Back from Italy
[G2:828]
We've been back from Italy for 2 weeks now, so I thought I should make a little post about our trip. To summarize, we went from Venice, to Florence, to Rome and we had a blast.
Day 0
We woke up at about 7:00am and went out for breakfast before catching our first flight to Chicago. Once we got there, our plane was delayed on the runway due to rain. So we ended up leaving about an hour late, headed for Frankfurt. When we finally arrived in Frankfurt, we had to go through passport control and security, just to get back on our flight to Venice. Well this, along with the fact that we were already late, caused us to miss our flight to Venice.
Day 1
So we ended up in the Frankfurt airport for about 12 hours trying to get a flight to Venice. [G2:830] When we finally arrived in Venice, only half our luggage made it. So we got to our hotel about 10:00pm and only had half our luggage. This was our first day, but it gets better I promise.
Day 2
This was actually our first full day in Venice, and we spent most of it trying to find our way around. We didn't really do anything other than walk around and try and orientate ourselves. The street names and numbers don't have any logic to them, the only signs are pointing to a few landmarks. So to get around you find where you need to go in relation to the landmarks, and follow the signs towards the landmarks. [G2:1311]
Day 3
Early in the morning we went and had breakfast (espresso) and headed to Saint Marc's Basilica (San Marco). [G2:888] Since it had been rainy and it was high tide, most of the square was flooded, even inside the basilica. Afterwards, we hopped on the vaperetto (water bus) to the train station, and were on our way to Florence. We arrived at about 3:00pm, and after finding our hotel we were off. [G2:906] The first thing we saw was the Uffizi gallery. Then we walked around some more until sunset. We also had some gellato. Kessia loved it.
Day 4
We went up to a town called Fiesole, it's just about 10 minutes out of Florence, and took a walking tour through the park. We saw lots of amazing views of Tuscany. [G2:960] Next we toured a tuscan villa and had a very nice tuscan lunch. By the time we made it back we were pretty exhausted, so we ate dinner and then went back to the hotel.
Day 5
We went to the Academia and saw Michealangelo's David. It was pretty impressive. Afterwards, we took a hike up to Michealangelo's Square. It's basically the best view of the city. [G2:1047] The rest of the day we took it easy, walked around, did some shopping, ate some more gellato. [G2:1032]
Day 6
Right away in the morning we went to the Botacelli Museum and saw Donatello's David, which was being restored at the time. [G2:1077] Then we had some espresso from at Giovanni's Cafe. [G2:1098] We took our train to Rome and found our hotel. Out of all the places we stayed, this was the one that I'd recommend. It's actually a B&B called Verbania House. The lady that runs the place was really helpful and friendly. We took the subway to the Colosseum. [G2:1107] It was pretty cool being able to walk inside a structure that was built almost 2000 years ago, and is still standing.
Day 7
We got up early and made our way to the Vatican. We were going to try and make it to the museum first, but the line stretched all the way to St. Peter's Basilica, so we decided to go there first. [G2:1158] We climbed our way up 500+ stairs to the top of the dome. [G2:1194] It's a pretty amazing church inside too. I know what you're thinking, and no we didn't see the pope. We had a quick lunch and then headed back to the museum. The line wasn't bad this time, probably because it's the most expensive museum in all of Italy. They also make you walk about 10 miles through a whole bunch of art before you see what you came for, the Sistine Chapel.
Day 8
Our last day in Rome we started out by going to the Roman Forum (the town square of ancient Rome). We used Rick Steve's guidebook to walk through and read about the history of these ancient ruins. [G2:1245] That ended up being all we really did that day, we again just did some walking around and shopping before going to bed early for our flight.
Day 9
Our flight was so early we had to take a taxi to the airport, we woke up before the trains were running. This time we flew from Rome to Munich to Chicago to Minneapolis. Oh, and when we finally made it home (about 3:00pm), the other half of our luggage was missing.