Italy: The First Week Of Summer During One Of The Last

It’s only fitting to look back on the first week of summer during one of the last warm weekends. At the end of May I headed to Italy for a week with my parents. We started off in Rome and then headed to the five villages of Cinque Terre on the Ligurian coast. On the way back to Rome we stopped off for a day in Florence. It was a fantastic trip full of amazing food, gelato, and desserts. I had been to Rome in college while I was studying abroad in Paris and I had great memories of staying up all night the last night there to catch an early morning flight back to Paris. Since Italy has so much written about it, I’ll keep it at a minimum and let the photos do most of the talking.

Wandering the Trastevere neighborhood where we stayed in Rome was fantastic. Someday I will look this chic…

Trastevere by night:

Cinque Terre is composed of five very different towns perched along the coast. We stayed in Monterosso al Mare – the fifth or the first village depending on how you look at it. There are hiking trails linking all of the towns or you can take a ferry. Many of the trails were closed while we were there so we took the ferry and took in the views. I really enjoyed the small and very highly perched town of Corniglia where you get amazing views of the coast. Vernazza has a great little port to sit and eat by and Manarola and Riomaggiore are fun to wander.

If he doesn’t say “sex bomb” then I don’t know what does:

The lemons used for limoncello grow in Cinque Terre. If you scratch the peel you get the most amazing smell. We tasted some wines and limoncello while in Monterosso, a nice way to spend an afternoon.

On the way back to Rome we wandered Florence. It was already jammed packed with tourists so we visited the less crowded Palazzo Vecchio as our museum for the day.

Oh, Italy and your food. I got used to a cappuccino and pastry every morning…

Amazing breads, focaccia here:

The seafood in the Cinque Terre area was fantastic:

Baffetto in Rome (recommended by several locals to me):

At Gli Amici where I had eaten seven years before (oh what my stomach remembers!).

Where to Stay:
In Rome we stayed in the Trastevere neighborhood in a fantastic AirBnB, highly recommend it.

In Cinque Terre we stayed at Hotel Colonnina, they have a large apartment next to the hotel which was great.

Where to Eat:
In Rome I recommend Pizzeria Baffetto and La Trattoria de Gli Amici.

In Cinque Terre I recommend Gambero Rosso, Ciak, Ristorante Via Venti, And for wines and limoncello try Buranco, really nice family owns it.