Julia's Thoughts: Venice to Rome

Venice was definitely everyone's favorite. Once we arrived in Venice by bus, we got out and took a boat taxi through the canals to the Piazza San Marco. I REALLY liked being there, because one of the movies I own, called "The Thief Lord," is based on a book set in Venice. The next time I watch the movie, I'm going to be all like, "I've been there!!" :)

We toured the cathedral and the Doge's Palace, both with an excellent tour guide. Everything was amazing and beautiful. Even the vendor carts on the streets were beautiful! A big seller on the carts were all kinds of intricate, beautiful masks. I wish that I had gotten a picture of them.

After our tour, we took a gondola ride. Mom posted a picture of our gondalier below, and we have named him Angelo (Kristina's name for him)/Gepetto (Mom and Me) because no one remembered to ask him his name. But he was very nice, super cute, and spoke English very well. Two generations of men in his family before him have been gondaliers. I thought that was neat. He didn't sing to us, but the mere existence of his presence kept our spirits up even when it started to rain.

After that, we wandered around for a while until we complained to Pierre about the cold. Then we took a boat taxi to our hotel, which was the most elegant one yet. Andrea, you would have loved the room that Kristina and I had- the decor was all the antigue-y, distressed kind of look that we both love.

Kristina and I collapsed onto our beds and set our alarm incorrectly so that we woke up to my mom knocking on the door to get us for dinner. Whoops. Dinner was vegetable soup or seafood with pasta, fried sole fillet, and a rectangle of ice cream with sprinkles. Then Nana and Papa and I walked around Venice at night for a while, and it was beautiful. I can't even begin to describe it, so I'll show you more pictures when I get home, or post them then.

I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow on my bed and slept hard until the next morning, when we had to get ready for breakfast and going to Murano island- actually just a section of Venice, which is made up of over a hundred little islands. BTW, the water didn't stink most of the time, which was nice.

Murano is home of the famous glass-blowers that have perfected the art of creation. We watched two demonstrations and then went crazy in the shopping area ( we got a 50% discount as part of a tour! Whoo hoo!). We then headed back to the main area for a little more shopping and then a bus ride back to Roma. :( Seven hours + in the bus, woot! Not.

It wasn't too bad, though. I read a lot. And napped. It was getting back into the hotel that was the problem. First we didn't have reservations, and then we didn't have rooms, and then the rude manager sent us over to their sister hotel about four doors down, at Hotel Impero, who was even more rude and insisted that we only had reservations and hadn't actually paid. He sucked, but we got rooms that were nicer and had better AC than the Flower Garden. We had dinner next door. Mom had sea bass, I had gnocchi with tomato sauce, Kristina had greek salad, Nana had some kind of seafood pasta dish, and I can't remember what Papa had. Sorry! Tiramisu and some unnamed chocolate caramel type of thing for dessert.

The next morning we went on the Vatican tour, which was neat. The best part was the Sistine Chapel, and seeing the Pope. The chapel was spectcular!!!!!! Then Nana and Papa got left behind at St. Peter's Square when the tour bus refused to wait for them, and they had to take a taxi back to the hotel. Mom, Kristina and I managed to get the bus. That afternoon, we went on the Imperial Rome tour, which took us to the Colosseum, The Palatino, and other places I can't remember because we really just walked by them. The main two were fantastic, and our tour guide taught us a few things that we didn't know.

We had dinner nearby our hotel. Nana had shrimp salad, Papa had pizza with salami and ham, I had four cheese pizza, Mom had clam and mushroom pasta, and Kristina had....a burger and fries. It was the smallest burgerthat was not meant to be a miniburger on the face of the planet, with a bun about seven times too big for it. It was pretty funny. Tiramisu and apple pie (italian style) for dessert.

Today was the Ancient Rome tour. We went to the Spanish steps, the Pantheon, and the Trevi fountain (which rocked). It was only when we were about to go St. Peter's when our guide said, "If you already went to St. Peter's and don't want to go again, this is where we say goodbye." We all look around. We're in the middle of a plaza with a couple fountains and living statue people. No bus to take us back to the hotel in sight. When we ask what we do, we're told that unless we paid for lunch and the afternoon tour as well, all of the the people who just took the morning tour had to find their own way home because a bus had broken down and they were short. We were ticked off. They hadn't told us anything until after the tour! All of the other tours had complete transportation.

So we had to take the public bus to the terminal, which was thankfully just a few blocks from our hotel. We stopped and had lunch on our walk back (me= margherita pizza, mom=vegetable pizza, Nana= tripe *GROSS*, Papa= salmon, and Kristina=spinach and cheese ravioli with mushrooms). Now Kristina, Nana and Papa are resting and Mom and I are going shopping. Ciao!

Venice, Paduoa, Rome 6/22-25 Photo's

Julia's Thoughts 6/19-6/22

Julia’s Location: On Bus to Venice

My flight sucked. The last five hours of the transatlantic flight had me wanting to die- my stomach hurt so BAD. It was better in Frankfurt (though I thought the airport was slightly gross) but on the plane to Italy my stomachache was back and worse. The food on the plane was good, though. They even gave me my first Mars Bar!! It’s like a cross between a Milky Way and a Three Musketeers. The Leonardo Da Vinci Airport was a little bit gross too, but but my perception might have been altered by the fact that everything seemed to be swaying and I was dizzy from the change of being on a plane with horrible turbulence and then on flat, stable ground. In Roma, it was very humid and our shuttle had no air conditioning. There were two other people on the shuttle, who were from Indiana. They were such BABIES about the heat, and kept being super rude to the driver and complaining and saying how much better Amsterdam was than Roma and I just thought, “Then why didn’t you do us all a favor and STAY THERE?” Anyway. At the hotel, Kristina and I passed out on our (surprisingly) very comfortable beds for as long as we could until we went to dinner on a rooftop garden restaurant. It was good, but unfortunately I was still feeling my phantom plane symptoms (which, unfortunately, would continue through my Saturday). I had risotto with mushrooms, Nana had a scallop dish, Papa had lamb, Kristina had tortellini, and Mom had pasta carbonara. There was limoncello and biscotti and other pastries on the house. I had tiramisu for dessert, Papa ice cream with strawberries, and Mom this anise-flavored drink.
Saturday we left on a tour bus. It had excellent AC and nice seats, and the bus was not very full. Our tour guide is Pierre (but he is NOT french) and he hates “inhumane Tuscans” (which is what he called them when they wouldn’t let me use the bathroom. We drove three hours to our first stop, a town called Assisi. We walked for a very long time,enjoying the architecture of the churches, which included St. Clare’s and St. Francis’s. We even got to see St. Francis’s tomb underneath the church proper! Then we continued on to a town called Siena, where our tour was interrupted by an hour’s worth of torrential downpouring, during which we were stranded in a museum giftshop (where the “inhumane tuscans” refused me the use of the bathroom for the first 45 minutes, and then changed their minds). We didn’t have much time left when the rain stopped, but we got to have our first taste of REAL gelato. I had white chocolate- cioccolato bianco- and Mom had chocolate, Kristina melon, Nana amaretto, and Papa strawbery and pistachio. It was YUMMY!! Kristina got a blue “Italia” sweatshirt at a shop nearby. We finally headed to Florence, known as Firenze. We had a bigger room, which was nice, and all of the towns in Tuscany (including Florence) were not humid like Roma, so we could leave the door that led to our balcony open and it would let in cool, dry air. All of our tour group ate dinner at a ristorante nearby, and a nice guy named Brian who’s a Nebraskan art major with a hairdresser girlfriend sat with us to complete our table of six. We had pasta in a cream sauce with mushrooms, a meat dish with french fries (I had a mild cheese similar to mozzarella with fresh roma tomatoes), salad, and a dessert similar to flan (but MY flan is much better J). Then we all went back to the hotel and passed out until breakfast.

Breakfast was quick and the coffee and hot chocolate delish. We drove further into Florence, got out, walked in the rain for a little while, and went into the Academia Museum. We saw Michelangelo’s David!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was AMAZING. There was a lot of other beautiful artwork, and we had a great guide that took us through Academia and into the city and told us about architecture, art, and culture. We saw Michelangelo’s house, the river Arno, the old Medici bridge, and wen t into fancy shmancy gold and leather factories that made me wish I wasn’t a vegetarian and could justify getting a really expensive leather coat that felt like butter. Nana, Papa, and Kristina went to Mass, while Mom and I roamed around. I bought some souvenirs for my friends and Mom bought a cute red leather purse from a street vendor. The two of us got lunch at a cute café called Oibo- margherita pizza for me, prosciutto pizza for her, and water, cappucino, and a macchiato for us to share. That took up all of the time until one o’clock while we left some of our group to shop in Florence while the five of us, Brian, a Spanish-speaking couple, and an Indian-American family of five with the two most irritating kids EVER took the optional tour to Pisa. That’s right- the home of the leaning tower. It was about an hour and fifteen minutes drive each way. Pisa was neat, and we had another good guide. The original village was outlined by a huge ancient wall that contained the cathedral, the cemetary, the hospital-turned-museum, a baptistry, and, of course, the leaning tower. All except the hospital were made out of the same beautiful marble, and all were massive and lovely. Everything b egan construction in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. We took a tour of the cathedral, and the best part for me was when we saw the body of a really old guy who was important to the church (but I can’t remember his name)in a glass coffin. Then we ate some more gelato (I had chocolate, Nana and Kristina lemon, and Papa strawberry) with a plate of cheeses and bread. After that, we walked and looked at the street vendors, but they were boring and all selling the same things. At five, we got on the bus and rode back to the hotel in Florence, where we napped for 45 minutes before going to dinner. The first course was a plate of rigatoni in a meat sauce and penne in a butter sauce with veggies, the second course either chicken and salad or salmon and salad (which I gave to Papa- Happy Father’s day! J), and dessert was panna cotta, a bland type of custard topped with a strawberry sauce. You might see a pattern, but then we went back to the hotel and passed out until our 6:15 wakeup call.

Breakfast today (our Monday) was fast and yummy like yesterday (with things like croissants, fruits, real yogurt, etc.) and now we are on our way Venice as I am typing this up. I am finished for now, so I am going to nap. Ciao!

June 21, 2009 Florence & Pisa

June 20, 2009 Assisi, Siena, & Florence

Words will follow tomorrow. Too tired to come up with anything coherent tonight! R

June 19, 2009 We Made It!

In the end it was as wonderful as I thought it would be! (For the first day!)

As many of you know Ron, Julia, my mother, and Kristina traveled separately from myself to arrive in Rome. We all had issues with the shuttle to our hotel but were smart enough to navigate all of those issues. I arrived about 3 hours earlier than the other traveling party. I was the last to be dropped off my shuttle group and the shuttle driver treated me to another 45 min of private drive-bys of the local landmarks. Just the Coliseum etc.... I have attached some pictures. Romero the shuttle driver took quite a liking to me and left me with his # even though he spoke not a bit of English and had to be 75. What is with you mature men? After Romero dropped me at the Flower Garden I refreshed myself and headed out to explore and find lunch, I rested and awoke to the melodic tap of my mother at the door. Oh how I have missed her! Our entire party met in the lobby for to head for an outstanding rooftop dinner including Limoncello and Sambuca for dessert. Reminds me of other adventures!

Julie, some othe descriptions you gave me are so accurate!

Rachelle

6/18/09 SMF No Visa Card!

Ahhhhhhh! I left my Visa card in the hotel room and I am already through security! Good thing for Mastercard! Rachelle

Suprise Italian Potluck!

The ladies I work with are the best! They threw me a surprise Italian themed potluck on Monday in celebration of my upcoming adventure.

Gratzie!

June 11, 2009 Location: Still in Redding

Hey! I just packed. Well, kind of. I put almost all of my clothes for the trip inside of my suitcase, and made a list of the other ones that I needed to wash and then pack as well. I also made a list of pretty much everything else I'm bringing, so I am ORGANIZED. Yeah! I feel so accomplished. ^_^ Now I just have to get through the next seven days without the use of most of my wardrobe.
-J

Just Checking!

Just making sure that I can add pictures in posts with no problem. Aw, look how cute Luke used to be! Just kidding.
-J

June 10, 2009 Location: Redding

The first post to this blog! Yay! It's Julia, and I'm setting up this blog so that Mom and I can post our days in Italy for people to see while we're gone! It's called "When In Rome" and the url is http://jrdoastheromansdo.blogspot.com. Isn't that cute? J and R do as the Romans do! Aw..;) I'll post more as we get closer to our departure date.
-J