Hey, guess what? I went to Italy for 2 weeks! We started off by flying in to Rome, taking the train to Naples, driving to Sorrento with a visit to Pompeii, then taking a train to Florence, and finished with another train ride to Venice. And because I have almost 1000 pictures from the trip, you get a plog (picture+blog) today!
JULY 28/29: We flew to Rome which was about 15 hours of travel time. But we arrived too early to check in to our hotel so we wandered around Rome for a while. But we refused to take pictures because we all looked like hell. Also, the time change thing really confuses me.
JULY 30: We started off the day by going to a farmer's market type thing in Campo de Fiore. And then we went to this cool museum of Leonardo DaVinci's large machines with working models.We got a tour of Vatican City, which is it's own country #funfact.
It's pretty impressive, huh?
Abby and me standing outside in the courtyard area, which reminds me of the catastrophe in Angels and Demons.
The inside was just as impressive, check out that ceiling!
Inside St. Peter's Cathedral. It's so huge the letters in the upper left corner are 5'2" tall!
JULY 31: We had a driver arranged to cart us around, so we were very efficient in our sightseeing. We started off with the Colosseum.
Hey look! We're sitting outside the Colosseum! We also went to the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill which were really close to the Colossuem (and I forget which was which).
Next stop was Castel St. Angelo, which was the Pope's fortress/castle.
It had a great view from the top. There was also a spigot that had a drinking fountain feature in the castle that we all had to try.
We finished up the day by going to the Galleria Borghese (no pictures) - the Borghese family was one of those super rich families in Italy like the Medici's - and the Spanish Steps.
AUGUST 1: This was our extra day in Rome, because our travel agency messed up our itinerary a bit. So spent the day shopping around the Spanish Steps.
And we found the world's biggest McDonalds!
The fancy-schmancy shopping streets (though you can't really tell here). We finished up the day by going to dinner (of course). We had been getting great restaurant suggestions during our stay from our doorman, Joseph, so we took a picture with him before we left.
JK, the last thing we did that day was go back to the Trevi Fountain at night. And it was super crowded.
AUGUST 2: We woke up early to catch a train south to Naples. The trains across Europe are super fast and I wish they had a train system like that in the US.
We got picked up at the train station and drove to Pompeii where we got a tour of the ancient city.
It also had a forum, which reminded me of the part in Hercules where he knocks down all the columns while playing frisbee and everyone gets mad at him.
And we saw the famously frozen-in-time people who had died from all the ash raining down on them, they all looked so scared (duh).
After Pompeii we drove to the city of Sorrento where we were staying for the next few days and went to the beach. But we soon got kicked out because it was a private beach and our whiteness made us stand out like sore thumbs.
AUGUST 3: Though we had resisted it for years, we became those tourists when we went on a tour of the Amalfi Coast. We drove with a group of other tourists up the perilously cliffy roads in a huge bus.
But there were all sorts of great views! So much landscape to absorb.
We got to see it from a boat too, check out this huge cave!
In one of the cities we stopped in (there were a handful: Amalfi, Scala, Ravello, and two starting with P that I don't remember), there was a pretty cool church (so many churches). We also discovered Lemon Soda. It's delicious!
AUGUST 4: We were those tourists again when we went to the Isle of Capri (it sounds so uppity when it's and "Isle" and not and "Island"). In the city of Anacapri there was an old, single person chairlift that took us to the up to see more magnificent views.
The Magnificent Views:
Once we got down in the the city of Capri (not to be confused with the Isle of Capri or the city of Anacapri), it was super crowded. So many people I'm surprised the Island didn't sink! Before we went back the Sorrento, we went to this place called the Blue Grotto, which is a glowing cave. It was a ripoff, but it was cool nontheless.
From Sorrento we went back north to Florence. We had a long wait in the train station, so I took a little nap.
The Duomo (that means dome)
This is called an Ape (accent on the e), it's like a 3-wheeled scooter-truck. AKA awesome.
The Uffizzi Gallery!
That famous bridge...
So much Lindt cholocalte! A dream come true!
We went to the beach in Via Reggio from Florence.
From Florence we also went to Cinque Terre, which is 5 little towns that are built into a cliff on the sea.
We almost got splashed!
Cliff towns (clowns), or cliff cities (clities, both of those are bad).
We also stopped in Pisa on our day trip!
Classically cheesy.
Is the tower leaning or is it us?
We were making a fashion statement in the Pisa church. From Florence we went to Venice, which was our last stop before going home.
The famous Rialto bridge!
St. Mark's square with the church, the tower, and the Doge's Palace.
View of the city from the tower.
Venice. Boom.
So so so many bridges.
My throne at the Guggenheim Gallery.
We lit candles for safe travels on our last day.
And we ran into missionaries!
On our last night we took a gondola ride to dinner.
So I wrote this entry on two separate days, and I gave up giving you the dates. You don't really care about that anyhow, right? Good, that's what I thought.
I've finished all but Bones, which I am working on now. These shows are, of course, accompanied by other tried-and-true favorites of mine:
Sadly, a number of other favorite shows are not available on Netflix. So depressing! Shows like CSI (of all types), Criminal Minds, How I Met Your Mother. C'mon Netflix, get your act together!
