5 Things to do in Rome

Have you ever been to Rome? We've been a few times now and it's always super busy. There is so much to see and do that it can be hard to figure out what's most important. The last time we went, in April, we tried to slow down and enjoy the city without rushing around from one tourist destination to the next.

Here are five things we like to do in Rome that are a little bit under the radar and can help take the pace down a notch.

5 Things to do in Venice

Today we have the third installment of five things to do in different Italian cities...and it's Venice!

1. Get lost. This will inevitably happen anyway and you just have to embrace it. Our favorite thing to do in Venice is to wander around, making our way through the tiny alleys to see what we see. It's how we've found some of our favorite bars and restaurants in Venice and how we stumbled on the best souvenirs.

2. Visit the fish market. It's right near the famous Rialto Bridge and it's definitely worth a wander through and a look (there's also a great vegetable market right nearby). Everyone shops here, from restaurant chefs to locals, to get the freshest fish of the day. Even if you're just visiting and aren't in the market for a giant branzino, it's a true Venetian experience worth having.

3. Take a boat ride. The best way to see Venice is from the water so make sure you get on a boat at least once during your trip. While gondola rides are great fun, they can often be pricey, so try the (much) less expensive vaporetto, which is sort of like a water bus.

4. Have a glass of wine at Do Mori. This is our favorite wine bar in all of Venice and it's been around for hundreds of years. They have a great wine list and a great cichetti (small snacks) selection to go with it. I don't think we've ever been to Venice without stopping here.

5. Eat spaghetti con vongole. This typical Venetian dish is my absolute favorite and, like visits to Do Mori, I've never been to Venice without having it at least once per trip (and usually more). It's good everywhere, but my personal favorite is at Trattoria da Bepi.

Are you traveling to Venice this summer? Here are our Venice favorites, with more bars, restaurants, hotels and sights to see....and our expat interview with Karen Henderson who is lucky enough to live in Venice full time!

5 Things to do in Florence

Today we're continuing on with our summer series of five things for summer travelers to do in different Italian cities. Right now: Florence!

1. Climb the Duomo. Most people visit the Duomo, but did you know that you can climb it too? We did this during a trip to Florence in 2011 and we felt like little mice scurrying up the building! Obviously the view from the top is amazing.

2. Buy leather. Florence has an amazing leather market (San Lorenzo) with bags, wallets, jackets....everything.

3. Eat steak. The home of Florentine steak (bistecca alla Fiorentina) has tons of good options but our favorite place is Trattoria Sostanza. The waiter will bring the steak out to show you before it gets cooked and everything there is so delicious.

4. See the David in person. Many people think it's okay to go up to the Piazzale Michelangelo to see the replica, but it's not! The real thing is at the Accademia Gallery and it's completely worth the entrance fee, the lines, etc. It will blow you away.

5. Drink delicious wine at aperitivo. Florence is the capital of Tuscany, arguably the most famous wine region in Italy. You can't go wrong.

Thank You Cortina

Today we're very excited to announce that Ryan has signed with the Fife Flyers for the 2015/2016 hockey season and we will be heading to Scotland in August! After four wonderful years in Cortina, we're ready for a change of scenery and are so, so excited about this new opportunity. That being said, Cortina will always be in our hearts and we are so grateful for the past four years that we got to spend there. Living in Italy was something that we never knew to dream of, but now we feel so lucky that for a while, we could call Cortina home.

Thank you to everyone who followed along during the Italy years....and now, on to Scotland! xo

5 Things to do in Cinque Terre

Today we're starting a new series that will continue through the summer and will feature five things to do in different Italian cities (for summer travelers!). First up - Cinque Terre.

There are really only two things to do in Cinque Terre: eat and hike. This makes it the perfect destination for the non-sightseer and/or a great stop in the middle of a longer trip, when you need to relax and regroup. Cinque Terre is composed of five towns along the coast of the Ligurian Sea (Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare). It's beautiful and relaxing and the food is out of this world.

Here are five things you should do while you're there:

1. Eat anchovies. Cinque Terre is known for its fantastic seafood but especially for anchovies. There are so many different ways to cook and eat them: with garlic, in casseroles, with lemon and olive oil. I thought I didn't like anchovies until I tried them here - I promise, they're completely different when they're so fresh.

2. Try a local wine. There are tons of vineyards in Cinque Terre (surprising, since all of the towns are perched on the tops of cliffs!) and each town makes its own wine. We stayed in Corniglia and loved the wine at Enoteca il Pirun.

3. Go for a hike. Trails connect each of the five towns - some of the main trails have been washed out by floods but there are other, smaller trails that take you up the mountain and then over and down into the next town.

4. Look at the view. Cinque Terre is so relaxing that sometimes there's nothing to do but stare out at the sea. There are great lookout points in each town and many bars/restaurants also have amazing views.

5. Buy pesto. Pesto is a regional specialty of Cinque Terre and makes the perfect souvenir or gift. Eat it on trofie, a short, twisted pasta, also local to that region.

And, here are some pictures from our trip last April, if you'd like to see...

Next up in June: Florence!

Summer Travel Tips for Italy

With summer travel gearing up, we thought we'd share a few travel tips that we've picked up along the way. If you're heading to Italy this summer, keep in mind:

Try to pack for your whole trip in one bag, especially if you're going from one place to another. It's such a pain to lug around three different bags.

Venice is NOT the place for roller bags because a) the alleys are so narrow and you will be dodging people b) you have to constantly carry them up and over all the bridges and c) everything is bumpy cobblestone. Venice is actually not a great place for luggage at all - there's a trick though: you can hire a porter to meet you at the train station or at your hotel and he'll load all of your bags onto a cart and wheel them to your next destination for you. Ask the front desk of your hotel how this works - if you have a lot of baggage, it can be worth it.

Watch out for pickpocketers in crowded, touristy places. When we announced that we were stopping in Naples for lunch during our big Italian trip, my mother was so.worried. She thought we were going to get pickpocketed, robbed, hit by a taxi, etc. While Naples is known for pickpocketing, you just have to be aware, not scared. Men should keep their wallets in their front pockets instead of their back and women should carry bags that zip closed so that no hands can wander in. Keep track of your belongings and be aware of your surroundings and you should be completely fine.

You will find hotels in Italy that don't have air conditioning. It can get quite hot in the summer, especially in cities, so if this is something that matters to you, check and make sure that your hotel has AC.

Many hotels also don't have elevators. If you're traveling with elderly or handicapped travelers (or lots of baggage), make sure there is an easy way to get up to the fifth floor.

Your hotel should be able to give you a good map of the city, better than what you'll find in a guidebook. Have someone at the front desk circle where you're going - restaurants, bars, sightseeing spots - they'll be much easier to find.

Research local foods ahead of time (or ask your waiter) and order at least one local dish. Each region in Italy has different specialties - different pasta dishes, types of meats, seafood, different sauces...

If you don't feel like spending a lot on a fancy bottle of wine, order table wine (vino della casa) because it's always delicious and inexpensive - and everybody does it.

If you're trying to save money on food, look for local markets. There are usually great markets in any city you'll visit (Mercato Centrale, in Florence for example) - getting lunch here saves money and you can take your food and eat outside in the shade. Also small sandwich shops - in Rome, we ordered sandwiches from a small cafe and took them to the Spanish Steps for a picnic.

Aperitivo - the Italian equivalent of American "happy hour" - can be a big money saver too. When you order a drink, it will come out with food - sometimes it's something simple, like little bowls filled with green olives or potato chips, but at many places you can also snack on pizza bites, meats, cheeses and breads - all for free!

Italy can get so hot in the summer - take a water bottle with you and fill it up as you go. In every city, you'll find fountains with drinking water and having a water bottle is much less expensive than buying bottles of water wherever you go.

Wear sneakers or really good walking shoes. Everyone in Italy, real Italians, do this for a reason. There are lots of cobblestone streets and you'll be doing a lot of walking and you'll want to be wearing good shoes.

Book tickets ahead of time. Many sights can get really crowded in the summer and it's best to already have tickets when you arrive so you don't have to wait in a long line, or get shut out entirely. Your hotel can help you book (or a travel agent, if you're using one) or you can book them yourself online.

Carve out nap times. It's the worst to be sightseeing when you're tired and you won't appreciate what you're seeing anyway. Make time to just relax...it's supposed to be a vacation, after all. 

There are some sights that you can see at night (sometimes they're even more spectacular in the dark, when they're lit up) when it's cooler: the Rialto Bridge in Venice for example, or the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps in Rome.

------

And - if you're going to Venice - here are our Venice favorites...

Sicily

The last leg of our trip was Sicily, where we stayed in a town called Sciacca for a little over a week. Sciacca is a fishing town on the south western coast of Sicily and we were lucky enough to stay in our friend's guest house which is right on the beach! The views were incredible and it was so nice to hear the sea as we fell asleep at night.

This was the wind-down part of our trip so for most of the week, we just relaxed on the beach. We did take a day trip to Agrigento one day, to see the Valley of the Temples.

The temples were so majestic against the blue sky that day, and most of them are in relatively good condition - considering that they were built centuries ago - especially this one, the Temple of Concordia (built in the 5th century BC):

There's also an amazing garden there with orange and grapefruit trees, rosemary bushes, prickly pear plants - it smelled fantastic, so we walked around breathing deeply for a while.

Another day we went to a town called Erice which is on top of a cliff and has beautiful views down to the farm lands and sea below. They have a special dish there, couscous with fish, so we tried that for lunch and it was spectacular. The waiter brings over a little bowl of fish broth and you can add however much you want to the dish.

After lunch we walked up to the castle and explored the town. Erice is also known for their pastries, so of course we sampled a few.

On the way back to Sciacca, we stopped in Segesta which is an old city, previously inhabited by the Elymian people, one of the three indigenous groups of Sicily. There's an amazing temple there that's in even better condition than the ones in Agrigento.

It's fun because you can see the temple from the road; when we exited the highway we drove for a bit and there were no signs or directions, but all of a sudden, the temple was right in front of us! We also hiked up to the amphitheater and there were amazing views of the valley below and of the temple off in the distance.

For the rest of the time, we got into a routine of waking up early and going to the fish market to get fresh fish for dinner. We tried shrimp one night and a white fish another, and one night we made a big pot of mussels. One afternoon we went down to the pier to watch the fishing boats come in and unload whatever they caught.

After securing our fish for the day, we'd have a coffee in town and then come home, pack up a beach bag and head down to the beach.

It was warm enough to swim and the water was really refreshing so we'd take dips, read, play Cribbage and repeat. Every day we'd take a picnic down for lunch: salami and cheese, couscous with grilled veggies, orange and fennel salads...

Then we'd come back up to our amazing little house to rinse off and cook dinner. We definitely got into a great routine.

After traveling around for three weeks, it was nice to stay put for a while and to be able to completely relax, especially before our big move back to Colorado on Thursday!

This has been the most amazing month and the most amazing trip: from hiking in Cinque Terre to eating up Rome; discovering Bari and trying real pizza in Naples; rowing around the Blue Grotto and visiting ancient towns like Pompeii, Matera and Alberobello, and then soaking in the Southern culture in Sicily - we are two very lucky travelers! Thanks to everyone for following along on our adventure this month, and for all the great suggestions! xo

And, if you missed any posts: here's the complete trip: Cinque Terre, Rome (+ our food tour!), Bari, and Sorrento.

Sorrento

For the fourth stop on our trip, we headed down to Sorrento. We actually stayed in a small town just outside of Sorrento (to get away from all the tourists who were already there in April!) called Massa Lubrense.

Sorrento is a great place to take day trips from because it's easy to get to Naples, Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast, Capri, etc. One day we took a ferry to Capri:

When we docked, we hopped right on a smaller boat that took us out to the Blue Grotto. It's a nice little 20 minute boat ride to get to the Grotto, and it's fun to see the island from the sea.

When we got to the entrance, smaller rowboats were waiting to take us inside the cave.

Getting inside is a riot: the entrance is tiny and everyone has to lie down in the boat so no one hits their head on the rocks. The rower waits until there are no waves and then whooshes the boat into the cave by pulling on a chain overhead.

Once you're inside, the sea turns neon blue from the light of the sun - it's really incredible. The rowboat driver rows you around singing Italian songs like "O Sole Mio" and you hang out in the cave for 10 minutes or so. It's definitely an experience not to be missed if you're in the area.

Afterwards, we took the chairlift up to the top of the island, where the views were amazingly beautiful, and then we hiked back down before lunch.

We ate lunch up in Anacapri (towards the top of the island) because it was less crowded up there. Of course we had delicious Caprese ravioli and Limoncello afterwards. We've really been lucking out with the weather this trip - this day was gorgeous and so was every other one. (We brought two bottles of sunscreen with us but we've had to buy about three more...I guess it's a good problem to have).

Another day we went to Pompeii, which was hot and crowded (as always) but fascinating (again, as always).

One thing that we did that was very cool and closer to our home base, was a farm tour. It was something that I stumbled on while browsing Trip Advisor before we left for the trip. The farm is called La Masseria and they take visitors around on various tours. We picked a two hour tour, and Eugenio, a fourth generation farmer, showed us around the farm and talked about the history of the area and explained how they grow their products. Sorrento is famous for their lemons, but they also have tons of olive, orange, fig and chestnut trees.

The farm was so peaceful and it smelled amazing there from all the delicious trees and herbs! Italians are great at using every inch of the land, as well as every part of every product. For example, lemon pulp is used for marmalade, the juice is used for lemonade (or kept as lemon juice, obviously) and the rind is used for making Limoncello, the after dinner drink.

For the rest of our time there, we explored Sorrento. We were planning on taking a day trip to Ravello or Positano on the Amalfi Coast, but we had been doing so many day trips that we decided we just wanted to chill. We had our own little beach down below the place where we stayed and it was fun to hike down there for a coffee in the morning.

The tourist season was just starting to get going, but we had the whole beach to ourselves, except for a few locals! In downtown Sorrento, however, it was a different scene with tourists everywhere! And lemons. We explored downtown one afternoon....

...but then we found a great little area down on the sea called Marina Grande. It's part of Sorrento but used to be its own little community. It has a funkier, more local feel to it and these days it's much quieter than up in Sorrento and it's so nice to sit on the sea and eat lunch.

We've been eating tons of seafood this trip since we've been by the sea pretty much the whole time, except for Rome. Our favorites are insalata mare (seafood salad), spaghetti with seafood (or spaghetti with clams) and at Marina Grande, they had this amazing basket of fried fish which everyone was ordering, so of course we followed suit.

Then, last Saturday morning, we headed to Naples where we would board the ferry that evening, for Sicily. We had the afternoon in Naples to kill and had one thing on our agenda: pizza.

We went to L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele which is one of the most famous in Naples (for various reasons, including the fact that the pizza scene in the movie Eat, Pray, Love was filmed there). The whole thing was a scene. We arrived at about 12:45 and there was already a huge line outside. What you do is go inside and take a number and then come back out on the street and wait for two hours. I'm not kidding - we waited for an hour and forty five minutes. Italians hate waiting in line anywhere - at the grocery store, in the car - so we figured that if they could wait, we could wait. Plus the people-watching is incredible. And the pizza is even more so. There are only two types on the menu: margherita (with cheese - buffalo mozzarella) or marinara (without cheese). We went for the classic margherita, of course, and it was the best pizza we've ever had.

That evening we got on the ferry and set sail for Sicily, where we arrived in Palermo early the next morning. More on Sicily next week!

PS - If you missed the first part of our trip, here is Cinque Terre, Rome and Bari.