Venice

Venice: the beautiful city floating on water.  The police, the ambulances, the buses, the taxis . . . all boats.  And any roads to walk on are narrow cobblestone streets--more like alleys or sidewalks than anything.  It's fun to be walking through the town and every few minutes to walk across a bridge over another water street.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon and after checking into the hotel, immediately set out to see the city.  Venice is quite small, so it didn't take us long to feel like we had seen everything (which was kind of nice since I was sick our whole time there--we didn't have to rush everywhere, but could just take our time strolling around).  First, we toured a church completely covered in mosaics, most of which were golden.  Amazing.  Every time I see all these spectacular mosaics, I just think about how much time that must have taken to piece together every single tiny little piece so perfectly so that it turned out to be a picture...wow that seems hard and tedious.  I greatly applaud anyone who had the patience along with the talent to create those mosaics.  After St. Marks Basilica, we headed next door to Doges Palace to look at the armory and the old prisons.  The boys loved seeing the different weapons and comparing them to Call of Duty, which frankly I do not understand the excitement of, but I guess whatever floats their boat (bad Venice pun).  Nicholas was dying to climb the stairs to the terraces (he LOVED climbing up to the Duomo in Florence and was thrilled when he saw another opportunity for stair climbing).  However, when we finally made it to the front of the line, we realized that it was just an elevator to take you up instead of stairs.  A simple elevator ride was not nearly as exciting as the difficult challenge that hundreds of stairs provides, so we headed to dinner then back to the hotel.

The next day we took a water taxi across to Murano Island to see the glass blowing factory.  {Fun fact: there are roads in the water.  Wooden pillars stick out of the water spaced a few meters (notice how I am being so European by using the metric system) apart from each other forming streets.}  When we toured, they were making a chandelier, and it was so cool to see the workers making each of the different parts--they made it look so easy!  And what is a trip to Venice without a ride on a gondola?  I learned that in order to become a gondolier, one must attend gondolier school and soon into the ride I realized why.  Gondoliers don't just paddle the boat along, but use their feet to push against the walls, have to duck under bridges, and steer the 11 meter (about 30 feet) long gondola with just one oar while standing up at the back of it.  I kept thinking that we were about to run into a building or another gondola, but we never did!

After the gondola, we came back to the hotel and all crammed onto one bed surrounding Mom and her iPad to watch The Sound of Music (much to Marty's disappointment...but I know that he ended up liking it). . . we're ready for Austria!

Nicholas's primary source of entertainment at the hotel.

At the prison.

Hahaha this picture is just to classic to leave out.

Forming the glass for the chandelier.

Gondola ride, with our stellar gondolier, Alex.

Florence

I can't decide which I like better...Rome or Florence??  Florence is much quieter and less chaotic than Rome.  Not only is it quite a bit smaller, but cars aren't allowed inside Florence unless they are government cars (garbage trucks, delivery trucks, street sweepers, etc.) or taxis. . . all that crazy driving in Rome really stressed me out, so the no cars rule is a nice change here haha.  Dad still tries to speak Spanish to the locals and claims they understand it just as well as if he were speaking Italian...  I just have to laugh a little, because sometimes it ends up being more confusing than helpful, but I know he can't help it.  Mom and I have learned that anytime he talks to someone with any accent he can't help his Spanish accent from coming out. 

Each of us pointed out one thing that we noticed was different in Florence than in Rome...
...Dad noticed the roofs had larger overhangs.
...Mom noticed the assortment of smells (interpret that how you may).
...I noticed that it was more peaceful.
...Marty noticed that there weren't as many Vespas lining the streets.
...Christopher noticed that the cars were bigger (and by bigger he does not mean that there are SUV's, he means that there are less Smart Cars).
...and Nicholas noticed that there weren't cobblestone streets, but big stones were used to make the roads.

We arrived in Florence Friday afternoon and spent our first few hours here eating lunch and wandering through the beautiful streets around our hotel.  A couple hours later we met with a tour guide to go see the sights of Florence. When we walked past the cathedral and Nicholas saw people at the top of the dome, he immediately wanted to climb to where they were, but we had a different museum on the agenda and had to put the climbing off until later (which frankly I did not mind, because the idea of climbing 463 steps while being crammed between two walls less than two feet apart and who knows how many people on either side of you and the thought of the lack of windows present in a roof did not sound at all appealing to me).  So, we continued on and before I knew it, we were standing right in front of Michelangelo's David. It is so much bigger than I imagined and I loved learning from Joan (our tour guide) how he actually went about sculpting a piece.  

After leaving the museum, we passed the cathedral again and lucky for us, we had extra time and were able to climb the Duomo after all. . .  Actually the climb turned out to be not at all as bad as I had expected it to be.  In fact, I am actually very happy that we ended up doing it--463 stairs is not as hard as it sounds, very few people were climbing with us so we were not trapped between strangers, and there were several windows so I did not feel like we were climbing through a dark and isolated cave.  That evening we enjoyed another delicious pasta dinner and gelato in the plazza.  I could do this same thing every night and not get tired of the pasta, want even more gelato, and still enjoy sitting in the piazzas and people watching.

Yesterday was another museum day.  We started off by walking through a church with the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machievelli, Dante, and Leonardo da Vinci.  Afterwards, we headed over to an old mansion in the middle of one of the piazzas to tour the art gallery there and a secret corridor built so the royal family could cross the city without coming in contact with the "regular people."  The corridor was filled with self portraits of famous artists collected for centuries up until modern day, which was actually very cool.  Nicholas commented, "I really liked that!  Except for when we stopped to talk about a picture."  And we did stop very, very often...by the end of the tour we figured out that we had been standing and walking for the last six hours and were all extremely ready to head back to the hotel and sit.  Sitting was nice.

I loved Florence and am sad to be on a train leaving it, but I am getting excited to visit the rest of the cities.  "It's so cool that when we get there instead of a driver we'll have a boater!!" -Nicholas.  Venice, here we come!

Nicholas finally got his piggy back ride. 

Walking up to the Duomo.

Just to give you an idea of how tight the space was.

The beautiful Firenze.

An entire shop dedicated to Pinocchio . {Nicholas}

{Christopher}

{Me...}

The mime was probably my favorite part of the tour.

Our hotel view. 

Chalk painting.

Notice that this car is the same length as the Vespa next to it.  This is not uncommon here in Italy.

The view from the secret corridor.

Rome

Buongiorno!

Rome is amazing. They have the most delicious pizza, fresh pasta, and of course gelato everywhere. And on every corner you turn, you find some sort of 6th century ruin or cobblestone streets or old piazza or Egyptian obelisk.  Literally, we just wandered through the neighborhoods and ended up staring at the Pantheon!

We left our house last Monday at 9:00 am and travelled all day long--although, I didn't mind that first class upgrade :).  By the time we made it through customs it was 9:00 am on Tuesday (the time change did have a part to do with that...the flight wasn't that long).  We dropped our luggage off at the hotel and at 2:00 am Utah time, we were off touring the city.  We toured the Colosseum, saw an overlook of the Forum, toured San Clemente's Basilica, and looked through the Knights of Malta's keyhole.  It was all we could do to keep our eyes open through lunch and afterwards promptly went back to the hotel and took a nap.  That evening we walked and sat on the Spanish Steps, made wishes at the Trevi Fountain, ate gelato by the Pantheon, and stopped in one of the piazzas where the boys had fun bargaining for little toys while waiting for dinner.

I think Day 2 in Rome was my favorite.  In the morning we toured the Borghese museum, which is pretty much an old mansion but each wall is intricately painted, all the ceilings are decorated, and Bernini's sculptures are displayed all throughout the house.  We spent that afternoon in a park, much like Central Park in New York, riding around on surreys, learning to ride a Segway, and eating sandwiches from the sandwich cart.  After our nap (we are still adjusting to the 8 hour time change), six Vespas picked us up from our hotel and took us on a tour around Rome.  It was such a fun way to see the city at night! ...although, I will admit, it was a little bit sketchy at times when we weaved through traffic and between cars--those times I just closed my eyes and hoped not to die...  After the tour we ate a late dinner right on the street.  Most of the restaurants here have indoor seating as well as a few outdoor tables.  But the outside seats aren't closed off like they are in the U.S.  They are in a line along the street, so there may be a couple you don't know eating less than a foot away from you while people are walking and driving right behind you.  It's different, but I actually kind of like it!

Yesterday, we shopped in the morning and toured in the afternoon.  This time we got to tour Vatican City.  The city (country?) is beautiful, filled with galleries and old buildings and churches.  The Sistine Chapel is stunning--it is so cool to have learned about all these places and people, like Michelangelo, for years and then to finally be able to see it in real life--and St. Peter's Basilica is huge!  We may not have seen the pope, but we did see rooms lined in gold and art older than I can even imagine.  After the Vatican, our tour guide took us to the best gelato store in town...150 different flavors!  That was an obvious highlight of mine.  After dinner we sat on the Spanish Steps to people watch, to watch Christopher and Nicholas have fun bargaining for a "super fancy" laser pointer, and to just enjoy our last evening in Rome.

Right now I am on a train on my way to Florence, or Firenze as they say in Italian.  Already on the way I have seen two castles and my ears have popped about 100 times.   Ciao for now!

Inside the Colosseum.

Staying awake was hard that first day...

Spanish Steps.

One of the many piazzas.

This one's for my friends... Peace and love from Rome.

Marty driving the surrey.  What a stud.

Learning to ride the Segway...  "Oh man, Luke's gonna be so jealous that I rode a Segway before him!!" -Nicholas

These people are all over Rome.  It looks really cool!  But we have figured out the trick to it ;)

Repp'n it in Rome...

I've taught Nicholas well.

Vespa tour.

Mom and Dad at the Trevi Fountain.

I love this cute little car!  All the cars here are tiny...notice the tiny garbage
truck in the back of this picture of a tiny car.

Welcome to the Vatican.

We got to get a picture with the Swiss Guard. 

Nicholas was super excited about touching the top of St. Peter's Basilica.

Take me back to the store with 150 flavors...

One of my favorite things to do was just strolling down the cute streets of Rome!