Italia, Ti Amo! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

Although all of these landmarks are within walking distance in the beautiful Lombardy city of Milan, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Italy's oldest shopping centre and a stunning architectural presence, sits to the left of the Duomo if looking at the photo provided. The Galleria is actually an easy route if you're looking to travel between Italy's largest church (the Duomo) and Teatro Alla Scala on the opposite side at Piazza della Scala.

The first time I visited Milan, I walked past all of these things in the middle of a heatwave. I remember that it was 6am on a Saturday morning. Nothing was open (things rarely are that early in Italy). My father and I took an overnight train from Paris and didn't sleep (we stayed up drinking cheap wine). We walked for seven hours in that heat until we checked into an AirBNB. The second time I visited, I took my mum. The weather was nicer. It rained for ten minutes-- the only rain of our entire trip-- so we spent that ten minutes in a bookstore in the Galleria.

Milan is a beautiful city. It's cosmopolitan, and the longer you stay, the more beautiful it becomes. And I'd be lying if I didn't say you could go anywhere else-- the train station goes pretty much everywhere.

Answer: False

Piazza San Marco is on the other side of Venice; the train station, Stazione di Venezia Santa Lucia, however, is directly across the long track-laden bridge that leads from the mainland (Marghera) out onto the islands in the Venetian Lagoon. Getting from the station to the Piazza is a task though. There are signs-- the Piazza is one of the most famous sights in the city-- but on the way you'll probably see the Rialto Bridge, the Grand Canal, and several dozen other Piazzas. The city is labyrinthian.

I had the treat of flying out from Venice on my first trip to Italy-- the trip I took with my dad-- and we spent five hours on foot looking for the landmarks. We were told Venice stinks (it didn't) and that it's hard to navigate (it is) but we saw the bulk of the sights. What we didn't get to do was ride the gondolas (you can).

Venice is a place that everyone should see once in their lifetime. The concerns about its longevity are based on fact; the city is prone to flooding and rising water levels and the buildings need constant maintenance (St Mark's Basilica was built nearly one thousand years ago). Visit Venice-- I implore you. Canal before you Can-not.

Answer: Florence

Florence is one of my favourite cities. There are only a handful of cities where I've felt overwhelmed at what I've seen there, and walking into the Piazza del Duomo for the first time was incomparable. The Florence Cathedral is a majestic building; it's my top pick for Italy above all else. Built with pink, green, and white marble, it's intricately detailed and massive (trust me when I say it's impossible to get a photo that gets the scale of it just right). The dome at the top of the cathedral was the largest one ever created out of brick upon completion in 1436, a record it held into the twenty-first century.

I love Florence. The streets are cramped but every corner you turn is another sight. It's a city for art, culture, food, architecture, and atmosphere. It has the River Arno; it has religious sites; it has the Ponte Vecchio; it has the Uffizi Gallery. When I brought my Mum to Italy, I insisted on Florence (she didn't argue against it). After a wine tasting (we went with wine over pasta-making because it's Tuscany-- you drink the wine in Tuscany!) we tried to get into Boboli Gardens (it was closed) and instead walked up into the hills to the south of the city and eventually made it up to Piazzale Michelangelo. Few cities have such a perfect lookout spot.

I'm going to gush about Italy throughout this entire quiz but let me make this clear now: Florence is my top pick. If I can impart one tidbit of travel info to you here, it's this. Florence is stunning. This is the warm heart of Italy. You are making the wrong choice if you don't go here.

Answer: Arno

The Arno also happens to flow through Florence. If you take a train from the latter, odds are, you're following much of the trail that the river takes on its way to the Ligurian Sea to the east. The train station actually lies on the other side of the river from the Leaning Tower, built as the bell tower for the Pisa Cathedral.

I've been to Pisa twice, but the first time I didn't venture out of the train station. My fear of missing trains was at a naive high. I remember very specifically that one of the vendors in the station had a copy of the "Dante's Peak" soundtrack for sale. It was 2017.

The second time I visited it was for about three hours, enough time to do a bit of shopping, stumble on the tower, take the typical pictures (mainly pictures of people taking pictures of holding the Leaning Tower up), and head back to the train for a second destination. Pisa is a very nice place to stop off; the Leaning Tower is one of those 'should see' landmarks. And yes, Tuscany is always beautiful.

Answer: Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre-- literally translating to 'Five Lands'-- sits off the western coast of Italy overlooking the Ligurian Sea. It's about two hours by train from Florence (one north of Pisa) and then another train directly from La Spezia. Set up along the coast, the villages here are quaint and picturesque with rich histories as fortified towns dating back to the eleventh century. While some, like Vernazza, sit right on the water, others (closer to La Spezia) rest on the cliffs near the sea.

I've been here a couple times and the area is breathtaking because of its beauty and its heat. Each of the villages is connected by train, but each is also connected by a hiking trail that winds up through the cliff-sides and no matter which route you take, it's uphill. Fortunately, they give beautiful views. Vernazza is a gorgeous postcard at the worst of times. The hills above Vernazza are lined with vineyards.

An added bonus-- if you hike between Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare, you'll probably see little houses built on the cliffsides. They're for local cats. In the other direction, Vernazza to Corniglia, there's a cliffside restaurant. Word to the wise though-- Corniglia isn't at sea level, so you're climbing up and up and up.

Answer: Siena

Siena is what you should picture when you think of Tuscan cities. Built like a compact fort upon the Tuscan hills, Siena contains countless winding streets, many of which lead to spacious and meticulously-constructed piazzas containing medieval towers and overwhelming churches. The duomo, Siena Cathedral, was the largest of its kind in the world when it was finished. It would have been bigger if the plague hadn't been going around.

I visited Siena towards the end of my visit with my Mum. It was her idea; she saw photos of it on Pinterest. (A lot of our trip was built around Pinterest, in retrospect.) We spent the day going from bookstore to bookstore and investigating the landmarks. I remember going through the train station (at the bottom of a hill of a thousand escalators) and one of the restaurants that greeted us was a distinctly 'American' establishment complete with cowboy and Indian decor. We elected to go for pasta at the Piazza del Campo instead. Fresh pesto gnocchi, if you're wondering.

Answer: The Roman Forum

Found close to the center of Rome, the Roman Forum and the Colosseum make up a major chunk of Roman ruins; the history of the area is in every square inch. On the edges of this same stretch you can visit Piazza Venezia. The monuments that were once found in the Roman Forum were some of the most important ancient buildings of their time; preservation of the remains is of the utmost priority. The Vatican, The Spanish Steps, and Campus Martus-- the Field of Mars-- are all to the northwest.

I had eight hours in Rome when I visited. My mum and I dropped our packs off at a BagBNB (that's what it was called!) and hiked around the city-- lost at first, I will note-- but hitting nearly every site during our day trip. I had the best carbonara of my life at a restaurant a couple blocks from the Colosseum.

Keep in mind the landmarks in Rome (there are too many to list) are very busy. This being said, I would recommend not skipping the Pantheon. What a beautiful building. There's no city like Rome.

Answer: Mount Vesuvius

A couple fun things about this stop. When I got to Naples (with Mum!), the owner of the farmhouse picked us up from the train station and drove us up the winding roads on Vesuvio to the property. We had no idea it was so far from the station in Ercolano. We relied on his kindness the entire time (three days of the trip) to get us to and fro. Our host drove us on a whirlwind car tour of Napoli and back to the property-- his own farmhouse made fertile thanks to the rich volcanic soil of the volcano and invited us in to taste his homemade herbs and alcohols. The walls of his home contained a number of paintings of erupting volcanoes. Unnerving, no? Let's keep in mind that I'm already neurotic enough to worry about Vesuvius exploding while I'm there. He explained he painted the images, but they weren't of Mt. Vesuvius at all-- they were of Stromboli, his preferred vacation destination. You can't make this up.

Vesuvius is commonly known as 'that volcano that's going to keep blowing up', but the people living in the nearby Phlegraean Fields don't really seem to mind. Naples has a population of one million people, and their densely-packed city is very much at risk. When I was there, they seemed to have a devil may care attitude; their souvenir postcards and magnets featured Mt. Vesuvius on them-- smoking, as if that's a way you want to remember it.

The whole region is stunning though. Vesuvius is home to the former site of Herculaneum (now Ercolano) and, yeah, Pompeii (I took the Circumvesuviana train past it six times, which is upsetting enough, I know) and of course, it has access to Naples, home of some of the best pizza I may ever eat.

Both nights I slept on Vesuvius, by the way, I woke up to explosions. One night it was thunder; the second it was fireworks at a wedding party. Yes I freaked out. It's Vesuvius.

Answer: Sorrento

Sorrento comes at the end of the Circumvesuviana from Naples, so you can take the line around the entire bay (past Pompeii!) and to the ideal spot for sunny day trips in one of the warmer regions of Western Italy. Sorrento is a city known for ceramics and lemon groves. The pasta is fresh and light; the water is bluer than anything.

When I visited Sorrento (repeatedly, since Mum and I were on Vesuvius, remember), we made a point of using it as an intermediate step to somewhere even more difficult. The first of these trips was to the island of Capri, an expensive, but stunning island where I spent too much money on pasta and boozy drinks. That said, it's worth it to take the gondola to the top to hike around to Arco Naturale and a boat ride is all it takes to see the Blue Grotto. I remember sitting amongst colourful trees outside the Carthusian perfumery and another sightseer was singing the nonsense part of the Spin Doctors' "Two Princes" loud enough that I recognized it. Good memories.

I know this anecdote was about Capri, but don't sleep on Sorrento; its market streets are humble (though crowded) and it's the ideal slice of Campania for any type of traveller.

Answer: The Amalfi Coast

Reaching along the rocky coastline around the southern bend of the Sorrentine Peninsula, the Amalfi Coast is a fairly upscale tourist destination known for its upsettingly high, winding roadways and its beautiful villages, often built into the stone above the Mediterranean. The town of Amalfi, depicted, is one such town, part of the grander scheme of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the area.

On our second trip out of Sorrento, Mum and I took a boat around the bend and to the town of Amalfi (we originally only planned to go to Positano). Little did we know, there was no boat back (they said it was a weather thing, but honestly, there wasn't a hotter, clearer day on the trip). We ended up waiting an hour and a half for a bus back towards Sorrento (stopping in Positano for some lemon ice) and, honestly, I've never feared for my life quite like I did standing on a packed bus careening along the mile-up roadways built along the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast. If Vesuvius wasn't going to explode, surely I was going to die on those roads.

The truth is that the roads are typically very safe. Despite the height, if you're there in the summer, there's enough traffic to keep things moving steadily, but not aggressively. I would still recommend the boat.