A Week in Italy

Unfortunately, if you're flying cheap, you might also be flying at inconvenient times. In order to catch our 8am Air Berlin flight to Milan, we had to get up at 5am. On the flipside, we were already in Italy at 9am with a full day ahead of us. Cheap European airlines also tend to fly into smaller airports, so we ended up in Bergamo, about an hour east of Milan. This was good for us because we had no interest in Milan anyway, so we headed straight for the Cinque Terre.

Long distance rail travel in Europe is expensive, so we rented a car from Budget instead ($229 per week with unlimited miles, no international license required). With a rental car, we had the freedom of traveling around Italy on our own schedule. Driving on the autostrada in Italy was not much different than driving on the interstate toll roads in the U.S. except that the signs were in Italian. The one major exception was the speed. Even though the posted speed limit was 110 KPH (about 68 MPH), everyone ignored it. And if you weren't moving fast enough in the left lane, you will be intimidated into moving over by aggressive tailgaters.

A partial explanation for this aggressive driving might be the coffee symbol that shows up on roadside signs about every hour. And since we were in Italy, a coffee cup symbol really means espresso and at every rest stop, the espresso counter was hopping. No time to rest here (we are on the autostrada afterall), got to push into the line to pay first (in Italy there's no such thing as an orderly line), then wave your receipt at the barista while shouting "macchiato." No time to sit, so we end up standing at the counter to slurp it down before heading back on the road. After a couple of shots of macchiato (espresso with a little milk), I was driving 90 MPH like everyone else.

The Cinque Terre is five well-preserved villages located on the west coast of Italy in the area known as the Italian Riviera. Isolated for centuries between the mountains and the sea, access to the villages was available only by boat until the 1920s. Of the five villages, Vernazza is the most charming, so we decided to make it our home base for the next four nights. Vernazza doesn't have any hotels, so all the rooms are in historic buildings and rented by locals who simply put up a sign saying "rooms available." If we had a cell phone, the process of getting a room would have been easier. But after ringing door bells and hoping someone was home, we looked at several selections and chose an apartment with a kitchen off a narrow side alley.

During the day, Vernazza is filled with tourists who arrive by train or boat. But in the evening, things quiet down and Vernazza becomes a tranquil village frozen in time -- a great place to hang out. All the Cinque Terre towns restrict automobile traffic to just service vehicles, so we parked our rental car in a free space off the side of the road and didn't touch it again until we left for Tuscany.

The five villages are connected by scenic walking paths along the sea, some easy and some challenging. With a little planning, one can walk a path one way and then return by train or boat. During the next four days, we managed to walk all of the paths and visited all five villages, each with a distinct personality. The view was spectacular and there was even an espresso stop between Vernazza and Corniglia, the next town over. There were plenty of restaurant choices of all types in every town and even with the Euro exchanging at 1.5 to the dollar, eating out was affordable.

After four nights in the Cinque Terre, we drove to Tuscany stopping in Lucca because it was on the way. Lucca is a charming walled city where we rented bikes and spent a few hours exploring the town as well as riding on the top of the walls. We wanted to stay longer, but we had a room reserved in San Gimignano, a well-preserved medieval town in Tuscany. San Gimignano could very well be the most charming of Tuscany hill towns with 14 (out of 60) of the original medieval towers still standing. From a distance, the town almost looks like a modern city with skyscrapers.

Our room in San Gimignano was in a historic building called the Palazzo Tortoli. Our jaws dropped when we saw our room: it was on the third floor overlooking the main square and furnished with antique medieval furniture. There were high ceilings and original rock walls and the view from our window was amazing. Too bad we were only able to stay two nights here.

Unfortunately, we found the food in Tuscany to be more expensive and much less tasty than in the Cinque Terre. The much hyped wild boar that was the specialty of the region tasted no different than regular beef but much tougher. Even the wines we tasted in Tuscany didn't compare to some of the local wines we tasted back in Corniglia. But being in a medieval town and staying in a beautiful historic building made up for the disappointing dining experiences.

The next day, we drove 30 minutes to a neighboring hill town called Volterra and stopped at the Guarnacci Etruscan Museum and an Alabaster workshop. The drive was beautiful and Volterra was just as charming as San Gimignano. After six nights in Italy, we had to head back to Bergamo to catch a morning flight back to Germany. But that didn't stop us from making a quick stop in Florence just to poke around.

We arrived in Florence on Sunday and drove right into the center of town. Florence was packed with tourists and the prices immediately went up at least 50%. Even with limited time, we were able to visit the Piazza della Signoria, the famous Duomo (cathedral), walk cross the Ponte Vecchio (old bridge) and tour the Giardino di Boboli, a manicured garden with fountains and statues not that different from our own Allerton Park. But the most impressive sight in Florence was the street artists who made their living selling paintings on the sidewalks. Sure there were typical portrait artists and plenty of paintings of Florence landmarks. But some of the other street artists were extremely talented and were showing work that really should be in galleries.

Our last night in Italy was at a hotel near the Bergamo airport. The next morning, we hopped on a Ryanair flight to Frankfurt for the last part of our vacation -- a quick tour of Germany's Mosel valley.

(See more pictures)
(Also see Smile Politely food column)