Wandering Browns

Riomaggiore- the start of our adventure Our night in Riomaggiore wasn’t the most comfortable, because the bed was 2 twin cots pushed together, and a drunk guy got lost on his way to his room and was yelling in the streets for about 30 minutes before his friends guided him home. Also, the church tower rang every hour and since the town is so tiny, it seemed like it was REALLY close to our windows. Regardless, we had a nice morning getting ready for our hike and finding fruit to eat for breakfast in Rio. We set out for the next town over, Manarola, at about 9:00. Manarola was not very far away, and had a cute main street leading down to a tiny rocky cove. We bought focaccia and some kind of sweet bread for breakfast, and walked around the next point only to find the trail to the next town was closed due to flooding. I guess last fall, there was a series of horrible storms that caused flooding and mudslides, wiping out the trail and much of the town of Vernazza. So, we had to take t...

Surprise, surprise we also stayed two nights in Siena! It was so nice to slow down and just hang out for a day and meet Austin’s friends/people who speak English! The next morning we woke up and had another wonderful breakfast by our B&B mother. Austin had a fun conversation with her and the other guy staying in the place, and I kept looking at him trying to remind him with my ESP that the train for Pisa left at 9:18. Well, we got out the door before 9:00, and even made it to the bus station in enough time to catch a bus to the train station. Once we got in there and bought our ticket, we thought we might have a chance to catch it. We ran to the proper platform just as the train doors were closing. The conductor didn’t open the doors for us, and they were locked, and the train started moving, so we officially missed the train. That was ok, though, because Siena’s train station also has a mall. Austin was able to buy batteries (we have had a constant battle with the camera and bat...

I hope you all enjoy this, because it is the first (and probably the last) time you’ll get to hear what actually happened during our vacation.  So after a grueling day in Firenze, and a train ride that seemed impossibly long after being spoiled by the fast train from Napoli, we got to Siena just as the sun was getting ready to set.  Not as romantic as it sounds, because we had no idea where to go, and I didn’t realize that Siena was built on a series of steep hills.  So we got on a bus that took us from the station closer to where we wanted to be, and started wandering around.  (Lonely Planet is great for info, but the maps look like a 3 rd grader drew them.)  After like 15 minutes of up and down, we ended up in front of the Duomo, which was totally unexpected, so I called the guy whose B&B we were staying at (did I mention we didn’t even have an address for this place?) and he said he would come find us.  Ten seconds later, he popped out of an...

David, just in case you don't know what I'm talking about For the first time in our whole trip, we stayed for 2 nights in the same place. Let me tell you, it felt really good to not have to worry about packing up our stuff and toting it around for once. Firenze day 2 started out early as well, though not as early as day 1. We took a bus from our hostel to the Galleria dell'accademia. This is the home of the famous David sculpture by Michelangelo. It also had a very interesting musical instrument museum which I enjoyed. It included some of the first pianos, and the first upright piano (it looked like a grand piano stood up on end). It also included some interesting musical instruments that aren’t around today, including a serpentine horn, and one-stringed instrument that sounded like a trumpet. There were other works of art, but the main exhibit was David. He is HUMUNGOUS! I was not expecting him to be that big, but he is one beautiful work of art. Sadly, we were not ...

On the terrace of the Uffizi with Palazzo Vecchio in the background It was raining pretty hard the night we arrived in Firenze. After being asked by at least 10 Africans if we wanted an umbrella, we found the right bus and met this lady from New Zealand who has been living in Firenze for several years. She told us the right stop to get off for the hostel, as well as some tips for sights to see and a good place to have dinner. It was around 9:00 by the time we made it to our bus stop. From the bus stop, we easily found the road leading to the hostel, but spent the next 20-30 minutes hiking uphill before finally finding it. Our hostel was called Villa Camerata and is right on the outskirts of the city, set amongst green fields and vineyards. It was an old, fancy house and had a beautiful courtyard and garden. We checked in and had to do laundry that night; which made it a pretty late night. The next morning, we woke up extra early because we wanted to go to the famous Uffizzi gall...

Castel dell'Ovo This morning, I woke up really early and could not get back to sleep. I got all ready (packed and everything) and was down in the lobby waiting for Austin by 7:00am. We slept in M/F dorms last night, so I didn’t know when Austin would be up and around. He came down about 7:15 and we had breakfast, but he was not at all ready for the day. I went up to his room (because there was nobody else staying there) and used the internet while he got ready for the day. We took off about 8:30am, ate strawberries by the sea, and walked along the sea to our first stop- Castel dell'ovo. This castle was named this because according to legend, Virgil buried an egg in a little casket underneath where the castle stands and said that when the egg broke, Napoli and the castle would fall. There was a wine tasting event going on, and so we could not go to many of the areas of the castle, but it was still fun to climb up on top and look over the edge where the sea meets it. After...

Today was Sunday, and there was a church branch on the way to our next destination. I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited to just go to church and partake of the sacrament, since we have not been able to go for 2 weeks. Before we left, we had breakfast in Suzy’s kitchen. She made us hot chocolate and we had rolls with jam and toast (comes in a package already toasted) with nutella. Another American couple from a northern Chicago suburb was there when we got there, so we got to talk about Chicago with them for awhile. Turns out, we were very similar in our itineraries/point in our lives. He just graduated from a medical school in Chicago, and they came to Italy for 3 weeks. We had been to many of the same places, and those places we did not have in common Austin and I still have on our itinerary. They gave us some tips on Chicago traffic, and assured us that west suburbs are a great place to live. They are moving to Seattle for his residencies, but it was nice to speak English aft...

Following the night train, we woke up in Salerno, Italy, which is a major transportation hub for southern Italy. It used to not be a very nice place, but the citizens there have made a good effort to clean it up. We went for a walk by the sea and ate our breakfast, then bought bus tickets up the coast, first to Amalfi. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The Amalfi coast kind of reminds me of Big Sur in California. There are sheer cliff faces, winding roads, and beautiful views. The difference is that for some reason, Italians decided to make the road miniature sized. In some areas, the road is only wide enough for one way traffic, but they do not control it in any way. Also, the curves are much curvier than Highway 1. So, here we are on a charter sized bus, going on this very winding road with cliffs on one side and sheer rock faces on the other. The bus driver alerted drivers coming the other way by honking his horn as he careened around corners. I felt like this g...

Today started off a little weird, because we were so tired from our long day the day before. We woke up and took an hour and a half to get going. Even though we had put our clothes in the dryer the night before, and then hung them up to finish drying overnight, most of them were still not completely dry! Austin asked the guy at the hostel desk about buying bus tickets, and he took 5 minutes explaining to him in English and Italian how to get tickets. This made us walk out of the hostel door just as the bus we needed pulled away from the stop. ARGH! That meant we had to walk to the station. Austin still thought we may be able to make the bus to Siracusa that we wanted to walking, so we fast walked it up to the station, and missed the bus by about 10 minutes. Then we waited for an hour. Then we got on a bus. We sat too far back on the bus (it was a charter style bus) and it was hot inside, so I got pretty sick. I sat there with my water and my plastic bag just in case for the remainder o...