We only had a day and a half in Milan, so we tried to make the most of our time. We arrived on a Sunday and went to see “The Last Supper”. This fresco is the original da Vinci painting of the Last Supper – Julie had booked this for us weeks ago as it…
Category: Italy
An amazing gondola ride
On our second day in Venice we went to the Rialto bridge (pictured above) and markets. (You can’t really see the graffiti that unfortunately covered the bridge!) Here we strolled, looking at the shops and stalls, before going by water bus to the island of Murano, where Murano glass comes from. Here we saw a…
A Venice birthday for Julie
The 9th of January was Julie’s birthday, and so we had a morning tea of delicious pastries in Florence before taking the train to our next Italian destination – the beautiful city of Venice. We stayed in Mestre, outside the city, so our first view of Venice’s canals was coming in that…
Firenze
On our first full day in Florence (known in Italy as Firenze) we went to the Uffizi gallery. This famous gallery has hundreds of masterpieces – here we learned that some of our group had a lower tolerance for art than others! You weren’t allowed to take pictures here…check out here, here and here for…
The Leaning Tower of Pisa
We took a train from Rome to Florence and then after unpacking jumped onto a local train bound for Pisa. Pisa is an easy hour’s train ride from Florence and a good afternoon trip. I had always thought that the “Leaning Tower of Pisa” was a freestanding tower on its own – imagine my surprise…
The ruins of Pompeii
On our fourth day in Rome we took an early morning train south to Naples. From there we took a local train and found ourselves at the ancient destroyed city of Pompeii, in the shadow of Mt Vesuvius. We spent hours walking around here. One thing I really appreciated was…
In the Vatican and under Rome
On our third day in Rome we headed to the Vatican City, a tiny independent city inside Rome known for being the Pope’s main hang-out. We had pre-booked a tour and we knew to expect crowds, but the mob scene through the Vatican museums and the Sistine chapel were still beyond what we had imagined!…
Reunited in Rome
Arriving at our apartment in Rome we were reunited with our mothers Julie (Karen) and Lynette (Reubs) nearly ten months after leaving New Zealand. We were very excited to see them (and we think they were excited too, despite being pretty fatigued after nearly 40 hours of travel!) Lynette had never been to Europe, and…
Meandering Kiwis 