24 Hours in Marseille
We got tired of Spain and decided that I had enough time left before I had to be back in Paris, to drive to Italia and spend a few days. We drove from Barcelona to Marseille, where we spent one night to catch up on sleep and divide up the driving time. I woke up early and explored the nearby streets in search for a bakery, once I located one, I was presented with a weird situation. Before I knew what exactly was going on, I had a homeless (Maybe Gypsy) women hanging on me, sobbing in French that she was hungry, not knowing what to do, I bought her a chocolate croissant, shook her off my leg, and headed back to the hostel.
Genoa is a region of Italy, located on the Mediterranean sea. My experience here was regretfully not enjoyable.
Back in Barcelona I had booked the hostels for the rest of the trip, so that we wouldn't be stuck without a place to sleep again, like we were in San Sebastian. We ended up getting off of the highway into the region known as Genoa. I will avoid this region of Italy for multiple reasons during my future travels at all costs. This was probably one of the shittiest experiences I had during my euro-trip. Firstly, we ended up driving around for five hours attempting to find our hostel, we couldn't find our hostel anywhere, nor could we find WiFi ANYWHERE, and before we knew it we were lost beyond comprehension with an empty gas tank. We ended up at a little gas station to fill back up our tank after hours of aimlessly driving, the gas station had self serve pumps that accepted cash, the pump ended up eating my 50 euro bill (which was the last bill I had in my wallet...) I then proceed to break into tears. Genoa was not being kind to us, I was out of money, and out of gas. An older Italian man that was BBQ-ing on the sidewalk, saw me crying, came over and put a 10 euros worth of gas into our car. I hugged him & thanked him. We ended up sleeping in our car on the side of an Italian street that night, only to wake up with a few parking tickets on our windshield and a miserable head cold that would last me the duration of our stay in Italy.
Portofino
The next morning, we drove along the cost to Portofino, before heading to Florence. Portofino was jaw dropping and even more stunning then the photographs of the macaroon colored town I had seen in magazines. Portofino is a very rich little town, i'm sure we looked like homeless kids to the Bugatti driving, Chanel wearing visitors & inhabitants.The Mediterranean was mesmerizing, i'd never seen a body of water that was so clear & so blue before. I refused to leave Portofino without getting in the Mediterranean, the only problem was that there were no beaches or shallow wade ins in sight, just cliffs with rocks at the bottom. After exploring we stumbled upon a man made beach, on a very swanky private beach club. We snuck into the private beach club, jumped in, enjoyed the Mediterranean for a few fleeting moments, before getting yelled at in Italian for trespassing and got kicked out. It was so worth it.
Florence
We spent four days and three nights in the beautiful city of Florence. Unfortunately I had a disgustingly awful head cold the entire time. But I refused to let me being sick stop me from enjoying this city that holds so much history. I explored much of Florence by myself, wandering the alleyways and leather markets, getting lost more times than not.
Ciao Italia!
Here's my trip through Italia through IG @madelineire:
