Is the name of a 1953 movie starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. We also had our own personal Roman holiday. And the Eternal City didn’t dissapoint.
Italy ended up being our replacement country for Jordan (we had to cancel our trip to Jordan after our President of Peace started yet another war and Jordan was in the danger zone). We considered several options but Italy was our best option for the most free flights and hotels plus easy logistics to get there from Tunisia and to head onto Namibia after we were done.
We were able to carve out 17 days for Italy which meant we had to make some hard choices. We set our schedule as 3 nights in Rome, 2 nights in Florence, 2 nights in Venice, 2 nights in Verona, 2 nights in Modena, 2 nights in Cinque Terra and 3 nights in Rome.
Since this was my first trip to Italy (Kate’s fourth) we mostly stuck to the highlights. In Rome we went to the Colisseum, the Vatican, the Forum, the Trevi fountain (you have to toss a coin over your left shoulder for good luck), etc. We attended two opera highlights shows. One of them, The Three Tenors, had a lot of humor in it and we really enjoyed it. While Rome was crowded, it was much less so than it would have been in the summer. One of the things I did not expect was mosquito bites. Here’s the most interesting thing about the Vatican. In the Sistine Chapel, Michaelangelo had painted just about everyone nude. This one Vatican official, Biagio da Cesena, didn’t take kindly to this and harshly criticized Michaelangelo. So in retaliation, Michaelangelo painted a picture of this official as Minos (the judge of the damned in hell) with horns coming out of his head and his balls being bitten by a snake! Michaelangelo had the last laugh.
Florence: Michaelangelo actually prefered sculpting to painting. He didn’t even want to paint the Sistine Chapel. Instead he sculped figures like David, which you can see in the Galleria dell’Accademia. It’s a fun town to walk around. Besides art, you’ll see a ton of leather and jewelry shops.
Venice: Beautiful canals. But how many times in movies have you seen floating houses? (buildings with air bladders keeping them above water). I couldn’t find a single one. We got to see the Bridge of Sighs (a biggie for any Robin Trower fan). And like every other city in Italy, huge cathedrals/galleries filled with painted ceilings. The man-hours (I’m assuming it was only men working on these back then) used in these, is just staggering.
Verona. Another large Colosseum, this one is the eighth largest in the world and the fourth largest in Italy. Of course this town also has another bell tower to climb to the top of. We really enjoyed the Museo Palazzo Maffei. So many of the other museums are completely filled with religious works of art. This one had a lot of regular art. And of course, there was the statue of Juliet (you have to grab her right breast for good luck)!
Modena. We spent the first day here going to the Maserati museum. We saw a lot of beautiful cars, including several favorites: the 3500 GT, The 5000 GT, the Merak SS, Ghlibi spider and the Mistral. Then we went to Maranello. I did a 20 minute test drive in a Ferrari convertible. It was certainly the most fun driving experience I’ve ever had. Our second day here was spent going to two Ferrari museums and the Luciano Pavarotti museum. While the rest of Italy was good, my pilgrimage to the Ferrari museum in Maranello was the highlight of the trip for me.
Vernazza and the Cinque Terre national park area. Vernazza is a gorgeous little hamlet on the far northwest Italian coast. It is one of five small towns along the famous Cinque Terre trail. The other four towns are Monterosso, Corneglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. We ran the entire trail (save for two closed sections which caused us to divert to higher trails). It was the most beautiful trail I have been on; edging out the John Muir Trail, the Lost Coast trail, the Catalina trail, El Camino de Santiago and the Haute Route in Switzerland. With the diversions, it ended up being a 9.6 mile run with 4,000′ of elevation gain.
All roads lead to Rome. Or in this case, back to Rome for another three nights. For our first three nights in Rome, we ended up paying $731 for our hotel (this allowed us to be where we wanted to be. And there weren’t any point options in the historical city center). Our next two Airbnbs were free due to Airbnb credits and our hotel in Venice was almost free due to Amex credits. We had to pay $403 for our Airbnb in Vernazza (we had used up all our credits by then). And that brings us back to Rome for three more nights. This time we stayed in the Waldorf Astoria Rome Cavalieri. This is a fabulous hotel that was again nearly free through using Amex credits. We were upgraded for all three nights and our middle night was an upgrade to the $1,731 Vista suite. We had several other Amex credits that we able to use to get a couple hundred dollars of credit for lunch and dinner.
We mostly took it easy for the last few days in Rome as we needed some time to plan for Namibia and South Africa. Three activities that we did do during this second trip in Rome were going to see a Chopin and Friends piano recital (the best parts were the friends – Debussy’s Clair de Lune and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue); going to the Villa Farnesina and to the Bocca della Verità (mouth of truth).
