Italy & Egypt

The Honeymoon edition

This trip was so special because it was our honeymoon! We wanted to make it a month full of our travel dreams. We wanted romance, unique experiences, and adventure, and so we chose Italy and Egypt. Mod planned Italy, as he had been there, and we wanted to have a mix of classic Italian art and history, as well as new places for both of us. I have dreamed of going to Italy as long as I can remember. Mod asked what I most wanted to see and visit, and I ended up naming a bunch of food destinations. He has made fun of my lack of interest in history and culture ever since.

Mod and I love Egyptian mythology and Pharaonic history, and going to visit a place we had read about as children became our shared dream.

Let's start with Italy!

Cinque Terre

We landed in Pisa and after a quick trip to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, we drove to Cinque Terre, a collection of five fishing villages along the Ligurian coast. The villages are brightly colored, set against a turquoise sea and a clear blue sky. We stayed in Riomaggiore, about 50 feet from the water, enjoyed the amazing food and walking trails that connect the towns.

This region is known for its pesto and its seafood, and we enjoyed both. Some of our most memorable meals in Italy were here in these mountainous, winding roads. It's a quiet town, and we enjoyed small moments such as watching people tend their farms on rocky cliffs or buying focaccia for breakfast.

Tuscany

We drove to Florence, to stay in a villa often visited by Dante. Mod could not have picked a more amazing place (thanks Anish!). It was the home of Beatrice Portinari, the inspiration for Beatrice who appears in The Divine Comedy. We had a breathtaking view and after our historical tour of the city, we pointed out the different monuments from the hilltop.

The architecture of the city is incredible, and we visited many iconic statues and duomos. There were several families who unofficially ruled Florence, and in an effort to outdo their predecessors, invested in art and architecture to immutably claim a part the history of the city. We couldn't come to Florence without seeing the statue of David, and it was even larger and more beautiful than I had imagined.

Mod, being the meat vampire that he is, was determined to eat a bistecca alla fiorentina, a 3-pound steak. We had this, truffles, gelatos, and cheese, which I didn't know could get so much better than anything I had eaten in my whole life.

Afterwards, we drove to Siena and enjoyed a beer while sitting in the square and playing card games. We loved watching all the local kids play with their friends and adults drinking beers, watching a local performance under the clock tower.

Mod and I had the best osso bucco and wild boar ragu in this town, and we almost stayed to eat lunch there the next day! If you go, we have a recommendation for you!!!

Naples & Pompeii

We didn't expect to love Naples as much as we did, but can I just say: Pizza. As an American, I'm pretty proud of the pizza we have, so when I tried a Margherita pizza, soupy with tomato and softy soaked dough in the middle, crisp and thin on the outside, I felt like swearing. Mod, who pretty much refuses to eat pizza even here in New York, ate two pizzas within an hour. It was a little scary, and we had to stop for a few drinks to ease the walk back to our place.

Naples has some beautiful architecture as well, but I was so excited to visit Pompeii. The city must have been so vibrant; and you can still see some stunning murals and mosaics.

Amalfi Coast

Mod: The Amalfi Coast was the other destination of our Italian trip I had never been to. The villages and landscapes are breathtaking, but the winding roads made Bo very anxious.

Our first stop was the small town of Sorrento on the west of the Amalfi Coast. It was really fun to explore the small harbors down the cliffs, drinking Limoncello.

The next day, we started driving the Coast itself. First stop, the small town of Positano and its pastel-colored houses. It is probably the most picturesque towns on the Amalfi Coast, but it comes with the touristic cost. We enjoyed lost ourselves in the small steep streets.

The village we stayed for the second night was definitely our favorite. Ravello is much more reserved than the other busy locations and is known for its classical music concerts in the Roman Villa Rufolo perched above the Mediterranean. The other villa, Cibrone, has gorgeous gardens we visited at night.

Rome

Rome was romantic. At every turn, there was something beautiful, whether it was the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum, the Roman forum, the churches, the piazzas where we would people watch and stop for a spritz. Armed with Google and Lonely Planet, Mod explained the stories and history to me, while I decided to invent alternate versions to his amusement(?). We also went to Vatican City, and gazed up at the Sistene Chapel. It's a beautiful, frightening painting that tormented even Michelangelo, who wanted nothing to do with painting the ceiling in the first place.

Mod was an excellent tour guide, and every couple hours we stopped for a gelato, a drink, some pasta, or tiramisu. He is the best.

Of all the cities in the world, Rome has the most Egyptian obelisks in the world, gifted or taken from the country during the Roman conquest. It was the perfect launching pad for our next adventure!

And the Food!

Charcuterie + Stracciatella di bufala with truffles + pasta pasta pasta + cacio e pepe served in a cheese bowl (from a place Anthony Bourdain once ate!) + chicken liver paté + pizza from Naples + deep fried pizza (not pictured) = two, blissed out eaters.

Giza

Mod planned Italy, and I planned Egypt. After how wonderful the first part of our trip was, I wanted to make this as memorable.

We flew into Cairo and started out at the Great Pyramids of Giza, the last remaining ancient wonder of the world. They are awesome to behold, and incredibly well-made. What we're seeing today is only a shadow of what the Pyramids looked like, as they used to be covered in smooth, shiny limestone and were crowned with a pure gold triangle at the top. The pyramids are empty inside, but it's still worth crawling inside to see how well the stones fit together from the inside, and wonder if we've found all the secret chambers.

Cairo

Mod: There is one thing you cannot miss in Cairo: its museum. It has sadly never been modernized, but it’s full of treasures. The most known gem is probably what archeologists discovered in Tutankhamun tomb. But what impressed me the most were the mummies, imagining those bodies were living kings thousands of years ago. You can actually see the unwrapped face of Ramses the Great. He was a redhead, if you were wondering!

We spent another day in Coptic Cairo featuring old Christian churches, the first mosque built in Egypt and the oldest synagogue. We finished that day smoking a shisha surrounded by Egyptians playing domino.

Luxor

We visited Luxor and Karnak together. Connected by a road lined with sphinxes, these two temple complexes comprise an amazing open-air history museum. The buildings are enormous, larger than life, and we could see some spots of color left from the old paintings. Pharoahs continued to add to the Karnak temple context, and you can see many building and art styles in one place. In the Luxor temple, you can see that other religions and cultures throughout the ages have tried to repurpose the space in various ways. This was a theme throughout the monuments and statues in this region.

The Temple of Hatshepsut and Ramses the Third

Hatshepsut was 12 when she was forced to marry her half brother, who died before he could come to the throne. They married her off to an infant named Thutmose III, expecting that she would act as a co-regent until her husband stopped wetting himself. Instead, she took over, assumed the title and powers of Pharaoh, wore a fake beard and bound her chest and ordered her statues and art to depict her as a true pharaoh. She was buried in the Valley of the Kings but her temple, built into the cliffs of the desert, is truly remarkable.

You can see the art she commissioned at Karnak. Someone, a petty man who ruled after her (Thutmose, is that you?) scratched out her image but her legacy, buildings and legend as a woman pharaoh have far outshone the basic men who tried to erase her.

Ramses the third was the grandson of Ramses the Great. His reign was full of war, as Egypt was constantly attacked by land and sea. Ironically, he did keep Egypt safe from invaders, but it's believed that he was assassinated by his own household. He is believed to have been the last great pharaoh, and after his assassination, Egypt was soon conquered.

One interesting thing about his temple, depicted below, is how deeply the hieroglyphs are carved into the rock. The thinking is that because there was so much turmoil, Ramses III wanted his history and the stories of the gods to be as permanent as possible.

Valley of the Kings

Mod: Traveling in September means high temperatures. Bo convinced me to wake up very early (5:30 a.m.) to avoid the heat and the crowds. The ticket gives you access to 3 tombs of your choice, our guide picked: Ramses III (KV11), Ramses IV (KV2), Merenptah (KV8).

Tomb of Nefertari

This is the tomb that is best preserved. Nefertari was the first Great Royal Wife of Ramses the Great, and she was legendary for her beauty and her skills as a diplomat. The ceiling of her tomb is lined with thousands of stars, and the beautiful white background highlights the vibrancy of the paintings. Ramses outlived not just Nefertari, but allegedly the children from their marriage as well.

Valley of the nobles and Workers

This village was dedicated to creating, decorating, and building the tombs in the Valley of the Queens and the Valley of the Kings. Hidden in the cliffs, you can see how the people who decorated the afterlives of royalty paid homage to their own village leaders. While we don't know how they created their works of art, we have learned a bit about how they lived, subsidized by the government, with what appears to be a higher than average quality of life.

We also visited the Valley of the Nobles, which are usually just a few rooms and can have beautiful paintings still inside. The government moved the village that was living above this valley to better preserve these tombs, undoing the damage from wayward leaky sewage pipes and the wear of daily life.

Red Sea

Mod: To finish our honeymoon on a different note, we ended up on the Red Sea, looking for one of the most amazing diving sites of the planet. The Shark Reef in the Ras Mohammed natural park, which is one of the top ten dive sites in the world, was indeed exceptional. Diving in this park was like diving in an aquarium: schools of fish, coral everywhere, and luckily, few many divers.