Some Roman version of Kobe used to ball here.




They weren't concerned with construction deadlines; they were just going to move on to build the next thing afterward anyway. Conquer, build, build more, conquer more. That's how you become an epic empire. There was so much. And everything was so tall... I can't even begin to imagine what this looked like when it was all complete and standing.


The Colessium was a $10 joint ticket with the ruins. Although we found out the movie took creative liberty with the epicness of the bloody battles, it was interesting to see how elaborate of an underground technology system the arena had. Pulley elevators replenished the ring with the next fighter or next animal for fast-paced entertainment.



As a break from the epicness we went to the quaint Jewish ghetto area.


Hidden around a corner was the restaurant that had been recommended to us. A handwritten menu in Italian and not knowing what I ordered? Now that's legit.

Everywhere you looked in Rome there was something thousands of years old. Something gigantic. (Look how small Don looks!)



Something epic.

But, that being said, my favorite parts of Rome were not epic; they were simple: sitting eating a slice of 1.50 euro pizza in front of the Trevi Fountain or at 10:30 a.m. on the Spain Steps with someone you care about.