As you may know, traveling to Italy has been number one of my travel bucket list for nearly a lifetime. I’ve wished it into the universe so many times and finally had saved up enough to go for 2 weeks this past October. Back in January, I committed to focusing on the word intentional for the year and by consciously putting effort into saving every penny, saying no to going out and excess shopping and turning down other trips - I was able to take action and book myself the trip of my dreams.

It started when I came across an amazing flight sale that I couldn’t pass up. While that triggered me to officially start planning the trip, I ended up flying for free to Italy by using my Delta airline miles (shoutout to the American Express Delta card)! Anyways, my husband informed me he wasn’t able to go, but I was determined to make this dream come true regardless so I decided this would be my first international solo trip. I researched a ton into traveling alone as a female and felt pretty damn confident in my choice. However, plans changed pretty quickly and I was just as enthused with them. My sister Jessica decided to meet me for the first week and then in week 2, my best friend from Val met me in Naples. I knew it’d be impossible not to have an amazing time with these two women I love so much.

With tons of research and late-night planning from different time zones, we mapped out our route, booked our flights and trains and found the best-rated hostels and Airbnbs for lodging. I ordered the 45L Pacsafe backpack so I wouldn’t have to drag a suitcase through cobblestone streets and a Travelon anti-theft purse to ease my mind in the heavy trafficked tourist spots and somehow found a way to make everything I wanted to bring to fit into the two. It was super hard to determine what photo gear to take, but I ultimately narrowed down to my lightweight Fujifilm mirrorless camera (which I call my travel camera) and a small zoom lens. The plan was for me to fly to NYC to meet my sister coming from MI and then fly together to Milan.

After multiple long delays, Jess and I finally landed in Milan over 8 hours later than planned and that’s when we first realized just how different things were going to be. First things first, we knew we needed to buy new train tickets (having missed our connections from delayed flights) and figure out how to subway to the train station and then hop on board for a few hours to Cinque Terre. Now, I studied Italian every single day for 3 months before going so I knew just enough to get by, but those first couple hours were a bit chaotic as I tried to translate so many unfamiliar signs, machines, currency differences, etc.

We learned quite a few lessons that first day. 1) that we needed to pay to use restrooms (from then on out for the remainder of the trip) and to keep coins on us at all times, 2) that things were not translated into English as much as we heard they’d be, 3) to ask the people around us if we were at the right station before hopping off too early and wasting our tickets and 4) we’d definitely be using our international phone plans much more than we thought we’d need to. Oh and the app Moovit was a GODSEND. Seriously, download it if you’re going to Italy.

When we finally arrived in Monterosso al Mare that evening and were waiting for our cab driver to pick us up (after being hung up on him the first couple times of not being able to understand each other), I snapped my very first photo (bottom left) as the darkening sky was turning pink over the coast. Despite the jet lag, we knew all the travel woes would be worth it if this was our view just on day 1. That night, we walked down from our Airbnb through dark alleyways into the quiet town. The tiny restaurants were bustling still (since the Italians each dinner much later than Americans) and when we couldn’t find anywhere to fit us in, we ended up in a small family-owned wine bar with the sweetest owners to poured us their delicious house-made vino Rosso (red wine). Eventually, as people started heading home, we got into Ciak where I had the best gnocchi I’ve EVER had in my life. I drool all over again just thinking about it.

For the next few days, we hopped more trains to explore the other coastal towns of Cinque Terre, walked many many miles while trying all of the foods that sounded good, stopping to browse in the street markets and trying a new flavor of gelato every day. Also, an Italian coffee a day keeps the jetlag away so we stuck to that rule at least a couple times each day. The espresso was just too good!