An amazing adventure with spontaneity and awesomeness!
Bob and I left the kids in Grandma's capable and indulging hands...
and traveled a long day to get to Rome.
We found our way to the hotel after circling inside the airport and metro stations forever...
Tuesday: St. Peter's Basilica and walked all over with Daryth as our "tour Rome by night" guide.
She is so much fun to be with
and she led us through the Italian backstreets and we dined at a delicious Italian restaurant!
She had to work all week,
so we visited with her in the evenings and on the weekend.
I had a lot of fun taking pictures, until I realized that Bob is the better photographer...
and we were pretty much taking pictures of the same things.
So I enjoyed the views and sights,
and he captured the best on his iphone.
(We accidentally left our camera battery and charger charging on our kitchen counter!)
A lot of his favorite pictures can be seen on his Facebook page...
Wednesday: Florence! I felt compelled to see Michelangelo's David and when Bob saw it, he agreed it was worth the trip. We also walked through the Uffizi museum and jet lag hit about half way through that one! Whew! Unfortunately museum rules dictate we couldn't take pictures...
so we have to just remember the amazingness with our minds and hearts.
We revived ourselves with some highly recommended gelato.
Thursday: Spontaneous trip to Venice! When in the world would we be close enough to go to Venice without spending airfare money all over again? So we went. We met up with the Briskin Family Wednesday evening for a night walk through Venice and dinner. We had a last minute mystery hotel that turned out wonderfully! Thursday morning we had no agenda but just walked around and enjoyed the thrill of discovery. We met a neat gentleman whose artwork was modifying architecture and art into 3-D interactive puzzles. (I even gave him a pass-along card and we talked a little bit about how life is like puzzles and we need God's light to understand and appreciate life!) We found St. Mark's Basilica and also a Vivaldi museum. We took a super short and cheap gondola taxi ride across the Grand Canal and then found our train back to Rome.
Friday: Colosseum, Roman Forum, Palantine Hill, Pantheon,
and more walking through the streets with Daryth.
Wow.
Saturday: Daryth lead us through the Borghese Gallery, a picnic on a field of daisies, Trevi Fountain,
and the Vatican Museum (Sistine Chapel at the end)! Again, pictures are frowned upon in these museums, so we have to make do with our memories. Bernini's statues, especially of Apollo and Daphne were beautiful. The Sistine Chapel was an incredible experience for me.
I've waited a long time to see that one in real life, and I was not disappointed!
Sunday: Daryth phone guided us to the nearest ward building (a metro trip away) and we were pleased to find English translators were available! We also took a metro trip and a bus to see the unfinished Rome LDS temple. It will be beautiful! Daryth graded papers and caught up on some school work but we gathered together at the end of the day with dinner at Daryth's apartment. She made a delicious homemade lasagna... and we played cards and talked.
Monday: I packed and journaled our experiences as Bob rested. He was unfortunate enough to be infected by a restaurant employee coughing on her hands before giving him his lunch on Wednesday, so he suffered through a horrible sore throat, coughing, fevers, and general exhaustion for the majority of our trip. He kept touring, walking, and being enthusiastic though, so he is a trooper! He is still recovering... a week and a bit later!
We met Daryth for lunch at a sandwich shop, and I had sandwich envy.
I wish I had ordered her sandwich! She was kind enough to share...
We ate a picnic at the St. Angelo castle and enjoyed great conversation again.
We walked, shopped for souvenirs for the kids, found a different gelato shop with fun flavors
(white chocolate and basil! walnut! raspberry and sage!)
and ate dinner.
A definite highlight of the trip was delicious Italian food!
As a joke, I planted one of the kids' toys in Bob's luggage. Occasionally the Littlest Pet Shop chinchilla made his way out of the bag for a photo op. I thought it might keep the kids entertained as we showed them over 1000 pictures upon our return!
Tuesday was a long traveling day, we were either taxiing, flying, waiting, or driving home for 24 hours straight. It was wonderful to come back home and see the kids and get the hugs we missed all week! Thanks Grandma! Thanks Daryth!
We had a wonderful time.
Bob has asked me often which was my favorite part.
Every single day was different and beautiful,
and I cannot pick a favorite.
However, as I told Daryth, we came to visit HER,
and Rome was just a wonderful "extra".
