Italy is cool. Let’s just start off with that. Duh. The country invented {Thin crust!}pizza and Gelato. Why on earth wouldn’t they be cool!? Here’s a list of my favorite spots in Italy I visited as a teenager and Why.
1-Piazza Navona – Rome
I could make a trip back to Italy and sit at this place for the entire trip. Seriously. It’s a huge outdoor plaza with restaurants boarding the square so lots of yummy smells are filling the air. All the time. It’s also a place where tons of local Artists gather. You can find any kinda of art from gorgeous oil paintings on a 8×8 canvas to some guys use spray paints to create some sci-fi looking art in a matter of minutes. There’s musicians playing. A jazz group played for 3 hours one evening while we sat and listened. Other musicians would busk for money on opposite ends of the Plaza. There’s a HUGE water fountain in the center. You can’t miss it. Like literally if you can’t see it, you need to look into purchasing some serious glasses. Sitting by the fountain, getting sprayed with that cool mist of water made the late August heat a little more bearable. Heaps of tourists floating about, you can hear loud Italian from the waiters in the close by restaurants. I could sit for hours mesmerized by all that happens in the Square. It’s like people watching at airports. Except a million times better.
2- The Tower of Pisa
The tower leans. Like you hear about in the movies except when you’re standing there in front you end up just staring at it like you’ve never seen a building before and all that can escape your mouth is…..wow. Look…just….WOW. If one wanted to see the view from the top, you could pay like 20 euros and walk up several flights of stairs. I’ve heard lots of people loved it. I however, combined with the rest of my family has just walked from our hostel to the tower (about 2 miles) so hiking up anymore stairs didn’t sound like fun. I enjoyed sitting in the large grassy/ park area right below it. Just staring up at the tower. You can wander all around til you find the area where everyone’s taking the pictures where you look like you’re holding up the tower. Look like a nerdy tourist? Check. Have an epic photo to show for the rest of life….Check.
I also bought a souvenir of the tower. It cost me a euro and now it sits on my desk. Pretty epic if you ask me.
3- The Vatican City Museum
Now, I’m not a huge art fan but can still appreciate the indescribable raw talent invested into this place. You could spend 3 days going through every room at this place and I’m not sure THAT would be enough. They have a ‘Childrens” route. We were given that because we had children travelling with us at the time….It worked out great. That route only hits the major highlights (but still takes 3 hours or so complete) and if you wanted to wander a bit off track you’re free to do so. My favorite room was the Sistine Chapel. You get herded in with about 100 other tourists and are told repeatedly not to take any photo of the art work on the Ceiling. You get told repeatedly because some crazy tourists literally stand there with their camera taking photos using the brightest flash known to mankind. My dad and I came up with this idea of videoing from our ipad by our waist, straight up so you can see the famous ceiling in the back ground. You can also see up our noses but the ceiling is worth it. I truly understand why Michelangelo had neck issues after painting it all. I had neck issues after staring at it for 8 minutes straight.
4- Trevi Fountain – Rome
Photo Credit
I love taking pictures. So this place was a jackpot. It’s this MASSIVE fountain with gorgeous detailed carvings
on the side of a building. Now I was probably told what building it was, just can’t remember anymore. There are benches for you to sit and look. I went at a few different times during the day, it always seemed to be packed with people. Which is ok. It adds to the life of the fountain. My favorite was at dusk. There’s a few places to get Gelato within view of the fountain. I’d strongly recommend this. I found the whole place to be more epic with Gelato in hand. Particularly lemon-raspberry.
Music drifts in from somewhere. Very Italian. Lots of laughter and squeals from little kids as they get close enough to the fountain to get sprayed by the water. Strange to sit and think this fountain has been here for thousands of years, with millions of people coming to sit and listen to the sound of the water washing over the stone figures. It’s a place I could sit for hours and people watch.
5- Sicilian outdoor Market
Sicily is a small island of the boot of Italy. The people here like to be known as Sicilian not I talian. But to an American teenager, It felt Italian to me. The beautiful architecture along the streets of the city of Syracuse were breath taking even to a 16 year old. I kept telling my parents I was just gonna stay and live in a little apartment above these streets and I’ll see them in a few years. Syracuse had a open air street market that spanned a few blocks. I remember walking through, thinking everything smelled of fish. Which it did. But looking back I see all the other chaos happening around me that made that place cool. There was a cheese shop at one end of the market. So. Much. Cheese. All in names I couldn’t pronounce. Could never find cheddar though. Weird. You would squeeze your way through the crowded cobble streets while listening to loud Italian yelling, wondering if any of the shopkeepers had “inside voices.” All the produce turned out to be as yummy and sweet as it looked. For lunch we gathered a loaf of bread, some cheese, grapes, some small oranges and a few glass bottles of Coke and Sprite, then went to look for a place to eat. Near the outside of the market on one end we found a bench between two trees and a small patch of grass, so we called it good and feasted on the yummy local food. Still one of my favorite lunches to this day.
{Maggie Blackham is a twenty-something travel writer who grew up living on a sailboat with her family of 8 seeing the world. She loves to write in long ongoing sentences about the places she’s seen as a teenager. She currently lives in Wilmington, NC and is constantly making plans to travel the world again. This time with her husband Josh.}
