This summer I visited the many cities of Italy for 2 weeks and got in touch with my last name, possibly the most Italian last name to ever exist; I mean it’s in Cars 1, 2, and 3 for god sake! During this time my diet consisted of solely Gelato and fancy water. Our first stop on the trip was to the bustling town of Rome which is must see, regardless of the obvious tourist trap it has become.

Since we were flying all night, when we landed it was morning and we decided to go sightseeing. Our first stop, closest to the hotel, was the infamous but not very exciting Trevi fountain. There was a mob of people (as expected) with the Italian Police blowing their whistles left and right at people trying to sit on the edge of the fountain.

Naturally I started a count of how many things I see along the trip. In Rome alone, I saw 20 big buses, 7 churches, 32 dogs, 40+ gelato places (I stopped counting), 27 pizza shops, and one Colosseum.

Next stop was the Pantheon, another unexciting building but sure… historical. We looked around for a solid 10 mins, inside and out, before we ventured off to find gelato and cappuccinos. What we found was a popular, high-end chain of flashy gelato stores named Venchi. I gave this place a 6/10 because while it was fairly good quality gelato, I didn’t like the long lines I saw at every store and I prefer to support our local small businesses instead.

If you’re ever in the area, my mom and I found THE best gelato out of the 45 total gelato stores we tested. Nestled in a small alley near the Colosseum, filled with tiny shops and cafes is a gelato shop called, Gelateria Del Teatro which is owned by a nice old man and his two sons. You were able to watch the gelato being made next door through the glass wall. They had unique flavors such as red wine and brazilian rain forest chocolate??

One stop on our trip was of course to Pisa, when I say there were swarms of people that’s an understatement. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many people in one place, looking at one thing. Now the actual Tower of Pisa (you know, the leaning one) was cool and worth making the trip but it’s cool for a solid 5 mins before you get tired of trying to get a picture without people or trying to find a restaurant not fully booked for 5 hours in advance. Nevertheless, I got one cool picture of my dad doing a typical tourist pose so enjoy.

Now onto the smaller cities and islands we saw; Siena, Cinque Terre, Montepulciano, Pisa, Portovenere, Monterosso al Mare. Six of the most beautiful small towns you can see while there, Siena had the feeling of home bundled with it’s fresh gnocchi and spanning countryside views into a measly 45 square miles and the rest were wine country. The most beautiful of the places was Portovenere, Liguria seen below.

There was small alleys and seaside bridges where you could see for miles the spanning ocean and its wildlife flying above or swimming below. This particular picture is still my all time favorite vacation photos but it may be topped by some of the photos from my new post from Iceland: Home of Ice and Land. I hope you enjoyed reading about my summer trip to the many beautiful places of italy, check out some of my other travels on the travel page!

Addio, Megs