Rome was not built in a day but it sure can be visited !!!!

Venice – Florence – Siena – Tuscany– Pisa – Cinque Terre – Rome – The Vatican

With Nice, the French episode of the Euro tour got over. We took a train from Nice to Milan and then with just a 15 min stopover, had a train from Milan to Venice. Crazily running with our bags, stumbling, shoving off others - we somehow managed to catch the train. The Italian trains are very nice. Of course, a big improvement over what we see here. They even show running speed and for the first time, we experienced zooming at the speed of more than 300kph.

Venice by night !

Now Venice is a difficult city. No vehicles sounds amazing but it becomes a tad bit difficult to carry the luggage across the numerous bridges. At first, from posh, well-dressed France to Venice was unpleasant. And Gondola ride seemed overrated, the canal looked like sewage. But imagine a city which you can walk through in a day. Walking through the narrow lanes of Venice and exploring the “tutto” shops, we fell in love with the city.  There is something about Venice, which makes you feel cheerful.

Burano

And what we loved the most - was the colors of houses at the Burano Island. The bright yellow green pink makes it a beautiful sight. The lonely Torcello island and the glass factory at Murano were OKish.

Next we traveled to Florence. Florence is famous for the artist Michelangelo among other things. No, we could not see the original David (the museum Accademia closed by the time we reached) but we saw "3" of the replicas. The view of the city from Piazza dei Michelangelo was mesmerizing.

Florence City

From Florence we had two tours, suggested by our tour planner. First was Tuscany full day tour. We went to Siena first. This little town is divided into 18 districts, each represented with one symbol. And the whole town prepares the entire year for the horse racing competition. It is known to be one of the fiercest competitions and the celebrations in the winning district continue for about 3 months !!!!!! I never knew people compete for anything other than ranks.

Vineyards

Tuscany has these huge green farmlands that we see so many times in the movies. The tour of Tuscany vineyard was one of the most amazing experiences. We had a 4-course meal, with four different types of wines. Here, for the first time we tried what they call a “Dessert Wine”, and it was delightful, savored with a "Biscotti".

Worlds Best Gelato

We visited San Gimignano next, famous for its towers. We had the best of the gelatos here. We did try to explore as many flavours as we could but there is so much you could eat. My suggestion to someone who is travelling to Florence- have a dinner of gelatos - avoid all the bread and have gelatos, especially the wild berries flavor. You won't find anything comparable in India.

And finally Pisa for the leaning tower. So our tour guide explained that the sand in Pisa is not so stable and if you look carefully, even the trees are tilted. If you ask me view of Leaning tower of Pisa vs view of Eiffel Tower, I will choose the view of Tuscany country side over both.

Next day we had Cinque Terre Tour. It is a group of 5 villages at Mediterranean Sea shore - bright coloured buildings, best place for photographs. We had the most amazing pesto sauce pasta here. The mood is set by the blue water and the amazing musicians on the streets making the passers-by dance. We used trains to travel between villages. But there are hiking trails also available here and something tells me if I take that trail I might never return :)

Cinque Terre

Our last stop was Rome. Rome was not built in a day but we had only a day to visit it. There is a reason why people study Roman architecture – you will be lost in the marble art. The structures are magnificent. Other than the Vatican City, what I cannot forget is the Trevi Fountain. The wish fountain, throw a coin and make your wish come true. The Neptune in the middle of the fountain was a huge structure carved in marble. I don’t think I have enough words to describe it. We had a day in Rome and we tried covering most of important tourist points. 

Trevi Fountain

And with this our little European journey came to an end. With loads of memories and promises to ourselves that we will come back for more!

An evening in Paris – Apr 2016

Paris – Nice – Monaco – Monte Carlo

We were planning our Eurotrip since 2013. Multiple reasons kept us from following through – wedding, other's weddings, winters, blah blah…...frankly, I thought we would never be able to find long enough vacation to go through the extravagant itinerary we had in mind. Finally, we found our tour planner. He helped shape the itinerary to fit in 10 days and still include the most important cities we wanted to cover along with some places we hadn’t thought of and which came as a pleasant surprise. After many days of research, advise from CherishTrip and advises from friends and family members, we were finally set. 

Worth it !!!

We started from Bengaluru to Paris with a stop-over at Mumbai. It is very important to mention the huge queue at the immigration counter at Mumbai international Airport. The employees at immigration desk were taking their own sweet time, making us anxious. But we somehow made it on time. I think the Jet airways crew is aware of this and they did make the flight wait for some time beyond the accepted delay. Lucky us!!!

Montmartre Square

The flight journey was long – 9 hours long. We reached Paris in the evening. It was drizzling. We started at 40 degrees and landed at 10 degrees. The streets, the buildings, the cafes are just beautiful. At every corner there is a musician with an instrument, every free wall is painted. The air in Paris also smells of art. You can spend all your time just appreciating people pursuing their dreams. 

Sacra Coeur

The Eiffel Tower, Sacra Coeur, Louvre – Mona Lisa, each of these is worth hours. You can spend an eternity in Louvre and if you have read Da-Vinci or watched “White collar” you can relate to many of the paintings. We could spot some exceptional artists making replicas of some of these famous ones in Louvre hallway. We did not have time to visit Notre Dame or Pompidou center - maybe on our next visit. Tip: People travelling to Paris, don’t worry about the travel within city - the local metro, buses are very well connected.

Nice Square

From Paris to Nice. Above is a picture of Nice square, I do not think I have words to describe the feeling when we saw the interplay of pastel colors at the various buildings there. At Nice, we were introduced to the European yogurts in breakfast and we just fell in love with the multiple fruit flavors (apricot to berries). We used to carry yogurts for the early morning train/flight trips in Europe. Here, we had lovely dinner in an open cafe with Chef suggested white wine which was delicious.

Nice View

Nice is a city on French Rivera with the most amazing pebble beach. I am a beach person; I can spend hours on the beach just listening to the waves. The clear water just adds to the perfectness of a clean beach. In the morning, there were people cleaning the beach, picking up the leftovers, an effort well appreciated. Nice had a small hill with a breath taking view of the city.

Monaco

We had a one-day tour to Monte Carlo and Monaco from Nice. Yes, we drove the Monte Carlo grand Prix race track (took 2 hours with all the sightseeing). And yes we saw the Monte Carlo Casino. On the left, is the view of Monaco from hill top.

Eze

Saint-Paul de Vence

As part of this tour we visited two French villages Eze and Saint-Paul de Vence – I think these were the highlights of our Euro trip, the narrow cobblestone streets with medieval houses.