Hey guys, and welcome back to casual chaos. So first off, I want to say happy Fourth of July to everyone, and this week I'm going to dive into my Italy trip. I have so many Italy recommendations for all of you, guys, and I want to tell you a little bit about my trip. So the main purpose for us going to Italy was my cousin's wedding. She got married in the Amalfi coast, but she got married in the town Amalfi, so it was a family trip, but it was mainly
a cousin's trip, which was so fun. It really felt like a trip that we were only going to get to do, not once. I'm sure it'll happen again someday, but really rare that we're all going to be in Italy again together. Maybe my wedding, because as you all know, I am going to need to get married outside of the US because my dad is not a lot to come back to the US at the moment.
Hopefully one day that will.
Change and I could have my wedding whenever, but right now I can't. Italy is obviously one of my options. But I learned a lot while I was in Italy and just seeing the wedding process and everything. Because I care a lot about it, I was very observant during it. And I think the biggest part about having a wedding outside of the US, it's very difficult to have a wedding in another country that doesn't speak your language. I think a wedding destination that's a little more realistic is
the Caribbean Islands, Bahamas. They speak English, they understand you, there's more direction. So that was definitely a little scary being in Italy, even though most of my family does speak Italian, they just operate differently.
Italy is very slow paced.
They don't move as fast as us in Jersey, so I would definitely say that that's a little bit of a red flag. I also wouldn't recommend getting married in a really touristy spot. I would kind of go somewhere off the grid in Italy and kind of just create a beautiful wedding venue on your own. It doesn't need to be a wedding venue that is so over the top.
You could kind of like make it your own.
And what I realized is what makes a wedding venue also so beautiful is your flowers and your candles. If you put your budget towards flowers and candles and nothing else, your wedding venue will be stunning.
All you need is just like your floral decorations and your candles.
I swear if you have beautiful table settings and beautiful floral arrangements throughout your wedding venue, your wedding is going to be stunning no matter what. So my cousin's wedding was absolutely beautiful, but I feel like there were definitely some setbacks because of the language barrier and just how they operate in Italy. It just, again, like I said, at a slower pace. So definitely taught me a lot.
But the trip itself was absolutely amazing. It was definitely something that I will never forget.
It was Christian's first.
Time in Italy, so I felt like a little tour guide, like I was showing him the ropes. It was so fun. So we started off our trip in a Malfi. Our home base was Amalfi, which I also would not recommend. I honestly don't like a Malfi. Amalfi's town. There's nothing to it, you know, like there's this one road and that's it. You have your shops, your lemons, your sorbets, and that's about it. They really don't have that grade
of restaurants in Amalfi. You know, they have the famous restaurant Digema, and there's another restaurant across from La Bousola. I can't remember the name, but Labousla is a hotel in Amalfi. But the one restaurant across from La Bousula, in my opinion, is the best restaurant in a Malfi town. But a Malfi itself, I would not make that your home base. If you want to take the ferry and go see a Malfi for the day, sure, but there's
really nothing special to a Malfi. Post Aitano, on the other hand, I am so happy we did a night in post Aitano. So we arrived in Amalfi. First day in Amalfi. Second day we traveled to post Aitano. We spent the night in post Aitano and it was absolutely amazing. We had the best night. Post Atano is so charming and so romantic. We had dinner at this amazing restaurant, La Tagliata, and post Atano this is where you book your dinner reservation. It was such an amazing meal with
the most beautiful view. And this is the place with the insane cooking class. Like it was, it's wild. It was actually the best food, homemade wine, family style dinner. The cooking class is insane. Wait list over a year long. If you can get into this cooking class, it's so much fun. It reminded me of like Cloud nine in Aspen with the champagne.
It's wild.
It's a big party, but you're doing a cooking class. And we were on the waiting list for it, but we didn't get into it. My cousin's friends got into it and they looked like they had the best time ever. We were lucky enough to get a dinner reservation there and it was phenomenal. Then afterwards we went to Music on the Rocks, which is the club in pos Aitana.
Super fun. It was not prime season in Italy. May is leading up to busy season, which is obviously July and August are very busy because in August the Italians also have off they're on holiday, so.
August is crazy.
July is crazy, but September is like the perfect time to go to Italy. It's not too hot, weather's amazing, but it is still prime season, so it wasn't too crowded.
When we were there in May. We got a couple nice days.
But when we were in post A Tato, that was the only beach day we did. Post Atano. The beach was beautiful, but the beach is rocks, it's not sand, so my feet were killing me running into the ocean, like the rocks are so hot. But that was a beautiful walk to the beach club. The restaurant was amazing, music on the rocks. I would say post Atana was my favorite place on the Amafi coast. Then we went to Capri for the day. I would have loved to spend a night in Capri, but that's just not how
it planned out. But Capri is beautiful. The taxis are convertibles. It's so fun. It feels like you're in a fever dream. They have the door beach club at Capri. They also have the little ski lift that takes you to an amazing restaurant at the top.
So there's a to do.
You have the designer shopping if you want to go to If you want to do designer shopping, go to Capri.
It's amazing.
Then we wanted to go to Sorrento for the day, which Sorrento is where my cousin's friends stayed. That was their home base. They had a phenomenal time. They loved Sorrento. So definitely, when I go back to Italy, I would love to go to Sorrento and Ishka. So I would make Sorrento or Ishka your home base if you want to stay around the Amalfi coast. It is amazing like those like I've never been. I heard it's beautiful in those two places, and those are two great home bases.
Don't recommend Amalfi. Then after Amalfi.
We went to Florence, and Florence was everybody's favorite place. We did Tuscany for the day. We did a wine tour. We just booked it on a website. It was incredible. We did Chinquiteta for a day and we did book that with a guide because it's really easy. You don't need a lot of you don't need a lot of time in each town. There's five towns, so I chinkwe and you know that that's where they filmed Luca, the Disney Show. So there's really cute moments in Chinquitada. Also
in Chinkuitada. They are known for their facaca bread and their pesto. So Manto Ro Salamade was the beach town in Chinquitada. It was gorgeous and I we literally we had an hour there. We took that time to just relax on the beach. Out of all of the cities in Chiquitada, I would say that town is the best town to stay in. You have a beach, it's chill, it's a little bigger, but then you know, it's nice to see the other towns too, very beautiful, colorful buildings.
It was nice.
So when you're there, you need to try their facaca bread and buy a jar of their pesto venice. I don't know if this is gonna upset people. I thought it was overrated. I didn't love Venice. I was there when I was little. I just thought it was overrated. Could do your designer shopping there. The food, I did not think it was great at all. We did the gondola ride. Our gondola driver did sing to us, but I don't know.
I thought it was overrated.
Definitely a good day trip if you want to do that, but you don't need more than a day in Venice. I probably wouldn't go back, honestly. We also went to my ancestral town, salaquin Selina, where my family from Italy lives. We had the best time there. It's just everyone is so happy. They don't have a lot, and they are just so happy and full of life. My Zio Antonio is the cutest person ever. Christian was drunk off of homemade wine, screaming Belichow. Belichow and my cousins are looking
at him like he has ten heads. But it was probably the most wholesome moment of our entire trip. Family, good food, drinking, It's it's what it's all about. Favorite restaurant in Florence was Los s Crudo. Wasn't one of your famous restaurants that you see on TikTok like Goby, like thirteen Goby and all that. It was called Oscrudo and it was so good, so good. Theduomo was The Douomo was beautiful, It really was. It was such a beautiful church. It was incredible. Yeah, I would say Florence
was probably my favorite city. I did run into a quite a bit of house lives fans, honestly when I was there, and my cousins were shocked. It was people that were from Jersey or from Australia, and it's always fun to see fans while you're traveling. And honestly crazy, nothing chaotic happened. Our trip was so smooth and went so perfectly. The only hiccup was our day in Sorrento didn't work out, but then we obviously just hung out in a Malfi did other plans. That's the thing about Italy.
If something goes wrong, you can always find something else to do. It's so beautiful. You could find something to do. Go on a hike, go on a walk, You'll see something new every day. Rome it was Christian. We ended the trip in Rome because we flew out of Rome. It was Christian and Tie's first time in Rome, so we did it all. We went from the Piazza to the Spanish Steps, to the Coliseum to the Trevy Fountain. It was incredible and we had such an amazing day.
But same thing.
You know Rome, you turned down a different street and there is you know, so much to see.
For Florence.
I will say, if you look up the best Panines in Florence and go to all those famous Panini shops. They're all amazing. And that was it today on Gia's diary. Let me know what else you guys want me to talk about. But this was so fun and I'll see you guys next week. Love you guys.
Bye,