The Great Italy Adventure

As promised, I'm putting up a post about our dream vacation in Italy. I've gotten all the pictures up, and as usual, I'm posting the links to those first, for those of you who want to go straight to them. Given the record number (1391), I've had to break them down into to two albums. There's also a quick reference guide in case you want to skip to a certain part of the trip. If pictures are what you're after, feel free to scroll down to the bottom of the page now.

For the actual story of the trip, I'm going to try to keep it short, but a lot of stuff happens in three weeks. To make it more manageable, I've broken the trip down into sections and include links to different sections on each page. Before we start, I think it's best to provide a quick overview of what we did...

We arrived in Venice on April 29th to spend the first couple days of our adventure. From there, we had a harrowing train trip across the country to Cinque Terre for a day of hiking in the rain. Then it was on to Florence, with a half-day stopover in Pisa. After several days of enjoying the art and culture of Florence, we picked up a rental car and spent the next three days driving through Tuscany and visiting various towns (Gropina, Siena, Massa Maritima, Chiusure, and Montepulciano), before dropping off the car in Rome.

We spent four wonderful days exploring the history and culture of Rome, including a day in Vatican City. After Rome, our next destination was Naples, with side trips to Pompei, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast. We took an overnight ferry from Naples to Sicily, where we picked up another rental car in Catania. The next four days were spent driving up the beautiful east coast, relaxing at a quaint B&B, almost getting blown off of Mt. Etna, touring Enna in the heart of Italy, seeing the best preserved Greek ruins in the world at Agrigento, and finally, spending a day of culinary exploration in Catania before returning to Tajikistan on May 20th.

As I said, it was wonderful. Despite my months of planning and carefully designed and detailed itinerary, (in the form of a 49-page presentation complete with maps, daily itineraries, descriptions of sites, etc...) we had very few hard and fast rules. The few we did observe all had to do with food:

1. Cappuccino every day
2. Gelato every day (sometimes twice)
3. Red wine every day (at least a glass, as much as a liter)

It really was a fantastic trip. For the blog, I'm going to focus on the stories of our adventure, rather than a detailed overview of everything we did. I've also kept the links to the photo albums at the bottom of every page for convenience.

Click here to start with Venice. http://theroadmoretraveled-nicksblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/venice.html

Or you can follow one of the links below to any of the other destinations from our trip. Enjoy!

Cinque Terre: http://theroadmoretraveled-nicksblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/cinque-terre.html
Pisa: http://theroadmoretraveled-nicksblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/pisa.html
Florence: http://theroadmoretraveled-nicksblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/florence.html
Tuscany: http://theroadmoretraveled-nicksblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/tuscany.html
Rome: http://theroadmoretraveled-nicksblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/rome.html
Naples: http://theroadmoretraveled-nicksblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/naples.html
Sicily: http://theroadmoretraveled-nicksblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/sicily.html

Pictures:

Part 1

Italy 2010 JPGS

1-151: Venice
152-224: Cinque Terre
225-286: Pisa
287-384: Florence
385-606: Tuscany (Gropina, Siena, Massa Maritima, Chiusure, Montepulciano)
607-960: Rome


Part 2

Italy 2010Part 2 JPGS

962-1040: Pompei
1041-1054: Naples
1055-1106: Capri
1107-1129: Naples
1130-1168: Amalfi Coast
1169-1186: Naples
1187-1233: Sicily (From Catania to Puntalazzo)
1234-1282: Sicily (Mt.Etna and Puntalazzo)
1293-1354: Sicily (Enna and Agrigento)
1355-1391: Sicily (Catania)