Venice! & Cinque Terre!

Gonna preface this by saying that this weekend is going to be hard to beat.

After following a nice (and somewhat rainy) beach day in ViaReggio, my roommates had to wake up again really early to catch another train. This time, the train was heading to Venice!

It was about a 2 hour train ride there, and as soon as I stepped into the city of Venice I loved it. The first thing I noticed was that there were no cars, no vespas, and no bikes. It was amazing! (haha, a little dramatic but since I have been living in Florence I have gotten used to pure mayheim of all the traffic and tourists!)

We didn't have anything planned for the day other than the idea of riding a gondola so we set off to just wander and explore the town! This was the first place that I really noticed boutiques and authentic shops over touristy shops, and I enjoyed looking through all the handmade jewelry/art. I bought a handmade glass beaded bracelet from 1 store.

After a quick break for lunch, we then hopped on a gondola ride! Highlight of my trip for sure. The city of Venice is really neat because like I said earlier, cars and other vehicles are not allowed. Everyone either walks or travels by boat. The water reaches right up against the buildings and there is a constant flow of water traffic and people docking their boats outside of restaurants, places of work, or their homes.

On the ride, we spotted Marco Pollo's house and admired all of the colorful buildings lining the water. Perfect day!

Sunday we traveled to Cinque Terre! Cinque Terre is 5 towns that all line the coastline. The tour group that we went through only took us through 3 of them due to timing. Each stop included different activities and sights to see. The first stop was Riomaggiore and included walking up to a lookout point to view the landscape, take photos, and shopping at a boutique. Although I didn't eat this, Riomaggiore is the place where pesta was made so they specialize in pesto pizza.

The second stop was Manarola. This stop included cliff jumping! One of the scariest but best experiences! I was basically peer pressured into it because the 3 girls that I was with all did it before me and there was a huge group of tourists watching me from the lookout point. Took me a second to work up the nerve, but once I jumped I was so happy that I did it! No regrets on this trip!

Our third and last stop of the day was Monterosso, the beach area. Although this beach was all rocks, no sand! We had about 3 hours here so we just hung out and tanned for awhile and also swam a good bit in the crystal clear waters! The scenery in the background was insanely pretty!