Italy!

Okay this is a bigger blog post then I was planning to post.... but it's a good one :)

My "favorites" of the trip; so hard to narrow down to one so I of course have many!!!

*Hiking the western seaside cliffs (through old English military fort ruins) on top of the Mediterranean Sea on Capri Island. Literally, at times during the hike we were scaling a seaside cliff. It might have been my favorite thing we did the whole trip. It was so beautiful.

*Seeing Ancient Rome... all of it. The Colosseum, Roman Forum, Pantheon, Capitol Hill, Trevi Fountain, The Spanish Steps. Holy Amazingness.

*The Vatican. Everything about the Vatican was unbelievable. The paintings in the museum weren't on canvas they were on the wall, and ceiling. We expected the Sistene Chapel to be like that but not the entire museum! Holy WOW GIGANTIC.

And St. Peter's Basilica and Square. We climbed to the top of the dome. TOTALLY worth the 550 steps!

*Waldorf Astoria in Rome (Thanks Tom and Carolyn). For 12 hours we lived like the rich do in Italy; access to 7th floor Gold Hilton Member Imperial room with all you can eat good free food and free drinks from 7 am to 11 pm (I definitely drank my fair share of champagne), had access to the pool and spa services, completely relaxed after a hard core 48 hours in Rome and had one of the most amazing views of the entire city at our fingertips.

*Touching the Mediterranean Sea for the first time in Atrani (little town where we were the only tourists on Amalfi coast)

*Venice was totally cool to see; nothing else like it. It is truly a Disney World for adults (glad we were there in the off season) and it really didn't smell that bad.

*The Tuscany hill towns were really cool (Volterra and San Gimignano) and so was the whole area of Tusancy (Lucca and Siena). As for Florence, I could never go back and be 100% okay with it (hands down my least favorite city of the entire trip but I LOVED their Central Market and seeing David was pretty amazing).

*Loved biking on top of the medieval wall of Lucca (by Pisa). I also loved the fact that this town is best known for it's toilet paper production!

*Our cooking class in Volterra. It was a 2 hour cooking class followed by a 3 hour lunch meal (6 courses) tasting everything we learned to make. We ate pigeon... yup but don't worry, we didn't eat the kind that ate our gelato, we ate farm raised pigeon and it was good. Everything was so good we ate our selves silly. Let's just say I ate a banana for dinner that night.

*The place we stayed in Volterra. Pure serenity!

*The food. Not just how it tasted but the fact that I did not make/serve/clean up 2 weeks worth of meals.My favorites: all the pizza, gnocchi sorrentino (in red sauce and mozzerella), prosciutto tortellini in cream sauce and pear and ricotta tortellini in cream sauce. YUM YUM YUM.

*The gelato. We easily tried over 20 flavors AND ate at a gelato store that was the Gelato World Champions of 2009 and 2010 in the hill town of San Gimignano. My favorite flavor was nutella. Rob's favorite was lemoncello.

*The wine... DELISH!

Things that surprised me the most about Italy

*I knew Nutella was good, but seriously it is good on EVERY THING!
*I could eat like an Italian for breakfast everyday but I would be huge. Put meat and cheese in front of me at 8 am and that my friend is a good start to an amazing day :) I have a feeling this is what breakfast looks like in heaven.....

 *The people were really friendly. We found it very easy to communicate, even with people who didn't speak English.
*We hate relying on public transportation.... we tried EVERY mode possible (except gondola/traghetto which we were planning on doing but accidentally took too long of a nap 4pm-9 pm). Plane, subway, intercity train, fast train, ferry, overnight bus, shuttle bus, taxi, city bus, car, escalator, elevator, you name it, we did it. Almost experienced a strike (were able to get on an earlier train to avoid a potential disaster), missed our overnight train due to a 2 hour delay on our first train (which resulted in an overnight bus trip to Venice). Seriously, we just wanted our car. I was not a fan of planning our day around the time we had to be at the train station; pretty stressing for me.

*The contrast of old to new was amazing, You would literally be looking at something that was 2000 years old and right by it would be a relatively new house. 2000 year old cobblestones right by new pavement. WILDLY AMAZING. I have never seen anything like it....

*Italians didn't smell that bad. Maybe it was because it wasn't hot out and due to the fact that they all wear the heaviest winter coats possible; even when it was 65 degrees out.
*The style. I knew Europeans dressed differently but come on. I wonder who their style icons are; especially the teens. It was really nice on the eyes to get back to the US of A.
*There is a STRIKING resemblance between my man and David....

 *That there is a difference between American coffee and coffee. The people at the restaurant thought it was hilarious that Rob and I couldn't take the cappuccino down (I don't even think we had a full sip it was that bad) and that we don't like coffee at all.

*The bidet... there is no longer any mystery behind what they are..... Like they say, "When in Rome......" :)

*We really liked the pizza. People had told us it was different then the US. It just felt like we were eating pizza from SPIN the entire time and we love SPIN pizza.
*Angry Italians are scary. VERY scary. I am just glad the mad ones were on our side (when we missed our overnight train due to Italy's fault, we got on a charted bus to Venice with a bunch of them!)
*Driving is also scary in Italy. Good thing my man knows how to drive a stick; but I am glad he drives an automatic in the US of A.... he drives like a speed car driver with a stick!

What I missed most about the US
*Our girls. I was never homesick for them but I sure did miss them!
*Chinese food
*Mexican Food
*Bananas
*Free water
*Over hearing English conversations
*My bed


What an awesome trip it was! Can't wait for our next great big get away in a couple of years!

Much Love,
Jenny