I just spent 10 days (including travel) in Italy with my mom. We had such a fun time. It was hard, however, being SO far away from Anderson (and David) and not being in charge of all the day to day details that I'm usually on top of. I am happy to report that David held down the fort and all was well when I arrived home.
Here is a little rundown of our trip:
The whole reason we were going to Italy was because my cousin was doing a semester in Florence and my aunt rented an apartment there for a month. She didn't want to be there alone, so she arranged to have visitors every week during her stay. She asked me at Christmas if I wanted to come, and my mom and I decided YES we did want to go! It was a great opportunity for both of us to travel to a place we'd never been. I was lucky that David's job is so flexible and he was able to work from home so he could handle dropping off/picking up Anderson from school.
We flew from Cleveland to JFK, and then JFK to Rome overnight. The plane was pretty empty so my mom and I each had a whole row to ourselves to stretch out and sleep--we were hoping to avoid any major jet lag. Italy is 6 hours ahead of the Eastern time zone in the US. Once we landed and collected our luggage we took a taxi to our guesthouse. We walked around a little, had a great dinner, and then went to sleep so we could start sightseeing early the next day.
Day 1--We had hop-on/hop-off bus tickets for our stay in Rome, which was nice because our time there was limited and the bus took us to the major attractions that we didn't want to miss. Our first day was spent in Vatican City. This ended up being one of my favorite things that we did the entire trip. We first went to the Vatican Museum. It was amazing and beautiful, and I'm not all that "arty". The paintings on the ceiling were my favorite part--I spent most of that morning walking around looking UP. After the museum and some lunch we went to St. Peter's Basilica. I can't even express how beautiful it was inside. And it was so HUGE that you felt so small! We spent a lot of time there. After that we decided that we'd pay the 7 euros to climb to the top of the dome of the basilica. I'm not sure why we thought that was a good idea--the climb was over 350 stairs. That didn't sound like a lot to me at the time, but when was the last time you climbed more than 12 or 13 stairs in a row? And we didn't know how narrow the stairways were. There was NO option to decide to quit and climb down, because there were people behind you on their way up and absolutely no room to pass them and go down. It was crazy. I felt a little claustrophobic. But we made it to the top and the view was spectacular!
Day 2--We decided to go to the Colosseum. We'd passed it on our ride from the airport and I couldn't wait to get up close! It was so amazing, to me, to actually see something like the Colosseum that I'd learned about in school and only ever seen in books or pictures. It was impressive! We didn't have time to take a tour of the inside, but we felt that we weren't missing much by only walking around the outside. It was finished in 80 A.D. so it was easily the oldest structure I'd ever seen. After that we had time for a quick stop at Trevi Fountain before we had to head to the train station to take the train to Florence.
I should preface this next part by saying that it has a happy ending--at the train station I was almost pickepocketed!! At our guesthouse in Rome I was keeping my passport and extra money in a zipped wallet in the hotel safe. On the train to Florence I knew my luggage would be separate from me so I put the passport wallet in my purse for the trip. I had been SO careful about how I wore my purse because we were warned about how bad the pickpockets are here. But getting on the train was hectic because it was crowded, we had lots of luggage to deal with...it was crazy. I was leaning forward to help mom with her luggage, and this woman came up behind me and she unzipped my purse and had my passport wallet out of my purse when I realized what was going on. I whipped around, grabbed the coat that she had covering her hands and my wallet fell on the floor. I was screaming at her, I threw her coat, patted her down to see what else she had taken...it was awful. If I had even waited a second longer she would probably have moved on. It was also good that she actually WAS the pickpocketer because I probably could've been arrested for assault! LOL I was SO glad that I got my stuff back, and she didn't have time to get anything else. I was, however, shaken and did not enjoy the ride to Florence. But, once we got to Florence I started feeling better and we didn't have any other trouble like that for the rest of the trip.
My aunt and cousin met us at my aunt's apartment. After we hauled all of our stuff up the 3 flights of stairs we decided to go out and get some dinner. We found this little restaurant and I had the BEST dinner of my life--tortellini alfredo with pancetta!! And Florence was beautiful. It has narrow cobblestone streets with tall buildings on either side--it was just like I'd imagined!! Very quaint. I knew then that I was hooked!
Days 3&4 were spent exploring Florence. We saw beautiful vistas at Piazza Michelangelo, we walked around the San Lorenzo leather market (I got 2 fabulous purses there, too!!), we had some wonderful meals...it was a lot of fun! One of my favorite souveniers was a pencil drawing that I bought from an artist of the view of Florence. I can't wait to get it framed and hanging in my house. We also saw Michaelangelo's "David". At first I wasn't sure I needed to see the real thing because there are replicas all over the city, but I am so glad we did. You walk around the corner and see him standing there...very impressive.
On Day 5 we took the train to Venice. I have ALWAYS wanted to go to Venice. David and I actually considered it for a honeymoon destination (we ended up going to Ireland), so I was very excited to go there. We had no drama at the train station, thank goodness, and we found our hotel very easily. There are no cars allowed in Venice, not even bicycles! It's all water travel or walking. We spent the afternoon wandering around the streets of Venice, and we ended up in Piazza San Marco. We went into St. Mark's Basilica and went to the top of the bell tower in the middle of the piazza. One thing we learned about bell towers is that going to the top at :55 to the hour isn't the best--we were up there when the bell started ringing and boy were they LOUD!! But the view was beautiful. We also saw the Grand Canal at twilight, the Rialto bridge, and the waterfront. The HIGHLIGHT of the trip was our gondola ride!! We split the cost of the ride with 2 other couples--one from the UK and one from Germany.
Day 6 ended up being snowy to start (it snows 1 time a year, on average, in Venice) and then changed over to icy rain. So we didn't do much. We'd planned on visiting some churches and a big long walk around, but since the weather was so awful we settled for walking a little bit and spending most of the day shopping or people watching in a cafe. We also took a vaparetto ride down the Grand Canal too. That evening we took the train back to Florence.
Days 7&8 were spent in Florence again. We went to the Uffizi Gallery which houses the biggest collection of Renaissance art in the world. We also went to the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio, Piazza Signoria, and we toured an ancient monastery. I absolutely loved all of it.
Then we had to leave. I was SO sad to leave, but glad to get home to my boys. We had great flights from Florence to Rome and then Rome to JFK, but when we got to JFK we learned that our flight home was canceled. Then we were rebooked and it was canceled again. We ended up spending the night and flying home the next day. We added it up and we were awake and traveling for 44+ hours. I was BEYOND exhausted when we got home.
We had such a fun trip and I have some great pictures. If you haven't already figured it out, I absolutely fell in love with Florence. The food, the lifestyle, the history, the architecture, the people...LOVE IT! I have added "Live in Florence" to our Life TO DO List. Somehow we need to make David's dream of buying lake front property in the Adirondacks and my new dream of living in Florence part-time work out. Of course then we'll also have to squeeze in RV-ing across the country for a year and working at Disney. LOL We want to plan a trip to Italy in the next few years. David's been to Rome, Pompeii, and Capri, but he never went to Florence. His grandparents were born in Italy. So we'll see...I bet you we'll be back sooner than we think! It was not as expensive as you would think to travel to Italy. We've spent more on Disney vacations!!
Here are some things I learned from my travels in Italy.
- They have the BEST blood orange juice there--Arancia Rossa--and I was obsessed with it! Too bad you can't get it in the US.
- They don't use peanut butter! Only Nutella
- Doors swing IN. I can't tell you how many times I went to walk into a store or leave a restaurant and went to pull the door open. It didn't work. Until I thought about it I didn't realize that most doors in the US you have to pull to open, very few do you push to open unless it's a 2-way door.
- No ice!
- No fountain drinks either--if you order a Coke you get a can.
- They do, however, have champagne on tap!
- You buy stamps and bus tickets at tobacco shops.
- They had condom dispensers every few blocks or so--like we have ATMs
- The drivers in Italy are crazy. And I've driven in NYC. NY drivers are mellow compared to the Italian drivers. Seriously...we were in a cab that passed a bus over a double yellow line IN traffic. The lines, speed limits, lane size--they're all just suggestions apparently. Oh, and motorcycles--they have no rules at all.
- They walk everywhere! I wouldn't even consider walking 45 minutes to go grocery shopping or to a movie. They don't think twice about it.
- Even if they don't speak English, they still listen to all the "hit" songs we have here...and sing along! It's 2 or 3 American songs (think Rhiana, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars) and then some long Italian ballad, then 2 or 3 more American songs, and then another Italian song.
- The cars are MUCH smaller there. No gas guzzling SUVs to be seen. We did, however, see MANY cars that make the Smart Car look big.
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