I am so grateful to have friends that love to travel and explore new places as much as I do. If it weren’t for them sharing the same passion as me, I would not go to this many places. This past weekend my friend that is studying abroad in Germany came to visit me in Milan. From here we decided to rent a car and do a road trip to Cinque Terre and Bologna (both in Italy) with a couple of other friends.
Cinque Terre has been on my bucket list since before I even knew I was going to study abroad in Italy, so I am glad to finally make my dream a reality. If you don’t already know about the famous Cinque Terre, it is known for its colorful buildings/houses on the coast of Northern Italy. “Cinque Terre” translates to “Five Lands” which means that this colorful coastline is composed of five different villages. I only had the chance to visit 3 of the 5 villages due to time constraints, but I visited the main one that is always seen in pictures- Manarola.
I also visited Monterosso, which is the biggest of the villages and has the nicest beach, and then I visited Vernazza. Since I went in the offseason, it wasn’t as crowded, but the weather wasn’t as nice either. The good thing was that it started pouring rain late in the evening after we had done all the exploring we wanted to do.
On Saturday, we went to Bologna and the first thing we did upon arriving was to eat the typical food- tortellini. Bologna was the city where tortellini was born so I am glad I got to experience this delicious food. Bologna was surprisingly filled with a lot of tourists…this city is not much heard of so I didn’t expect it to be full of people.
There was so many talented people playing music on the streets or some sort of art and it was fascinating to watch. This city was really beautiful, and even though there wasn’t much to do, it was nice to walk around and take in all the beauty. It has a lot of orange/vintage looking buildings. To end this trip, we went up on a hill to see a panoramic view of Bologna which was awesome.
There are so many nice cities to visit in Italy and I am glad I am knocking them off my bucket list one by one.