The Gorick family's adventures in Italy have come to a close. After three exciting and jam-packed weeks, we are back in the good ole US of A. Since I last posted, we visited Rome, Cinque Terre, Florence, and Venice.
Rome was everything I'd hoped and more. It's this incredibly vibrant city with buildings that are ten times older than our COUNTRY. Blows my mind. We saw the ancient ruins of the Roman Forum and the Coliseum, visited a number of old churches with intricately painted domes and giant marble sculptures, and checked out the restaurants and markets tucked into narrow streets throughout the city. We also visited the Vatican, where we saw St. Peter's Basilica (seriously the most mind-blowing display of art I've ever seen) and took a tour of the underground tombs. This is my sibs and me at the Coliseum:
After Rome, we set off to Cinque Terre, a collection of five cities on the Mediterranean coast that are part of a national park. We stayed in Manarola, the smallest of the five. It was breathtakingly beautiful. There's a bunch of trails to hike around the cliffs between the cities, and we spent hours playing in the Mediterranean Sea:
From Cinque Terre we went to Florence, the cultural heart of Italy. It's a bit smaller and quieter than Rome, and has awesome markets for leather. We got matching leather bracelets cuz we're tourists like that. While in Florence we also visited the two main art museums, and saw the statue of David (dat bod doe) and countless other sculptures and beautiful paintings by such artists as Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Rafael. No biggie.
Last stop was Venice, land of the canals. (For the record, I've heard Venice smells bad. I did not find this to be the case.) We spent two days shopping and soaking in the sights of St. Mark's Basilica and the countless markets and shops. Venice was by far the most touristy place we visited. Not a bad thing, but I personally preferred the less commercialized areas a bit more. We traveled around by boat, which I loved, even though if the ferries were in the Charles waking the shit out of everything, I'd probably feel differently. Here's us on the Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal:
And now I'm back home in Virginia. Because I'm still jet-lagged and halfway between Italy time and here time, I've woken up naturally at 4:30 the past two days. Which is fine by me, because it means I can leisurely get ready and go to 5:30 AM spin class at the gym. This morning at class, we were doing a hill interval set. We were all getting pretty pathetic because it was a hard hill and it was about 40 minutes into the class. So the instructor just bellowed "THEY'RE KNOCKING!!" and we all took off in a frenzy of oh-hell-no-nobody's-getting-past-me. It was awesome. Coxswains, I think this would be a great call on the water too. It also made me think about how important this summer is. All of our enemies (okay fine, Ella, "opponents", if you want to be PC about it) are training right now. They're erging and running and rowing and lifting weights and getting stronger and faster. They're knocking at the door and threatening to move past us. BUT WE WON'T LET THEM (#fuckbucknell). We will train harder than anyone else, so that when we get back on the water this fall, we can shut. them. down. Just remember that in the middle of a hellish spin class or painful run in the summer heat. We're doing this to get better, to get faster, to win.
Yeah, I got really psyched after that call. I miss you guys and can't wait to see you all in September so that we can go fast and kick some ass on the water. Okay I think that's it.
Love y'all.
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