tips & tricks

The ever-so-fabulous reader Amy H. has provided such a great read on her trip to Italy. With amazing advice and awesome pictures, I am providing you with the second installment of her post! Read on to hear about where she stayed, what she wore, and everything in between! If you didn’t yet get a chance to read Part 1, you can do so here!

From Florence we were off to experience what travel guru Rick Steves calls the “decaying elegance” of Venice. The canals, bridges, palaces and boats make it one of the most visually interesting and romantic cities on earth. While we visited St. Mark’s Basilica and the Rialto Bridge, we mostly just walked around and explored. You can walk a wide circle around Venice in just a few hours despite how intimidating the map looks and how easy it is to get lost! Walking is also easy here because there are no cars. We stayed at Hotel Dimora Marciana. The best thing about the hotel was the location (a five minute walk from St. Mark’s)—I found the rooms to be a little dreary and formal and the service to be average.

After Venice we trained to Monterosso, a town in the Cinque Terre which is a string of five fishing villages on the Ligurian coast. This is the birthplace of pesto and focaccia bread. We had some amazing seafood as well. We worked off all that focaccia by walking the trails between the villages. Between the towns of Manarola and Riomaggiore is Via Dell’Amore (“Lovers Walk”). Couples come here and attach a lock to the gates or rail to seal their eternal love. We came prepared with our lock! We stayed at the Hotel Margherita in Monterosso which, according to the owner is renovated every year. Everything looked really nice, but it did have a bit of a paint smell! We had a very nice breakfast and a huge balcony!

While training back to Rome, we made a pit stop in Pisa, checked our luggage at the train station, and walked the mile or so to the leaning tower to get the typical “I’m pushing the tower back up” picture. Corny? Yes. But it is actually really neat to see something so iconic in person. When we got back to Rome we checked back into our hotel and went to dinner. The last day of our trip we had reservations to tour the Vatican Museum, which was pretty amazing. I definitely recommend paying for a tour because you get to skip the (very long) line and you get so much more out of your visit. That night we went to the famous Ristorante Da Fortunato near the Pantheon—the restaurant is featured in my husband’s favorite novel “Beach Music” by Pat Conroy, so it was a must-see. The next day, we sadly flew home!

A few notes about fashion in Italy. What stood out the most were sneakers like Converse (which was a surprise to me), skinny pants or jeans tucked into tall flat boots, and leather. I was so glad I brought my black riding boots for my fall trip to Italy. They were super comfortable and versatile and I felt like they added a bit of fashion to the typical sight-seeing outfit. Because they are bulky, I wore them on travel days. I also took a pair of very comfortable TOMS Shoes, those broken in heels I mentioned earlier, some flat sandals, and my sneakers for hiking. My basic wardrobe consisted of black clothes—a black blazer, black skinny pants, black straight pants, black leggings, long black cardigan, regular black cardigan, black dress, black tights, black and white striped shirt (note: don’t wear this in Venice or you’ll look like a gondolier!), as well as a few colored tank tops, a pair of jeans, a knit grey dress, some scarves, and a waterproof rain jacket. Yes it all fit into a carry-on bag! And best thing I brought along? Dry shampoo! Who has time to wash and dry their hair every day when you are in Italy? If you spend time styling your hair once every three days or so, that blowout can last when you spray your roots with dry shampoo and brush it out. I took along a travel-size bottle of Big Sexy Hair Volumizing Dry Shampoo.

And finally, thanks to Kirsten for her guidance—she was right about everything! I felt fully prepared for my trip and consistently felt like I had “just the right thing” in my suitcase at every stop.

Thanks so much, Amy! Let’s hope she decides to write more soon. Great advice, and such a fun read!

Love, K.

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