Cavalino and Venice
While in Amsterdam, I booked an apartment that said it was in Venice but right on the beach. You would only have to take a short boat ride to reach the city. When we arrived to Venice and then our new apartment, this was not the case. We took an hour boat ride to Punta Sabionni and then were picked up by the house owner. Her name was Brunna and she only spoke Italian and a little bit of German – not helpful. After playing charades in the car for about 45 minutes, we arrived safely to her beautiful BnB. She had bikes to loan us so we could ride 10 minutes to the beach, so we got over our frustration. No internet, but soft warm sand for days. Matt and I decided we would enjoy a few days here, then go stay in Venice to experience the city. This was no mistake. We both got a nice tan and met some fun Serbian friends who invited us to a disco tech (aka club). We danced the night away, speaking to the only one of the group who spoke English (then he translated to his friends what we said) and had a great time. All-in-all Italy was getting off to a great start!
We said our good-byes to Bruna and the beach and headed into Venice for some sight-seeing. Our hostel was a student dorm converted and had no A/C. For those of you who have not yet made it to Venice, it is pretty hot during the day, and for some reason it got hotter at night. They did have internet though, which Matt was thrilled about (he was going through withdrawals) so we were ok.
After settling in, Matt and I made a new friend from Cali named Mondo. He was traveling alone around Italy, so I decided he needed to join our group. We went to a nice Italian dinner of pizza with pecans on it (yum!) and some house red wine. Italy has amazing food: pizza with crazy toppings and home cooked pasta is available everywhere! The only slight problem is that this is just about the only thing offered everywhere. So if you aren’t the biggest fan of the bread and cheese combos, you may want to skip this trip. After getting filled up, we met up with some Aussies for the popular Venice experience: Sitting on the steps over a canal drinking a Spritz. A Spritz is a mixture of white wine, soda water and some nasty orange liquor that makes you have a bitter face more than a lime. Matt liked it, I stuck with whisky. We woke up the next day a tad hung-over but ready to get some good interneting done – book the next stay. Matt checked his facebook account and read me a message from his future GSB classmate who lived in Italy. Fede from Italy invited Matt and I to a party for the weekend. This party is going to be in a castle. I’m sold.
We relax that night with some friends and dedicate the next day to true Venice sight-seeing. We begin our day with Mondo and a young girl from Indonesia and we head to the fruit market. We grab some fresh breakfast then snag a Gondola for a ride around the city.
We were shown Casanova’s house, Maco Polo’s church and a variety of other churches that I don’t remember – but they had nice Italian architecture.
We go to the top of the tower in San Marco Square, which gave us a killer view of all of Venice. Then we took a boat ride to the island of Moreno to see glass blowing first hand.
This was a cool thing to watch, and then walk around all of the complicated glass sculptures that came out the same process as a giant vase does. The island had really intricate life-size glass sculptures as well. It was incredible! We finished up with Moreno then boated over to Boreno. Boreno is the island known for lace and bright colored buildings.
The old tale about the bright colored buildings is that when the men are drunk and wanted to come home, it was easier for them to find their house if it was bright pink or green. Makes since to me ☺ We concluded our stay in Venice and hopped a train to Verona for one night.
Verona was a short stay because we were to be picked up the next morning by Fede's friend Anna and then taken 2 hours away to the Castle. Matt and I used Verona as a laundry city and skipped out on the overly tourist Romeo and Juliet balcony.
Epic 48 Hours
The next morning at 10am, our new friend Anna came to pick us up. She had studied for a year in Colorado so we were able to communicate quite well. We picked up two more people who flew in from Rome just for this party. This is when Matt and I knew that these people did not party in a castle every night, but it was a special occasion. Anna told us that the owner of this castle was Fede's best friend Giorgio. Giorgio decided to throw himself a birthday party and Fede a good-bye party all at once. After a two-hour drive into Italy’s beautiful mountains, we arrived in a city called Cles. We met Fede for lunch (he is a hoot!) and he explained that Giorgio’s last name was Cles. The town was named for his family, and his family was noble men who owned this castle and now run a vineyard. Giorgio was the last heir now and was trying to fix up the castle so he could live in it full time. Now I was extremely intrigued to meet this guy. Matt assured me that if the prince of this town wanted to marry me that I could run off and become a princess, no hard feelings. I told him not to worry because I haven’t even seen him yet (jk).
So we drove up to the castle and I have to say I was not disappointed. We met Gorgio – super super sweet and single (for all you single ladies out there) and were given a tour of the grounds. They had a barn area where a full wet bar had been installed, a grassy area where they brought in a huge pizza oven, a DJ stand for some groovy tunes to be played later and a nice wooden stage for “the ladies to dance on later.” I asked how many people where expected tonight and he Gorgio replied with ease, “About 150.” Matt laughed and told them that was bigger than our wedding.
The party got started around 7pm, which in Italy meant that it is still light out. The barn/dance hall was closed off, and people were told to go to the multi-level grassy area for paninis and drinks. There were pitchers of home-made mojitos and spritzes with about 500 nicely cut paninis on display. Around 8pm an acoustic guitarist came to serenade the guests. The kegs were tapped and bottles of beer were then brought out for the next course – PIZZA! Now I love pizza (duh) and I love chocolate (double duh) but when I heard there was a way to combine both, I flipped! After making 150 people cheese pizzas, the pizza workers decided it was time for dessert. They made pizza dough and put it in the wooden stove bare, then removed it when it was cooked and smothered Nutella all over it. This created the perfect melted chocolate pizza ever!!! This was by far my favorite part of the party. People’s food began to settle and the dancing was starting to get crammed outside, so they moved the party into the dance hall/barn. They transformed this wooden building into a candle lit club, complete with an open bar. It is about midnight when the disco starts, and people are acting like its 4pm. We danced the night away, avoiding the Jaeger Shots being offered to everyone, and decided it was time to call it a night around 3:30am. We were supposed to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor in the castle but it was cold, so we decided to sleep in Anna’s car (Matt got the passenger seat and I got the back seat). This was an epic night.
The party ended around 6:30am with Champagne, oranges and croissants for breakfast (these are the best hosts ever!) Matt and I woke up around 9am and decided we needed to do our part, so we cleaned up the plastic cup covered barn until people woke up. Giorgio came into the barn and told us to come into the castle for breakfast around 10:30am. People were hung-over is an understatement – but everyone faked it pretty well. Matt and I actually felt great, but we did leave three hours early. A giant sausage buffet with leftover oranges were offered to the 10 guests that had passed out all over the castle. Then people reminded us of the day’s plans: White water rafting. This is also a reason Matt and I wanted to crash a little early.
We met at the rafting place around 3pm with 20 people ready to either raft or throw-up. Everyone was pumped once the wet suits were on! We spent about two hours in the chilly water rafting through the Italian mountains. This view was spectacular and I loved every minute.
We completed rafting then cleaned up the castle a little more. A bunch of us went to dinner and then we sadly said goodbye to our new friends. If they couldn’t be any sweeter, Giorgio and Fede made sure that Matt and I have two bottles of the Cles wine to have for the rest of our Italian trip. Epic 48 hours.
Cinque Terra
We made a plan with a couple people in Venice to meet up in Cinque Terra on Monday by 11am. We didn’t book any housing and had the genius plan to just wander around and find a place when we got there. They name Cinque Terra means five cities or five villages. So we figured we would find somewhere to sleep if there were five cities of options. We ran into our two Canadian friends and our buddy Mondo. On the train into the Cinque Terra, we meet a couple Aussies (they are everywhere) that mention where they are staying and they may have openings. We hop off at the city right outside of Cinque Terra and found great places for everyone in our group to stay.
The highlight of staying in these five cities is there is a hiking trail that goes from one end to the other. So the next morning that is what we set out to do. The first hike between city one and city two took about 2.5 hours but the views were incredible. We stopped in each tiny city to have a look around.
The whole day hike took about 8 hours including stopping for meals here and there. We ended the day by taking the train back to our hotel which was right across the street from the beach, and relaxed with our feet in the sand.
We decided as a group the night before that we wanted to rent a motor boat to tour the cities by water. Mondo and Matt did some research and we found that with 6 people we could rent a boat for the day, including groceries, for 35 Euro a person. It was a steal and we all jumped on it. We cruised our Bimini top motor boat around all day long. Stopping here and there to jump into the water in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Everyone got some great sun, and no one got seasick. It was a great success.
The next day the boys wanted to go on another hike in the other direction through some old train tunnels. I decided I would stay home and do a little job hunting. They had a blast and came back desperate to go swimming in the nice cool water. Cinque Terra is a great hidden gem, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone.
