The Vatican

May 8th -- Well after a few slow days in Rome we broke out with a bang. We decided to tackle Vatican City...the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. We had read that in order to avoid the long lines it was better to go right after lunch, avoiding the early morning tourists groups. So we took our time getting up and going (which was fine with mom and Gilda after a long day of travel the day before). We took the metro and spent some time window shopping in the various shops lining the streets. We decided to stop for lunch since once we entered the Vatican museum, it would be a long time before we exited (although at this point, little did we know how long!). We found a nice restaurant that seemed to have all your basic Italian food...meats and cheeses, pastas and pizza. You would think that after being in Italy for a couple of weeks now we would have the food down, but somehow Amy and mom made quite the ordering fiasco. They had decided to order a couple of different items and share them. To make a long story short, they ordered the wrong things (and didn't like what they got) and so then tried to correct their mistake. There was a couple next to them that had a dish that Amy wanted so she got the waiter and pointed to it. Little did Amy realize at the time, but that "dish" was part of the entire antipasto on their table. So when the waiter brought it out, it included about 5 plates of food. Gilda and I were at the other end of the table with our simple pizza and lasagna dish respectfully, laughing at all the food on the other end...half of which they had no intentions of eating. We were afraid what the bill was going to be but told them it was up to them to work that out! We had a good laugh. Once we finished with our lunch, we walked to the Vatican Museum. We walked straight in with absolutely no line. We entered the museum and begin our journey. It would be 3 hours before we would finally make it to the culminating room...the Sistine Chapel. Throughout the 4 miles of displays in the museum (which was originally the papal palace), we traced history from the ancient times to the Renaissance. After seeing Egyptian artifacts and Greek and Roman sculptures and Renaissance art, we finally made our way to the Sistine chapel. We had downloaded an audio guide onto our iPods, so we sat down for about 20 minutes and listened to a descriptions of the frescoes in the Chapel. While the room itself is not that grand from a pure size perspective, it is absolutely amazing to think that one man, Michelangelo, painted the frescoes by himself. After just 5 minutes of staring up at the ceiling your neck starts to hurt...and to think that he stood on scaffolding for 4 years looking up and painting. After our audio guide was finished, we took Rick Steves' shortcut out of the Sistine Chapel directly to St. Peter's. It was a great decision because we exited out of the chapel, took a short walk and were on the inside of the gates to St. Peter's. No line...no more security checkpoint right into the Basilica. It saved us about 30 minutes of walking time! Now talk about going from amazing to more amazing....wow!! We entered St. Peter's just after 5pm local time. They had just begun daily mass and the sun was shining down through the windows creating some beautiful sunbeams into the church. The music from the mass could also be heard (although softly at first given the distance from the entry). As you enter the door, you are struck immediately by the grandeur. At over 2 football fields long with a capacity of over 60,000, the size of the church is almost indescribable. When you realize that the main altar with canopy that stands under the dome is 7 stories tall, you then can get a perspective for how tall the dome is (equal to a football field standing on end). We had planned on climbing the dome, but after a long day, decided that we would have to come back another day. We "wandered" through the church and then stood near the altar and St. Peter's tomb to enjoy the music from the mass and take in the beauty. As we were exiting, we stopped to view Michelangelo's Pieta..another unbelievable sculpture from Michelangelo. We then exited into St. Peter's square. Here we were able to look back at the massive church and see the top of the Sistine Chapel and the Pope's apartment. We were tired and more than a little hungry since it was now almost 7pm so we decided that we needed some Gelato. I know....it was dinner time, but just another excuse for Gelato. After our Gelato dinner we made our way back to the apartment and had some cheese and crackers for our "real" dinner. It was a long day and no one had any problems going to sleep!

MeMom arrives

May 7th - I got up this morning and took the metro and train to the Rome airport to meet my mom. She is traveling with her friend, Gilda and they will be staying with us for the next 10 days before leaving Rome on a Mediterranean cruise that ends in Venice. We will meet them again in Venice before they fly back to the US. When I met them, they were tired but in good spirits. They were to the point that everything was funny and they just kept laughing. It was a good thing because the airport is a 30 minute train ride into Rome and then a 15 minute metro ride to the apartment. Of course there is walking between each of those so they got their exercise for the day. We took them to the local pizzeria for lunch and then walked over to the park for the kids to play and to enjoy the sunny day. The girls all then headed back to the apartment for a nap while Austin and I played for a little while longer. We had a light dinner of cheeses, meats and crackers from the deli and called it an early evening. After a couple of slow days in Rome, we are looking forward to beginning to see the sights.

Taking it Easy in Rome

May 5th--Today we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. We plan to visit every Hard Rock along the way. I have a friend I used to work with that collects the pins. So, we are picking one up for him at every stop. It's actually really fun, and at times we wonder why we aren't collecting them too. Anyway, after lunch we walked to the Spanish Steps. We were inundated by people trying to get us to buy long stem roses. They are all over the place here. They really try to get the kids in on it so we are trying to teach our kids to just ignore them. That's a hard thing to do. We then did some window shopping. We walked down the famous Via del Corso which is a street lined with many shops. We had planned to walk the entire "shopping triangle", but as we came to the end of Via del Corso, it started raining. So, we ducked into a gelateria hoping to ride out the rain. Well, after we finished our gelato, it was still raining and not really letting up. Luckily, it wasn't raining too hard so we made a run for the nearest Metro station and headed back towards the apartment. When we arrived at the apartment's Metro stop, it was still raining so we ran from the station to the apartment. The kids enjoyed the opportunity to "play" in the rain.



May 6th--Today was another take it easy day. We left the apartment about noon to head back to the "shopping triangle" to finish window shopping. We first found a cafe to eat lunch at before doing any shopping. We walked the entire shopping triangle today. After that, we decided to go to Villa Borghese Gardens. This is considered Rome's Central Park. It was very pretty and we got a great view of St. Peter's from the park. After walking around for a little while, we rented a 2 person bike. It was a lot of fun riding around the park and we got many laughs from it.
After Mike and I had had enough of a workout, we turned our bike back in and headed back to the apartment to get ready for MeMom arriving tomorrow.

Ciao Rome

May 3rd—Brent left early this morning for his trains, planes and automobile day (train to Bologna, plane to Frankfurt, car to Luxembourg). We finished packing up our stuff and after lunch left for the train station and our 1:30 train to Rome. It was our easiest travel day yet as we only had a 1.5 hour train to Rome. We arrived in Termini station and had a little time to kill before we could check-in at our apartment so we stopped for Gelato. We then caught the metro to our apartment stop. The apartment is just a short walk from the metro station. It is a nice apartment on the 8th floor of a residential complex. We are staying in a residential neighborhood outside of the downtown “tourist” area. It is nice because there is a grocery store and park within walking distance of the apartment. We took the kids out to play and it was full of families and their kids. They really enjoyed it because it has been a while since we have had a park/playground close to our apartment. We then walked to a pizzeria that is nearby and picked up a couple of pizzas to take home. They were great handmade pizzas and the pizzeria is likely to be a regular for us given its proximity to the apartment.

May 4th -- We awoke to a bright sunny day in Rome…or should I say Austin awoke us to a bright sunny day by opening our shades. We were a little slow moving this morning after a couple of packed days with Brent in town and then a travel day. The apartment has a DVD player with tons of kids / Disney movies so the kids were able to watch a movie this morning. Amy and Abby then headed out to the grocery store to pick up some essentials. When they got back we decided to head into the city to get some lunch and begin to get our bearings. We took the metro to the Colosseo stop. It was about a 10 minute ride from our apartment. When we came out of the metro station, the Colosseum was directly in front of us. It is very impressive to see and to think it was built 2000 years ago. I’ve been amazed at the architecture that we have seen and this sight topped them all from an engineering perspective given its size and age. We walked to a nearby restaurant that was recommended to us by our friend Paris and enjoyed lunch at one of the sidewalk tables. We then went back over to the Colosseum area and grabbed a spot on a hill to enjoy the scenery and people watch. It is beginning to warm up here so after a little while in the sun, we actually began to get hot. We decided to make it a light day since we will be in Rome for 3 weeks. We headed back to the apartment and took the kids back to the playground. It was even more crowded than yesterday. It was neat because one of the girls that Abby played with yesterday (who speaks no English) saw her and came over to her when we got there. While at the park, the gelato man (ice cream man) pulled up and all the kids rushed to him. Our kids didn’t notice him until everyone started coming back to the park with ice cream. So, I went to get gelato for both kids. My comment was “it’s nice to get gelato in the hood”. The cheapest gelato we’ve had so far. After a good, long play time, we went back to the apartment for dinner. We cooked pasta (of course) and sat on our balcony enjoying a nice Rome night.

Cracking Up with Brent

May 2nd--This morning Brent and Mike got up early and headed to the Academia so Brent could see Michelangelo's David. I stayed back at the apartment with the kiddos getting everyone dressed for the day. The kids and I headed out about 10:00 to meet Mike at the Duomo. Once meeting him, the kids got a morning snack and we shopped in an English bookstore. We were able to pick up Rick Steves' guide for Rome, and I found "The Host", another book by Stephenie Meyer. Brent was visiting David at the time. He met us back at the Duomo and from there, we walked to the market in front of Santa Croce Church. It was here that we all found exactly what we wanted to eat for lunch. Some of the foods enjoyed were specialty bruschetta, bratwurst (from a little German booth), and canolis. Yummy! There were many booths set up for wine tastings in the market area so we walked around for a little while sampling some wine. We finally decided on a bottle of Chianti and sat on the steps of Santa Croce Church. We kept saying that we were having communion on the church steps. The kids loved running around and playing while we people watched. We actually sat their for a couple of hours just people watching and enjoying a beautiful day. We ended up seeing way more of some people than we really wanted to see. This is probably too much information for some, but we saw more rear end "crack" than we cared to. It seemed like everyone that sat down in front of us had an issue with their pants. It got to be pretty humorous and we enjoyed many a laugh. Abby and Austin's reactions were funny too because they don't know how to filter....they would point or laugh out loud. Anyway, after our bottle of wine was gone, the girls and the boys split up. Mike, Brent and Austin headed back to Duomo to climb the dome. Abby and I headed back to the apartment to rest, but had to stop for gelato on the way. The boys arrived back to the apartment a little after 5:00 and enjoyed their climb of the dome. We all got ready for dinner and took Brent to our favorite restaurant Trattoria "da Giorgio"; how many times have we mentioned that restaurant in a blog? We enjoyed a wonderful meal with good stories and many laughs. After dinner, the kids went to bed, Mike & Brent went out for a guys night, and I enjoyed a nice "chick flick" at home. It was a great "last day" in Florence.

Lost under the Tuscan sun...and moon!

May 1st-I'm not even sure where to start with this post because we were literally all over the place today. I guess I should start with we rented a car from Hertz and decided to drive to some of the small Tuscan hill towns. This was our first time to have a car during our trip. Well, let me first start with the car...it was a small (very small) FIAT. It worked though. Amy was crammed in the middle of the back seat and the kids were on both sides of her. Brent started off driving because I (Mike) wasn't that comfortable with a standard, therefore; wasn't comfortable driving out of Florence. Brent did a great job driving us out of town and I did the job of navigating us. We got on the A1 which is the main interstate that heads south between Florence and Rome. We had decided that we were going to take the A1 to Montepulciano and then travel through some of the small hill towns, stopping at various ones along the way until we reached Montalcino. Well, as we exited the A1, and entered the windy Tuscan roads, we were immediately struck by the beauty of the region. We stopped to take some pictures and I decided to test my standard driving skills. We continued for a bit before we started entering Montepulciano. Almost immediately, we started noticing cars parked on the side of the road. After a little bit the traffic started getting heavy. We then came upon a huge town fair / carnival area. Today was Labor Day in Italy, and by the looks of it, we had wandered into a large regional festival. We initially had thoughts of going to the festival until the traffic became overwhelming. It took us over 30 minutes to go a mile or so to get through the town. No where along the way was their parking and once through the traffic, we decided we didn't want to park on the side of the road and walk a couple of miles back to the festival. We decided that we would skip over the town and head to our next village. We headed out of town and started trying to navigate to the next village. After a couple of traffic circles and turns, we realized we were heading right back into Montepulciano and the traffic. We convinced ourselves that there would be a road around the village as we drove, but upon hitting the traffic again, realized this was not the case. I did a u-turn in the road and headed back away from the crazy traffic. I should have mentioned that from the moment we left Florence at 9am, Brent was talking about how hungry he was. I had told him that we would grab something in Montepulciano because we would be there in about an hour. It was now almost 12:30 and he still hadn't had anything to eat. So we came upon what looked like a house on the side of the road that said "ristorante" and decided to head in. It turned out to be a local winery that had a restaurant and small hotel. It was great food and perfect Tuscan ambiance. Once there, we asked the waiter for directions. He pulled out a more detailed map of the area and marked the key roads we should take. Unfortunately, we would have to go through Montepulciano to get to the other towns. I guess a full stomach gave us some confidence that we could navigate thru the area without getting caught in the traffic. We headed into Montepulciano only to hit traffic again. Since it was such a beautiful day, we just rolled down the windows and enjoyed the sights. Once we finally made it into the town, the police had a road block that detoured us into the narrow streets of the town. At this point, we were literally squeezing between cars and people, trying to find our way out of town. At one point, we were the only car driving in an area filled with people and market booths. We came to a dead end on a street and had to turn around. Unfortunately, it was back up a very steep hill. As mentioned before, my standard driving skills are not that greatest and so at one point, I got stopped on the hill and could not get going. After about 3 times of stalling out (and the car behind us honking & the smell of burning clutch), I hopped out and traded places with Brent for him to drive. He got us up the hill but then promptly got us trapped again on a dead end street. However, this one did not have enough room to turn around. He backed down the street until he thought he had enough room to turn around. It turns out that while I can't get up a hill, Brent can't turn a car in a tight location. We were going back and forth, back and forth trying to turn with minimal success. He finally tried to back into a driveway only to drop the car off a small ledge and drag/scrape the front end. Finally he got into the driveway enough to turn the car around. We then found a main road and headed out of the city thinking we had finally made our way through. At the next road circle, we looked at the signs only to realize we had somehow gone back the same way we came in. We were dying laughing about how this town had sucked us in, spun us around and then spit us out. So at this point, we decided to go a long way out of our way back to the interstate and make a big circle around Montepulciano to get to the towns on the other side. While it turned out to be a big detour, we were rewarded on the other side. The drive between the small hill towns on our way to Montalcino was beautiful and very scenic. We stopped in one small town of Chianciano for gelato. From here, Brent and I had had our fair share of driving so Amy took over. She successfully got us to Montalcino about 4pm. The town had a huge castle that sat on a hill overlooking the valley. They were having some type of labor day festival with a live band playing. We bought a bottle of wine and sat at a table enjoying the beautiful day and music. The kids were able to run around and play so it was a great time for all. After a few hours, we headed back for Florence. We took the "back" roads up through Siena towards Florence. It was another great drive, enjoying the scenery at dusk. As we began to enter Florence, we realized that we had directions out of the city, but not back to the apartment. However, we were confident that we could make it back with no problem. As it turns out, I think we made a key mistake. I (Mike) was driving with Brent navigating. Given, this was his first time in the city, we should have reversed that and let me navigate. So, we quickly found ourselves lost coming into Florence. Luckily, we somehow ended up in Plazza Michelangelo which is an area up on a hill that overlooks Florence. We got out of the car and took some pics of Florence at night. We then got back in the car with our goal to get across the river to our apartment. We thought it couldn't be that difficult. Well after about 30 minutes of driving and not crossing the river (and actually somehow ending up at Plazza Michelangelo a second time) we were getting pretty exhausted. Just as we were about to go try to find someone that could direct us, we found a bridge across the river. At this point, we were close to the apartment. We still had to navigate through horrible traffic to get to the apartment and circle a few times because of one way streets, but finally made it back a little after 10pm. We were exhausted from driving and glad to be out of the car. Amy actually had a friend (Tina Young) and her husband in town that we were meeting for drinks. So we left the kids with Brent (was that smart?) and took off walking to meet them. It turned out great as we sat at a table on Plazza Signoria and enjoyed catching up with them and hearing about their Italy vacation. This was our first night out together without the kids and it was great to be able to have a "grown-up" conversation! We finally left them and headed back to our apartment. It was a long, but enjoyable day in Tuscany.

Brent Arrives...

April 30th--Happy Birthday, Shanda! We wish the title of this blog said "Brent and Shanda Arrive", but we were happy to have Brent come visit us in Florence. Since we knew we had a packed next couple of days entertaining Brent, we decided to just take it easy today and not do a whole lot. Brent was on a business trip in Asia and then was heading to Luxembourg, but decided to spend the weekend with us. He traveled to Florence by train from Bologna. Since the trains left Bologna every 30 minutes, he was going to just catch the first train he could after his flight. He was supposed to call us once he got on the train so that Mike could meet him at the train station, but as it turns out, his cell phone was not working. So, Mike and I sat here for a while wondering where in the world he was. Finally, Mike decided to just head to the train station and see if he was there. It just so happened that the train that arrived while Mike was at the station was the one Brent was on. So it worked out that they found each other in the train station. By the time Brent got to the apartment, he had been up for 24 hours and was exhausted.