Road trips I have already been on!

Well seeing as this is the travelbunny1 blog, I best tell you about some of the places I have already been to - so let's start with my road trip around Italy - one of my favourite countries in the world.

Itinerary for a good road trip.

We backpacked though Italy a few years back and it was an amazing experience.

We didn't book any hotels, we just found places when we got off the train, real fly by the seat of your pants traveling!

We flew into Rome where we then proceeded to jump on a train to the Termini Station and then walked to our hostel (the only place I prebooked before arriving), which was an apartment split into 3 dorm rooms, each with 6 beds in, we were sharing with a couple of Swedish girls and a German couple, it was all very civilized (was a bit worried previously as had no experience of hostels) but this place was lovely.

We unpacked, got changed and hit the streets of Rome, we ventured into a lovely Italian restaurant to have our first pasta dish – Italian style and then walked around taking in the sites.

The next day we went walkabout for some breakfast, croissants and a latte, sustenance for the day of exploring ahead. We paid for out tickets on the hop on hop off bus which costs around GBP15.00 and you can get to all the main tourist sites at your own pace (http://www.viator.com/tours/Rome/Rome-Hop-on-Hop-off-Double-Decker-Bus-Tour/d511-3523ROMOPEN#additional).

We spent the day exploring the Colosseum, Campidoglio, visiting the Fontana Di Trevi, Villa Borghese and ending our trip that day at Piazza Venezia, where we took ourselves off for a slice of pizza! We’d already decided to use our 24 hour pass the next morning to go to the Vatican, an absolute delight to visit, everything there is a sense sensation! St Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, it’s a magical place to visit.

The next day we went to Termini and jumped on a train to our next destination – Florence! The journey is just under 2 hours, but it flies by! When we got there, we didn’t have a place to stay planned so we called around a few places on the tourist guide we had and lo and behold we found another beautiful apartment that rented out rooms to travelers, this time we were sharing with 2 younger American girls who had been back packing for a while across Europe, but they were beginning to get on each others nerves. The youngest of the 2 came back in the middle of the night in floods of tears and carrying a painting rolled up (still no idea where she got it from) – her friend had ditched her and gone off drinking with an Italian guy she’d met! (one thing I would say about backpacking – if you’re with a friend, look out for each other, it can be scary being left on your own in a foreign country!)

The afternoon we arrived we took ourselves out again to a local deli and bought a medley of food and some wine and fresh bread and had ourselves a feast! Then the site seeing began over the next 2 and a half days with Santa Maria Novella Basilica, Palazzo Vecchio, Uffizi, Ponte Vecchio, Palazzo Pitti, Baptistery and cathedral.

From Florence we took ourselves to Pisa for the afternoon to go and see the Leaning tower of Pisa (naturally!), another thing I have to say about Italy is that the train stations are pure works of art – they are incredible to look at! I digress, we disembarked the train at Pisa and started to walk to the Piazza del Duomo and on the way I was sidetracked by the most beautiful arrangement of marzipan I have ever seen – so I had to pop in and buy some to enjoy later with an espresso!! So onwards we went to the tower, there were lots of tourists there as you can imagine and more than about 10 trying to take the photo of looking like you are holding up the Leaning Tower itself (alright we did it too, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time!) There was a fabulous market on that day as well, selling usual touristy fare. It was a trip worth making.

We went back to Florence to pick up our back packs and headed onwards up to Venice by train, about 2 hours in total and a glorious trip, very scenic. We got there late afternoon and were searching, desperately before it gets dark for a suitable place to stay (our guide book had warned us off a few places we’d walked past) as luck would have it we got chatting to some other backpackers and they told us that they were staying in a hostel about 10 minutes walk, so we thanked them and went looking for it, it was a renovated property with a domed roof and was just lovely. The proprietor didn’t speak much English but thankfully my travel buddy was from Cameroon and could speak French with him, which he knew fluently. Unfortunately, he mistook my friend as my maid as she is African and I am white, which seemed to him quite strange! We soon set him straight on that matter! But thankfully he did have a room available, it was actually on the top floor and it was a delightful room (just the 2 of us in it) with a shared bathroom on the floor, which was spotless!

So dropped off the backpacks, showered and out for dinner in Venice, it is actually a bit pricey in Venice for us budget back packers, but we thought what the heck and found a fabulous little restaurant and had a pasta feast, then strolled back to the hostel, knackered! The next day we spent walking the streets of Venice and headed to Piazza San Marco and the basilica, all the little alleys and the beautiful architecture on the way makes it a real treat. The gondolas are fun to watch but mega expensive for those watching the pennies.

The time had come to leave Venice and head to fair Verona, it’s about an hour and half in the train, sounds stupid and extremely dangerous now I think back on it, but when you get off the train, there are usually people milling about offering their business cards and brochures for accommodation and that’s how we happened upon this lovely little house with 2 hosts who rented out rooms, it was a gorgeous place, very arty and our room was just amazing and with our own bathroom. So we dropped the bags, had a nap, showered, changed and hit Verona. It’s a sight to behold strolling along the steets on a summer evening, there were still lots of people milling around, we had a nosey at the ‘posh shops’ like Chanel and then grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to our room.

In the morning we were provided with breakfast by our hosts and we ventured out again to go see Juliet’s balcony and also the Arena di Verona (mini colosseum) and then went to see Ponte Pietra and that was all we had time for as we needed to get to the train station for the last journey – Milan.

It takes around 2 hours to get to Milan from Verona and if we had been lucky with our accommodation till then, it was all about to come crashing down as we went to the youth hostel in Milan, it was truly horrendous and filthy. So bad in fact that we slept there that night (had to, nowhere else to go) in dorms, huge dorms, and neither of us used the bathroom once, you just couldn’t! We got up and out as early as we could, I checked my bank balance and had enough to pay for a decent hotel which we gladly did, had a shower, a long one, started to feel human again and happy to be in Milan and out we went, headed to the Duomo, did a bit of shopping, to be honest we didn’t do very much in Milan (I was to return a few months later for a football match and did the whole tourist thing then, but that’s for another time!

We flew out of Milan and back to Stansted!

A great road trip, memories that will last a lifetime. (But no going back to that Milan Hostel!!)