Italia!

In front of the Arch of Septimus Severus at the Roman Forum

Jose and I arrived home from our most excellent vacation in Italy yesterday afternoon and are back at work today, much to our dismay.  If only it were possible to stay on vacation indefinitely!  We’d just come home when we felt like it — which would eventually happen, since there’s no place like home.  But it probably wouldn’t have happened so soon if we truly had our choice.  I think we could have easily spent a week or more in each of the three cities we visited and still not seen everything.

Our first stop in Italy — after a nap — was the Pantheon!

Cool sun spot where the light was coming through the oculus

It was a fabulous trip, if short.  We spent three nights in Rome, two nights in Florence, two nights in Venice, and a final night back in Rome before our flight home.  We saw a TON of stuff including:

Rome:  Pantheon, Roman Forum & Palatine Hill, Colosseum, St. Peter’s, the Pope! (who was addressing the masses in St. Peter’s square), the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, and the ancient Christian catacombs.

Florence:  the David at the Accademia, the Duomo!, Santa Maria de l Fiore, Galileo and Michelangelo’s tombs at Basilica di Santa Croce, Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi gallery, and a couple other museum stops.

Venice:  Piazza San Marco, the Basilica of San Marco, the Grand Canal, and lots of awesome alleyways.

The Colosseum!  Amazing.

Inside St. Peter’s.  The scale of this church is overwhelming — so huge.

Despite having been to all three of these cities before, I had an awesome time.  Some of the things we saw were things I’d actually skipped or missed on my last trip, and of course that trip was 9 years ago to begin with!  I do not have a great memory, so I’d forgotten a lot of it!  It was fun to be there again, and this time with Jose.  I should also mention that we ate a lot of yummy Italian food, and had gelato at least once — and sometimes twice — every single day.  We happened to be in Florence on the same day as the first-ever Florence Gelato Festival (which also has the coolest logo ever — a gelato cone topped with the Duomo).  Now THAT is what you call good timing, people!  Mmmmmm…

This cab driver liked to read the newspaper at stoplights. Related: Rome drivers and traffic are INSANE.

I’m working on getting my photos downloaded, but it’s a slower-than-expected process thanks to a flaky 4 GB flash card that I used for the first time on this trip.  I bought it at Target a few days before, popped it into the camera, and it worked fine. But neither my Mac nor Jose’s PC will show the files!  The Mac says it’s not a valid device, and the PC recognizes it as a drive but wants to format it before use.  Um, no thanks!  Jose asked if a different card reader might help, so I tried putting the card in the slot on our printer, of all devices, and it worked!  Except the transfer rate is sloooooow.  I left it running when I left the house this morning, so hopefully I will have all my photos tonight.  In the meantime, you can enjoy a few from Rome and Florence that Jose took with one of our point-and-shoots.  Venice will come later!

The DUOMO!  I LOVE the Duomo!

The view from on top of the Duomo