Italy/Greece: Day3 - Rome

Grab a full cup of coffee... This is a monster post for a marathon day! I have lots of pictures to share. We were up at 6am via wake-up call, and didn't get back to the hotel until after 10pm!

Our first stop was the Vatican. Where Cheryl fell out of the bus... don't worry, she wasn't hurt; just embarrassed. Look at all the people here!

Our local guide told us that some people stand in line for hours to get in, but thanks to our "front of the line" pass we walked right in. Our first destination was the Famous Sistine Chapel. We walked through long halls full of statues (yes, there are statues around all those people).

And walked down another long hall full of tapestries. But the highlight of this hall for me was the ceiling. It looked like a bunch of framed pictures all lined up. Each picture was amazing, and they went on and on and on...

There is a dress code for the Vatican, and in fact for all the churches in Italy... shoulders and knees must be covered. Our host, Fabrizio, reminded us over and over about it, so we were all dressed appropriately for the day. No photos were allowed in the Sistine Chapel. So here is my token photo:

We were not allowed to speak in the chapel (BTW, "shhh..." means be quiet in Italian too). You saw all those people in the hall? All those people were crammed in a 134'x44' room all looking up. It was packed! Remember the radios I told you about yesterday? They came in handy today. Our guide was whispering in her microphone, telling us about Michelangelo and the story depicted in each panel of the ceiling. Then she directed us all (scattered throughout the crowd) to the exit door when it was time to leave.

Our next stop was my favorite: St. Peter's Basilica!!! This place was so amazing! I could have spent the entire day in just that one building. I have lots of photos to share... I couldn't pick just one:



The big difference between the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica is that the Sistine Chapel is all paintings where St. Peter's Basilica has NO PAINTINGS. Look at this below... do you think that is a painting?

NO! It's a mosaic!

It's hard to tell even in person that this is not a painting. We had to zoom in with a camera to see the tiles. They were so small! There were lots and lots of these mosaics in the Basilica along with fantastic sculptures.

Here we are set loose for lunch in St. Peter's square. See that building on the right? That's the Pope's residence. Since the shutters are closed, that means that he's not there. He's at his summer residence.

Here's Chris having a drink at the Vatican. All the water in the Italian fountains is potable. The water from this fountain was cold and delicious!

Yeah, that is just our MORNING! Now it's off for a bus tour of the city and a stop at the FABULOUS Roman Colosseum! Look at all the people!!! Again, it's another place where people stand in line for hours to get inside, and we walked right in with our front of the line pass!

Here we are! Just to prove we were there!

And here is the inside of the Colosseum without us blocking the view, lol! To get an idea of how HUGE this place is, look how small the people are! This place was truly MAGNIFICENT! It could seat 90,000 people! The Home Depot Center only seats 27,000.

Do you see the labyrinth of rooms in the middle? Those are the catacombs under the Colosseum. We took an underground tour of the catacombs. Unfortunately, they didn't allow pictures. Here is Cheryl waiting patiently with her radio on, like a good little tourist:

The catacombs were okay... a pretty cool twist of tunnels with burial chambers and nitches (all were empty). If you have a chance to go to the catacombs or spend more time in the Coloseum area, I'd recommend the Coloseum.

You think we are done for the day? We are not done! Some of the group went on a trip to an Italian Opera. We decided to skip that one and head out on our own. We took the metro (yes, in Italian) to the Treve Fountain.


... And like everywhere else we've been, it's mobbed with people!

Cheryl and I managed to get close enough to toss a coin in the fountain! They say that means we will return to Rome someday... After that, we just wandered around the Baroque district...





We must have pizza! So we wandered until we found a sidewalk cafe that 1) spoke English and 2) served pizza. Our waiter was quite a character!

After our adventuring, we headed back to the metro. As we were buying tickets a man ran by us and yelled something at us in Italian. We shrugged and went back to buying tickets. We got to the platform just as the train was arriving and jumped on. We figured the man was telling us that the train was coming. Anyway, Rome is so beautiful at night... we had the urge to see St. Peter's Square lit up in the dark, so got off at the Vatican stop (two stops before our hotel). It was BEAUTIFUL and so QUIET after the crowds of the morning:

We were tired from all the walking and were ready to go back to the hotel and get some sleep. We walked back to the metro station, and guess what? THE METRO WAS CLOSED! The man was telling us that the LAST TRAIN was coming! There was no traffic around the metro and the streets were quiet. Jim thought that maybe we could find a taxi if we walked back to the Vatican.

We did find a taxi and the taxi driver spoke ENGLISH! Thank goodness, since we had no idea where the hotel was! Jim gave him the name of the hotel, but (since it's new) the taxi driver never heard of it. He called the hotel name into his dispatcher and got the address! WhooHoo! We made it through our first European adventure!

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That's it for our first full day in Europe... if you made it this far, thanks for sticking through it. But I'm not done, because I want to end with the STORY OF THE DAY:

Chris's college registration appointment was 4:45pm on Monday, which is 1:45am TODAY! Cheryl and Chris got up at 1am to register using Jim's iPad and the hotel wifi, but the registration didn't go through. Chris needed to complete an academic advisement online before he could register. He tried to fill it out, but it wouldn't work on the iPad (no flash). So at 1:45am, they were in the lobby using the hotel computer. They said that it was a good thing that the night desk guy spoke English. They had to buy time on the computer, 3 euro, and ask the guy how to type the "@" on the Italian keyboard... That was quite an adventure for them. I'm so proud of them for taking care of it all... Chris is registered for Saddleback for FALL 2011! YAHOO!

Italy/Greece - Day 1 (leave USA) - Day 2 (arrive Rome)

Yep, 25 hours of travel from our front door to the hotel in Rome! I was working on Friday, so I didn't finish packing until after midnight. I got about 3 hours of sleep before the van picked us up for the airport. We flew USAir to Charlotte. Bare-bones. No food, no movies, no music. But surprise! Our aircraft from Charlotte to Rome was running the P@ssport IFE system! I had never seen a system that I programmed in service before... I was so excited! It's a 10 year old system, but it still works GREAT! We had the choice of about 15 movies and lots of music. BUT that airplane was soooo UNcomfortable! We hardly got any sleep. When we got to Rome, I asked Cheryl, "How to you feel?" She relied, "Like crap. How about you?"

Here we are waiting for the bus with our "one suitcase and one carry-on per person."

After we made it to the hotel, we had time for a shower and and 1 hour nap before meeting the rest of our group. There were 46 people in our group... from Australia, Canada, USA, and New Zealand (most from Australia, and only 4 from New Zealand). Our "host" was named Fabrizio. He makes all our arrangements and makes sure that everyone gets where we are going.

After we met our fellow travellers, we all piled in the bus. (Believe it or not, we have a bus seating chart. Fabrizio rotates our seat position every day.) We headed out to the Piazza Navona. What a perfect place to start the trip! It looks exactly how I expected Italy to look... large plaza lined with sidewalk cafes, quaint buildings, churches, fountains, statuary, and street artists!

Oh, I want to point out that church on the left... that's where Cheryl fell down the stairs. Don't worry she wasn't hurt. She just left her butt print in Rome.


What else do I associate with Italy? Ancient ruins... we saw those too! In fact Rome is a city build on top of a city. One bank we saw had an inside balcony over their open floor that looked down into the ruins under the building. Here is one of the most famous ruins in Rome, the Pantheon. It's the only Roman building still intact.

We had dinner in quaint little cafe called the "Opera Cafe." It was on a tiny side street (or is it an ally?). There were two bottles of wine on the table (white and red) and the food kept coming and coming and coming. We were stuffed! There was a fabulous opera singer and accordionist to entertain us. Oh, and also there was Jim dancing with the opera singer, hahaha! After dinner we went for a walk along the Tiber River to the Castle of Saint Angelo.

We got back to the hotel at 11pm for bed... there's a 6am wake up call tomorrow!

Funny of the day: The hotel we stayed at in Rome was a newer hotel (The Executive Style Hotel). To turn on the lights in the room (or use any electric outlet), you need to put your key in a slot by the door. Cheryl and Chris had their own room, and when they went to bed, Cheryl just pulled the key out of the slot to turn off the lights. Well, Chris had to use the bathroom during the night, and he couldn't find the key! I asked, "What did you do?" He said, "If you sit down, you can't miss."

We're Back...

WE HAD A SUPER-SPECTACULAR time!!! Even after living out of a suitcase for 16-days, I wasn't ready to come home yet!

I have over 1000 photos from Chris's, Cheryl's and my cameras. Don't worry, I won't share them all here, lol! I still need to sort through them all and pick out the best ones... it's tough when I'm at work during the day, and can't stay awake past 7pm! Yeah, jet lag is making my week difficult. I've also caught a cold...

The rumor is that someone started the trip with a cold, and as our host said... "when someone gets a cold on the bus, in 5 days EVERYONE will have a cold." Well, it wasn't 5-days, but it did spread to almost everybody. Cheryl was one of the first to succumb... she got the cold in Florence. After Cheryl got sick, Jim, Chris and I ran straight to the nearest Italian Farmacia and got some cold medicine for Cheryl and Zinc for the rest of us (BTW, "zinc" is still "zinc" in Italian). Chris got sick after that, but since he was taking zinc, he didn't get anywhere near as bad as Cheryl did. But, a cold wasn't enough to keep Cheryl down... she stayed on the road touring with the rest of us.

By the time we got to Greece, our host, Fabrizio, made an observation... He said, "By now most people would be comparing souvenir purchases and passing biscuits and crackers to each other across the aisle of the bus. This group is comparing what they bought from the pharmacy and passing cough drops." Oh, and BTW, Fabrizio got the cold too (but not until we got to Greece). He was supposed to go on vacation right when he finished our tour. I'm sure he's thanking us for that... NOT!

I'll start posting pictures of our trip soon. I just need to make it through this week. They saved all my work for me (nice of them isn't it?). Now I have two releases to do that were due last week. UGH! I want to be home in bed... at least I didn't come down with the cold until I got home. Jim is the only one that didn't get sick. After all of his years working with the public, he's pretty much immune to everything.

I ran out of pages in my journal, and had to journal my last day on a separate piece of paper. I need to add more pages and rewrite my last day. I also have some pictures that I want to add.

Stay tuned for photos and commentary!

I'll leave you with a piece of wisdom from Chris on How to Pack:
"Put on your two cleanest things and throw everything else in the suitcase."

What's for dinner?

Cheryl had to work tonight so Chris made dinner. Tonight we had: Stuffed Red Peppers with Chicken and Orzo; 4 ingredients, prep time 5 minutes, cook time 5 minutes. So 10 minutes to the table and just a little longer into our tummies! YUM!

My Travel Journal

I made myself a journal for our trip to Italy and Greece. This is one trip that I don't want to forget!

Is this the last family vacation? Maybe... maybe not... This page is about that and how we decided where to go.

These pages aren't finished yet and won't be until we go. The left page is about what we are taking. The right page is going to be a running schedule of the day, in TWEET format, hahaha!

Last Saturday, we were at the LA Colosseum watching Galaxy lose badly to Real Madrid. It was fun thinking that in just a week we would be at the Colosseum in ROME!

Now we are busy busy busy getting ready for the trip!
FOUR MORE DAYS until we leave!!!

Another celebrity look alike?

We have another celebrity look alike in the family... or so some people say... lol! What do you think?

It's a doggie beach day!

It's a June Gloom morning, but that didn't stop the crew from heading out to Doggie Beach.

This is Jena's first trip to the beach... there are so many new smells...

... holes to dig...

... and waves to chase...

Jena loves doggie beach!

Don't you Jena?

What's for Dinner?

Cheryl had help tonight with dinner! Yep, invite the cousin over to spend the night and put her to work, hehehe...

Tonight, the girls made... Greek Pasta Salad with prosciutto, artichokes and feta cheese. YUM!

... AND for the main course... Olive, Red Pepper, and Arugula Pizza on whole wheat pizza crust. This was delicious!!!

Now the kiddos have settled down for a Red Box movie marathon. They got Green Hornet, Beastly and Unstoppable. That should keep them busy for a while {grin}...

Is this ART?

Cheryl and I took an Art Journal class last week at the Carson Stamp show. It's kind of new, kind of different, and a lot of FUN! This first one is Cheryl's creation:

I'll have to admit that I didn't think that I would like it that much. Do the pictures give you the creeps? BUT, after working with them, they have a charm and a mood... which leads to a message (hence the journal part).

The whole process was rewarding. And even though you won't find my girl hanging on the wall at my house, she still has a place in my heart (and on the first page of my art journal).

Celebrity Look-alike?

My friend from work brought her 14yr daughter to the 4th of July race. She thinks that Chris is so CUTE!... and that he looks like T.L. (I'm not going to type his name because I'm afraid my blog will get found by the crazies).

Chris thinks that she's delusional. But, what do you think? Maybe a little around the nose? lol!

Summer Card Camp - week 2

It's week 2 of summer card making class! And here is the color combo for the week:

It's hard to see the glaze in the flat light, but it's there... I love the extra shine it adds to the card.