Italy is a major tourist attraction for people all around the globe. The food, culture, history, and ethnicity shape Italy to what it is today. It was my bucket list item to visit Italy and I got a chance to visit in this spring. When I came back to New Jersey after our trip I felt great. It was a memorable family trip and would like to share about the experience …… Italy through my eyes.
Unlike any travel wiki sites, I am trying not to focus much on top must-see places list or maps or any sort of guide info about Italy. You can get tons of such information on google. My main intention is to give the picture of Italy as seen through my eyes. I will try to add a couple of photos taken from my Mom’s camera to justify what I am saying!
Italy is everything that is said about it and more. First of all, the people in Italy are very friendly, family oriented. Whenever we asked for help with anything, they helped us navigate through the streets of the city and gave us a few laughs too with their too friendly talks. Second of all, Italy’s most iconic foods, pizza, pasta , gelato and tiramisu, were absolutely delicious. They were probably the best I’ve ever tasted so far. Although we were satisfied with the food, our stomachs had a rough time with all that carb later on!😅
Unlike my other trips, this time we stayed like any local Italian by renting homes/apartments in every city we visited. Walking to nearby stores and getting all needed groceries, cooking light breakfast ourselves — we all enjoyed every moment as a family. I felt like I am at home. I would definitely recommend trying staying local than at some hotel.
My journey started in Venice. If you are visiting first time there, the important thing to remember — don’t pack too much with heavy suitcases. It is extremely difficult to move around the heavy pieces of luggage inside Venice. Out of all the cities we visited, I would say Venice is my most favourite place. It is known as the city on the water since it has many canals throughout the city that exit out in the Mediterranean Sea. The main way of transportation is boat or gondola, which is a fancy boat where one person rows. There were only cars and buses in the City Square connecting to the suburbs. It was cool to see boat versions of vehicles like water taxi and water ambulance. Although it wasn’t easy to travel to faraway places in the city, we got a nice workout from all that walking. Also, Venice is less polluted than the other cities I have been to.
Next stop was Florence !. We took the speed train (Frecciarossa 1000) from Venice to Florence and the ride was fabulous. My parents had booked spacious business class seats and it was very comfortable. By looking through large wide windows, I enjoyed the greenery, mountains, small villages, cities passing by as train zoomed through and reached Firenze station in Florence.
Florence is a very old city with many years of culture, history and Renaissance Art in it. It was easier to travel since there were cars and buses but the air wasn’t too graceful. The streets were a lot narrower than I imagined. There were cars zooming right past us as we were walking on the cramped roads. People were still walking on the streets like it was no big deal which surprised me. Apart from transportation, all the museums and art gallery were fantastic. It was hard to imagine that one human could create such a masterpiece. The Uffizi Gallery had many works of art of different kinds. The sculptures were so human-like and well made.
Rome was my last main destination and the most ancient. We went to Vatican City, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, etc. It was cool going into each of the attractions because they existed for so many years. The Colosseum was huge and well architected. There was obviously tight security on the premises to prevent anything bad from going in. I tried to imagine what Rome was like during the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages. Vatican Museums was too big to explore where we visited Egyptian and Greek Exhibits and the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel had so many paintings on the ceiling made by Michelangelo and many other artists. However, we couldn’t go to the St. Peters Basilica because we didn’t use the direct passage from Sistine Chapell.
I would highly recommend all of the places I visited but if you ever plan to visit Pompeii or Vesuvius then be aware that Naples is not that cleaner city. I was surprised to see that, the Circumvesuviana train from Naples to Pompeii was not clean at all whereas Frecciarossa was super clean!. Still, Pompeii is my second favourite attraction in Italy aside from Venice. I saw the destroyed buildings and houses and it made me wonder what life was like before Mt. Vesuvius erupted and damaged Pompeii. Our tour guide did lead us through the City Square, streets and theatres. It was so beautiful scenery to see Mt Vesuvius and the other mountains in the background of Pompeii. It was so heartbreaking to imagine back in 79 A.D, how volcano eruption took people’s lives. Our visit to Pompeii was only for a short 3 hours but that amount of time was very well used.
Overall, this was one of my favourite trips I went on. A big thanks to my parents who made this possible. Going from place to place, wearing fancy outfits, eating great pizza and pasta, walking around the narrow lanes and streets — those are just a few highlights of my trip. You can’t experience Italy reading through the web or through someone else’s explanation, you have to experience that fun country by personally visiting them. Take your backpack and set on to explore !!
Quote of the Day:
” Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something” — Winnie the Pooh from the film ”Christopher Robin”
