This blog was intended to inform my audience of our life in paradise- Maui. So I won't stray too far from that primary objective to this blog. But our back packing trip through Italy and Paris took over almost a full month of our life, and fulfilled us in ways we never expected.
Here is a photo montage of my favorite images from our month in Europe. On my facebook I have an album for each city in depth (100-150 photos from each city) so check those out to really understand our trip. These are just the highlights.
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| Italian rooftops |
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| First meal in Florence |
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| First Italian restaurant we stumbled upon for dinner where this owner sang Italian opera as he ran food, took orders, cleared plates, rang people in at the cash register, etc. Unforgettable! |
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| Random guy doing a photo shoot with us in front of the Duomo |
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| Duomo (Italian for cathedral) |
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| We somehow snagged the only front row seat to the Duomo at a nearby bar |
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| Handmade pasta class in a Florentine chef's personal kitchen- Jon's dream come true |
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| Look how happy he is :) |
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| It was AMAZING |
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| The Italian tradition, espresso or cappucino in the morning |
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| San Lorenzo street market. Where we haggles for 2 leather jackets, a leather belt, and 5 beautiful scarves |
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| Infamous bridge in Florence- Il Ponte Vecchio (the grand/old bridge) |
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| "Faux" David statue |
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| One of the most unforgettable evenings of my life. Yes those buildings in the background are real |
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| Free food with our bottle of wine in a front row table on top of a hidden hill we stumbled upon while walking around... yes please :) |
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| We met my best friend Toni from Maui and her boyfriend Bradley in Tuscany |
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| First Italian style thin crust pizza. This is supposed to be for one person |
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| The leftovers were used as my umbrella later while trekking through the hills outside of Siena to get to a farmhouse |
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| The grounds of the castle we all stayed in outside of Siena |
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| Inspired by the Florence cooking class, Jon made pasta for us and our new Canadian honeymooner friends staying nearby |
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| Lookout on top of the castle grounds of the nearby hill towns |
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| All gone :( |
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| Our favorite meal through out our entire trip |
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| Best pasta I had the entire trip. Fresh Mushroom and Truffle creamy pasta. ughhhhhh yum |
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| That's the castle up on the hill |
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| My favorite part of Siena was getting lost along the back residential streets |
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| Il Campo Piazza- Argued to be the most beautiful piazza in all of Italy |
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| Talking story with an old local lady. She very much insisted on me having "bambini" soon (children) |
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| Having dinner in the dungeon of our castle... There was a dungeon connected to our bedroom |
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| Sunrise in Tuscany |
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| A random doggy followed Jon home |
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| An old man picking ripe olives out of the olive tree on the castle's property with a rickety only wooden ladder. Precious |
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| Walking along the highway, alongside vineyards |
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| Volterra |
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| Our hotel at sunset |
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| The bulbs along this archway used to be faces, dating back to the 1st century!!!! |
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| Saving the world, one Tower of Pisa at a time |
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| Riomaggiore in Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre means 5 lands/towns. They line the coast line with hiking trails in between them. Super local, beautiful, low key, colorful, welcoming, but a little over run by tourists during the day (understandably, it's beautiful) |
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| Along the Via Dell'Amore. The "pathway of love", where young lovers from seperate towns would meet up for a rendez -vous away from their feuding cities |
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| Everyone "locks their love" along the Via Dell'Amore to ensure their love will last forever. We didn't have a lock , but we did have a wine cork from our favorite wine produced by the castle we stayed at in Siena |
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| Picturesque Manarola |
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| Who gets a chance to swing on the swings and play on the teeter totter in Italy on top of a hill overlooking the Mediterranean Sea?! Gotta do it |
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| Corniglia |
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| Smallest wine glasses we encountered. Smaller than his hands... |
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| Hiking between the 5 towns |
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| Vernazza |
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| Our picnic dinner high up overlooking Vernazza and Corniglia |
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| Statue along the sea in Monterosso al Mare |
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| Lots and lots of thin crust pizza |
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| Our "bar crawl" hopping between restaurant to restaurant for wine tasting and appetizers (better known as pupus in Maui "poo-poos") |
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| Amazing. 5 reds and 5 whites from each of the 5 towns in Cinque Terre |
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| Venice |
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| Street produce markets |
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| Doge's Palace |
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| Venice, the city of water, had overflowed from the previous day's rain |
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| So we tapped into our Maui roots and went barefoot (notice everyone around out of the water :) |
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| Carnival masquerade masks galore |
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| I love this. Italians leave their laundry and sheets out to air dry. Makes the hidden streets look so homey |
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| "You are my life" |
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| This is how tiny some of the alleyways are!! |
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| The Vatican Museum |
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| Infamous in the Sistine Chapel |
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| Roaming around Rome until the late hours of the evening |
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| The Colosseum. Unreal to be there in person... |
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| The prison that the apostles Peter and Paul were held!! |
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| The statue doesn't seem as big unless you have me to compare to it's size!! |
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| The pope's church St. Peter's Basilica. The grandest and wealthiest cathedral in the world |
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| Vatican City. Smallest private state in the world |
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| Pasta and Pizza coma all trip. Our favorite thing to do is order "una bottiglia di vino rosso della casa" which is a bottle of house red wine. It's like they have a keg of red wine in the back to serve as house wine so you get a pitcher of red wine for really cheap, but it always still tastes great, very easy drinking. |
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| Probably the biggest structure I have ever been next to. The photo doesn't do it justice |
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| Maybe this helps. That's me in the center standing in between the middle pillars. This thing was jaw dropping, as many other structures were in Rome |
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| The Trevi Fountain. All the coins that people throw in there to make a wish are actually donated to a local church! |
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| My favorite part of Rome. Trastevere. Magical |
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| Gelato was a daily ritual for us ( just as drinking espresso in the morning and a bottle of wine in the evening became). Gelato is more dense than ice cream, so more flavorful, fulfilling, and usually creamer, unless you like the sorbetto as I do which is dairy free, the more tart flavors :) I'm not joking when I say every day |
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| Dinner overlooking Sorrento in Southern Italy |
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| Capri private boat trip! |
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| Famous |
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| Capri was my favorite place to visit. Like a green wealthy Greece. So beautiful. Great memories |
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| A little sea sick... but that didn't ruin the trip |
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| Sampling Lemoncello, what Southern Italy specializes in |
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| View from our hotel |
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| Hotel stay in Salerno |
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| goofy |
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| He had many of these along the trip |
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| And they ended up like this |
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| First baguette in Paris |
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| Jon made an Italian dinner for me and Catiy to thank Catiy for letter us crash her pad for 5 days :) |
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| I used my perfect french (ya right) to ask how much for a day pass. After a lot of French words I didn't understand she said "no women." I said "that's fine... I don't want one, my husband wants a pass." She said "GAY gym" ... ooooo... ok bye. I didn't know that even existed? |
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| Rockin' the buret |
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| The beautiful street art was unforgettable about Paris |
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| The Seine River |
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| Notre Dame |
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| Thrift store shopping in Paris... |
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| Entrance to the Louvre |
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| First Parisian crepe (not so good on the street) |
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| We had a picnic in front of the Eiffel Tower one evening |
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| And walked around into the wee hours of the night |
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| Best baguette we had was in Montmartre (see the cool art on the wall, it was everywhere) |
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| View from the Sacred Heart Church |
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| One even looked exactly like me! |
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| The real Moulin Rouge |
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| One day our lunch consisted of only French pastries and wine. When in Paris.. |
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| And there just so happened to be an amazing event one evening called Nuit Blanche: White Night. Where countless museums and stores stay open extremely late with free admission. There are people playing music and having dance parties along the river, showing black and white intellectual movies along the bricks of the Seine, lots and lots of fun. |
One of our most memorable souvenirs were these handmade postcards we found in our favorite part of town Montmartre and we hadn't seen these postcards anywhere else in Paris. There were different scenarios of this blonde girl and brunette boy flirting all around Paris. They were the epitome of Jon and I. So we picked our favorites and went around Paris and reenacted the scenarios as best we could!
Now that was probably a lot of pictures... but thats the best I could do, I have well over a thousand pictures from our trip!! Again to see more in depth check out my Facebook, or ask me to send you more sperately. But in all, this trip matured me as a person, grew Jon and my marriage, and sparked a passion for travel. Probably next year around that time we will be jetsetting off to another country. I can't wait.
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