Venice

Venice is the last city of our trip to Italy. We spent about 2 and 1/2 days there, which seems short, but was the perfect amount of time as there really aren't that many things to do in Venice. That doesn't mean, however, that we didn't like it. It was actually possibly our favorite city, although we loved each city we visited and each had its own charm. In fact, part of the reason we loved it so much was because there wasn't a lot to do and we were able to just walk around taking everything in and go shopping for beautiful Venetian glass and Carnival masks.

As we had between Rome and Florence, we took the train from Florence to Venice. We weren't sure exactly where the train station was since Venice is, as everyone probably knows, a city of small islands connected by bridges over the many canals, with one large canal snaking through the whole city, the Grand Canal. When we got off the train, we walked out of the station and boom! The Grand Canal was about 20 yards in front of us. Wow. We had no idea that when we got off the train that's where we would be. It was really cool to see, a bit shocking, but a good taste of Venice immediately upon arriving. The only problem was, we had no idea where our hotel was or how to get there, since they obviously don't have regular taxis (they do have water taxis and water buses though) since they have no real "streets." Since we didn't know where to go, we headed back inside the train station to the tourist information that we had seen on our way out. They told us where our hotel was, and apparantly it was really close to the train station, which is lucky for us because after we had walked around Venice over the next few days we realized we could have had a really bad time getting to our hotel. But we were lucky, and it was only a 5 minute walk from the station, so we headed in the direction they pointed us to seek it out. We ended up getting there and, for some reason, the hotel was closed. I mean, really closed, with the metal barred door thing that comes down in front of stores, not sure what it's called, so we knew it wasn't open. We started getting very worried about not having a place to stay, especially since we had already paid for the hotel, when we saw a sign on the door telling us to inquire at the Hotel Principe. I had seen HP on our way to this hotel, so I knew where it was. We got there and they had apparantly had some kind of emergency at the other hotel and needed to close it for a few weeks, so they were putting all their guests up at their other hotels. Apparantly our hotel was one of 3 in Venice with the same owner, so it worked out really nicely and we ended up with a good room, luckily.

We didn't really do much in Venice at all, like I said, but we did see St. Mark's and we did go on a gondola ride, as well as shopped and just enjoyed being in such a beautiful and remarkable city. The first full day we were there we took at water bus down the Grand Canal to St. Mark's, the major piazza/church in Venice. The water bus was pretty cool, it was a little chilly and rainy, but it was fun to ride down the Grand Canal and see Venice that way. We also saw something that I thought was really cool--a UPS delivery boat. No joke. At first I thought I imagined it, until the next day when we saw another one! I really wanted to get a picture but the first time I wasn't expecting it and the 2nd time we didn't have our camera out. I'm a little disappointed about that, but it was still really funny to see! I guess packages have to get delivered to Venetians somehow!

Once we got down to St. Mark's it was still cloudy and a little rainy (luckily we had our umbrellas!) but we tried to get some good pictures. They're not fantastic, but we do have some pictures which is good. We wanted to go up in the bell tower because we had read that we could, but it was either open or they no longer let people go up in it. That was a huge disappointment. We went into the church, of course, but they are super strict about pictures and they kept it so dark we could hardly even make anything out. It's supposed to be the church of gold, and we could sortof see all the gold (all the frescoes and everything are done in/with gold) but not very well because it really was dark. We got bored of it pretty quickly since we couldn't see or do anything and decided just to go. What we could see of it was really cool and pretty, but that wasn't very much so we were fairly disappointed with our whole St. Mark's experience, especially after all we had heard and read. Plus, the rain didn't really help because everything outside was fairly dark and depressing too. Since that was pretty much all we had planned for that day (we weren't going to take a gondola ride in the rain unless we had too, and we still had a full day and a half left) we weren't really sure what else to do, so we just started walking back in the direction of our hotel looking for this street that I had read had good shopping. We had some lunch and did some shopping for awhile, and it was really fun. That's actually what we did for the rest of the day--looked at beautiful glass and carnival masks, bought a few things but not too much since we wanted to make sure to have something to do the next day too! Some of the masks we saw were amazing! They were hugely decorated or very intricate and just amazing. The ones we took pictures of don't even do justice to some of the ones that we saw. I wish I had the money and an excuse to buy them, they were so amazing. The glass we saw was amazing too, but most times we went into a store I was so afraid of breaking something! Most places don't let you touch anything anyway, which is a good policy because it is so nice.

For dinner that night we found a little place where apparantly none of the waiters/waitresses spoke very good English. We didn't think it would be a problem, but we were a little surprised because every place we had gone to up to that point had someone who spoke fairly good English. It didn't bother us because before that we had been a little surprise that so many people spoke so much English! Plus like I said, we didn't think it would be a problem--the menu was in Italian and English, so we could read what we were ordering. Since Venice is known for seafood, Eric decided to try the lobster that was on the menu (Norway lobster or whatever). Now, we knew they did things a little differently, for example they use squid ink in pastas (we saw multiple people eating black pasta and it looked gross), but Eric thought that since we hadn't seen any place with Adriatic crab (which Venice is apparantly known for, but we didn't find any place with it on their menu anywhere, so maybe it's seasonal or something) he would try the lobster. What we were not expecting to get was 5 little lobsters sitting in a row on his plate, whole, with the eyes in their heads and their many little lobster legs when you flipped them over. We were so grossed out. Eric had, fortunately, ordered pasta and had already eaten it, so he wasn't going to go hungry, but we had no idea what to do. It was completely not what we had expected, and if we had known, Eric would not have ordered it. He had no idea how to eat it, and no appetite for it had he known since it was a little off-putting having 5 whole lobsters on a plate on the table. And, like I said, the waitpeople didn't speak that great of English, so when they came back and Eric hadn't eaten any of it, we had to try to explain to them somehow that we had no idea that's what we were going to get when we ordered, and that he didn't want it. Eventually I think they understood, but we felt so bad. They were super nice about the whole deal, but we felt terrible and really out of our element. That's probably the time where we felt the most awkward and stupid about being Americans in Italy. It worked out ok, but we avoided seafood like the plague after that for fear of getting a whole crab or a whole fish staring up at us.

The next day Eric and I knew we wanted to go on a gondola ride since it was our last day in not just in Venice but also in Italy and it was one of the few things we wanted to do in Venice. We knew it was expensive, and had found out just how expensive the day before when we asked a gondolier, so we were prepared to shell out a lot of money, and it was a lot, but how can you go to Venice, especially on your honeymoon, without going on a gondola ride? We just couldn't. We also wanted to walk to the Rialto, Venice's first bridge that was originally built out of wood but was rebuilt with stone 500 years ago, so we headed there first. We figured we didn't want to do our gondola ride at 10 in the morning so we walked around first, and it was actually a beautifully sunny day, unlike the previous day. It stayed sunny almost the whole day too, until later in the afternoon. We spent some time meandering towards the Rialto, and then taking some pictures on the Rialto, and saw some gondolas so decided to take our ride then since we were able to haggle the price down a little bit (they won't go past a certain amount though, we figured that out because we had already tried with a couple of people just to see what we could get the price down to before we actually took the ride). Plus, it was a gorgeous time of the day and the weather was wonderful and we didn't want to risk waiting and having the weather change on us. It was definitely worth spending the money on it. We had a great time. It wasn't super long, about 1/2 an hour, but it was romantic and gorgeous and we got to see both the Grand Canal around the Rialto and some of the lesser canals too. We took a lot of pictures on our gondola ride and thoroughly enjoyed doing it. It was perfect.

The rest of the day we just spent shopping and walking. We still had people to buy souvenirs for, not many but a few, so we finished all of our souvenir shopping and walked around some of the quieter parts of Venice away from the Grand Canal, and then back down the familiar shopping streets around our hotel to pick up one or two more things for ourselves! We had our last wonderful dinner in Italy and went all out--we both got pasta and a meat course, and we had wine, and just spent a long time enjoying our last Italian meal. It was a wonderful trip and our last night in Italy was wonderful, if a little sad that we were leaving.

The next day we came home, almost missing our flight in Amsterdam and running through the airport to make it on time. Unfortunately, our luggage didn't make it back with us but fortunately we got it the very next day, for which we are very grateful! Overall, it was the most amazing experience and one Eric and I will never forget. We have plenty of pictures and some wonderful souvenirs to help us remember. I am so happy that we went when we did, and very grateful that we were able to go at this point in our lives. Eric and I spent 10 fantastic days in a place we have wanted to visit for a very long time. Italy is an amazing country and I am incredibly happy that we took this trip!

Florence

After writing such long posts about Rome I needed a break before writing about Florence and Venice. But, I'm finally getting to it so here is the story of Florence and Venice will come later today or tomorrow.

We left for Florence Saturday morning. We took the train from Rome to Florence, which was largely uneventful, mostly boring but it gave us time to read up on what we wanted to see in Florence besides the Uffizi, which is the big museum there. Saturday we didn't see much, walked around the city a little bit to get used to our new surroundings, took a few pictures of what we did see. The one notable thing that we saw was David, at the Galleria Accademia, among a few lesser known pieces of art, mostly icons. It was really cool though, bigger than I expected. For some reason I didn't think it was gigantic, but it was. It's interesting though (and funny) because they have benches that you can sit on, only the benches are right behind David, so you're looking up at his butt. Poor planning on someone's part, otherwise they thought it would make a good joke which it does. Besides that we didn't do much, ate a pretty good supper at a nice restaurant, and had some wine since we were in Tuscany. It was pretty good wine, and we ended up buying a bottle (not at the restaurant, which would have been way more expensive) to bring home as a souvenir.

The next day was our busiest and most enjoyable day in Florence. We started with the Uffizi Museum early in the day to avoid the "crowds" although nothing was really busy on our trip since January isn't exactly peak tourist time, which worked out well for us. The Uffizi started as the Medici art collection, and most of the pieces in it were at one point owned by the Medici family (Florence was the home of the Medici family). They owned some really famous pieces of art, and the museum has the Birth of Venus (Boticelli) as well as another painting that I really liked by now can't remember the name. It has Venus in it, and some nymphs, and some other people, but I can't remember it. Maybe someone knows what I'm talking about? It's also by Boticelli, and I really liked it. There are some things in the museum that have been added to it, that weren't the collection of the Medici's, but it was so cool to walk through and know that they owned so many of the things that we saw. It took us a few hours to get through the museum, and they had a couple of rooms closed so we didn't even get to see everything.

After the museum we thought we would check out the Palazzo Vecchio which is the Medici family's first home (they eventually moved to the Palazzo Pitti, after the city apparantly got too crowded for them and they wanted a bigger place with land...) and right by the Uffizi. Well, you had to pay an arm and a leg to get in, so we took a couple pics of what we could see and then decided we would rather check out the Palazzo Pitti instead since it had the Boboli Gardens which I wanted to check out. We are so happy we made that decision, as the Boboli Gardens ended up being one of our favorite places on our trip. First though, before that, we went to the Ponte Vecchio, which is Florence's first bridge, and has some of the nicest and most expensive jewelry shops on it. We got some gelato and hung out on the bridge for a bit, took some pictures of the river, then crossed over to the other, less busy part of Florence where the Palazzo Pitti (or the Pitti Palace in English) is. We thought we would check out both the Palace and the Boboli Gardens, but the admission is different for each, two separate admissions for the Palace and for the Gardens. The Gardens also included the porecelain gallery and the costume gallery, both of which I wanted to see, and it would have been really expensive to do both, and time-consuming, so even though it would have been fun to see the inside of the palace we chose just to do the gardens and the galleries that went with it. Like I said, it was probably our favorite thing in Florence. The weather was really nice for it, the day started out gray but ended up sunny, so everything was really pretty. The Palace has a fountain right when you walk through the entrance, as well as at least 3 other fountains/ponds in the gardens. We walked up the main path, right behind the palace, which had what looked like stands and what I later discovered actually were stands for audiences to watch lawn games and sports and the like apparantly. We took some pictures by the fountain at the middle of the hill, and then walked up the rest of the way to take some more pictures and go to the porcelain gallery. By this point we were way up above the city, only we were overlooking the countryside and not the city, so we got to see how beautiful the Italian landscape was. As to the porcelain gallery, wow. Amazing. I would love to have china like that. No kidding, beautiful. It was amazing to see the differences in patterns and how fancy some of them were.

After we left the porcelain gallery we headed back downhill a little bit to discover the rest of the gardens. We had a basic map, so we knew we had a lot to cover still. The rest was even more amazing than the first part, or at least equally so. There were so many paths to go down and little courtyard like areas, some had fountain, some had benches, some were just open spaces, some had statues. At the top of the hill (sortof parallel to where the fountain at the middle of the hill in the main path that's right outside the palace itself) is a courtyard with a weird statue of a face, it's really cool and apparantly it's been a part of the gardens for a long time, I think it was owned and kept there by the Medici family, but it doesn't really seem to fit the rest of their garden decor. I mean, they have all of these Roman statues and their fountains are either Roman styles or very old-fashioned, but this head is so huge it seems out of place. From the courtyard another large path goes downhill (perpendicular to the "main path") to what we think was their "main" pond, it's bigger and there are benches all around it, plus a courtyard like areas at the bottom of the hill as well. Although, there are courtyards all over it, so who knows. We just couldn't imagine, after walking back up the hill on our way back to the palace, having parties down there even though it seemed like they would use it for that because it was so big, but the hill was really tiring and long. Maybe we are more out of shape than they were, but really, can you imagine the richest, wealthiest people tiring themselves out at a party to walk up a hill? I don't think so.

Anyway, we didn't walk straight down the hill to the pond, instead we just wandered down slowly, taking paths off to the side, following them as we wanted and then coming back down them only to find new ones and take those where they led. We discovered that on both sides of that large path, and parallel to it, were smaller paths with trees on both sides that created a cover, and they were really quiet and pretty and romantic, so we took a few pictures. We were even able to get a few of us by setting our camera on the ground. I wish we would have had a tripod, not just for that time but others, but we managed to get some of us without it. We also discovered many other paths, and a bird bathing in a fountain that was at the side of a path. The fountain spilled down into little half tubes carved in the marble and ran through them until it spilled down into the next one. There's a picture of the bird on facebook I think so maybe you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. There was also a cat chilling around. We also saw the costume gallery, which was cool but not as cool as the porcelain gallery because there wasn't as much as I thought there would be. It was still fun to see all the fancy clothes they would wear.

The whole time we were at the Boboli Gardens we felt like we could have been at a fancy party like you see in movies, where they just stand on the lawns and drink champagne in their huge old beautiful dresses. If you've ever seen the Patriot or the Count of Monte Cristo you should have an idea of what I mean. It was also very romantic, walking on some of the paths with no one around. There were multiple people in the gardens, they were just so huge that we hardly ever saw them. Plus, we explored a lot so I'm not even sure how many people walk around in there as much as we did. We spent the whole afternoon there! It was just a gorgeous place to spend an afternoon and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

The next day was our last day in Florence, and we only had a few things we wanted to see. We went to the Duomo, the big church in Florence, which is gorgeous on the outside but a little plain on the inside. Seriously though, the outside is very intricately and beautifully designed, and looks really good. I think part of the reason the inside is a little more plain is that a lot of what used to be in the Duomo is now in the Museo del Opera, which is basically the museum of the Duomo. That was better than the Duomo because while the Duomo is amazing on the outside, the museum has a lot more in it, including Michelangelo's unfinished Pieta. The Pieta isn't just Jesus and Mary, it's also Nicodemus, who was carved in the image of Michelangelo, and Mary Magdalene, who was actually added in later by a student. Anyway, this Pieta has a funny story with it too. It's unfinished because the marble had too many imperfections. Well, the imperfections ticked Michelangelo offed so much that he chucked his chisel and the statue and broke off one of Jesus' arms and one of his legs. No kidding. The arm was restored, but to this today Jesus does not have a left leg. I can attest to the truth of that.

Besides the Duomo and the museum, we really only wanted to go up the hill (Florence has a lot of hills) on the other side of the river (not by the Pitti Palace) to a church called San Miniato, a little bit past Piazzale Michelangelo, which has a 2nd statue of David. I wanted to go to the church because I had read they still have monks that do Gregorian chants in the afternoon. So we went in the afternoon up to P. Michelangelo, to see the other David, which is in terrible condition due to weather and wear and tear, but the Piazzale has a great view of the city so we took some pictures, and Eric got worried that the storm clouds that we saw over the hills were going to hit us, but we only got a small amount of rain so it wasn't a big deal. Then we went to the church, which has an amazingly large cemetery. It was both cool and depressing at the same time. There are some famous Italians buried there, like the author of Pinocchio, and apparantly it's a famous cemetery that a lot of people want to be buried in. Plus of course, people from the Benedictine order that lives there have been buried over the years. One of the saddest things was a tomb of a man and woman who were obviously husband and wife and who died during WWII, when they were still really young. There was a statue of them on top of the grave. We didn't get to hear any Gregorian chants, even though we were there about an hour, so maybe we just missed it or maybe our guidebook was wrong, but I'm still really happy we went.

That's basically our time in Florence! We bought a few souvenirs, such as our wine and some olive oil and some other small items, and just enjoyed our time eating food from another region and walking around seeing what there was to see. I'm really glad we went a little bit outside of the city where it was slightly less touristy and which had a really good view of both the city of Florence and the surrounding "countryside." Florence is in a really beautiful area and I can see why so many people choose to travel there! We loved it as we did the rest of our trip.

Italy continued

The story of our trip continues. Tonight I will finish Rome and hopefully get to Florence. We'll see.

Our 2nd day in Rome we covered many wonderful small and big sights, such as Piazza del Popolo, which was really close to our hotel, Acra Pacis Augustae fountain (we just happened to walk by it after we went to Piazza del Popolo on our way to the Pantheon), and Castel Sant' Angelo, which we just happened to see as we were walking toward Piazza Navonne and the Pantheon. It's by the river, and we didn't go in but thought that maybe if we had time we'd stop back because it looked really awesome. Piazza Navonne was really cool. It had a really decorative fountain/obelisk that Eric and I both really liked, plus the Piazza was really open and inviting. Simple, except for the obelisk/fountain. We stopped there for awhile when it started to rain, and, since we forgot our little umbrella that we bought from a vendor the night before, we hunched under a little overhang. When it slowed down a bit we headed back out to find the Pantheon. It was really close and we found it pretty soon. It was fairly impressive from the outside, a little smaller than I thought. Still, it was the Pantheon, so we thought it was cool. Until we walked in, and realized that it was now a Basillica, and Christianized. We were so disappointed. It basically looked like the inside of a round church with a giant hole in the ceiling. Stupid. There are how many churches in Rome, and they feel the need to turn the Pantheon into one? Not cool. We didn't spend much time in there because it just wasn't worth it. The outside was cool though, so I guess that makes up for it.

Once we left the Pantheon we got about 5 feet when it started raining again. Even though we knew when we left for our trip that it was probably going to be rainy, we didn't plan well. Plus, when we left our hotel that day it was almost sunny, and we were hoping it would be nice so we could go to the Colosseum. We also had planned on walking a lot. Well, our plans changed. Now, we weren't like Italians, who use their umbrellas if the sky looks cloudy. I mean, we're from Minnesota. But it was raining enough that we wanted an umbrella. Luckily for us, I guess, there was an umbrella vendor out almost immediately once it started raining. We decided that umbrella and rose vendors are the same people, they just switch their wares depending on the weather. Actually, we're almost positive of that fact. Anyway, we ended up buying a bigger, nicer, and more expensive umbrella from him. So at this point we have 2 umbrellas but only one with us. We still had plenty we wanted to see so we headed to the nearest subway station which was, coincidentally, the one by the Trevi fountain. We rode it all the way to St. John Lateran, and spent some time there. It's actually one of the better churches, I think, only we didn't see all of it because to go to the courtyard and I think another part you had to pay and we didn't feel like it. The church supposedly holds the skull of St. Peter (not to be sacriligous, but he's all over the place). What I thought was really cool about St. John Lateran is that it had huge statues of the 12 apostles, 6 on each side of the main aisle. I'm not entirely sure why, but I really liked that.

After St. John Lateran we planned on heading to the Colosseum because the map showed it being fairly close. The map, while 99% of the time helpful, was this one time not so much. The Colosseum was close, only we couldn't figure out which of the streets matched which. In fact, I'm still pretty sure a street was missing. We ended up going the wrong way twice, but fairly quickly figured out we were on the wrong streets. However, after the first wrong street, it started raining. Pouring actually. Luckily we had our one umbrella, but big as it was, it's still hard to walk with 2 people and a camera under an umbrella. Plus, puddles form very quickly in Rome, so our feet and pants were getting soaked. We weren't even sure at this point that we wanted to go to the Colosseum and the Forum because we were so wet. After the other wrong street, we made one more attempt to find the Colosseum and I guess the 3rd time really is the charm because we made it there, and about the time we did it stopped raining. Go figure. We decided we were too wet and hungry to go but there was a subway stop right there so we went back to the hotel, changed our clothes and socks, and headed back out to get some food. We ate some pizza, since that's basically what we ate almost every lunch, and since we were by the Trevi fountain and it wasn't raining decided to do the tourist thing by throwing in our 2 coins over our left shoulder into the fountain, one for a wish and one to ensure that you'll return. It was fun, even if it was touristy. Touristy things are fun, that's part of why so many people do them.

After the Trevi we went to Castel Sant' Angelo to see if the inside was as cool as the outside. It was mostly filled with modern art exhibits, which was lame, but it was still super fun to walk around and see a real castle. It was built as a fortress basically, and there is a "secret" tunnel between it and the Vatican as apparantly at some point it was a fortress for the pope somehow. The castle itself was only half the amazement of being there. The other half was the view. We had a great view of the city, from St. Peter's Basillica to the Victor Emmanuel monument and just past the Victor Emmanuel we could barely see the Colosseum, but it was still awesome. And it was right by the river, and in the evening, so everything was really pretty. That was one of our favorite places that we just stumbled upon. Most of the places we went to in Italy we planned to see, and most of them were as wonderful as we thought (with a few rare exceptions) but there were some real jewels that we just happened upon and that made our trip even more amazing. Castel Sant' Angelo was definitely one of those. That was what we did that day. That, and had one of the best dinners we had on our whole trip, and easily the best we had in Rome. I ordered a penne arrabiata, and loved it. It was spicy but perfect. It was one of my favorite pasta dishes. Plus Eric had a great pasta dish that he loved, and we both had meats that were good too. The restaurant was really nice and we were able to just relax and enjoy great Italian food over a couple of hours, just like we planned.

The next day was our last full day in Rome, since we had to take a train to Florence the day after. It was, therefore, our last opportunity to see the Colosseum and the Forum (and the Palantine, which are some ruins right next to the Forum), so rain or shine, that's where we were headed. Fortunately, it was shine. Actually, I'm really happy that we waited, since it was the most gorgeous day we had all trip. No rain, hardly even any clouds in the sky, and it warmed up quite nicely. It was the perfect day for being outside, walking amongs Roman ruins. We took the subway to the Piazza del Repubblica, which was the closest stop to St. Peter Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains) a church I had read about and wanted to see. It's 2 main features are Michelangelo's Moses and the chains that held St. Peter. Like his bones, there really is no way of proving if those are really his chains, but that's the tradition. From there we walked to the Colosseum which was close by. We were out early enough in the day (we realized tourists are not active until the afternoons for some reason), and Rome is not as touristy in the winter as it is other times of the year, so we only had to wait in line for tickets for about 15 minutes (and the tickets were good for the Palantine and Forum too, so no waiting at those places!) The Colosseum itself is indescribable. No joke. There is just no way to tell, even with pictures, how big and grand and awe-inspiring it is. My words will not do it justice. I have pictures up on facebook, and the ones I have up are only a small portion of what we took. I think we took about 100 pictures of the Colosseum, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. It was old and mossy and huge and even though it's nothing like it was two thousand years ago (it was built in 27 A.D.) you could still sense what it was like. To give you an idea of how big it was, there were probably at least a couple hundred people there when we were and yet you hardly see any in our pictures. It was fantastic. That, combined with the Palantine and Forum, which we saw next, combined to make this day one of the favorites of our whole trip, and definitely Rome. The Palantine is basically a bunch of old ruins, I can't remember of what even though I read about it, but they're really cool and cover a large piece of land. So large that it has a small orange grove, and, of course, a fountain.

Then there's the Forum, where the Senate met, and where many old temples are in ruins. It's centuries older than the Colosseum, and you can tell because there's even less of it left. From all I know, it's the center of ancient Rome, were a bunch of major temples were and of course where the Senate was. There's only a few statues standing and some pillars from some temples, and an arch which I think was the "entrance" to the center of the city, or something like that. Everything else that's left is basically a jumble of broken pillars and statues. It's interesting to walk around though, especially on a nice day, and imagine what it was like. One of the temples that still has some pillars standing was to Zeus, so that's cool. It seemed like it was a pretty big temple too, maybe one of the biggest ones. Probably, since it was Zeus. It's hard to get an idea of what it would have looked like, but I've seen enough movies that I could kindof guess. (After doing the Colosseum and the Forum Eric and I really wanted to watch Gladiator, so we started watching it over the weekend but only got about 1/3 through since we're so busy catching up on everything.)

Later that day we headed to the Trinita del Monti, where we had actually briefly been the day before in the evening on our way to the restaurant, it has the famous Spanish steps, although I'm not sure why they're famous exactly, but it's a really pretty area, with an interesting fountain (what a surprise) and it's in the ritzy shopping center of Rome. Really ritzy, as in Prada and Armani. We took pictures by some of the stores, including one of my in front of Jimmy Choo wearing my cheap tennis shoes and being sad about that. It was fun. Then we just had an inexpensive but delicous pizza dinner (probably the best pizza we had on our whole trip) and some gelato to end our time in Rome. We loved Rome, there was so much to do and we always had somewhere to go and something to do, and the food and gelato was so delicious. They love their olive oil in Italy, and we planned on buying some at some point. We didn't in Rome, but we did in Florence. We also realized, probably in part because they use olive oil and not grease like we Americans do, that we could eat so much more in Italy than in America. We partly realized it while we were there eating multiple course meals, pasta and meat, but then fully realized it when we got back and at out a restaurant and couldn't eat that much because we filled up so much faster with greasy food than we did with lighter Italian food.

It looks like I won't be getting to Florence in this post. I'll have to save it for later tonight or tomorrow, but rest assured, the rest of our trip will soon follow. I hope I covered Rome in depth enough. I'm sure I left many wonderful and interesting things out, so please ask if you want more details!

Trevi

I forgot to add that on our first full day, after dinner, we also spent some time around the Trevi fountain taking pictures of it at night, and being bombarded by flower people, which is where the roses came from. We did end up buying one, but man, are those people after you. That was our first but not our last experience with them. They're everywhere in Rome. Everywhere. We loved the Trevi fountain though, and it was really close to our hotel which was cool. We went there during the day the next day too, after we had seen some other things and before we went to the castle, and threw in our coins, one for a wish and one to ensure that you'll return someday. It was touristy but fun.

Italy, Part One

Ok. I'm going to do my best to write about our trip to Italy. It probably won't be as cool without seeing the pictures at the same time (although some from Rome are posted on facebook, with others yet to come) or without hearing it in person, but it's still awesome. I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to get a post up here after our trip, but the days have been hectic and now it's already 3 days since we've been back! Crazy. Oh well, I'm writing now. Here goes:

We landed in Rome, took a taxi to our hotel, I lost my hat somehow (and by the way, they no longer have hats at Target; however, they have swimsuits. January is the coldest month of the year and they stop selling hats? I'm really angry about that.), but eventually bought a cheap and ugly new one. We get up to our room, and it is tiny. I mean, really small. After our long long plane rides and a really long (and crappy) taxi ride, we were tired and stressed and not in a good mood. For those of you who have traveled before, I'm sure you know what I mean. We hardly had enough room to put our bags somewhere and still be able to walk through the room. On the bright side, we did have a full sized bed, not 2 small ones. Plus the room was cute and nice, just really small. Well, we took what was supposed to be a short nap and went out and about looking for the place to pick up our tickets to see the pope. It was supposedly by the Trevi fountain, which was only 2 subway stops from our hotel (the subway was only about 50 yards from the hotel, yay), but we had no address, just a general idea of where it was supposed to be. We could not find it, and no one, the police, or tourist information, had any clue what the heck we were talking about. To top things off, it started raining, and it was night, and we only had an hour to find what we were looking for because our nap took longer than we had planned. We never found it, but we did get to see the Trevi fountain on our first day in Rome, and it was super cool. Plus we bought a small umbrella. It was quite an experience, and somewhat stressful, but we didn't let it get to us because we didn't want to make a big deal about missing one thing when there were so many other amazing things we knew we would get to do. Plus, the tickets were free so we didn't lose any money on them at all. It was a little disappointing, but we got over it once we got to do some other things. The rest of that night we just ate an amazing dinner at a restaurant close to our hotel and tried to settle into a foreign country.

We didn't sleep the greatest that night, partially due to jet lag I think and partially due to excitement, but largely due to the stiffness of the bed. Which meant that we got an early start for our first full day in Rome. It worked out really nicely. Actually, we got up early every day except one in order to get out and see as much as we could and make the most of our trip. For our first full day we planned to go to the Vatican, as we had tickets for a Scavi tour in the afternoon, of the Necropolis and St. Peter's tomb underneath St. Peter's Basillica. These ones we paid for, in advance, so we definitely wanted to make sure to get to this! We spent the morning at St. Peter's, in the square and in the Basillica, wandering around, taking everything in, basically enjoying the beauty of the Basillica and the art. We saw the church part, took many pictures, and then went and found lunch. We ate the most delicious pizza we had had so far (considering we had only had it once before, at supper our first night) but not the best pizza we would have. It was cheap too, as were most of the pizzerias at which we ate. After eating lunch on the sidewalk as everyone else was doing we headed back over to St. Peter's. We still had plenty of time before our tour though, so we looked at souvenir shops on the way back and saw some things we liked and wanted to get for ourselves and others, but didn't buy anything yet. Once we got back to St. Peter's we still had time so we went to look at the tombs of dead popes, including JPII's tomb, so that was really cool impressive. The tombs are just below the church itself. Then we did the Scavi tour, which was below everything, way down. See, St. Peter's Basillica was built on a graveyard basically, where St. Peter was originally buried and then where, over the first couple of centuries of the church, really wealthy romans were entombed. So we got to see some old and cool tombs with their frescoes and actual sarcophogi and everything. It was very cool. Then, we saw St. Peter's bones, or what everyone is 99% are his bones. That was awesome too-the first pope, a person who actual lived and breathed with Jesus, only a couple of feet away.

After the Scavi tour, we headed up the hill to the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. The very long hill. Even though the Vatican is tiny, it felt like a very long walk up that stupid hill. We finally made it there and paid our admission fee to see the museum and the Sistine Chapel and went on in. We started out taking our time, figuring since we had multiple hours to get to the Chapel we could meander through the museum and see what there was to see. The museum was amazing. So much art, from old Roman statues to paintings, frescoes, and mosaics by some of the most famous artists ever. We spent a long while looking at things, and then decided we would start purposefully heading for the Sistine Chapel while still taking time to check everything out along the way, since you just follow the signs to get to the chapel and wind your way through the rooms of the museum. Well, after about another 1/2 hour or heading for the chapel, and looking at art, and not getting to the chapel, we decided to pick up our pace and only look at things that looked really interesting. Another 15 minutes later, we still aren't there, so we decide to basically stop looking at everything else so we could get to the chapel. We had already been in the museum multiple hours at this point and had seen everything major we had wanted to see except the chapel. Towards the end of the museum closer to the chapel the art started getting more and more modern and worse and worse (Eric and I both decided that no one goes to Rome for modern art and yet many of the museums and heck, even the castle we went to, all had modern art exhibits. Kindof annoyed us a little.), and we had to walk at least another 10 minutes before we got to the chapel. So if you go to Rome and want to see the Sistine Chapel and that's all, take all the shortcuts. Although that shouldn't be the only reason you go to the Vatican. There really are many amazing things to see. Just be prepared for a long and leisurely, and at times visually overwhelming, experience. It really was amazing, but the Vatican is one Roman treasure that should not be combined with too many other things--it's definitely enough to do by itself in one day. I loved it though.

After we left there, before dinner, we found a Blue Ice and had gelato (Matt had actually recommended this gelato chain so we were happy to find one) and it was amazingly delicious. I feel like I keep saying everything was amazing, but it really was. The food, especially the gelato, was possibly the best part of our entire trip. I love gelato. Especially ciaccolato (chocolate, obviously). Yum. We went back to our hotel because our feet hurt, and then headed out again for dinner. We ended up back by the Trevi fountain trying to find a place to eat around some shops that we saw since we wanted to look around at stores too. We ate another good dinner of pasta and meat (we did the multiple course thing a few times, other times just one course, and sometimes one of us would get one course and the other 2 and we would split the 2nd one). It ended up actually being one of our least favorite meals, because the pasta was not what we had expected, but it was still good. That's our first full day in Italy!

There is so much more I need to write about from our trip, but it will have to wait until later as there are other things I need to get done. Look for another post (or more) about the rest of our trip!

Amazing

Italy was AMAZING! Eric and I had such a good time! For those who don't know, we spent 4 days in Rome, 3 in Florence, and 3 in Venice. It was awesome. We loved it so much--the food, the sights, the shopping, everything. We're still a little jet-lagged, unfortunately, plus we have to go back to work tomorrow already even though we just got back Friday evening. So, even though I have many many things to write about, I will be heading to bed. Look for a more thorough blog post in a day or 2. Plus, pictures will be going up on facebook tomorrow, so check that out too.


"Which of the cities visited did Your Highness enjoy the most?"
"Each, in its own way, was unforgettable. It would be difficult to - Rome! By all means, Rome. I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live."

5 Days

Only 5 days until Eric and I leave for Italy! We are super excited but we still have so much to do to get ready for our trip, and for being gone for 2 weeks! We both have been working extra hours this week to help make up for some of the time we will be gone, so we haven't had as much time to do anything else. Tomorrow we are going shopping for some last-minute things we need, hopefully we will be able to get everything. We have someone to drive us to the airport, thank goodness, but I don't think we have anyone to pick us up when we get back on the 23rd! We arrive in MN at 5:40pm on the 23rd, which is a Friday, so if anyone is available to pick us up, that would be fantastic! Otherwise we might get stranded at the airport...better than a drive-in I guess!

"What will they say Monday at school?"