A trip well-traveled

At the beginning of August I took a 10 hour flight to Rome, Italy with my friend Barb but the story actually begins years ago when she and I met in Denver, CO as waitresses. She ended up moving back to Chicago and we stayed connected by cards and letters (before the internet!) In one of those notes I said something about when we're older and walking around Italy with a glass of wine! She called me this spring after rereading this message and yelled "we need to go to Italy!" and so we did. Sometimes you need a kickstart to really get going; this was mine. We did some preliminary research, making decisions on where exactly we wanted to go but the rest of it was pretty spur of the moment. And really until I drove into Chicago with my family, went to a Cubs/Cardinals game on my birthday and then dropped off at Barb's I still had feelings of uncertainty.  And the next afternoon we headed to O'Hare and got on an Italia airplane! I remembered my passport and all other relevant things including a suitcase full of clothes and the trip began! 

I've never been on a plane that long and it made me a little antsy - doesn't the pilot get sleepy?- but we settled in with a glass of wine and a plastic container of decent lasagna. Neither of us had working screens so we watched Madame Secretary with Tea Leoni on Barb's phone because that's what she had in her downloads.  We tried to sleep to no avail-personally I was too excited and nervous. 

We landed in Rome, easily made it through customs because they had these great scanners and we only had to stop to get our passports stamped. At baggage claim we hooked up with Barb’s hairdresser who was also traveling to Italy. And we headed out into the Rome sunshine pulling our suitcases behind us.  We paid an Uber driver to tour us around the high points in Rome and with just one day there it was the easiest way to see everything. The Coliseum, St Peter's Square and the Basilica, the Fountain of Trevi, and the Spanish Steps were all amazing to see. Being near such old buildings, statues and monuments was awe-inspiring and it never got old. In Florence I walked through a perfumery that has existed since 1221.  We had.an amazing meal that evening at Trattoria Pommidoro dal 1890 tucked away in a little neighborhood and we sat on the patio and lazily enjoyed our meal and wine. I was still pinching myself that I was eating dinner in Rome.  We discovered a fountain near our hotel that had two cafes for croissants and cappuccinos.  

The next day we headed north by train to the beautiful Cinque Terre region to stay for three days in Monterosso, one of the 5 hill towns on the coast. We had a little AirB&B on the hill and we could walk down to the town but we always caught a ride back up. Because we were on the coast and the seafood was fresh a lot of our meals here were straight from the sea. The second day we took a boat ride around the 5 hill towns to see them from the water. We were there during a heat wave and hiking around the hills (the preferred method to sightseeing here) was just not going to happen. The boat ride was lovely and we loved Lorenzo, our handsome boat guide and that we were able to get in the water and swim in the sparkling water. We had several amazing meals in Monterosso and a delicious meal right off the boat at Ristorante Gambero Rosso in Vernazza. 

On the fourth day we headed back to the train and headed an hour south to Livorno, another coastal town where Barb and I were excited to see a concert that night. We stayed in a cool old hotel right across from the Fort where the Xavier Rudd concert would take place later that night. We cooled off in the hotel and then headed out for dinner and a cold bottle of Prosecco before heading into the concert.  We hadn't finished our bubbly so our server gave us plastic glasses to travel with as we traipsed our way down the cobblestones.  The concert was a very relaxed affair and one that I'm so glad we took the time to see. Nobody looked through our bags or cared that we had cups already in our hands. The sky was beautiful and the crowd was easily like family. It was a great place to people watch as we bopped our bodies to Xavier's music. 

The next day our adventure took us to beautiful Florence where we started our days with cappuccinos on the piazza and watched the fountains spurt out water and eventually made our way to the Uffizi Galleries witnessing masterpieces of art.  We also visited the Gucci museum and store which took us through the history of the artisitic brand. We had more delicious food including a meal at La Tenda Rossa. During our time here we also took a Walk About Tours cooking class in the Tuscan countryside and a vegan dinner in the San Gimignano region at a 600 years old farmhouse. We shopped at tiny boutiques where Barb and I bought matching silky dresses and I bought a beautiful linen dress.  We walked through dozens of leather stores with so many purses. I had a shopkeeper try and sell me very beautiful but expensive earrings, I had to walk away unfortunately. And Barb and I wandered through the Basilica di Santa Croce which is where Galileo and Michelangelo are entombed. We drank quite a few carafes of red wine, Prosecco, Limoncello and Hugo spritzers.  We enjoyed it all. I loved the trains and the sleek Uber cars/drivers. I also enjoyed seeing a world that treasured the old, embraced their history, had access to good food (great little mercados), and did their part for the world with recycling and compost bins everywhere plus everyone we ran into was friendly and happy to help us. In Livorno the front desk woman called her son in the U.S. to translate something for us.  

And then we took a high speed train back to Rome and headed to the airport hotel to spend one last night before flying home. We spent a funny 20 minutes in a gas station/restaurant and I will never forget the Prosecco and freshly made potato chips served to us as we waited for our Uber driver!  It was the trip of a lifetime but I plan to get out there more. I want to go to Spain and Portugal next...