Good Morning USM! I was on yesterday for an admin meeting when Ginger kindly reminded me I never shared about my trip to Italy like I said I would. So I promised her I would get a post up today. Although I do apologize for it being so much later after my trip and for the fact i am only sharing 17 out of my 1,346 pictures.
I went to Italy with my sister from May 10-May 22. We went to Rome, Florence, Tuscany, Venice, Murano, Burano, Vatican City, and Trastevere. Our trip started in Rome and ended in Venice.
The flight there was not something I enjoyed too much. 8 hours on a plane, is not much fun especailly when it is an overnight flight and the person next to you decides to put bags under your seat so you can't move your feet and the flight attendant says it is alright. We left NY at 4pm and got to Italy around 9am. I didn't sleep much so I was really tired for the first day in Rome, but that didn't stop us. We wandered our first day to Trevi Fountain which wasn't too far from our hotel. It was really crowded but we manage to get up close, sit around for a while and take some great pictures. See picture below.
Afterwards, we walked to the Spanish steps and wandered the streets for a while. Until about 4 in the afternoon when we decided we needed a nap before dinner. We did dinner at a place down the street from our hotel "Ristoraunte La Pentolaccia". This place had the most delicious food I had the entire trip. The veal was tender and delcious, and they had the best chocolate mosse I ever had (I went back there 3 different times while we were in Rome just to get the dessert lol)
On next day consisted of tickets we had booked ahead of time for the Colleseum and Roman Forum/Paletine Hill . To step foot in buildings/places so old was fantastic. I mean it is nothing like I imagined (I imagined the Colleseum to be much larger- although it is really large) . We wandered the Colleseum for about 3 hours, listening in on tours, taking pictures, and just enjoying the view of it all. We decided to wander the streets to get a better view. For me this meant climbing a random hill across the street from the Colleseum. As I am climbing the hill a man yelled down to me, I was like uh oh I am in trouble. No apparently he was just informing me that there were stairs that would take me to the same spot i was climbing to (oops. lol). He was dressed in Roman gladitaor outift and we did several awesoeme pictures with him. It cost a bit of money but in my opinion it was totally worth it for the once in a lifetime photo shoot. We wandered around the Roman Forum/Paletine Hill for a few hours, although honestly I was a bit dissapointed with the lack of structures you could explore up close or enter, but perhaps that's just me. We spent the remainder of the afternoon getting lost, like literally, it took us until about 6pm to find our way back to our hotel and we found little alleys/side streets we probably would have never seen otherwise. It was quite exciting.
Our next adventure was to Vatican City, a must see even if you are not religious. The paintings, sculptures, buildings, ect are all breath taking. Although you aren't allowed to take many pictures. I am not big into art but still was fascinated by much of what I saw. The work was so impressive. We saw the Sistine Chapel as well during out tour. Absolutely beautiful, I stared up at the ceiling for as long as they would allow, but a lot smaller than I had always imagined. The chapel the Sistine Chapel is in is no where near the size of a normal church of today (less than half the size). But wow did Michelangelo must have had a lot of patience and talent. I still wonder how none of the paint dripped onto the floor lol.
From the Vatican we wandered to Trastevere. A beautiful little town outside of Rome. The buildings were more quaint. We viisted a few churches, wandered the streets, and found this beautiful little side alley where we had dinner. Delicious Chicken and a nice glass of Chianti. It was defnitely worth the extra walking and getting lost trying to find this place. We wandered back to Rome after dinner and explored the Spanish Steps to see how they looked at night, I was hoping they would be nicely lit but they weren't really.
Our last full day in Rome we got on a bus and let it drop us off on the far side of the city. From there we walked around, got lost, explored, shopped, and eventually found our way back to the hotel.
The next day at 11am we headed to Florence. Wow I wish the trains in the U.S would upgrade to the train we got to take to Florence. Big seats, a table, and plenty of leg room. It was quite lovely. The train ride to Florence was about 2 and a half hours. So we got there in the early afternoon. We tried to find some food with no much luck, we tried some pizza there (pizza in Rome was the best for our trip) but I did not like it so I decided to wait until dinner to eat. We walked along the River Arno and made sure we knew where the different museums we were going to those next couple days were (Accademia Gallery, Pitti Palace, Galleria degli Uffizi). Here is a picture of the sunset on River Arno.
I will continue the rest of my adventure later today or tomorrow. Hope you like what I have shared so far.
Thanks for sharing with us, lady. Right on... 
27705 Category:(Interesting) Created:(7/10/2013 6:30:00 AM)