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.