Well, I guess I haven't blogged because we were busy getting things planned for our trip to Italy. It was so much fun. I didn't miss the kids as much as I thought I would. We were pretty busy, so I didn't have a lot of time to dwell on missing them. We did get to email them some, and they sent us emails via Mom, who was kind of enough and brave enough to watch them for 10 days. We've been home for a week and we've just been catching up on everything. It was so good to see the kids when we got home. They were so excited and so cute. I could probably write 10 pages worth of stuff about Italy, but I won't. We had a heck of a time reaching Rome. We had a 7 hour lay over in Chicago, which ended up being 8 and then landed at JFK on time, but taxied forever-seriously, we taxied so long that I thought I would pee my pants and I had to get up and use the lavatory while taxiing,even though they say to stay in your seat. We missed our flight to Rome. The American Airlines workers were less than helpful. We ended up taking a flight with a lay over in London. That flight left late also. We were 60th in line for take off, yep, 60th! So, we get to Rome, and we are all excited that we finally made it, find an ATM to get the cash we need to pay for our Bed and Breakfast. Nothing. We tried 3 ATM's and none of them worked. We needed to get on a train to meet the owner of the B&B because she doesn't live at the B&B. To say the least, I was stressed. Then, we walked around Rome for an hour and a half looking for the B&B. My arm was ready to fall off!! Things went better after that, but we were not without incident. We had ATM issues almost every day. It was really cool to see all of the famous sites in their surroundings that you don't ever see in the photos. All of the stuff in Rome is right in the city. I thought it would be more preserved or set back from streets and traffic. The weather was great every single day. It was around 73 degrees and sunny every day. Rome and Florence were crazy busy. If we hadn't had the ATM issues, which stressed me, I probably would have enjoyed those cities more. The leaning tower of Pisa totally leans more than we thought it would. I heard others around us say that same thing. Stephanie was a such a huge help. She told us what sights to see and gave us really good tips and she even called the B&B in Rome to let them know we would be 9 hours late because of our flight junk. There were some beautiful places everywhere we stayed. We got lots of great pictures. We didn't get pick pocketed, which I was sure we would. We were in Rome, Venice, Florence, Sorrento and Rome again. We took a gondola ride in Venice. That was fun. A lot of the places we saw I recognized from movies. I didn't know what Piazzale Michealangelo was, but Steph said we should go. We went, and it's totally in movies. It's the highest point above Florence and it was gorgeous. I'm glad we walked up the huge hill and then the million steps-it totally was worth it. Sorrento was a smaller coast town and it was so relaxing. Italy was great! I was sad when we came home and Chad and I didn't get to spend every minute together like we had for the past 10 days. We had a such a great time!!!!! I wasn't too sure about traveling to a foreign country, but it was really cool and not as difficult as I thought it would be. Even though there were times when I was cursing the scooters and alleys that they call streets, I'm glad we went and feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to take such an incredible vacation. Thank you, Mom, Stephanie, Chad and Rick Steves.
Pictures will be on Facebook, hopefully, soon.
