Renting an apartment in Cinque Terre

July 20, 2010 | Posted by Ovidiu Petruescu

Renting your apartment

If you are thinking of renting an apartment for your stay in Cinque Terre you better do it fast. We booked our apartment in Manarola in March when our trip wasn't until September. We had a hard time finding an apartment that was decent looking and at a good price. Six months in advanced will get you an apartment outside of the 5 main villages and will run you about 500-700 euros. If you want to be inside the town with a great view expect to pay up to 1200 euros. Most apartments rent for a 7 day with checkins on Saturday.

Find find our apartment it took us about 3 weeks of searching about 2 hours a day. Find finally found it on Ca de Capun. The sites that we found useful and always went back to are:

All of the sites have an availability calendar however I have found that its not always up to date. Your best bet is to email the listing and ask if the apartment is available during the time you want to visit. Each apartment I have emailed have replied to me within 2 days and all of them spoke english (some better than others).

In order to reserve an apartment you will need to make a deposit. Our deposit for our 1,000euro apartment was 180euros through paypal.com however its not uncommon to be asked to wire the deposit through your bank.

Getting your Romanian Passport

July 18, 2010 | Posted by Ovidiu

Getting your Romanian Passport

I left Romania in March 1989 before the revolution so when I left i did not have any documentation and for the longest time I did not think i was a Romanian citizen because we have to renounce our citizenship when we left the country. I was very suprised to find out that it was easy to get my passport. The whole process took about 9 months but it was straight-forward.

The first step I had to do was to get my birth certificate. This involved just filling out one form from the Romanian Consulate in Los Angeles (you can find it here). It took about 3 months from the time I sent the documents to the time I got my certificate.

After I had my certificate in hand I submitted documents to clarify my citizenship status. This again was just a 1 form process. I filled out this form and sent my money order along with a copy of my birth certificate and I received a note saying that I am still a Romanian Citizen. This process took aonther 3 months.

At this step I was very exicted, I was looking at having my passport in a couple of months and being able to actually get out of the country. All I had to do was to get my passport picture taken and submit my application. Just to make sure that I did not leave any important documents out I sent the consulate a copy of my greencard, birth certificate, citizenship status and driver license. Paid my $77.00 that the consulate wanted and waited for my passport to arrive. 3 or 4 months later my passport arrived.

So it starts

July 17, 2010 | Posted by Ovidiu Petruescu

How it all started

I have wanted to go to Italy ever since I had taken an Art Appriciation class at Yuba College. The whole class was about the italian Renesaunce and I just fell in love with the sculptures, architecture and paintings of that period.

Each year Jessyka and I have always said that we will go next year. We are going to save up for the whole year and by this time next year we will be in italy. As live always turns out, each year there was more pressing issues and needed that money and we did not save as much as we wanted and we could not go. Two years ago we made each other a promise, we will go to italy for our 30th birthdays. Last year when i told Jessyka that we are going to italy this year she did not believe me, she said "I will believe it when we buy the tickets". We are now 1 month away from boarding our plane and going to Italy.

I am so exicted, i am going to have my two most beautiful girls with me, my wife Jessyka and daughter Sohpia.

Schedule

We are flying into Rome on Thrusday and will be staying at the Antica Dimora dell'Orso until Saturday. On friday will be our sightseeing day and will are going to see:

  • Sistine Chapel
  • Pantheon
  • Roman Forum
  • Campo dei Fiori Markets
The trouble with visiting Rome and only spending a day is that Rome was not build in a day and you can't see Rome in a day either. I am not really sure if we are going to the market but the idea of seeing the Sistine Chapel and the Pantheon gets me all excited (take your mind out of the gutter). The Pantheon still looks today like it did thousands of years ago and you will not get that type of history sitting here in Sacramento, CA.


Saturday we will be heading out to Florence by train and will settle into our apartment in the heart of the old city. We wanted an apartment so we can have a home base for Sophia and be able treat it like our home and not have to live out of a hotel room. It has all of the things you need when traveling with a baby, a kitchen, dining room and living room (for when the baby is asleep and we need our alone time). Every place we are staying is going to have a baby cot, which is a must if you bring a baby. Finding our apartment in Florence was actually very painless and the only trouble was in which area did you want to stay.



On Saturday we are planning on just walking around the city and just letting ourselfs get lost. Since we are staying in an apartment we want to cook dinner about 3 times a week we are going to go to the market on Monday.

The Uffizi Gallery is closed on Monday but they are open on Sunday so the first Sunday in Florence will be spent visiting the gallery. I am really excited about seeing this museum because it has everyone from Giotto to our favorite painter Botticelli (we have a huge framed poster of "Birth of Venius" in our living room...and no, its not "pornography"). Since we are staying in Florence for 7 days we are going to take our time in this gallery and spend the whole day looking at these works of art.

We are going to head to Cinque Terre on Saturday the 4th for our last leg of the trip and staying 7 days. Cinque Terre is located on the italian riviera with beautiful hilltop towns and cliffs. We got an apartment in one of the towns part of cinque terre (Manarola) that overlooks the town and sea. This week is not going to be packed with tours, galleries or monuments, its all about relaxing and enjoying the view (check out the view!!). We are going to be visting all of the 5 towns making cinque terre and doing tons of hiking and just cliff diving. I am going to try to get Jessyka to go out on the water with me on a small boat and do some diving.