Almost right in the middle of northern Italy, before heading into the mountains, is Verona, my next stop. Verona was arguably made famous by a certain Shakespeare play, more on that in a bit, but Verona also has a pretty long history that’s not fictitious. My hotel is situated such that I stroll into town right by the historic main gate, Porta Nuova, and then through the Portini della BrĂ where you’re almost immediately confronted with Verona’s main attraction, the…
A very quick train from Bologna and I’m now in one if Italy’s, if not the world’s, most famous cities, the beautiful and enchanting Venice. When the Roman towns along the Adriatic coast were overrun by barbarians in the 5th century, the people ended up settling in these wetlands. In the early 8th century the first doge was elected and Venice slowly grew in power and size. Today, Venice is an unbelievably beautiful city, a tourist Mecca, comprised of 118…
My route from Modena to Bologna may be the shortest stretch of travel I’ve had on this entire trip. Just a quick thirty minute train ride. And since I’ve already passed through the train station here three times in the past week, I may as well explore the whole city. Bologna is a really busy university town, in fact, the university is the oldest university in the world, established in 1088. Bologna, despite all the idealistic young hipster students walking…
Modena was just a quick stop for me, quick but busy. Busy because most of the sites I came here to see aren’t even in Modena, they’re in nearby towns. It was just a short train ride from Ravenna to get here, then I dropped my backpack off at the hotel since it was too early to check in, and immediately walked to the bus station to make my way to the first site on my agenda in Maranello. That’s…
It was another long, yet easy travel day following the Adriatic coast way up north to Ravenna. It’s probably not one of Italy’s more famous cities, but perhaps it should be. For most of the 5th to 7th centuries, around three hundred years, while the rest of the empire was falling apart, Ravenna was the capital of western Rome and after that, the capital of the Ostrogoth kingdom. Today Ravenna is most well known as the mosaic capital of Italy….
Just a couple of short train rides, first north to Brindisi for a quick connection and now I’m in Matera, one of the oldest inhabited places on earth. One source I read claims that it’s the third longest inhabited place on earth. How they know that is beyond me, but in any case, civilization has been in this spot for around 7000 to 8000 years. A long long time! It was afternoon when I arrived, so I only had time…
When I said in my last post that I was going to spend a whole day on a bus, I meant a whole day. I had to make my way from Sicily in the west all the way to the Salentine Peninsula (Italy’s boot heel) in the east. I left Catania about 930am. The most exciting thing that happened was the ferry crossing from Sicily to the mainland. About 530pm I arrived in Taranto for a four hour layover. So…
It really doesn’t seem that far on the map, but it took nearly five hours on the train to get from Agrigento to Catania, on Sicily’s east coast. Catania, like most of Sicily’s cities was originally a Greek city, going all the way back to the 8th century BC. The first thing I noticed while walking to my hotel, however, was the remains of the 2nd century Roman theatre. Most of it is buried underneath the modern buildings, but this…
Just a quick update from Agrigento on Sicily’s southern coast. I originally planned on visiting Selinunte as part of my stay here, but since the buses are uncooperative and since I ended up seeing it from Palermo in my one day rental car, I found myself with some extra time. So I visited the ancient city of Akragas, also known as The Valley of the Temples, and the only other thing I had planned, at a much more relaxed pace….
My eleven hour train ride from Naples turned out to be just the rest I needed, and it rained most of the way, so it was a good day to avoid that. Finally around 7:30pm I arrived in Palermo in Sicily and found my hotel for the night, slept, and then hit the streets first thing in the morning. Just a little sidenote, Sicily has what has got to be one of the craziest flags in the world. The three…