Tres Vagabonds

Venice –

First off, the plane ride was shorter from Barcelona to Venice than the taxi from the Venice airport to hotel. “Why?” you ask. It was a water taxi. Definitely a unique experience! No complaints here, as we were ushered into the historic and extremely romantic (we go the honeymoon suite at our hotel [see photo below]) canaled city at the speed of tortoises in a 5-meter dash (around an hour and a half).

Sometimes, you gotta spring for the extras

All I can say is, “What a change of pace!” We went from the hustling and bustling city of Barcelona, to a tranquil and almost utopian locale of Venice, with its aged brick-and-mortar bridges over canals and narrow labyrinthine corridors that offered the only transportation medium if on land. We counted on one hand the amount of cars seen during our stay in Venezia.

Gondolier (I made that up) gives us the stare down

Disney World's newest attraction: The Venetian Gondolas

Piazza San Marco

(left to right); Jason Statham, Tim Thomas, Neo

Bologna –

Originally, this city was not on the list of cities to see, but a few days before heading to Italy, we spoke to Antonio’s (the Portuguese poker grinder/friend we met in Porto) Italian girlfriend over Skype and discovered that she was going to be home during our Italy visit, so we decided to make a detour our favorite Italian from Porto. So a water taxi from Venetian hotel, and an hour or so train ride from Venice to Bologna later, we were in the land of Oscar Mayer [see picture below].

Jasmine (and her friend) toured us around her city and showed us typical Bolognese cuisine; as we tried some delicious Lasagna and Tortellini over some delicious Italian red wine. They also showed us around the city center and accompanied us to a typical Bolognese bar, an Irish Pub. ;)

Jasmine, we had a great time in your city, and appreciate your hospitality, even though you had to wake up the next “mornin’” (for some reason, she has an Irish accent when speaking English) at 6am.

Jasmine, I can't believe you haven't heard of Oscar Mayer, even in your hometown of Bologna.

Florence –

“Wait. Is Parma on the way to Florence from Bologna?” Ben asks. I pull out the tablet and upon further introspection on Google Maps, realized we were an hour out in the wrong direction [see Dumb and Dumber clip. For those pressed for time, fast forward the clip to 1:20].

"Sorry, Mr. Perfect!"

What had happened was that within 5 minutes of the departure, they switched the departure track because of jockeying delayed trains around. The next stop outside of Parma, we hopped off the train, and luckily for us, got on one that was headed back to Bologna to start over again.

On our second try, we found a little trouble. The train conductor came to our cabin, and asked to see our tickets. Now, at this point, we have invalid tickets, and plan on playing the innocent, stupid tourist approach. He looks at the tickets, scanning the details [meanwhile, we’re hoping he skims too quickly and misses the time stamp. This was not the case, unfortunately. He sternly explained in broken English. “Tee-kit no guud. Rong time. I shuud bee charrrge yoo feefty Yoo-rohs (Euros).”

“We thought that this ticket would work at any time.” After each party repeating via rephrasing several times, we were able to create an impasse, where the conductor saw the futility in fining us ‘feefty yoorohs.’ He punches our tickets and disgruntledly trudges to the next cabin, sliding the door behind him. #LanguageBarrierWIN

How we feel sometimes while navigating around the world

So anyways, we arrived in Florence. Barcelona 2.0, it seemed like. People flooding the streets like Burt Reynolds was in town or something. The only difference was that about 80% of the people seemed to be tourists/study abroad students. This city is definitely built for tourism. With a population of around 400k, it seems as it’s twice or three times that during tourist season. I had heard mixed reviews of this city. Some people rave about it, saying it’s the most beautiful city they’ve ever been to; while others complain that the city is infested with tourists, and so it loses some of the authenticity of a true Italian city. Each side has merit, but I’ll gravitate towards the ‘Beautiful’ side. I don’t mind shitloads of tourists. Furthermore, I feel like I feed off of the energy that crowds offer. The city may be lined with hotels and ristorantes, but they’re lining some of the most beautiful, quaintly and historically decorated streets. Everything is within walking distance. We were able to conquer most of the city in about 3-4 hours, upon arrival.

Pisa –

As shitty as I feel saying this, Pisa was thought of as a formality. You can’t pass up an opportunity to take cliché photos of the ill-architected failure. Luckily, upon arriving at the Pisa Centrale train station, we were able to put our luggage into temporary storage (3 Euros/each item). Ain’t too shabby, for a city you plan to be at for no more than 3-4 hours. This city surprised me. While there didn’t appear to be much to do, it was another typical relaxed and beautiful Italian cities. Very chill locale, and there were outdoor patio’d ristorantes to take in the Italian sun and fresh air. Here are some of the pics from there.

The Tower of Pisa, I guess

The Tower of Pisa

Me not giving a shit about the tower

Ed, perplexed, as well

To be honest, these last pics are...

...the only reasons we came here

Cinque Terre –

This area was somethin else. I’ll tell you that much. Cinque Terre roughly means “5 lands,” 5 cities/town that hug the coastline of the Italian Riviera. The cities include:

Monterosso –

We started with this city, as it was the location of our hotel. If you want a place to relax, away from emails and twitter, to just let go of everything, go to Monterosso. The village so quiet, you can make out conversations that echo off the baby waves and surrounding bluffs. You can hear each lick of gelato as you amble across the kilometer wide beach town.

Vernazza –

Day 2 of Cinque Terre started with hike from Monterosso to Vernazza. We were told it would take about 2 ½ hours. Up to the challenge, we embark on a still foggy morning. The hike started out on hastily-boulder-assembled steps. At a fork in the trail, there was a logical route to the right (sans-markings) and a treacherous and illogical route to the left (labeled by a wooden arrow saying ‘Vernazza’). As tourists should never question, we followed the sign. Navigation FAIL or cardiovascular WIN? Well, it may have been both. It was one of the most difficult hikes I have taken. Out of breath, at the top of the 5 bazzillionth step (approx.. :D), we started questioning the legitimacy of this sign, as we seemed to only be scaling up this mountain, and not moving closer to the city . Based on movies I’ve seen, situations like these include protagonists that are eventually led to their demise, as their bodies are harvested for organs to pay for their escalating methamphetamine addiction. Luckly for us, it was one of those ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ type of deals. The hike ended, in a whopping hour and 15 minutes, virtually shattering the predicted time.

Vernazza was cool. We stopped at a ristorante and ordered a gigantic cheese pizza (thanks, ben and ed, for caving on my boring taste preferences), and ate it in one of the towns’ squares.

Vernazza from the top of hike

Vernazza from the top of hike, through the vineyard

3V atop Vernazza

Vernazza

Riomaggiore –

We trained it from Vernazza to Riomaggiore. It was the easternmost of the towns. To be honest, I don’t remember this one that much, other than it’s much like the others. This city, if I remember was a very tightly-packed city in an even smaller inlet or bay. Just house staggeredly-stacked on the hillside.

Manarola –

From Riomaggiore to Manarola, we took the very famous, “Via Dell’Amore (“Love Walk”). This stretch was a very rocky area, and most of the path included chain link fences securing the pedestrians from falling rocks. Along the walk, we stopped at a café that was literally tucked inside of the mountain (much like mens’ body parts when kicked in the wrong spot) , and included tables that were leaning over the cliff.

Ben in rare form, flexing his silly side

Eddie "Squints" Ice

Locks left by couples visiting Via Dell'Amore

Aforementioned cafe over the cliff

All these cities had incredibly gorgeous train station locales

Ed shooting down a pirate ship

Sorry relatives, but this picture's hilarious

Normal pics are boring

Manarola

Corniglia –

We trained it again to Corniglia from Manarola. We arrived at the same time the rain did. So we tried out a novel concept that came to us in that moment….. POWER TOURISM. It’s everything you know about tourism, but no walking. You run from sight to sight. It actually served two purposes for us. We didn’t want to get rained on the whole time, and we also had to make the next train in 25 minutes back to our hotel. So in and out. Another cool city…yada yada yada. And we’re off!

Rome –

After the Cinque Terre tour, we picked up our luggage at the Monterosso hotel, and high-tailed it to the train station. We wanted to catch the right hi-speed train to Rome. We did, and it took only 2 ½ hours to get to Rome, going around 140 mph. Pretty cool. Politicians, why don’t we have these everywhere in America? Absolutely ridiculous.

Rome was Rome. Tourists galore, more hotels than you can logically justify, and Canons/Nikons aplenty. It was bad luck for us, as we chose to go during Easter weekend. Everything was wayyyyy too packed and crowded to do any real tours (Colosseum, The Vatican). We were able to see quite a bit, and walked pretty much everywhere we went.

Spent from a week of sight-seeing, Rome was actually a 3-4 day decompression time. We took it easy, and ‘Ro(a)med’ around and ate at delicious restaurants.