Italy - Our Top 10

During our nearly one month stay in Italy we were able to visit an array of different regions and cities. To wrap up our trip, before moving onto Vienna and Berlin, here are our top ten Italian experiences.

Ancient Rome

No trip to Italy is complete without visiting the Colosseum. One of the Seven Wonders of the World, it is not only extremely impressive, even by today's standards, but also a testament to the building acumen of the ancient Romans. If that wasn't enough, you can walk in the footsteps of Augustus, Caesar, and the rest of Rome's important historical figures in the ruins of the Roman Imperial Forum and Palatine Hill.

The Colosseum - the centre of Ancient Rome

Cinque Terre

Five cities perched on the Ligurian coast caused us to forget everything - blog posts, TV, calling home, and even bickering - if only for a few days. Rightly a UNESCO World Heritage Site, these five cities still seem to operate the same way they have for hundreds of years, oblivious to the millions of tourists flocking to see them every year.

Riomaggiore - our home for 4 days

Pompeii and Herculaneum

Perhaps the best opportunity to step back nearly 2000 years and explore a fully functioning Roman city - from palaces and temples to storefronts, cafeterias, and small family homes. Ironically, by being destroyed, Pompeii and Herculaneum survived, untouched and avoided the slow degradation of generation upon generation building on top of each other. 

Pompeii - destroyed but not gone

Burano

A photographer's playground, with it's brightly painted houses and winding canals, Burano provides the authenticity that Venice is now missing. Even as water buses deposit groups of tourists on the island hourly, it somehow manages to retain a laid back, peaceful feeling.  

 

Burano - full of colour

Sculpture

With the likes of Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, and Bernini (wait, he wasn't a ninja turtle), the Italians easily dominate in the field of sculpture and there's no better place to bask in the glory of their masterpieces than Florence. The Uffizi, Bargello, and Accademia museums feature works by these famous sculptors as well as many others. 

Giasone - one of our favorite sculptures in Italy

The Vatican Museum

Our favorite Italian museum (that we've visited), and a serious contender for best overall, the Vatican Museum won us over with it's collections which are large both in size and scope. From ancient Egyptian artifacts, to Greek and Roman sculptures, classical and modern paintings, and the museum's architecture, the museum offers something for everyone - and it's also home to the Sistine Chapel. 

The Raphael Rooms - one of art's great achievements

Pizza

Naples may be credited with the invention of this tasty dish, however we found restaurants throughout the country serving up mouth watering versions. Our favorites were Senzanome, in Florence, and Dar Poeta, in Rome. 

Pizza at Senzanome

Montemartini

Unable to get enough sculpture in Florence, we added a trip to the Montemartini Museum to our Roman itinerary and were blown away at the exhibition space - a historic electric plant. The contrast between the soft white marble sculptures and dark metal engines, valves, and pipes is gorgeous and provides a great photo opportunity as well. 

Juxtaposition at Montemartini

Basilica San Marco

Unrivaled for the title of most opulent by anything we've seen to date, Basilica San Marco makes up for what it lacks in size and scale with an abundance of sparkling gold mosaics. The lavish exterior, situated next to the equally stunning Doge's Palace, and mosaic covered interior leave visitors with a true understanding of how rich and powerful this republic really was. 

Basilica San Marco - one of the best in the world

The Pantheon

Was it famous before Dan Brown included it in his best selling novel Angels and Demons? If so, it's impossible to tell now, as visitors flock to the site hoping to glimpse a hidden symbol, or at least Raphael's tomb - which actually isn't that easy to spot. However for us, the building's architecture is the real draw. 

The Pantheon - an architectural marvel

A reminder, many more photos from our time in Italy, as well as the entire trip through Europe can be found on our Flickr page.

Hope you enjoyed our list...think we missed anything? Let us know!

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The Colours of Burano

It's easy to go photo-crazy in a place like Burano, with it's striking painted houses in every imaginable colour (yes that's right, colour with an "o-u") and its picturesque canals, and Calli did just that. We spent the day wandering the friendly streets, eating pasta and pizza, looking at bead shops (and by we, I mean Calli), and looking for Campion boats in the marina (no such luck).

Burano is a lovely island, even if its skipped over in favour of Murano far too often. While it doesn't have the glass-blowing shows, it does offer a glimpse into somewhat "everyday Italian" life that is otherwise missing from the region. We enjoyed watching fishermen bring back their catches and people hanging their laundry, and loved how much pride they seemed to have for their little island. 

The houses are all painted these bright colours so that returning fisherman could navigate back to their houses even in the dense fog that settles here. In any case, they make for some fantastic photo opportunities.

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True Genius - da Vinci in Venice

While we didn't make much time for museums in Venice (perhaps a combination of our budget and already having been to some amazing museums), but one we couldn't pass up was an exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci designed with the purpose of bringing his inventions to life.

360 degree mirror da Vinci used for working on perspective

The organ in the church

Housed inside the small Church of San Barnaba, the collection of machines made from his sketches is both intriguing and amazing. The wooden models, some of which are interactive, range from ball-bearings to bicycles to tanks  to helicopters to double-hulled boats. Each model is placed beside a reproduction of the original sketch, making it all the more interesting. In addition to the models, prints of some of his most famous sketches, sculptures, and paintings adorn the walls. 

A column lifter - simple but brilliant

One of the many designs for a flying machine

One of the first designs for ball bearings

A flying machine and a bicycle

 

When walking around looking at what he accomplished in his life it's easy to be blown away. Besides creating some of the most famous pieces of art in the world (The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man) and creating designs for machines that wouldn't be built for hundreds of years (he lived from 1452 to 1519), he also was an accomplished botanist, came up with a rudimentary theory of how plate tectonics worked, made extensive inroads into the world of anatomy, wrote music and novels, and even created incredibly accurate maps. 

An incredibly accurate map of Imola, Italy (via)

A self-portrait of the man himself (via)

The Vitruvian Man (via)

No matter what your interests, you can't help but be impressed. Even though the museum is small and simple, it has enough to occupy visitors of all ages for hours upon end. You can find it by looking for the Chiesa di San Barbara, and entry is 8 euro per person.

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Venice - A Photo Essay

When it came time to explore Venice, I was most looking forward to simply walking around, camera in hand, trying to capture even a small bit of its beauty. From sunrise to sunset, Venice is constantly changing colours as the moving sun turns the deep blue waters golden at sunrise, frothy green throughout the day, swirling brown in the evening, and finally jet black again before bedtime.

7:00 am - Sunrise over the sleeping gondolas

St. Mark's Square, before the tourists awake

8:00 am - As the sun paints everything golden

A sun-kissed St. Mark's Basilica

9:45 am - Fish at the daily Rialto Market

A group of gondolas awaiting their passengers

Santa Maria della Salute Church

11:15 am - The busy Rialto Bridge

1:15 pm - One of many hidden side streets

St. Mark's clock tower overlooks the square

3:00 pm - Boats taking an afternoon siesta

5:30 pm - The sun begins to set

7:45 pm - Gondolas return home for the night

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Venice - Backpackers Need Not Apply

Regularly referred to as the most romantic city in the world, I was excited to visit Venice for the fist time, and envisioned foggy morning walks through the canals and afternoons people watching at a small cafe while gondolas glided by. Then, a few weeks before our visit while enduring rainy weather in Florence, we learned about the abnormally high water levels currently leaving a large portion of Venice underwater. My visions of the city quickly changed to thoughts of wading through thigh high water with our backpacks hoisted overhead to stay dry and teetering on a temporary walkway with hundreds of other tourists in St. Mark's square.

St. Mark's Square - beautiful and DRY when we were there!

Luckily we missed this fun (via)

Luckily the rain stayed away, the tides didn't breech the canal walls, and we had sunny bright blue skies for the duration of our three days in the floating city. Making the most of the sunshine, possibly some of the last we would have for awhile, we spent hours getting lost down narrow streets and exploring as much of the city as possible. However, wrapped up in romantic daydreams and weather concerns there was something I hadn't accounted for in our visit to Venice - the prices.

The canals

Being one of the top tourist destinations in the world, fifty thousand visitors (on average) flock to Venice per day looking for an injection of arts, culture, and extravagance. However the majority (let's say 99%) are clearly not on a backpacker's budget, or any budget, as evident by the abundance of high end hotels, swanky restaurants, and tourists carting around multiple Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Missoni shopping bags.

Many of the old buildings and palaces are now hotels

Sunset in Venice - the stuff of Romance

Although we were able to avoid the luxury designer stores (they likely wouldn't have let us in with our backpaker attire anyway) we found the prices for everyday goods as inflated as the hotel rooms and gondola rides, and naively experienced some serious sticker shock when faced with risotto for eighteen dollars per person. However it turns out that residents are also struggling to keep up with these rising prices and are deserting the city at a rate of 2000 people per year. It's estimated that by 2064, the city will essentially be a ghost town without any permanent residents - a sinking Disneyland of sorts. 

Doge's Palace - once the most powerful seat in the Republic

 

In the few grocery stores that still haunt the island we found some deals - one Euro beer, buns and mortadella for a few euros, and quality dark chocolate for a fair price, all the components of a balanced diet; however, looking for affordable restaurants or internet access revealed itself to be completely futile.

The glittering mosaics of St. Mark's Cathedral

While it might be overrun with tourists and extremely expensive, there's no denying the beauty of the city. There's a reason it has earned a spot among lists of the most romantic and beautiful cities on Earth. The narrow streets and canals, especially at night, are magical to wander around, and the Piazza San Marco is the ultimate reminder of the power and opulence that the Most Serene Republic of Venice enjoyed for over 800 years. In the end, three days probably wasn't enough to see all the sites that we wanted to, but was about all that our budget could endure.

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They Loved Hercules!

Hopefully you've already checked out our post on our trip to Pompeii, but if not you can read it over here. 

Our second stop of the day after Pompeii was the similarly-devastated ancient city of Herculaneum. Although it has always lived in Pompeii's shadow, Herculaneum offers a very different (and overall, probably better) experience than Pompeii. Other than the fact that they were both Roman cities and destroyed forever by the eruption of Vesuvius, they have very few similarities.

The excavations sit just below the modern city of Ercolano

Many of the buildings are still fairly intact

Herculaneum (named after Hercules...a guy they seem to have really taken a liking to) was a coastal port city located between Naples and Pompeii. Unlike Pompeii, it was not pelted by flying rock and ash; instead, it was covered, from the bottom up, with a pyroclastic flow of boiling mud. This resulted in very little damage to the buildings, compared to those seen in Pompeii, and amazing preservation of the site itself. Many of the buildings have multiple stories and extremely well preserved frescoes, mosaics, and sculpture. There's even a lot of the wood (doors, beams, etc.) still intact after being instantly carbonized by the intense heat. 

Some of the frescoes - amazingly preserved after all this time

Pottery still where it was found

Cofferred arch details still intact

Wood instantly carbonized by the intense heat

Another nice feature of Herculaneum is the fact that it is in the middle of a bustling city. This means that it is largely inaccessible to tour groups and buses. When we arrived at Herculaneum, there were probably only 20 other people at the site which meant that we got to explore and take photos in relative peace. 

Calli by a pot!

Travis by some wall paintings!

The site is much smaller than Pompeii, mainly due to the fact that a city surrounds it on all sides, but does have some extremely impressive buildings including the College of the Augustales with its frescoes depicting myths of Hercules, and the Villa of the Papyri with its library containing 1785 carbonized papyrus scrolls. 

Small place for worship

Floor mosaics

Some beautiful columns

Much of the excavations have stopped in favor preservation efforts, mainly due to the unfortunate location of the site under the modern day city. Some buildings have even been covered back up using modern mining techniques to try and preserve them until they can be safely excavated.

Statue of Marcus Nonius Balbus - a major benefactor to Herculaneum

At the end of the day, we enjoyed each site for different reasons, but the combination of the two into one exhaustive daytrip proved to be all the more rewarding. The vastness and location of Pompeii combined with the completeness and preservation of Herculaneum are truly amazing in their own right and worth of the millions of tourists that visit them every year.

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