Harvard Student Agencies - Lets Go Rome, Venice & Florence: The Student Travel Guide

LETS GO

www.letsgo.com

researcher-writers

Nicole Fearahn
Reina Gattuso
Michelle Oing
Sofia Tancredi

staff writers

Matthew Beck
Linda Buehler
Madeline Ford
Amy Friedman
Mikia Manley
Bronwen OHerin
Delphine Rodrik
Sofia Tancredi

research managers

Haley Bowen
Linda Buehler
Billy Marks

editors

Spencer Burke
Michael Goncalves
Claire McLaughlin

managing editors

Michael Goncalves
Chris Kingston

HELPING LETS GO. If you want to share your discoveries, suggestions, or corrections, please drop us a line. We appreciate every piece of correspondence, whether a postcard, a 10-page email, or a coconut. Visit Lets Go at www.letsgo.com or send an email to:

, subject: Lets Go Rome, Venice & Florence

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Lets Go Rome, Venice & Florence, 67 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

In addition to the invaluable travel advice our readers share with us, many are kind enough to offer their services as researchers or editors. Unfortunately, our charter enables us to employ only currently enrolled Harvard students.

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Lets Go Rome, Venice & Florence Copyright 2012 by Lets Go, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Lets Go is available for purchase in bulk by institutions and authorized resellers.

eISBN-13: 978-1-59880-916-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-61237-025-5
Second edition
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NICOLE FEARAHN. Nicole took her mission as a researcher-writer to heart. From parties on Ios to protests in Syntagma, she let nothing short of Zeuss intervention get between her and her coverage of Athens. Nicole then switched from one ancient civilization to another, trading the Aegean for the Adriatic as she did a stint in Venice.

REINA GATTUSO. Carrying only a sundress and a Virginia Wolfe novel, Reina followed the scent of jasmine through northern Italy. With politics and silly faces as her only weapons, Reina gathered a gang of Korean hostel owners, Canadian yoga instructors, and old Italian professors and set out to conquer every museum in Italy. Wandering the Cinque Terre with her new-and-improved calf muscles, she contemplated starting an international campaign for art appreciation but decided that Italy was so bella, it wasnt really necessary.

MICHELLE OING. A true academic at heart, Michelle flexed her superior art historian muscles, beautifully depicting 14th-century wooden crosses, martyrdoms, and the ever-popular Roman ruins. Despite her hatred of Ms. Hepburn, she starred in her own Roman holiday, partying in Termini, fawning over the ubiquitous stray cats, and endlessly searching for the perfect Roman bath(room).

SOFIA TANCREDI. After leaving her broken computer in the hands of a stranger named Carlo, Sofia showed Florence and Tuscany how budget travel should be done. When she wasnt on her eternal quest for Wi-Fi, she pulled out all the stops, donning the most conservative of conservative outfits to infiltrate churches, monasteries, and Tuscan towers. Through her travels and pints of gelato, Sofia discovered she can take herself anywhere.

If youre reading this, youve likely made the wise (if not entirely original) decision to spend some time in three of Italys (and the worlds) greatest cities. Yes, these are the destinations that everyone hopes to visit, but Rome, Venice, and Florence have gotten their must-see reputations for a reason. People come here to live out the romance of moonlit gondola rides through Venetian canals, melting gelato in the sun-baked Piazza della Signoria, and sunset at the Colosseum; to revel in the spine-tingling, larger-than-life testaments to the human spirit that fill the Sistine Chapel and the Uffizi. All three cities are ready to reward you with as many magical moments as you can handleas long as youre ready to embrace them. Some travelers find Italys quirks (supermarkets closed on Sundays and spotty air-conditioning among them) frustrating and let minor inconveniences spoil their time abroad. As a student traveler, however, you are uniquely situated to experience Rome, Venice, and Florence in all their ridiculousness and sublimity. Striking out on your own, likely on a budget, youll open yourself up to what someone who stays in the swankiest hotel and eats at all the five-star restaurants will miss: making connections with the people and way of life in these storied cities. Reach out to locals, adapt to your new surroundings, and navigate the caprices of the cities in which things we take for granted are conspicuously absent (the customer is always right, street signs, etc.). You too can learn to see the beauty of Italys sometimes befuddling customs, as getting to know the people of Rome, Venice, and Florence becomes as much a priority as taking in all the Renaissance art, Roman grandeur, and religious relics. Who knows? Maybe by the time youre ready to leave, some of those Italian oddities wont seem so ridiculous after all.