vickilicious

I have made numerous references to where I will be spending the rest of my summer, and I think it’s finally time to spill the beans.

I’m going back to Italy!!!

I am ridiculously excited!

The first portion of my trip is going to be two weeks traveling with my mother. We have spent weeks organizing and planning our itinerary, and I’m really really stoked for what we’ll be doing.

I’ve made a Google Map of our trip, if you would like to view the sequence of cities, or you can zoom in to check it out below. I’ve marked our trip with a line which is obviously as the crow flies, but we will be traveling a less direct route by train.

View Larger Map

We begin with two days and two nights in Milan, where we will see da Vinci’s Last Supper and begin our art marathon.

Next we travel for a day in Padua and a day relaxing in the spas in Montegrotto Terme and hiking in the Colli Euganei.

From there we enjoy two days and nights in my beloved Venice (where I will sneak in some invaluable thesis research too).

We arrive in Florence early in the morning so my mother can spend her birthday with her Italian boyfriend.

Then we travel down for a day in the tranquility of Assisi before two bustling days in Rome.

From Rome, we travel to Monterosso al Mare, one of the Cinque Terre, a group of linked cliffside coastal villages on the Italian Riviera connected by hiking trails. We conclude our trip with a day in Pisa, from which my mother flies home.

The same day my mother departs, I will be meeting up with a professor and my lab mates for a week of intensive study and travel to Pompeii and other points south, followed by a week of research on site in a medieval chapel in Volterra. We’ll be doing intensely cool science stuff and working with another research group. Everyone involved in this project is thrilled beyond words, and I know it will be a phenomenal experience.

I’ll be in Italy until August 25th (just shy of a month), and when I return Eric and I (and the kitties) will be moving out of this apartment and into an as-yet-undecided new residence.

While I have been feeling constant anxiety about logistics, money, and every possible disaster that may befall me in the coming weeks, I am overall ecstatic with all the upcoming travel and changes in my life. I have been looking for an adventure, and I have most definitely found it.