Curious Boho

When In Rome.. Rome was our final city on our stroll through the Italian Rivera. Rome is one of the biggest cities of Europe with so much history right in the middle of it. We were spending 3 days in Rome and plan was to cover Vatican as well. We had taken the Omnia Vatican & Rome card and had booked our entry times to Vatican museum, St Peter's Basilica and Colosseum in advance. Colosseum Our Day 1 started off with a trip to the Colosseum to go back in time to when Gladiators and their fights were the main source of entertainment for the Roman Emperors and masses. We turned up at the Colosseum at our stipulated time and walked in, zoomed past security and proceeded to enter the area. I was under the impression that booking the entry time had an audio guide included. Unfortunately not. Rick Steve's audio guide to the rescue! The sheer size of the Colosseum is what hits you as soon as you enter. Go back in time, visualize the gladiators in action and get los...

Ever since I was in grade 5 or 6 and we read about the lost city of Pompeii which had been buried under layers of ash years ago when one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world erupted - Mt. Vesuvius, I had dreamt of walking through this city.. So this just had to be on the list.  Thermal Bath Pompeii Pompeii & Vesuvius can be done on a day trip from either Rome or Naples, though it is closer from Naples. We did a lot of research on the best routes to get to Pompeii & then get to Mt. Vesuvius to trek up to the crater.. yes you can trek up to the crater :) A DIY way to get yourself to both sights would involve about 2 trains and then a bus to Vesuvius - it seemed quite a task! Hence we decided to take one of the day tours from Rome. We decided to go with City Wonders Tours and we booked them through Get Your Guide website (you can also book directly on the City Wonders site).  There are other tour groups as well but the reviews seemed good.  ...

Alright! So after Pisa we went about our one hour train ride to La Spezia Centrale, our gateway into the beautiful Cinque Terre.  Cinque in Italian means 5 and Terre means Land.. the Cinque Terre consists of 5 cute and extremely Instagrammable villages - Riomaggiore, Manarola, Vernazza, Corniglia & Monterosso. The regional/inter-city trains stop only at La Spezia and you need to change to the local trains heading towards Levanto. We picked Riomaggiore as our village to stay in and visit the other 4 during our 1.5 days there. Now you can either walk through the hiking trail, of-course with a cost, or choose to shuttle between the villages on trains. Each trail is a 2 hr walk between 2 villages and we hence picked the train as our travel option. Now Cinque is a tad bit expensive on transport - a train ride between 2 stations which would ideally last 2-4 mins costs about 4€ and that’s when we decided to take a Cinque Terre day pass which costs 16€. So after the check-in to ...

Our next stop from Florence was Cinque Terra. En-route to Cinque we decided to spend a couple of hours at the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  The Leaning Tower of Pisa Pisa is about an hour’s train ride from Florence, mid-way between Florence and Cinque Terre. The main attraction in Pisa is the Square of Miracles housing the Cathedral, Baptistery & the wonder of the world, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Every cathedral has a baptistery, the main cathedral and a bell tower. In this case when they constructed the bell tower, it started leaning and hence became a wonder of the world. Pisa is a small town and the trip to the tower, up the 250+ steps to the top most part of the tower and back in a matter of a couple of hours.  To climb the Pisa tower, you need to book tickets online on the Pisa website or other sites like GetYourGuide.com etc and pick a slot when you would be climbing. There are long queues to buy tickets at the sight and hence an online reservation is highly...

Florence or Firenze is the renaissance capital of the world and it has a lot to offer! We planned about 3 days in Florence and still wish we could spend more time there.  Santa Maria Novella We started our exploration of the city by joining a walking tour by Another Florence (this has to also be booked in advance online). The guide gave us good insight into the city - just what we needed to figure out the history and our way around. Florence’s transport network is a little complicated and it took us a while to figure it out. So is the complication with the entries to all the major sights - Florence Cathedral, Galleria Accademia etc. We had decided to purchase the Firenze card since we were spending 3 days in Florence. But one has to pre book the entry time for the Galleria Accademia which houses David and Uffizi gallery by calling on their number and booking an entry time. You still need to pick up the Florence Cathedral free pass and then book the climb to the Duomo onc...

Venice.. the city of canals and indeed it had to be one of our first stops on our Italian adventure. Planning a trip across Italy can be quite a task since the country has so much to offer! We finally settled on covering the top ones - Venice, Florence, Rome, Cinque Terre in 14 days. (Refer my blog Italia 2019: The Planning) We landed in Rome and immediately took a train to the one of the most romantic cities in the world - Venice. Venice is a city with no cars/vehicles and runs on an intricate network of water taxis (vaporette) and gondolas on their canals. Being one of the most touristy spots you will be greeted my crowds of tourists walking across the small lanes, enjoying gondola rides and many standing in queue to visit the sights! We planned about 2.5 days in this beautiful city and we couldn’t get enough of it. Venice is best experienced by walking aimlessly, sometimes getting lost, in their tiny but cute streets and that's exactly what we did. We picked the top h...