Italy Recap

In front of the Pantheon in Rome

Tiny car in Roman

Well, I've finally gotten around to writing about Italy.  It was really hard to do anything in Italy because the internet was slow!

Daniel posing for a photo in restaurant

First, we visited Pisa and enjoyed seeing the Leaning Tower along with the other sights around it.  [It is the bell tower for the cathedral. Together with the cemetery they form a UNESCO world heritage architectural ensemble; they were famous together until the tower started leaning and then it became more widely famous.   By the way, we found Fibonacci (Leonardo of Pisa) buried here! ~David]  Our one memorable experience from there was eating dinner the first night.  After checking in at our hotel, we asked for some recommendations for dinner.  The place we ended up eating had great food and they were so happy when Daniel ordered a second plate of spaghetti carbonara (his new favorite pasta dish).  Erin and David ordered mixed fish platters and Erin was quite surprised when her fish came with its head still attached!  She wasn't quite sure what to do with that, but she figured it out!  She also got some clams and abalone in their shells and both she and David got to play with prying them open and getting the meat out.

Carrara Marble - on the way to Pisa

Leaning tower of Pisa

After one short day in Pisa, we headed on down to Rome.  Our train was late, so we missed the connecting train out to the station by our hotel.  We weren't sure whether to wait another hour for the next train because it was getting dark and our hotel looked to be in sort of a ghetto area outside of the main part of town.  So, we decided to take a taxi.  I think that may have been one of the highlights of David's and Daniel's trip to Rome.  Our taxi driver drove really fast and most of it in the tram lane weaving around all of the slow-moving trams.  Rome doesn't seem to have much in the way of lanes for traffic, especially when it comes to near the city walls.  People just spread out and go through the ways and then try to narrow down to about 1.5 lanes of traffic again (I was never clear if it was supposed to be one or two lanes through that section).

Roman Traffic - no "lanes" in sight!

One of my favorite statues!

The next day we were going to take the train into town but the hotel clerk thought we were crazy and told us to take the tram instead.  So we hiked much father to the tram stop and got on board.  Then we couldn't figure out how to buy a ticket, so we just sat like we knew what were doing and tried to avoid getting a 50 Euro ticket for riding the tram without a ticket (it was a little scary when a police officer got on board and sat next to Erin).  But, we successfully made it to the termini station and then saw the major sites of Rome (Colosseum, Forum, and Pantheon).  We walked to the Trevi Fountain only to find that it was under construction and not working.  Daniel then began to point out all the many fountains in Rome that were not working and was very surprised when we actually found one.  We were glad, though, that there were numerous places on the street to fill up our water bottles because we drank a ton of water (it was about 90 degrees with 75% humidity).  Daniel was quite happy in Rome to find that the Holiday Inn served scrambled eggs (after many days of having bread and juice for breakfast) and he filled up on as many eggs as he could eat.

In the hotel - taking a photo in the mirror in the elevator!

The next day we headed to the Vatican to see where the Pope lives. We decided that day to take the train since we knew the neighborhood better and weren't so worried about it.  Our train came on time, but then we sat in the middle of the tracks for 30 minutes for no apparent reason.  We still made the connecting train to the Vatican, but just barely!  We were going to get in line to see the Vatican museum, but it looked really long, so we decided to take a tour.  Our tour guide was hilarious!  He was a native Roman who had studied archeology in school, but had been a tour guide for 20 years.  He did a good job tying together why certain pieces in the museum were important and how they predicted the renaissance.  He had a funny accent and a great demeanor.  It was a great experience!!!  After going through the Sistine Chapel we headed into St. Peter's Basilica and went through that.  Later we headed back to the same restaurant as the night before for dinner (next to the Pantheon).  Their lasagna was the best I had ever eaten and wanted more.  So, I ordered two plates of it.  I couldn't eat it all, but David and Erin helped me finish it.  Daniel ordered a whole 12" pizza for himself AND a plate of spaghetti carbonara.  They thought that was funny at the restaurant!

The next day we headed to Florence [Firenze].  We had a 9:50 am reservation for the fast train, so we thought if we left at 9:05 on the direct train into Rome for the 12 minute journey that we would have plenty of time.  Well, that train was very late!  We almost left after waiting 20 minutes past the time it was supposed to come (and all of the sign boards were broken at out ghetto station so there were no updates about when the train was supposed to come).  But, as we were leaving a nice lady came up to us and said the train should be coming in 4 minutes (she had a real-time app on her phone that let her know where the train was).  We got there just in time for our connection and headed to Florence.

Florence Cathedral

Florence was wonderful.  I think it was the favorite Italian city for most, if not all, of us.  Our hotel was terrible (no air conditioning and terrible beds), but once we left the hotel it was nice!  We decided to get the Firenze card to help us make the most of our time (so we didn't have to wait in lines).  We got to see the Duomo (cathedral), Uffizi Gallery, Accademia, Ponte Vecchio, Pitti Palace, and others.  We were going to go to the Galileo Museum, but it was closed because of a power failure.  We did have fun buying leather belts there and Daniel got a new leather wallet.  As usual we got a lot of gelato to help cool us down.  We did get one unexpected thunderstorm, but it passed by right before we had to catch the train to leave Florence.

Florence tables made out of pieces of stone - they are beautiful!

Early clarinets and wind instruments

Finally we got Venice.  After arriving via train, we had to take the water taxi around to where our hotel was.  When we got to the hotel, there was a sign saying that the reception person would be back in 5 minutes.  Turns out it was 5 Italian minutes (around 15 minutes).  But, the receptionist was very nice and gave us lots of suggestions of what we should do.  We went to St. Mark's cathedral to see it and then went out to Murano to see them making glass.  After buying some new necklaces for me and a small ring for Erin, we headed back to the mainland to wander around Venice for the rest of the day.

In St. Mark's Square in Venice

Our train leaving Venice was a night train and it left at 1:30 am.  So, we had to figure out what to do to entertain ourselves until that time.  We sat outside the main train terminal for an hour playing TriBond and then moved inside to eat at McDonald's and stay until they closed at 10:45.  We played Pinochle (we are getting good at that game -- except that I seem to be the jinx and whatever team I am on loses).  Then we moved out to the platform itself and continued playing a long time.  A kid from Mexico finally came up to us to talk to us for a while.  He was headed to teach English and History in Romania and was traveling around for a week until the program started.  He was really nice.  We finally got onto the train (it was 25 minutes late) but had a hard time sleeping.  We only got 5 hours of sleep (not even that much for me because I was having hard time falling asleep with that much commotion).  Then we arrived in Austria 50 minutes late and missed our connection to the local train.  But, we caught another one and were so happy to be out of Italy and back to the land where the trains were nice, clean and run on time.

Roman Forum