Saturday, May 31, 2014

Leaving La Spezia, Stopping in Pisa, Ending in Rome

Before I start this post I wanted to start with letting you all know that our last day in La Spezia was also our 3 year anniversary! Nathan and I were wed on May 27th, 2011. This day we planned to be a traveling day because we wanted to have a relaxed day with each other! That was exactly what it was; we loved it! :) 

Before we start the post about our day, here is a little collage I put together of Nathan and I!


I am so blessed to be this mans wife! He is my everything! I love learning and growing with him everyday! I can't believe it has already been 3 years! It feels like our wedding was just yesterday! We have had so many wonderful adventures together and we will continue to have more! Happy anniversary Nathan! I love you!

Naomi, you are awesome. I am blessed to have you as my wife. Thank you for always loving me. These past 3 years have been awesome, and the future will be even better! Happy anniversary!
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This was our breakfast!! Hot Cocoa and croissants!! YUM!

Our last morning after breakfast we decided to take a quick walk down to the docks. It was a beautiful morning!


We found a really cool bridge as we were walking around! :)


This is the view from one side of the bridge.

This is the view from the other side.

Our last walk through the beautiful La Spezia shops and walking area.

On the train, Pisa bound.

At one of the stops we saw this family transporting their new TV.

Welcome to Pisa!

Our walk toward the Pisa monuments.

The leaning tower of Pisa, if you look closely you can see that some people are doing the classic "holding up Pisa" pose, because its falling! EVERYONE was doing it! ;) 

So we did too! :)

And then we took this! :)

This cathedral was right next to the tower.

This was the baptistery of the cathedral.

A panorama of all three!

Okay, so we had to take this photo because everywhere we go there is scaffolding on something and a lot of times its on the iconic monuments. It has seriously been on everything. We guess we just came at a time where they are fixing everything. 

The tower of Pisa up close

Statue next to the tower


It really is leaning! :) This is a picture of the foundation, you can see how far the foundation has settled on the right side (compared to the left side).

This is one of two main bridges in Pisa. We crossed over to get back to the station.

This was our fast train to Rome, one of the better, more comfortable trains! :)

The view from the window.

Relaxing on the train! :)

The ride was beautiful! 


We made it to Rome an hour earlier then we thought we would! :) 

The street to our Hotel.

We have a little balcony.

This is the room.

 After getting all checked in we decided that we should go eat some dinner! :) Haha so we took the elevator down because we are on the 3rd floor which is really the 4th floor because the first floor is floor zero. The elevator is tiny, only big enough for 2 people maybe 3 if you wanted to get cozy! The elevator goes quickly and then stops abruptly at the last second. It took a few rides to get used to it. Also, there are 3 doors involved here: the first door is the main door on each floor, then there are two additional doors on the elevator (double door style, as you can sort of tell from the picture below and the reflection of the door in the picture above). While the elevator was moving, I (Nathan) decided to test the safety mechanism of the elevator by opening the doors while the elevator was in motion! I am happy to report that the elevator promptly stopped moving before the doors were barely open and to get the elevator moving again, you just had to close the doors and push the button for the floor you desired. The whole three-door thing was complex for us Americans who have elevators that do everything automatically, but we figured it out soon enough!

Haha I love him! He is so fun! :) 

This was our dinner, Nathan had chicken fettuccine alfredo.

 I had spinach and mushroom ravioli. They were both really good!! Nathan's favorite place so far! :)

In honor of our anniversary we splurged and got a delicious dessert, it was called grandmas pie, in English, no idea what it was called in Italian! It was really good though! It was a kind of creme with pine nuts and almonds.


La Spezia - Exploring Cinque Terre

We bought our tickets for all of the cities in Cinque Terre!!

On the train!

Welcome to Riomaggiore!!! The 1st city!

We had to do some surgery on the mouth piece for my camel pack. :( The hose was breaking.

Outside of the station of Riomaggiore.

When we left the station we went right instead of going left and this is one of the tunnels that you can walk down to get out of the city (we guess). We were going to go this way and realized quickly that the city was the other way. :)

When we went back we were faced with 2 options, one was to go up and walk along the coast or the other was to go up and walk in the city. We decided to walk up this way through the city. It was all uphill.

It was worth it! The view was beautiful!

This was the way we walked up! :)

Another shot of the beautiful view.

Nathan taking a panorama! :) 



Waiting for the train to get to the next city. The hiking paths were all closed because of a bad rain storm! :(

The 2nd city, Manarola! So beautiful! Nathan and I have pictures of this city on our desktops back home! We were really excited to see it! :) 


We found this on our trek up to the 3rd city, Corniglia. They had tiny cars here! :) 

We took a picture of it because we thought it might be the perfect substitute for my dads Geo metro! ;)

Walking up. 

When we got up the first thing we found was a little church.

This is the view from the top!

In my opinion this was the best gelato we have had out here!!! It was delicious! (Strawberry and Chocolate Chip) I'm still thinking about it!! YUM!

Another little church with a restaurant at the foot of it.

Pretty much this is what all the pathways looked like around this city.

A beautiful view from the edge of the city!!! :) 

Nathan is so good at capturing the Panoramas! :) He is the best! 



Lunch time!! We found a cheap and really yummy place with a good view!

We got lasagna! It was yummy!

We also found Snow White, 4 of her dwarfs and 2 gnomes.

This was the view of the waterfront for this city.

This is the 5th city of the 5 cities, Monterosso. We found the beach!!

It was SO beautiful!! I just wanted to jump in!

We sat on some rocks near the water! I loved it! 

We found out that the hike from Moterosso to Vernazza, the 4th city, was open!! These were the first steps to our hike to Vernazza! :) The 4th city! (Its about a 2-3 hour hike!) We were really excited!

The view looking back on Monterosso!

Some of the trail

It was a really beautiful hike!

Lots of up hill! :) 


Beautiful views!!! :)

We found a little vineyard! 

In the corner of the vineyard we found this cute table with wine bottles! :)

One of the signs pointing us to Vernazza!

Taking a little break to enjoy the view!


These were painted on the trail to let people know that they were headed in the right direction! :)

A nice Australian man took a picture for us! :)

I just can't get over how beautiful the trails were! 

A little bit of cloud coverage! :) So pretty!

We came around a corner and saw Vernazza! 

Throughout the hike there was a little railway and at the end of the trail we found the car that goes on that railway. We assume it transports grapes? :) 

We made it to Vernazza! We were hiking on that hill!

Here is a view of the city.

We sat by the water! It was so peaceful!

There was a guy fishing as the sun set! It was all so beautiful! (Nathan was looking up where to eat!)

We found a really good restaurant next to where we were sitting! :)



After dinner Nathan found a dark hole and decided to check it out, this is the other side of the dark hole I didn't take a picture of us going in because it was creepy haha. This was the other side though, it brought us to a little private beach!

It was so beautiful!!

We explored a little.


Nathan really liked it! :)

All the rocks here were really smooth! Perfect for skipping rocks! :)


Nathan was so cute! He was really having a lot of fun throwing and skipping the rocks! I joined him of course but I had to capture some of this moment! It was so much fun! We were like two kids having fun!


This was the scary dark hole leading back to the city street! :) 

This was the view as we walked back to the station! We love staying late because all the crowds are gone! :) 

This was the station for the train back to La Spezia.