After Rome, we hopped on a train and headed to Lucca in the Tuscany region.
My name is Luka. I live on the 2nd floor. I live upstairs from you. Yes, I think you've seen me before.
You're welcome for that little gift being stuck in your head now. I was singing it the whole time we were there.
Lucca was probably my favorite place that we stayed in Italy. A big part of that was the half day cooking class Kylie and I took with chef Paolo while staying at our quaint little hotel out in the countryside outside the walled city. So peaceful and beautiful there with rolling hills and vineyards all around. Enough chit chat. Let the photos begin.
This was the view of the countryside from our room.
This was the entrance to our little hotel.
Within the first few minutes we were there, we headed out on a walk to explore the countryside. Kylie caught this image of me within the first few minutes when I was making my way back across a ditch from taking a photo.
We saw a woman and her son walking a wheel barrow down the road to empty their trash in a nearby garbage bin. I wanted to get an image of them walking towards us, but I felt a little awkward about making her uncomfortable.
We found this little abandoned building along the side of the road, so I propped up my camera on the road with my wallet and a lens cap, flipped it over to timer-mode, and fired off a couple images of me and the new Mrs. I loved the golden light this time of day and how it was spilling on the the upper half of this wall.
While we were out walking, we met Victorio. He was out working in his vineyard preparing the vines for the next growing season. Such a sweet ol' guy... he spoke enough English to give us a little grape growing education and told us all the different types of grapes he was growing, what kind of wines were made with his grapes, where his wines were sold. The bottles produced from his grapes sold anywhere from about $6/bottle up to several hundred dollars per bottle. He offered to give us a bottle made from the grapes from his field the next day if we stopped by, but unfortunately we ended up not being able to meet up with him because we had to leave to head to Vernazza.
Hey, it's Mrs. Nicolosi! Still sounds weird to say.
The rest of these images were from inside the walled city.
Courtesy of a Rick's Steve recommendation, we ate dinner here and it was fantastic. We actually walked in around 7pm and they said they were closed. Wuh? Closed? Are you kiddin' me?. Then she asked if we wanted to make a reservation for 7:3o when they opened up. Oh... our bad... we like you again now.
So I'm not sure these photos actually took place on Day 29... it's all kind of a blur. At this point, I'm just throwing in images from Italy from days 25 - 36. They all happened somewhere in that time.
Here's some of the images from our stop at the Vatican to see the Pope. Apparently he was too busy playing a Wii boxing tournament to come out and greet us personally, but we stayed anyway and took a look around. I was blown away by the grandeur of this place (as evidenced by me actually using the word "grandeur"... that may be the only the 2nd time ever.). The architecture, artwork, sculptures and scale of this place was breath-taking. Honestly, I was kinda ho-hum about visiting the Vatican going in... I've got a limited window of attention when it comes to museums, and so I just wasn't sure I was going be into it for the entirety of our 3 hour tour, but it ended up being one of the highlights of the trip for me and it went by in a blink. I was blown-away by the visual wonderland this place is.
Here's an image of St. Peter's Basilica. This place was e. nor. mous. You'll see more images from inside the basilica further down.
I think this is a sculpture of Asclepius, the god of Medicine. I can't be sure, though, I was busy adjusting my exposure and firing off a couple images while our tour guide was explaining this one.
Another important guy back in the day. Honestly, I was more in awe of the statues and their detail and the work & skill it took to create them than who the statue was actually a depiction of. I still can't fathom what it took to create one of these.
Every ceiling in the Vatican was so ornate.
Random museum-goers.
I hope this image needs no explanation. I'm actually pretty proud of this image simply because I secretly fired it off with out even looking through the viewfinder to avoid being accosted by the photo police. I just kinda nonchalantly wandered to the middle of the Sistine Chapel, looked up, mimmicked an innocent whistling wandering tourist, tilted my camera up on my hip, discretely fired off a couple images and moved on. Actually I probably coulda just raised my camera up and taken a photo as I normally would since at one point after the Photo police called out "No Photos!" for the 5th time, I looked around and saw no less than 10 people firing away. Anyway, I'm slightly amazed and very pleased at how well this one came out.
We weren't allowed to go down this hall, and it was roped off since this is the hall the Pope travels through when coming up to the Sistine Chapel. Pretty majestic from what I could see while leaning over the rope.
Here's Kylie making fish faces in the middle of St. Peter's Basilica.
Looking up through the dome in the basilica.
Check out this throne in the basilica. The intricate details are insane.
One of many enormous statues within the basilica.
Even the grates on the floor were amazing. No details were spared in this place.
Loved the way the light was spilling through the windows in one of these "mini-chapels" along the the outside edges of the basilica.
Actually this last photo was taken outside the Coliseum, but it was too funny not to include in a post. I was just trying to get an image of this horse with the Coliseum in the background and he serendipitously gave me this look.
Sorry if this takes too long to load... I went a bit overboard on bandwidth with the number of images in this post.
Here's a few of my favorite images from our first stop in Rome on our honeymoon tour of Italy. I think Rome was our "least favorite" city in Italy if you can have such a thing. I mean, c'mon, we were in Italy... even so-so cities over there make most of our cities look like Mayberry. Actually, strike that last comment... I'd probably like Mayberry for it's Nostalgic feel and backdrop. You get what I'm saying, though. It's not that we didn't like Rome; it was still pretty cool... I think we just gravitated towards the smaller, more quaint, village-like feel of the other cities we visited.
I loved the character and color of the architecture in Rome and, for that matter, all the cities we visited. I prolly have a 100+ images of building front vignettes just like the one below. I never get tired of these.
On our way to ride the Metro. Side note, the Metro transportation system wasn't as extensive as I thought it would be, but we found out why later during our tour of the Vatican. 60% of ancient Rome is still buried, so anytime someone wants to dig underground, it's a big to-do and you have to go through an extensive process and get all kinds of approvals after archeologists come out and do a survey/study to make sure you're not gonna be diggin' up Ceasar's pet dog bones or destroying some priceless ruins.
We walked through this big par on our way to the Galleria Borghese museum. BTW, I swear Italy must have the largest population of pigeons per capita of anyplace on this earth. They're everywhere. Interesting factoid: Venice even puts a form of birth control in the pigeon feed that tourists can buy.
The Piazza di Spagna, home of the Spanish steps and some expensive shopping.
... and here are said Spanish steps. Like most of Italy, there were a lot of them. They love their stairs.
Did I mention it was raining for much of our stay in Rome?
Kylie doing her part to promote tourism.
In a basillica just off the Piazza di Spagna. So many fantastic churches all over the place.
The Trevi Fountain
Supposedly if you throw a penny over your shoulder into the fountain and wish you make it back to Rome the next year, it will come true. I broke tradition and wished for more gelato that night. My wish came true. And check out those wide angle lens Hulk hands. "Hulk... want... gelato!!!"
For some reason I just thought this was funny.
What? I'm just mindin' my own business standin' by this water fountain lookin' at the Coliseum across the street.
Okay, funny story (except for the almost dying part). So after spending a couple days in Rome and then Lucca, we jumped on a train and headed to the coast to stay for two nights in Vernazza, one of the five cities that make up the Cinque Terra region. Now, I don't claim to be a light packer. I like to have options, 'cause ya never know what you might wanna wear, right? Never mind that Kylie packed for 11 days in one suitcase and pretty much nailed the wardrobe needs with only one left over unworn shirt at the end of the trip. I had 2 left over pairs of pants, 5 shirts, a sweater, three... whatever, that's not important here. The point is we had 3 sizable, fairly heavy bags in tow the whole trip, in addition to my camera and lenses in a backpack.
We jump off the train and met a lady at the station that would lead us to our much anticipated "Honeymooners Paradise" room at a bed and breakfast in town. Our friends Trace and Kristie stayed in this room during their honeymoon last September and highly recommended it to us in their trip notes. BTW, when I say trip notes, that's an injustice... seriously, their itinerary and notes they gave us from their trip made Wikipedia look like a third grader's book report. SO much info and detail... it was AMAZING! I digress.
One thing Trace and Kristie left out, though, was that Mt. Everest climbing experience was a prerequisite to get to the room. We're walking through town all fat, dumb and happy still on a gelatto high from previous days, and then we see a few stairs. Oops. Okay, no biggie... there's only a few. Then we turned the corner...
At this point, I'd like to take you on a little visual journey. Come with me, won't you? Keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times. The next series of images shows our trek to our room starting at step one and ends with the last steps leading up to our door which was right across the walkway to the Doria Castle at the top of the city. All in all, 105 steps later, we nearly passed out. Enjoy the ride.
[insert sound of me gasping for air and cursing my packing skills here]
We had to stop like 3 times on the way up as my shoulder muscles almost detached from the bone and I nearly pulled my aorta. Our lungs were on fire by the time we piled in the front door. I'm glad we didn't actually need 911 because 1) I'm not sure 911 is the right number to call in Italy, 2) even if it is, I didn't know how to say, "Help, we are lazy Americans spoiled by modern inventions like the escalators and elevators, and we're about to go into cardiac arrest from this stupid hike to the front door of our room" in Italian, and 3) I don't think they could've gotten a gurney up the stairs to take us down. I think I almost vomited from the light headed-ness.
Now that I've over-dramatized the whole story, let me show you the little pot of gold waiting for us at the top after we finally recovered from the stairmaster workout with luggage.
Here's the view from the bedroom through one set of the walk out doors to the patio.
And here's the breathtaking views that made it all worth it. Simply. Amazing.
And finally, here's a view from the ground looking back towards our room. You can see the castle right behind us.
