It's taken me a while to finish this blogpost but here it is. Continuing on from the last blogpost "The Swiss and French Alps".
After a week in the alps we were leaving for Italy, our bus was an hour late though so we needed to change our plans for the day slightly. We were taking a bus to Milan and the plan was to leave our luggage by the train station and then explore for a few hours, but all of a sudden we wouldn't have that much time.
So we ended up changing the plans and when we arrived at the bus station outside Milan we got the subway into the city and started walking, with our now 12-13kg backpacks on, looking for an alright lunch spot. And by the way; this was the hottest day on our trip, I believe we had about 38°C! We found a quaint street with some restaurants after about 15 minutes and had a decent meal in front of a fan, incredibly lovey. When we'd eaten we had about an hour to make it to the train station, we thought we'd see if we could find gelato on the way, but we couldn't find any decent places within the radius we needed to and ended up walking straight to the station. By the time we got there I was so freaking hot, we found some ice-cream at the station but it honestly didn't help much. As you've probably understood by now, we were not staying in Milan, we had about an hour on a train ahead of us at this point. And a hot one at that, we were so relived to arrive in Bologna and get off the train at the cool underground station. After gathering ourselves for a bit though we had to get out in the heat again and walk the 1,2 km to the appartment we were to spend the next 3 nights. At least the office where we were picking up the key was on the opposite side of the street from the appartment, we got ice cold water and after dealing with the practical stuff we were followed over to the flat and let in before we were handed the keys. It all made us feel really good about our stay, it felt very professional.
As it was getting late we did a quick supermarket run before getting ready for the evening. Then we went to find dinner, and found a restaurant where there were quite a few people sitting outside and the atmosphare was pretty good. And so was the food. This was one of the few days on this whole holiday where I really enjoyed my meal, as most of them were okay but not all that. After the great meal we went to the irish pub as Tonje wanted to see the last part of the FIFA Women's World Cup match between Norway and England. We were a little disappointed they didn't turn on music after the match, but seeing as we were getting up early the next morning we didn't stay late anyways.
The first full day in Italy wasn't technically spent in Italy as we headed for San Marino. It was fairly easy to get to San Marino. It wasn't too easy to find the bus online but once we got to Rimini we were quickly told to get the tickets at the train station and then told where to go for the bus. We took the bus all the way to the town and started exploring the town. It's a really charming little place with little nooks and crannies, loads of lookout spots and castles. It's such a picturesque place. It was hot as all hell though, not that I'm complaining, we were incredibly lucky with the weather on this holiday. We had little breaks for ice-cream and soft drinks in the next few hours as we needed to cool off any way we could. Then we took the little tourist train through old tunnels while listening to the history of this little country. And we even got the train just about to ourselves. After a little lunch we headed back to Rimini and did a little shopping, we both felt we needed stuff as we were quickly sweating through the clothes we had with us. We didn't spend as much time in San Marino as I had originally thought we'd want, and because of the heat we couldn't be bothered to walk around Rimini too much either so we ended up going to the train station early to wait for our train. Which unfortunately was delayed, by about an hour. So we sat at this train station for ages!
Back in Bologna and dolled up again we struggled to find a restaurant for our second meal in the city, as we'd gotten delayed in Rimini we were really hungry, but we'd clearly walked in the wrong direction. Nothing seemed good enough, not that that's too surprising I am really picky. We did eventually find a decent place, most of the food was based in meatballs though, which is a bit different. After dinner we thought we'd see if we could find a little bit of life as it was friday. We ended up going to the Irish pub, but were surprised there was still no music there. So after a while we decided, okay I persuaded Tonje, to try a bar I had looked at online before we went on this trip. The bar seemed slightly tacky and the music wasn't very loud but there was music, even music we liked. So we stayed for a drink to give it a shot. The music was turned up a little round midnight or so, and to my surprise Tonje was a bit more awake again so we stayed for another drink. We didn't really feel like the crowd was totaly our crowd though and decided to throw in the towel after the second drink. It was only friday after all.
The second Saturday of our holiday was spent in Bologna, we explored a little, went to "the seven churches" and sat in the park with berries and melon. It was a nice park with a small lake filled with koi fish and turtles. There are a couple of bars at the park too and they were under consideration for the evening but as it's not exactly in the city centre we decided to try out an area deemed the place to go for a night out, according to the internet. Before that though Tonje wanted to go looking for the perfect summer dress, so naturally I ended up with like 2 dresses and a skirt. Because, you know, my backpack wasn't heavy enough yet. It was a nice day, but I wouldn't say Bologna is a city I need to go back to.
So when it was time for dinner we walked around a bit, trying to find an area we'd seen earlier, an area with restaurants. I'm not sure that's where we ended up to be honest but we did find a nice restaurant with outside seating, the food was good, and it looked a little fancy. After the meal we walked towards this area we saw recommendations for but there were a lot of people at the start of the street and there were police there, so we asked someone about it. And from what we understood it was a demonstration of some kind, and we did not want to get caught in the middle of trouble. So we decided to walk towards other bars on the map, found one where I could try a fancy drink while we tried to find our next move, it wasn't the right kind of bar to stay in for hours. The next posibillity on the map seemed to be gone though, so we ended up back at the irsih bar, again. We were surprised it was so difficult to find bars with a bit of music, but at least the Irish bar wasn't far away from the appartment and we'd walked a lot, for the past week and a half really. It didn't end up being quite the saturday night we'd envisioned but we talked to some guys and had a decent time. Even without music. But it really baffles me that they don't have any music, and in an Irish bar none the less.
On the tenth day of our journey we were going to a place I've wanted to go for a long time. A lot of this trip was based off of what I found on the map and what looked interesting or beautiful online, however towards the end of our trip there were two destinations I had wanted to visit for a long time. The first of them was Verona. And although Verona did not completely win Tonje over, the city sure did live up to my expectations. I love the narrow streets opening up to huge open areas and squares, and I could definitely see myself coming back to Verona. Especially because we only had one day and there are things I'd like to do in the area that there just wasn't time for this time.
Anyways, after checking in we explored the city, visited both Romeo and Juliette's houses and shopped. (Yes, I got even more dresses, at least Tonje got stuff too this time.) Then we got pretty for dinner and went back to this cool square with restaurants lined up and had a nice meal before sunset. This far I hadn't really had the chance to get a nice view for the sunset, so I really wanted to get it here. It turned out we should have started towards the lookout point a little earlier than we did. So I got a bit of a workout just about running up the stairs in the heat while wearing a dress. But it was most definitely worth it. Verona at sunset was beautiful.
After being on the move, exploring new places everyday for a week and a half we needed to relax a little, recharge the batteries before taking on Venice, so we went to a place called Lido di Jesolo which is a beach area outside Venice. I think this might have been the day Tonje had looked forward to the most this whole trip, and it really was nice. We didn't get in as early as we would have liked and the walk from the bus station was brutal, but we made it and got to check in right away as Hotel Kristina has a pretty early check in time. The hotel also have their own little area of sunchairs and sunbeds on the beach, so we spent the next 4 hours or so relaxing in the sun. And come dinnertime we wandered a little to see what this little place had to offer and I quite like it. I would really recommend this area if you want to do a holiday combining Venice and beach life. We even found a bar with a great vibe and live music outside after dinner. The perfect day to unwind and recharge before exploring the very busy city of Venice.
Before moving on to the last destination of this 2 week summer adventure we had breakfast with a view. The hotel seemed very proud of their new breakfast room and with good reason, we had a nice view of the main street in Jesolo di Lido while eating breakfast. Then it was time to hustle. The bus ride to the ferry took about 30 minutes and unfortunately my planning doesn't always work out the way I think, so we ended up having to wait a while after getting our 2 day boat passes. We got there eventually though and I really like that we arrived by boat. After getting our luggage to the hotel, which luckily was better than I feared taking the cheap-ish price into consideration, we went for lunch and then just started walking. Venice is really such a nice city to just walk around in. They say this is a city you want to get lost in and I'm not disagreeing with that. Finding your way in and out of the main street, finding little lookout spots by the main canal and all the charming little bridges, it all spoke to me. It was still really hot so we sat down at a restaurant for a pop after a while. Keep in mind if you ever go, you can't just sit wherever you want in Venice so find restaurants and cafes when you need to rest your leggs for a minute. We went into a whole lot of little charming shops, had some milkshake. We really had such a nice time exploring this amazing place. And the views were just as nice around dinner time when the skies got darker and the streetlights came on, reflecting in the canals.
On our last full day on this holiday we got the boat out from Venice to visit a few Venetian islands away from the main crowd. The first boat ride lasted about 45 minutes, our goal was Burano island but we got off on Mazzorbo where we noticed a nice little winery open to the public. We walked through this little park like vineyard, where there was a strange art exhibit on, and got out by the bridge to Burano.
Burano is a colourful and lovely little island, I absolutely loved it. The island wasn’t packed with tourists but there were some and out here everyone tried to be respectful of each other and stay out of the way when others took photos. Quite refreshing as this is difficult on the main islands of Venice, and it results in some pretty awesome photos for everyone. We walked around, checked out some of the little shops and walked over many bridges before getting on a boat going back towards the main islands. We got of a little before that though, on Murano. This island is known for the glassworks so after a lunch break at a small restaurant we checked out some shops, including the glass factory shop and just walked around a little. Then it was time to get back to the main Island. We got off the boat on the eastern tip so we could walk through some areas we hadn’t seen yet, and for the first 15 minutes of the walk we were in areas less populated by tourists. It really is cool to see this side of Venice as well.
We decided to go back to the hotel a bit early this last afternoon as we wanted to get ready for the evening a little early. We planned on taking a gondola ride and seeing the sunset from another island before dinner. Those plans were changed by the weather however. As we were getting ready to go we started hearing rumbles from outside, and it was what we fared. The sky had started rumbling, the clouds were coming in thick and I spotted a lightning bolt as we started walking. After about 10 minutes we were caught in the rain. (The photo to the left was taken about 5 minutes before.) Luckily we managed to find a bit of roof before the worst started, we did not get this little patch of roof to ourselves either, it filled up quickly under there. There was a shop just a few meters ahead though so we managed to get in there and get umbrellas. As our evening plans were no longer an option we started walking hoping to find restaurants, we hadn’t walked in the best direction for this though so we ended up getting the boat towards the area we had eaten the day before, close to the famous Rialto bridge. We found a nice restaurant and asked to sit inside, they seemed a bit surprised by this as there were no one inside, but we were shortly joined by other patrons. We went looking for bars or such after dinner, we really struggled to find good places on this holiday though and Venice was no different. We eventually sat down at an Irish pub, at least they have those, for our last couple of drinks before heading back to Norway.
We had one last order of business to take care of on our last morning in Venice though. And luckily we had a little time in the morning before we needed to get to the airport. You can't go to Venice and not do a gondola ride! So instead of the evening gondola ride we'd planned on we got a 9am gondola ride. It was really nice even though it wasn't the time of day we would have prefered. The gondolier was good at his job, he took us on a nice little round and pointed out a couple of interesting things during the ride, including Casanovas house. After the gondola ride we walked back to the hotel, got our stuff and headed for the airport, by boat, which I think is only fitting when you're in a place like Venice.
So let's look back at this and summarise a little. I love Italy, and the heat but 38°C might be a little much for me. Going full speed like we almost did for two weeks might be a bit much, but we did see a lot. It is a good idea to have a day or two of relaxation in between the exploring. I have clearly misunderstood the concept of backpacking, I honestly think I bought more clothes on this trip than I did on my last shopping trip. And for some reason it's difficult to find good bars with music in Italy. I do still want to go back to the country though, and even a couple of these cities.
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