Viva l'Italia! (Part 4: Cinque Terre, Milano, Venezia)

Who wants more pictures from Italy? I imagine everyone in the world is shouting yes right now, so who am I to stand in the way. Next stop on our Italy trip was Cinque Terre...

Monterosso al Mare. Totes gorge.

Hiking from Monterosso al Mare to Vernazza.

Artsy shot ftw.

Being awesome.

Captions are really unnecessary at this point, aren't they....?

Vernazza. Unfortunately a few of the trails were closed so we didn't make it to all five cities.

Gelato break.

I swear with a little effort this could totally be one of these pictures...

View from the roof of our hotel in Monterosso al Mare.

After the Cinque Terre, we moved on to Milan and its outrageous Duomo...

La Scala Operahouse.

The Milan Duomo. I'm not kidding, it's outrageous. At the top of each of those spires is a different Saint.

Giant bronze doors to the Milan Duomo.

Roof of the Duomo--it's made entirely of marble, foundation to roof, so people can just wander around up there amidst a forest of spires.

Mace Windu special effects included.

We caught some rehearsals for a crazy concert that was going to be happening the next day. This is Elisa singing.

Did I mention the Milan Duomo took about 500 years to build? No joke.

Elisa!

And, last but not least, we zipped over to Venice (Venezia) before heading back home to America...

For some reason I didn't have high hopes for Venice, but it's basically as cool as everyone says it is.

Although it's apparently a dying city; residents are moving out by the thousands each year because of the high cost of living and, er, transportational difficulties.

Gondolas!

Some people even think that within the next thirty years, Venice will be nothing but a museum slowly sinking into the sea.

Il Duomo di San Marco/St. Mark's Cathedral.

Listening to some tunes in St. Mark's Square.

St. Mark's Square. It's crazy to think that a place that was once the center of the known political and artistic world now only exists for tourists. Not that I didn't mind being there, but it was something of an ethereal experience.

Arrivederci, Venezia.

Aaaaand that concludes our tour of Italy! But wait--we're not done yet. In the next day or so I'll publish one more post, perhaps the most important post of all (at least when it comes to Italy)...

...in the next post, I'll be talking about food. Run and tell that.