Italy, my best road trip

From the first day of my Hive journey, when I started sharing my travel experiences with you in #Worldmappin, I've been waiting for someone to ask me:
What's the best road trip you've taken, where did you go and why was it so enjoyable?

I posted a lot of posts from the places I visited, some fantastic, some interesting, some beautiful, and some not at all, but I never wrote about the entire road trip that lasted several days and in which I visited the entire region.

The four of us, my partner, her sister and my sister, set off on an adventure through Italy.
It was Easter 2017.
I know this because we stopped at a vacation spot and made a real Easter breakfast with breaking painted eggs.

I was driving my previous car then, a Suzuki SX4 and this was the longest trip I had with them. In total, it traveled 3000 km in 7 days.

We left early in the morning, via Croatia and Slovenia.

After entering Italy, our first stop was Venice.

A whole day's walk across the Venetian bridges and narrow streets, photographing the squares, cathedrals and gondolas that transported tourists along the canals, was a fantastic experience for us.

Too tired from driving and visiting most of Venice, we spent the night in Treviso, from where we took the highway to Florence early in the morning.

We didn't miss a single minute. As soon as we found a parking lot, we started to tour this fantastic city.
Duomo Cathedral, Vecchio Palace, Ponte Vecchio, interesting architecture, streets, sculptures, were at every step and we simply swallowed every detail around us.

Our accommodation base was in Montecatini Terme, where we arrived late and only briefly toured the city.

After we saw that the morning was bright and sunny, we decided to visit Siena and San Gimingnano.

The beautiful square in Siena, the white marble cathedral on the hill, as well as the medieval town with towers, I still remember to this day, for its beauty and peace, even with the large number of tourists.
From the walls of San Gimignano, we had perhaps the most beautiful view of the Tuscan glades.

The next day we headed to the famous Tower of Pisa. The tower and the cathedral are a millennium old, and the interior of the cathedral is one of the most beautiful I have seen.

After a detailed tour of Piazza dei Miracoli and the interior of the cathedral (while it was raining outside), we headed via La Specie to Manarola, one of the five towns of the Cinque terre.

A beautiful city on a steep cliff above the sea, it is not a place to enjoy a holiday by the sea, but spending time on the cascading terraces and enjoying the view of the city and the open sea is priceless.

Since Florence was the biggest city for us next to the place where we are staying, we visited it several times, during the day but also at night, when the reflection of light on the white marble of the Duomo Cathedral makes a perfect contrast to the black sky.

The next city on our Italian road trip was Milan.

The Scala Opera House, the Vittorio Emanuele II complex with its luxury goods shops, the beautiful Duomo Cathedral as well as the beautiful Sempione Park, with the famous fortified medieval town of Castello Sforzesco were more than we could have expected to see in just one day.

Settled in the modern Da Vinci Hotel, we gathered our strength for the long return home.

And as a bonus, we had a stop in Sirmione, a small fortress on the shores of Lake Garda, which added to the beauty of this trip.

Unfortunately, during the creation of this post, the uploading of photos stopped working, so I leave only this one photo from Sirmione.

I believe that each of us takes the opportunity to travel when it presents itself.
And each of us experiences our journey in our own way. Some journeys can be interesting and beautiful, but some can also be traumatic (and there were some).
But each of us, no matter how far or where we have traveled, has that one thing that remains etched in our memory for the rest of our lives.

And so, when asked which road trip is the best in my life so far, I would say a road trip on the roads of Tuscany. Italy in 2017.
I think that from the description of the places that I mentioned that we visited and some pictures from the album that I shared here with you, it is clear what kind of beauty it is, and why this trip is in the first place for me, but in addition to the beauty that we saw there, the perfect trip was also contributed by the fact that we did not have any problems with the car, we were all healthy and we were in a good mood and ready for socializing...
All in all 10/10.

Maybe this kind of post is not suitable for #Weekend-engagement, but it is certainly good for #weekend-experiences, only that it covers several days, much longer than one weekend 🙂
If you liked any of the locations we visited on this road trip, and you didn't find a photo or description in the post, which would make the places I mentioned even better, get in touch, I'll be happy to share my experience with you and recommend what is most interesting. Even though it was almost 10 years ago, that trip is etched in my permanent memory and I remember every step I took on those days.