For our last day in Rome, we headed to the Colosseum, Forum, and Palatine Hill. The Colosseum, as its name suggests, is quite large and truly an engineering marvel. Since we had purchased a Roma Pass earlier, we were able to skip the long ticket buying lines and walk right into the ruins. Next, we walked around the ruins of the Forum and the Hill for a while before eating an early dinner near Capitoline Hill.

One thing that annoys me about Rome is the large number of unofficial “tour guides” who solicit you to join their tour by promising that you can skip the long lines at major sights. While the line to enter St. Peter’s was quite long, it only took about 20 minutes to traverse, despite the warnings of “2 hour waits” by the guides. Once inside the sights, we overheard some of the tours given by the guides and it seems like most the guides are pretty terrible.

It’s 1 BC! Tomorrow is the start of our transatlantic cruise from Rome to Ft. Lauderdale. Valerie laments that phase 1 of the honeymoon passed by so quickly. I’m very excited to move to the relaxing and fattening phase 2.

For our first day in Rome, we visited Vatican City. The Vatican is closed to tourism on Sundays, so today was pretty much our only opportunity to visit the Holy See. In the afternoon, we braved the rain to visit St. Peter’s Basilica. Unlike other cathedrals, which try to look big and impressive, we learned that St. Peter’s actually was designed to appear smaller than it is (which is ginormous). After the rain turned into a mere sprinkle, we walked to the Vatican Museum (also huge) where we spent about 3 hours, including at least half an hour in the Sistine Chapel.

In the late evening, we took a Rick Steves walking tour of Rome from the Pantheon to the Spanish Steps. We stopped along the way for various delicious treats including a coffee slushie, gelato, and sorbetto. Finally, we headed back to the hotel, tired and having accrued about 25,000 steps on the FitBit.

As a side note, once the cruise starts, updates to this blog are probably going to become very scarce. The cruise line charges exorbitant fees for accessing the Internet from the ship and I’m probably too cheap to pay for it.

Siena is a fairly small city and we were able to visit most of the major sights in one day.  We started by heading to the very impressive Siena Cathedral, which is huge for a city as small as Siena.  After visiting the cathedral-related sights, we walked to Il Campo (the main square) where we picked up food and strolled for a while before heading back to the hotel.  We took a taxi back to the train station and then headed for Rome, our last stop on the self-guided portion of our honeymoon.

Today, Valerie and I took an all-day wine tour of the Chianti Classico region of Italy.  We visited two wineries and two local towns where learned a whole lot about Chianti and also drank a lot of Chianti Classico.  Our tour was led by the very knowledgeable Franco who seemed to know everyone in every town.  I don’t really remember a whole lot of the tour after the first few bottles of wine, but it is definitely a worthwhile experience for those who enjoy Chianti or Brunello or want to learn about the operations of small-scale wine producers in the Chianti region.

It’s another train day! Today’s trip to Siena involved two transfers (@ La Spezia & Empoli) and was about four hours long.  When we arrived at Siena station, we took a cab to our hotel.  Most cars are restricted from entering the Siena city walls.  With its narrow one-way steep roads clogged with pedestrians, Siena is not car friendly.  However, our cab driver effortlessly navigated us through the city (narrowly avoiding tourists as we passed through the city’s main square) for only 11 euro.  While I wouldn’t recommend hiring a taxi in most of Italy, I think taking a cab is definitely the right approach in Siena.

Today, we headed to the remaining two Cinque Terre towns: Riomaggiore and Manarola. In Riomaggiore, we once again got lost while following the walking tour directions. By the time we realized we were lost, we had gone about halfway through the tour in the reverse direction, so we continued through in reverse order. Sadly, this meant we had to walk uphill most of the way instead of downhill.

Most of the Cinque Terre towns have small rivers running through them. However, it is often hard to notice since the rivers were paved over after WWII and turned into sewer systems. In Manarola, the river runs right underneath the main street and you can hear it flowing underneath your feet. Amazingly, we didn’t get lost on the Manarola walking tour. I really liked the Manarola walking tour, which includes a slightly strenuous hike through a hillside vineyard and beautiful views of the town and sea.

Along with Interlaken, Cinque Terre is one of my favorite destinations of this trip. The towns are easily accessible by train. There are very few cars. The restaurants are tourist friendly. The food is good. And the atmosphere is relaxed.

The coastal road between all the Cinque Terre towns is closed due to a landslide. This left two options for us: hike the much more difficult high road between towns or take the train. We started hiking the high road to Vernazza, but quickly gave up, turned around, and headed down the hill to the Corniglia train station.

Corniglia is unique among the Cinque Terre towns in that it isn’t at sea level. Thus, visitors must either hike up 365 steps to the town or take a shuttle for 1.5 euro one-way. For our trips up the hill, we opted to take the shuttle. For our trips down the hill, we braved the stairs and took in the view.

Today, we visited two of the Cinque Terre towns: Vernazza and Monterosso. Vernazza is Rick Steves’s favorite Cinque Terre town. This was clear from the numerous tourists with Rick Steves guide books in hand. We walked around town a bit trying to follow the walking tour from the book, but eventually gave up and walked to the harbor to relax and take in the sights and eat some lunch. Next, we headed to Monterosso, the only of the five towns with a “real” beach. We once again failed to complete the walking tour and just enjoyed the sights. Tired after hours of walking, we headed back to Corniglia.

Today, we traveled to a land (five lands?) popularized by the patron saint of European travel Rick Steves. We’re staying in the tiny town of Corniglia, the middle city of the five cities that make up Cinque Terre. I was fascinated to learn that one of my favorite pasta sauces (pesto) and one my favorite breads (focaccia) were invented in this region.  I’m really looking forward to eating lots of tasty Italian food. Meanwhile, Valerie is looking forward to the gorgeous coastal hikes that Rick Steves talks about in his books.

Valerie is not feeling well again.  Yesterday, we drank the tap water in Venice and perhaps that wasn’t a good idea.  While I’m still recovering from the effects of the tap water in Prague and thus have increased tap water immunity (this probably isn’t true), Valerie was hit by the dreaded tap water troubles.  Rather than heading into Venice, we stayed in Mestre today.  While walking around town, we found Jungle Pizza, a restaurant that won Best Non-Traditional Pizza at the International Pizza Competition in Las Vegas.  The place was super busy and the pizza was really tasty.

Our train arrived at Venezia Mestre station around 9am in the morning. We dropped off our bags at the hotel and then headed to Venice on the bus. We then took a vaporetto (water bus) along the canal before disembarking at St. Mark’s Square. In quick succession, we visited the Doge’s Palace and St. Mark’s Cathedral before taking a quick walking tour of the square. (At the Doge’s Palace, we learned that St. Mark was not the original saint of Venice, but rather St. Theodore, slayer of crocodiles.) We then proceeded to take Rick Steves’s advice and get lost in Venice while trying to find our way back to the bus stop.

I think Valerie regrets that we are staying in Mestre instead of on the island. The 30 minute bus ride to the city and back is a bit inconvenient and I feel like we are missing out on the evening charm of Venice. If we ever return, we’re definitely staying in the city, even if we need to haul our luggage across half of it to do so.