italy trip overview

so I’m going to break up this trip into a few posts because the trip spanned several cities (in a couple countries), and if we tried to cram all the pics and info into one post, it would be huge. so this post is a basic overview of the trip as a whole, with the individual city posts linked in this one.

we left for italy on friday, and it took us three buses, one plane, an inner city train, two metros, and a fair sized walk to get to our hotel in Rome… talk about exhausted. it didn’t help that we didn’t really know where our hotel was, where we were, where the train was going, where the metro stops were, and all that…  but we got there. we did the Rome thing, which was seriously amazing, if you ever get a chance, I highly recommend it, although I definitely would not want to live there. it’s a bit too dirty and touristy and crowded for my tastes.

after Rome we headed off to Tirrenia (a little beach town between Livorno and Pisa), where we took in some beach and sun time because, even though the weather forecast said rainy in italy for the whole week, it was a blazing 30C (~85° F), which is really nothing compared to the 100+ heat of Utah, but add in 100% humidity and it will suck the sweat right out of you. but again, highly recommended, the water and beach were perfect.

after Tirrenia, that’s when the fun began…  there was a pretty major train accident in Viareggio (not too far from La Spezia, our next stop), which caused all the trains to La Spezia to be cancelled. because of this, our 1 hour train ride became a 4 hour bus ride, and Skye is not too fond of trains, and doubly so for buses. we got there quite late, and were completely frazzled from the bus ride, so we went to our hotel. we had planned to do a little day trip to Cinque Terre, and take in the amazing sights there, but just couldn’t make it, it was too late to do anything, and our train for Milano left pretty early the next day, so we stayed in.  =(

we left for Milano the next day, and again, because of the train accident, had to take a longer train, so we got to Milano a bit later than we had hoped. we had planned to go to the science museum in Milano, and check a few other things, but only made it to the museum. the museum was supposed to have a bunch of hands-on stuff for me and Skye to play with, but they were only available on the weekends (it was Wed.), and the rest of the museum kinda sucked. after the museum we headed off to the train station to catch our night train to Salzburg.  unfortunately, the “night train” was actually 3 trains, and none of them had sleeper cars. so we really didn’t want to be sitting up with Skye all night and switching trains at 4 in the morning, so we got a nearby hotel and stayed the night in Milano with train tickets that left at 7 the next morning.

after the 7 hour train ride through the Alps via Innsbruck to Salzburg, we arrived at around 4-5 in the afternoon, went to our hotel, dropped off our stuff, and grabbed a bite to eat. it was already too late to do anything, but that was ok, because we were there for as long as we wanted, no more early morning trains, and no more rushing to get somewhere.

Salzburg is probably my favorite place in Europe so far. it is simply breathtaking. The mountains were amazing, the country was amazing, and the city was amazing. we left Salzburg and headed home late Sat. morning. the train we were going to catch was about to leave, and we were hoping to get an empty coach to let Skye nap in, but the ticket girl said it was probably full, so we got tickets for the next one. as we walked out on the platform, we saw the train we skipped, and it was nearly empty, and as I was about to go back and exchange tickets, it pulled away. our train arrived from another city, and was packed solid. the only reason we got a seat at all was because we had reserved some. but we finally made it home, and crashed.

overall, it was a good trip, there were some poopy parts about it, mostly due to the train accident and not wanting to travel for extended periods with a toddler, but the cities we were able to see were pretty amazing. i highly recommend any of them.