The last stop on our Italian roadtrip was Lake Garda. An interesting choice, but one I was pushed toward via an internet friend, Mrs. Carousel from Weddingbee. Shortly after she was announced as a new writer for the site, I sent her an email asking if she’d be interested in giving me some advice regarding our trip planning. She didn’t just write back with a sentence or two, she put together a multi-page spreadsheet with itinerary, suggested budget, aguriturismo suggestions, transportation options, and more. It was hands-down one of the nicest things a complete stranger has ever done for me.

Because she loved Lake Garda so much, and because I like the idea of travelling and experiencing places that a local loves, we decided to end our trip in the town of Garda. We had plans to do a day trip to Venice, go see some ruins, do some trips around the lake on a boat, but TH’s hurt leg had us largely confined to our room and the area around the hotel.

My favorite part of this location was when I accidentally bumped into Mrs. Carousel on her wedding day! We were eating breakfast in the hotel lobby the morning after we arrived when a woman walked up and asked if I was a writer for Weddingbee. I was stunned when she told me that she was Carousel’s wedding planner and that Carousel would be arriving shortly from the hair salon. She wasn’t just staying in the same hotel, we were literally staying in rooms adjacent to each other! Somehow, the bride-to-be and I had managed to book the exact same hotel for the weekend, without even knowing it. I found out when she would be arriving, and went over to surprise her and say hello. It was so fun!

She was waiting for her mom to get there before stepping into her dress, and after we talked for a few minutes (and got over the shock of seeing each other in person!) she was kind enough to invite us to the ceremony and cocktail hour held later that afternoon. The ceremony wouldn’t work with our schedule, but I sheepishly agreed to stop by at some point, feeling a little bit like a wedding crasher. Ha!

We decided to say hello at the cocktail hour, held at a hotel that was just a few minutes drive from our place. It was located right next to one of those medevial times type places (yes, they have those in Italy as well!) and while the bride and groom were away doing portraits, we witnessed a sword fight intended to convince all of us that we simply must come over and pay a few euros to see who the victor would be (none of us were swayed).

Carousel’s dress was custom made. Why does it feel like everything is better in Europe? My SIL’s dress was custom made as well! Read more →

Portofino and Vernazza (one of the cities of Cinque Terre) are without a doubt the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. There is nothing like this little corner of Italy, and if you are planning a trip to Italy I urge you with every fiber of my being to make visiting this area a priority. Yes, it’s so good that it merits the use of the melodramatic phrase every fiber of my being. La Torre will always be my favorite place to stay in Italy, due to the food, the tucked away location, and the story behind it, but the Cinque Terre region will forever sit at the very top of my recommended places to see before you die.

Unfortunately That Husband injured himself right before we packed up the car and drove toward Portofino (he has recurring problems with one of his tendons that pop up every few years), so we weren’t able to see and do as much as we intended. In some ways this was good, because we took the time to really enjoy and soak in what we were seeing instead of rushing to get to the next location. It’s never fun to see your spouse in pain though, and watching him limp along was really heartbreaking. We’re being really careful in our Thailand plans to try to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

First up, Portofino, approximately 84 km north of Vernazza (which was going to be our one and only Cinque Terre stop for the day).

We ate at Nicola’s Pizzeria Portofino. TH had Foccacia pizza with prosciutto, arugula, and cheese sauce and I ordered a side salad. The restaurant had a frustrating policy that didn’t allow us to order just one thing and split it, we each had to have something. The total cost for the meal came out to 35 euros, proving that the vendors in the area are doing a fantastic job at extracting as much as possible from the tourists coming through the area.

We weren’t originally going to go to Portofino. I was wasting time on Pinterest when I saw my friend pin this image, and realized the location was in Italy. I looked it up on a map, realized how close it was to the Cinque Terre, and immediately adjusted our plans so that I could go to that very same spot and take a picture of my own. It meant ditching TH on the path for a little bit, as he limped slowly toward me, but he very kindly urged me to go ahead without him so we would have enough time to get to Vernazza before we lost all of our light.
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On the night we arrived in San Diego we threw a little bachlorette party for the bride, heading downtown to eat dinner, and ending up at a cupcake bar called Babycakes. I don’t call it a cupcake bar because of the variety (though it does have something like a dozen delicious choices), but because it’s an actual bar! None of us drink, so the alcohol wasn’t important to us, but the place had much more of a nightclub feel than a traditional cupcake shop. This was a really good fit for us.

We made the bride wear a crown, button, and sash, and she also had to do tasks, like yell out in the street that she was getting married, or let us all take a picture of her so we could cover Facebook with her picture.

The group, minus the three girls who were driving in from Utah and arrived later.

The bride had a brilliant idea as we were sitting down to eat our cupcakes. We each set a cupcake down in front of us, and took a bite. Then we slid our plate over to the next person, received a new plate from the person on our right, and took another bite. We all loved tasting each one and choosing our favorite, and I’m looking forward to a group setting where I can do cupcake roundtable again in the future!

I think my favorite was the signature “Babycake” cupcake (Marble Cake w/ Chocolate Chips & Cream Cheese). I know Em has written about this place in the past too. Go there, it’s delicious.

I usually like to write about the places I ate/things I did while travelling, but this was one of the few times during the weekend that I ate! (Seriously.) It was a jam-packed weekend and I spent far too much time eating chocolate or nuts in our hotel room before rushing off to the next event (though I loved every single thing we did and wouldn’t do it any other way). The rehearsal dinner was at Pizza Nova, and I loved the white pizza and artichoke dip. On my way out of town, I met up with reader/friend Erin for brunch at Naked Cafe, which was definitely a highlight of the weekend for me, and I really liked my Green Transcendence Wrap.

I think I’m going to have to plan a road trip down to San Diego so I can spend some time exploring the food, the La Jolla caves, Balboa park, and some of the other highlights of the area. I don’t regret spending most of my time with these two doing stuff like this though.

Right now I’m in the middle of planning our Thailand trip set for this September (is this seriously real life?) and while researching a place to stay I find myself repeating in my mind “I want La Torre, I just want to stay in La Torre again.” I don’t know if a La Torre experience exists in Thailand, but I’m not going to stop researching until I find something as close to it as possible.

While planning our trip I emailed back and forth with a girl who has spent time living in Italy, and she suggested I look into staying at an agriturismo at some point during our trip. Agriturismi are working farms described really well by About.com:

Agriturismo - a combination of the words for “agriculture” and “tourism” in Italian - is a style of vacationing in farm house resorts codified into Italian law in 1985. An agriturismo vacation is suitable for the whole family and some places even be very romantic or luxurious. An Italian agriturismo will usually serve foods to guests prepared from raw materials produced on the farm or at least locally. Some will allow the guest to actually participate in the activities surrounding the farm. Despite the rural nature of the lodging, one might expect a rustic experience; yet many agriturismi (the plural form of agriturismo) feature rather luxurious accommodation as well as swimming pools.

A farm out in the middle of nowhere that would serve me homemade food grown on the property and in the surrounding area? Hello dream vacation experience, nice to meet you. Unfortunately all of the agristurismi my friend recommended were unavailable during our available dates. I spent hours and hours researching, and decided to take a chance on a tiny place in an area of Tuscany known as Bagni di Lucca called La Torre. Paolo and Laura quit their 9-5 office jobs, bought a run-down property in the middle of the Tuscan countryside, and spent years restoring the property to its present state. As if the whole quit-your-job-and-start-a-bed-and-breakfast part of the story wasn’t romantic enough, they were actually married in the small ancient chapel on the property in 2005.

As you already know from my opening paragraph, La Torre was heaven and I want every vacation experience to be an exact replica of that marvelous time from now on. I hope my pictures can do it justice in some small way.

The view from the property

The building where our room was located

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On the day we arrived in Florence we actually dropped our stuff off at the hotel and immediately took a train to Pisa. I had planned to do things a bit differently, but once we were on the ground in the area this is what made the most sense to us and so we went for it. I was listening to the first Hunger Games book at the time, and found myself not-so-secretly glad that we had several hours of sitting around doing nothing on a train between Florence and Pisa. TH chose to sleep, but how could I close my eyes for a moment with Katniss running around the arena evading her fellow competitors?

Poor Pisa! They are really fighting a losing battle when it comes to preserving the grass around the Leaning Tower. And we are certainly just as guilty as everyone else, stepping right out to take the overdone “I’m holding up the tower” pictures. As I am normally against doing what everyone else is doing because it’s the cool thing, That Husband was puzzled by my insistence that this picture is an absolutely essential part of any Pisa trip.

I really, really am not a fan of how I look in this picture, but the story behind it is sweet. I wanted a picture of the two of us together, and so I did my usual thing, scanning the crowd for a fellow dSLR owner. The guy I chose was a fellow Canon user who not only flipped my camera into manual and set the settings himself (I admit, this made me a little nervous in case he didn’t know what he was doing) but he walked around the tower for us to find a good spot that wouldn’t be backlit. It was really kind!

I call this: The Shrinking Tower of Pisa

Our visit was short, but perfect for us. We got off the train, walked toward the tower, ate lunch, ate gelato, walked the grounds while listening to a free podcast on the history, and went back to Florence again.

As usual, I was on the hunt to avoid all tourist-trap style eateries with big sandwich board signs out front advertising their food with pictures. We wandered the streets with bellies grumbling until we found Osteria Culegna in a little alley. I wouldn’t rate it as anything particularly special, but it wasn’t awful either. The waitress was rather fiery, and laughed openly at my attempts to order in Italian (in a good-natured way!) but my Risotto con Zucchini was cooked well, and if you want a really hearty dish you can order the Tortello al Ragu like TH.

But nobody goes to Pisa for the food anyway, right?