Italy

Finally I'm getting a chance to sit down and blog about Italy! So let me just say, first of all, that the trip was great! Also, if you want to look at the rest of the pictures, they're all posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/HeidiH8000/Italy#

I got a bad cold a few days before leaving, so the flight wasn't much fun. My ears never popped...I hate it when that happens! And there were four legs to the trip, so that meant eight take-offs and landings. I'd be deaf for a few hours until my ears finally unclogged, and then I'd get back on a plane and it would happen all over again. I was really glad to finally get to Florence and go to bed. I expected the hotel room to be small, like all the other hotel rooms I've had in Europe, but this one was pretty big! There were two beds, but one of them was a sofa bed so I opted for the one with a real mattress. The room had a refrigerator, oven, and stove, which came in very handy.

The hotel gave me a voucher for one of those hop-on hop-off tours on a double-decker red bus, the sort of thing I usually make fun of. But I figured as long as it was free, I'd take advantage of it. We drove around the city and then headed up into the hills to a town called Fiesole. The pre-recorded tour narration told me that there wasn't much to see in Fiesole except for some Etruscan ruins and great views of Florence. But I fell in love with Fiesole immediately, so I hopped off the tour and spent the next few hours wandering around. Since it was a hill town, everything was on a steep upward or downward slope. It was quiet and peaceful, especially after crowded, busy Florence. The views were incredible! And there was something about the town that just resonated with me; when I grow up I want to live in Fiesole.

I was wandering around, half-heartedly trying to find my way back to the bus stop, when I saw a sign for hiking! Hiking, my favorite thing to do! And now I could do it in Italy! I abandoned my bus tour and started down the trail. The nice thing about hiking in Europe is that wherever this trail ended up, there was going to be a bus stop nearby. I didn't have to worry about being lost or stranded anywhere. The trail first took me to the overlook where Leonardo da Vinci tested his flying machine. For an engineering geek like me, this was REALLY cool. It also wound past the quarry where all the stones that built Florence came from. I had been reading The Agony and the Ecstasy (a novel about Michelangelo) so I knew this was where Michelangelo's foster family had worked and where he developed his love for stone. The views of Florence and the surrounding Tuscan countryside were also gorgeous. When the hike finally ended I found the bus stop, and the next bus to come along was...my big red double-decker tour bus. I hopped back on (somewhat reluctantly) and finished the tour.

The next day, after pushing my way through the crowds in Florence for a few hours, I decided to get out and go somewhere else. I originally bought a train ticket to Pisa, but on the way we stopped at a town called Lucca and I decided to get out there instead. I loved Lucca too. Back in the Middle Ages the town had a stone wall surrounding it, but then when technology developed to the point where a cannonball could bring down a stone wall, the people of Lucca upgraded to walls that were 25 feet thick and filled with dirt (so they could absorb a cannonball blast). It turns out that nobody ever tried to breach Lucca's city walls, but the walls did save the town from a flood once. Now there's a walking/biking trail on top of the walls and a couple of parks with picnic benches and playground equipment. It makes me wonder what the original Lucca villagers would have thought if they could have seen the future, and seen how their walls were now meant for recreation instead of protection.


I wandered the walls for a while and then went down into the city to get something to eat. There's a big cathedral in Lucca which turned out to be one of my favorite cathedrals. There was so much to look at: each of the pillars was a different design, and there were carvings and sculptures all over it. Best of all, there wasn't a huge crowd of people to push through like at the cathedral in Florence.

Just a side note: if any women out there need a self-esteem boost, head to Italy (or basically most of Europe). American women seem to be absolutely irresistable to European men. I'm sure it has everything to do with our good looks and nothing to do with the fact that the men think we're all in Europe looking for casual sex. The story I usually tell strangers who start up a conversation is that I'm traveling with a female friend (whether I am or not) but I have a boyfriend at home. The "boyfriend at home" was enough to discourage men in Germany, Austria, and Greece, but not in Italy. I had to change my story to say that I was traveling with my boyfriend who was "due metro"--two meters--tall. And even then, that sometimes wasn't enough! Since we were in northern Italy, the men would usually take no for an answer...eventually. (I've heard that southern Italy is different.) And since we were in Europe instead of the United States, I was never worried about violence.

So as I was waiting for the train back to Florence, I was approached by two young men, one from Serbia who spoke some English and one from Morocco (who was actually wearing leather pants!) who didn't. They struck up a conversation, and it was fun to talk to them and try to use my small vocabulary of Italian. I also picked up more Italian as the Serbian translated for his Moroccan friend. We rode the train back to Florence together. I included the above paragraph just to show that I wasn't entirely naive about where this was all heading, but it still made me laugh to see how persistent these guys were. The Serbian told me that he's been striking out lately when he takes women out, because they just want to leave afterwards instead of having sex with him. So as we were nearing Florence, he said, "We go have sex first, and THEN we go eat dinner. I pay." I was thinking, "Dude, does that line EVER work for you?" Anyway, I told them about my six-foot boyfriend waiting for me back in my hotel, and they assured me that he'd never know. Then they gave me their cell phone numbers and email addresses in case I changed my mind. Poor guys. I wonder if they ever got any. I mean, the Moroccan wore his leather pants and everything.

The next day I decided to get up early and see if I could see the city before the crowds came out in force. (I can't imagine what Florence is like in peak season. I mean, this was MARCH and it was difficult to get anywhere.) I went for a walk along the Arno River and crossed Ponte Vecchio, a very old pedestrian bridge lined with jewelry shops. It was all very picturesque. I climbed the hill to the Piazza Michelangelo, where a replica of the David overlooks the city. By that time the tour buses were coming out, so I found a quiet avenue that went back down the hill to the city.

When I got back down there, I saw a bunch of people in line for a tour to a castle. It sounded fun, so I got in line for the tour too. We were already on the bus weaving through traffic before I realized it was a wine-tasting tour. (I should have realized all the spring breakers in line weren't there just for the culture.) I loved the castle...it ended up being the very castle where the Pope conspired with the Pazzi family to kill the de Medici family during Mass at the cathedral back in the 1400s. (It only halfway worked. They got Guiliano but not his brother Lorenzo.) We explored the wine cellar and also saw where they made olive oil. I learned a LOT about olive oil that day! Turns out the expensive stuff really does taste better. And then we went upstairs for our wine tasting. It ended up not being a big deal; the spring breakers sitting near me were more than happy to taste my wine for me. It was fun...something I would have missed out on if I had known what the tour entailed before starting.

I had planned to go to Venice the next day, but the crowds in Florence were driving me crazy and I didn't think Venice would be much better. Besides, I was exhausted. I was still fighting that awful cold, and I wasn't eating very well. I mean, I was eating GREAT (the food was wonderful!) but not the way you're supposed to eat when you're sick. I don't think I saw a single piece of fresh fruit my whole time in the country. So anyway, one of my coworkers had told me about a town he loved in Italy called La Spezia. It was on the Mediterranean, and he told me it's just really low-key and beautiful. It sounded perfect, so I got on a train.

As soon as I got to La Spezia, I realized I should have just spent my whole vacation there. It was beautiful, very clean, and very relaxing. There was lots of mountain hiking available but unfortunately I wasn't feeling up to it, so I wandered through parks and along docks. The people were very friendly but not in that obsequious catering-to-tourists way, which was refreshing. Actually, the whole town was refreshing. That's a good word for it. I felt refreshed when I left La Spezia.

The next day I flew to Frankfurt. My original idea was to do some sightseeing in Frankfurt before heading home, so I was spending the night there. Unfortunately, by the time I got there I was completely exhausted, so I just picked up dinner in the train station and went to bed. I'll go back to Frankfurt some other time. But let me just say that I love German train stations. They're clean, easy to navigate, and you can buy ANYTHING there!

And then I flew home: 11 hours from Frankfurt to Dallas, 5 hours to Seattle, an hour to Spokane, and then I had to go straight to work. It's taken me a while to recover from the trip (and the bad cold) so that's why it took me so long to blog about it. It was wonderful, though. I loved Italy.