Northern Italy | Milan + Cinque Terre + Pisa

I haven’t had a chance to post much travel photography on the site since I tend to leave it on the back-burner and take care of my clients first. Traveling is something that really gets me excited! I love the adventure of learning about a new culture, trying new foods, and exploring wherever I am. Matt and I joke that we rarely take a relaxing vacation and we tend to need one when we get home. We have been very blessed to go to such wonderful places. While Matt was finishing his last year of college and getting ready to leave for Oklahoma he worked for Northwest Airlines/Delta for 18 months as an intern. We look back now and feel very thankful for what an awesome internship it was. Not only did he get to work with some fun people, learn new things, and apply his knowledge to the job, but we both were able to take advantage of the travel benefits! And be sure that we did! We knew this wasn’t going to last forever. I hope to blog more about other trips that we took, but one of our biggest trips was over Labor Day weekend last year with Matt’s parents to Italy.

Since flying stand-by we started to get used to our first class treatment. I am sad to know that is over! It was fun to be able to bring family along to enjoy the experience. There is just nothing like traveling first class to another country. The service, food, entertainment, and room to stretch your feet was amazing. Good thing we were able to take advantage of the opportunity to sleep since little did we know we were in for a long first day.

We arrived in Milan, Italy around 9AM (1AM at home). We were able to find a restaurant open around 10AM so were could have some lunch before heading out on our travels. We have been traveling for over 8 hours now.

One of my favorite pizza’s in Italy!

This was our first experience using the trains in Italy. It took a while to figure out the routes and read the signs, but we were masters by the end of the trip. Our first train was heading for La Spezia but we were stopping in the Cinque Terre to find rooms for a couple nights. We didn’t have any hotel’s booked (you will find out later we regretted that decision).

AAhh we arrived in Vernazza, Cinque Terre to find a hotel. Matt and his dad went on foot to find a place for us to stay while Mary and I enjoyed a little gelato and time to relax.

We were all very disappointed to find out that there were no rooms in Vernazza and we were probably not going to find a room in any of the other small towns nearby. Our next best chance was to continue to La Spezia to find a place there. At this point we still had our luggage (carry-ons thankfully) and we had been traveling for nearly 14 hours. So we said good-bye to the Cinque Terre for now with plans to head back tomorrow.

After walking around in La Spezia until dark we ended up not finding a hotel there either. We tried getting online and the closest hotel we could find was in Pisa. So we booked it online, went back to the train station, and of course had to get some McDonald’s. Nothing else was open. Shortly after we ate they closed and kicked us out. It was about 11PM when we found out the train was canceled because of a strike and we would have to wait until after midnight.

Finally we arrive in Pisa, Italy! We trekked on foot to our hotel and came to find the town was surprisingly busy at 1AM.

As we were wandering the streets to find our hotel we came around the back side of the park that the Leaning Tower is in. We had not expected to see it while we were walking. It was a magnificent sight to see in the light of the moon! How amazing to think that not many people see the tower at nearly 2:00 in the morning! At this point I could only laugh … and take some pictures!

After a long day and a little frustration we finally made it to our first hotel. Got to bed right away and planned to figure out the rest of our trip in the morning!