Cinque Terre!

Yay! I'm super excited to stay in Cinque Terre...it should be a lot different than the other places we're staying....less modern. It will be nice to get away and relax, so I can't wait!

Anyway, there weren't too many different "hotels" in Cinque Terre, especially when we were able to narrow it down to one town in particular: Vernazza. It's the one Rick Steves recommends, so obvi we're staying there! After looking through the reviews on trip advisor, we ended up choosing one hotel, and requested a sea view room (you had to email or fax them to make reservations....). We were super disappointed to find out that it was no longer available, but they did have a non sea view room, with a private bathroom, for 20 euros less. So, this became our back up plan.

I kind of want to show pictures of the other hotels we looked at, and put in a request for, but that might have to wait for another post. To make a long story short, none of the other hotels we liked had rooms available, so we ended up back at the first place! At first I was kind of sad, but we did like it best in the first place, so there must be something good about it. And there is!

I'll show you pictures, all from trip advisor.

This will probably end up being our view....

This is what our view could have been!

Here's a picture of one of the nicer-looking rooms

And here's a picture of the connected restaurant!

I am definitely very excited to try out the restaurant that is part of the hotel: Gianni Franzi. The pesto and seafood and wine are all going to be so good (I'll be sure to take pictures, and post them when I get back.....to make you all jealous!). Anyway, while the nearby restaurant is exciting, my favorite part about the hotel has got to be the terrace, that everyone staying there has access to:

See the little part sticking out from the rock?

And here's a close-up view! The water is beautiful!

Finally!

I feel like I've been waiting forever...but my passport finally came about a week ago! I've been meaning to get it for a while, just in case an opportunity came up to travel outside of the US. Anyway, Ryan and I have been thinking about going to Europe for a while, and since airfare has been dropping, we booked our flights (yesterday!) for this September!!!! I'm soooo excited, you don't even know!

Where are we going? Well, I'll just give you an overview for now. I'll go into more detail about some of the places and what we plan on doing in later posts.

1. Venice, Italy

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So we knew for sure that we wanted to go somewhere in Italy. But where? We have a limited amount of time for our trip (thanks to Ryan's super limited pto...), so we knew that there was no way we could see everything! So, for me at least, I didn't really care whether we spent the time in Rome, Florence, Venice, Sicily, because I definitely plan on going back and exploring the rest of Italy. Well, after watching Rick Steves's Venice episode, we both thought it looked so romantic. Oh, and what if it's not there in 10 years (apparently it might "drown" at some point...hmm)?

2. Cinque Terre, Italy

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Originally we wanted to go to Portofino. We wanted to go somewhere on the "Italian Riviera" (not sure if it's actually called that...), found Portofino on the map, recognized that name, and decided to try that out. Well, turns out there are only a couple of hotels, and they were both pretty pricey, so we looked around that area and stumbled upon Cinque Terre. About a week later, Rick Steves had an article on cnn.com about Cinque Terre, and it sounded awesome! We've since done more research since then (including reading about Lisa's adventures here) and decided that Cinque Terre will definitely be on the list of stops!

3. Nice, France

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Our next stop will be the French Riviera! Specifically, we are looking into staying at Nice. Looking at the pictures, I just realized that all of these places are on the coast. But, whatever, why not? I've always heard great things about southern France, so I was excited to add Nice to the itinerary. Also, I am very excited to stop by Monaco, and maybe check out the Monte Carlo!

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I guess only the REALLY rich people gamble here, but it sounds like there's another casino nearby, so I'd love to check that out as well!

4. Paris, France

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This is the last place we'll visit on our trip. I've wanted to go here for a while, so I'm excited that it's finally happening! I don't even know what we'll be doing while we're here. There's way too much to do in the small amount of time that we'll be there, but we do have some ideas (to be shared soon!). In the meantime, for those of you that have been to Paris, or have done some research, let me know if you have any suggestions! Or, let me know if there is anything I should not "waste" my time doing. Oh, and I really hope the Eiffel Tower sparkles when I'm there (like it does in the picture below!).

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