Andiamo a Perugia!

Monday, October 10, 2011

Cinque Terre

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to travel to Cinque Terre and hike through it's 5 main towns. My friend Alex and I started at the top, Monterosso, and worked our way down through the towns, ending in Riomaggiore. The nature of Cinque Terre is beyond beautiful and I want to show you through my many pictures from my trip. I will try and explain what I saw and what it looked like, but I think you all would get a much better appreciation of such a place through my amazing photos!

Let me begin by saying that the sea water throughout Cinque Terre was the most gorgeous color turquoise I ever seen! I did not know that water could be such a true blue color. Also, the water is crystal clear-you can see for meters below the surface.

FYI! The order in which we proceeded through the towns are as follows: Monterosso-Vernazza-Corniglia-Manarola-Riomaggiore. We hiked for 1hr 30mins to Vernazza, another 1hr 30mins to Corniglia, Corniglia to Manarola was closed so we took the train to Manarola, and then hiked 30mins to Riomaggiore. In total, we hiked for 3hr 30mins! The hike to Riomaggiore is less of a hike and more of a stroll along a boardwalk. It is called Via Dell'Amore, or "Lovers Walk". Along this walk there are locks, bows, ties, etc that symbolize lovers who have made this walk together. Very romantic!

I am so proud of myself-I had a weekend full of adventures. I camped the first night, hiked all day Saturday, and swam in the sea again! Quite the experience!

Camping La Sfinge

Scrimp Scampi-quite a surprise when my dish was brought over to me!

Sunset in La Spezia

Monterosso

Turquoise water

One of the tiny trails we had to walk through...

SO MANY STAIRS!

Alex & I

Lots of agriculture

Vernazza

Cactus

Via dell'Amore

I was feeling artsy...

Sunset in Riomaggiore

Riomaggiore

Ciao!
Melissa

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Firenze

I am still playing catch up with all my blogs so bear with me just a little bit longer!

Two weekends ago, my two friends (Asia & Alex) and I went to Firenze (aka Florence) for the night. It is one of those major cities that you have to see while in Italy. We didn’t do much of the historical Firenze (i.e. the Duomo, museums, etc), we did more of the markets and hit up a discoteca! Within a 24-hour time period (Friday-Saturday), we managed to fit a lot into our days. We stayed in a very impressive hostel and went out for a nice dinner on Friday. We had a delicious dinner of pasta with a lovely glass of wine outside overlooking the main center in Florence. After, we sat outside at the Uffizi with a bottle of wine and just took in the scenery. It was early to go out to the discoteca (which doesn’t really get going until close to midnight) so we got some gelato and just walked around and took in the nighttime scenery. We ended up at this place called The Irish Pub-most depressing bar I’ve ever seen! The bartender looked and talked like Ray Ramano! He just seemed so down that we were itching to get into the discoteca.

We finally made it to Space, a discoteca our waiter had recommended to us. At first it was just a bunch of American students, most likely studying at the University of Florence, so we stuck out like sore thumbs. However, once the dance floor (the upper part of the club) opened up things got crazy!!! My first discoteca experience was pretty awesome! I danced the night away-obviously one of my favorite pastimes!

The next day, Saturday, we hit up the markets, which were insane! Vendors throw themselves, and they’re merchandise, at you constantly! We shimmied our way down the streets managing to pull over and look at pashminas/scarves, jewelry galore, and LEATHER! I bought two pashminas and a leather wallet! My goal of going to the markets was to find a wallet and I lucked out! By the end of the day I hadn’t found “it”, but I knew I would probably come back to Firenze again. However, just when I gave up I came across the perfect wallet: a beautiful red leather wallet! I am in love with my new wallet! I keep smelling the leather (one of my favorite scents) and admiring the “Firenze” printed on the front of it. Now I’m in search for the perfect pair of leather boots…:)

Saturday was also a day of firsts for me-I held my friends’ hands as they went about getting tattoos! Me. In a tattoo parlor. In Florence. With a man named Gus. WHAT?! Well, it happened and I can now check this off my bucket list. It was quite the experience, but as weird as it sounds, in the back of my mind I have always wanted to hold a friend’s hand when he/she was getting a tattoo…mission accomplished!

Something very interesting is that everyone spoke English, which is weird for me because everyone in Perugia speaks Italian. I would start ordering something in Italian and the waiter would see right through me and start conversing with me in English. In Perugia, I am forced to try as hard as I can to speak in Italian because a fair amount of locals just do not understand English.

However, Florence is a beautiful city! As touristy as it can be, it still captures the essence of Italy!

The faux David

Part of the Uffizi at night!

What we were staring at while sipping wine...

Cathedral at Duomo

We stumbled across a wine festival! Real live oxen were pulling the cart of wine!

The Duomo

Alex & I

View from the bridge!

Ciao!
Melissa

Monday, October 3, 2011

Amalfi Coast-Finally!!!

I apologize for being out of touch for some time now…my apartment’s Internet has been an epic fail the past few weeks. I sucked it up and got an Internet USB. So much for mooching off Wi-Fi.

Anyway, I need to share with you my adventure to the Amalfi Coast 3 weekends ago, which was the most amazing week of my life thus far! I really wish I could have posted this blog sooner but I have been so busy. I finally have some down time to reflect. I apologize in advance for the abundance of exclamation points-I was just so excited the entire time I was there!

Umbra students boarded a bus at 6:00 a.m. Friday morning and departed for our first stop: Pompeii. I slept pretty much the whole time seeing as I only got 4 hours of sleep the night before. Ever since my 6^th grade research paper on Pompeii in Ancient Civilization with Mr. Gowen, I have been dying to see the ruins. We took a guided walking tour around most of the ruins with an older Italian man who brought us right back to when Mt. Vesuvius erupted. I had such a cool experience! Just being in the remains of so many houses and buildings that were left standing was pretty surreal. We even got to go into an old brothel and got to the see the different rooms there. One thing I noticed (and the tour guide pointed this out) was that there stray dogs everywhere and because it was super hot that day, they looked like they were on their death bed. It sounds morbid-I know, but it’s true. To be honest, I was so hot that day that I didn’t feel like I appreciated the tour as much as I probably should have but I still thoroughly enjoyed myself!

Next, we hopped back on the bus and drove to Sorrento, where we stayed in a 4-star hotel-Hotel Michaelangelo! The drive to our hotel was absolutely breathtaking-we drove along the edge of a cliff that looked out over the island and crisp blue waters on the Mediterranean/Tyrannean Sea. With Mt. Vesuvius as a backdrop, it was one of the most beautiful views I have ever witnessed in my lifetime!

Once at Sorrento, we checked in to our rooms (which were awesome by the way) and quickly changed into our bathing suits and headed down to the “beach”. The beach here was more of water and 2x2 patch of rocky sand, but I wouldn’t think to pass up the chance to swim in the Mediterranean Sea (technically it was the Tyrannean, which feeds into the Mediterranean)! A bunch of kids of school ventured down to the water and we finally found the free part of the beach and dove right in. OMG the water was the perfect temperature, crystal clear, and super salty (which made floating so easy). I never wanted to get out! The other Umbra kids and I just floating and swam around and just relaxed. It was beautiful!

That night, we had dinner at the hotel and had our first hotel bar experience! We ordered drinks and sat and chilled with all the students in the lobby. It felt like a “grown-up” experience-never thought I’d see the day when I could order a drink at the hotel bar!!

Saturday morning, we got up and got ready to leave for Capri! I’m telling you-I will be getting married on the Isle of Capri! We took a ferry over and as we approached the isle, you could see this big mountain with houses nestled on it surrounded by deep blue water. First thing on the agenda was to get into a boat that would take me to La Grotta Azzurra (The Blue Grotto)! For those of you who don’t know the significance of the Blue Grotto, here it is: Inside the grotto, the water glows the most beautiful, intense tones of blue in the world. It’s the coolest color I have ever seen, (see pix below), however, pictures just don’t do it justice! I easily took 500-600 pictures that weekend, but they just don’t do the Amalfi Coast justice because everything is just SO beautiful! Getting into the grotto was a joke! We had to manage to hop off the big sailboat we were on with a group and get into a 3 person max row boat with an Italian man who would get us in and out of the grotto in 5 minutes. I was in a boat with two of my friends. The opening to the grotto was…ready?...2 meters by 2 meters! The rower made us lie down and he stuck his oars in the boat, he grabbed onto chains that he would pull on to get us through the entrance as he laid back basically on top of us. Awesome! Once in the grotto, I saw the most beautiful color blue I ever seen in my life-the water glowed! Our rower asked if we wanted to jump into the water-HECK YEAH I DO! So that cost me 5 euro- a 50% discount. So worth it!

Later on that day on Capri, I had another chance to swim in the sea. Literally, I treaded water for 3 hours without feeling tired because the water was just that salty! My friends and I could see straight down through the crystal clear water. We thought it was about 10 feet, but my friend who dives, couldn’t get to the bottom-it easily could’ve been like 50 feet instead!

That night we had a repeat of Friday night-dinner at the hotel, hotel drinks, and we ventured to an American bar/club downtown (not that fun haha). If you ever have a chance to try a “Sorrento Special” do it! It’s a combination of prosecco and Limoncello-delish! Apparently Limoncello is huge in the Sorrento area because every single store sold some sort of Limoncello drink or apparel!

Sunday morning we packed up and left for Napoli. We had tour guides on our bus with us talking about Sorrento and Naples the entire time-all we wanted to do was sleep! In any case, I have always wanted to go to Napoli because I always hear how beautiful of a place it is; however, I was overwhelmed and didn’t think it was as gorgeous as I thought it would be. Maybe it was just the area we were in, but it was very touristy. It kind of reminded me of New York City a little bit. Don’t get me wrong-it was a very cool city, but after two days of traveling, I wanted to be home!

So, after a whirlwind of a weekend, I have some of the best memories to look back on for the rest of my life! I can’t believe I had the opportunity to take part on these extraordinary adventures! Often time, I can’t believe my life right now-it’s SO cool!

Please enjoy the pictures! I have so many more on my computer that I’ll be sure to share with whoever wants to see more when I get home!