Our Practice Trip

Welcome to our travel blog. Holly and I will be using this to document our various travels. I hope you will enjoy reading this as much as we enjoy sharing our experiences with you.

Holly and I visited Venice, Rome, and Pisa for our last trip in Europe before we leave Germany. Typical of most Americans living in Europe for a few years, we had more places to visit than we had time to travel. Italy made the cut. Normandy, Budapest, Warsaw, and other places will have to wait until the next time we can be in Europe.

When I told our friends we were going to Pisa, to a person they said more than a few hours there was a waste. However, Holly has relatives in that part of the country, so that part of the trip is more about seeing them than sightseeing. There were no such reservations voiced about visiting Venice and Rome and for good reason.

San Marcos Piazza in Venice

8-10 August

Enjoying our somewhat unusual gondola ride

Holly and I both LOVED Venice. We enjoyed the usual attractions of Venice, but both of us fell in love with just walking around the city and enjoying it for itself. The architecture is exquisite, colorful, and constantly photo worthy. The romance of the city is palpable. Not that we minded. We saw many of the tourist sights:  San Marco Square, Rialto Bridge, Bridge of Sighs, and many old, beautiful churches. We also took a gondola ride. Holly had reserved a ride for us at 7:30 in the evening. When we arrived, there were already about 30 people waiting. All total, we filled 12 gondolas with 4-6 passengers in each. As Holly described it, we looked like an armada moving down the Grand Canal. One of the gondolas had an accordion player and a man with a concert hall quality voice. We were serenaded by them throughout the ride. We cruised a few hundred meters down the canal before turning around and entering the narrow canals that wind their way throughout the city. Our armada and musical accompaniment were very popular with the tourists, Holly and I are prominently featured now in many people's photos of Venice and our musicians regularly received applause from the walkways and bridges above the canals. We both would eagerly return to Venice just to soak the city in again.

10-13 August

The Colosseum from Palatine Hill

Holly making a wish at Trevi Fountain

Rome is dripping with history. There are of course the famous historical sites--the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, etc.--but there are buildings that precede the US by a thousand years around every corner. In addition to the three I mentioned, we also saw the Fountain of Trevi, the Spanish Steps, the Palatine, and Vatican City. We tried to take the USO tour of the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, and St Peter's Basilica, but the tour was sold out. We settled on one by What a Life Tours. Not the best tour I've ever been on, but it was well worth the 46 Euros we paid for each of us to skip the long lines outside the chapel and basilica. Both of us were amazed by how clean Rome is. We rarely saw any trash on the ground. We were also grateful for the many water fountains around the city, especially since it was in the high 90s (over 35C) the days we were there. If you go there during the summer, I highly recommend carrying a water bottle with you so you can fill it up often and stay hydrated. We were satisfied with what we saw, but we easily could have stayed there another 3 days and not seen all the historic sites.

13-15 August
We stopped in Pisa and visited the famous square where the tower, cathedral, and baptistery are. No, we didn't take any "holding up the Leaning Tower" pictures. After a short visit to Pisa, we went to Holly's cousin's place in the Italian resort town of Castiglioncello, about 30 minutes south of Pisa by train. We were definitely there during the high season, the beaches were packed. During our time there, we mainly visited with Virginia (Holly's cousin) and her family and relaxed. We also ate a lot. The food on the entire trip was scrumptious and Virginia ensured we ended on a high note. Spending too much more time in Italy would have been hazardous to our waistlines.

I am taking away two main lessons from this trip. First, Holly and I make great traveling partners., which is good since we plan on spending 9 months circling the globe together. We are both easygoing and have similar outlooks on the joys (and challenges) of traveling. The gondola ride in Venice was a perfect example. I think we enjoyed it more than anyone else in the group. We were laughing at how it was a bit cheesy, especially when we thought the ride was just going to be a few hundred meters down the Grand Canal and back. We have yet to see how we handle adversity, but so far so good. Second, I realized air conditioning is more important to me than I thought.

Our world adventure is off to a good start. We're about to leave Germany and start a whirlwind tour of the US. More adventures to come...

Traveling Resources

RyanAir.com: The primary budget airline in Europe. I won't fly with them though without buying either priority boarding or a reserved seat. To me, 7 or 10 Euros per person per flight is a small price to keep my sanity and not have to stand in the ridiculous line to board the flight.

Booking.com: Awesome website for finding hotel rooms and, to a lesser degree, hostels. Expanding beyond Europe since it was purchased by Priceline.com. We used it to find the place we stayed at in Venice, Antico Fiore. The hotel was a little difficult to find, but the room was great (had an AC unit!) and breakfast was delicious.

http://www.blackberryhouse.it: The place we stayed at in Rome. Great price and great location, but not the best place either of us have stayed. Don't recommend staying there in the summer since the room didn't have AC or a fan and someone kept turning off the hallway AC unit at night.

http://www.pensionesignorini.it/contenuto.aspx?id=16: Virginia's place in Castiglioncello. Beautiful little B&B in a seaside town and I can promise you you will eat very well if you stay there.

Triposo for iOS: Fantastic app for finding things to do in multiple cities.

Trip Advisor Rome City Guide for Android: Nice guide to sights and anything else you want to do in the city. Especially loved the compass tool to help us find restaurants (even if they were closed for vacation).