"Italy - My first European trip" a Italy Travel Page by gauravm03

I started living in Europe in August 2006 and decided to take my first trip in January 2007 when my wife, who was still living in India came to visit me.

Few reasons I chose Italy for the trip
1) One of the most famous tourist destination in the world
2) Was easy to fly to from Oslo, Norway
3) Wanted to see one of the wonders of the world ' Leaning tower of Pisa'
4) Wanted to experience Venice

We chose 4 destinations which we covered in 5 days. I know this is really fast but this is all the time I had and I really wanted to see all these places.

Pisa was just a stopover to visit the 'The leaning tower'. Then we took the train to Florence where we stayed in night. Next day late morning we took the train to Rome and spent 2 nights there. On the 4th day we took the flight to Venice. Spent the 4th night and the 5th day in Venice and travelled back late in the night to Pisa to take a very early morning flight back

Highlights

1. All the beautiful and great monuments like the leaning tower, Duamo, Vatican, colloseum, St.Marks square
2. Food - This is like saying the obvious, but it is significant for us as my wife doesn't like expirementing with food much and of all the countries we vsited in Europe after Italy we never got the same quality and taste that we found in Italy. Great small Pizzerias, always look for a busy one where locals are, and great gellatos
3. Murano and Burano - two small and beautiful islands and a very interesting boat ride from venice, was especially interesting due to the mist
4. Value for money - Italy in winters is really cheap and very good value for money

Lowlights
1. Long queue at the vatican meuseum - I later found out that we can buy advance tickets on the internet
2. We had a flight back at 6 AM and thought about spending 2-3 hrs in the night at Pisa airport. To our surprise airport was closed so we had to wait outside in cold weather.