Germany!

We made it to Germany in the morning.  After an hour train ride we met Opa and he drove us to his house.  We had a grand breakfast of fresh cold cuts and fresh pretzels that we picked up from the baker on the way home.  After our late breakfast and catching up we convinced Opa to take a nap.  Justin and I walked to the supermarket to pick up something Emelia forgot to buy to make dinner.  Then we let Opa sleep and Justin and I played a memory game with flipping over cards and finding pairs...he had never played it! Then he decided to take a nap and I went outside to read. After Opa woke up we visited around the table until Leonie, Michi, and Adrian came.

 Emelia made a delicious spinach and ground meat lasagna. That night we decided we would go to Europa park (a large amusement park in Germany). So we went to Michi's for some rest.

Europa park was awesome!! Because we had so many people going we took two cars.  Leonie's boyfriend Valle drove and Adi drove Michi's car.  It's crazy that he can drive already!! The drive was two hours long but it went by really quick for me because I slept of course!!

Once we got there you could immediately I tell the similarities to Disney world.  There is a europapark mouse and girls in pretty gowns. Michi and Carmel decided to let just us go to the park and they went to Strausburg in their bikes. We headed straight into the park and just did whatever ride we came up to,  Wait times were on average 30-40 minutes but everyone kept their spirits high and had a great time.  Michi picked us up around 9:30 and everyone was so tired we all slept super well on the ride back. Amusement parks are hard work :)

Milan

Our plan to see something the day we traveled to Milan (to fly out of Italy) got cancelled when we realized how tired we were.  Roxy had to meet with her professors at 11 and we didn't crawl it of bed until 10:30 so we decided to take it easy pack and eat lunch with Roxy when she got back. That meant we didn't leave Florence until after two.  It was a 4 hour drive to Milan and by the time we got there all we wanted to do was relax at the hotel. 

We had amny adventurers thwt day. One included a toll road thwt wasnt like the others....wll other toll roads we had come across in Italy had a card you took and then inserte when yu existed the toll road so it could see how long you were on the road and charge sccordingly.  this one just had nothing...no place for a card no intructions.  It explicitly said not to leave your cr and oush the help button.  all we got was a scratchy...."prego" and nothing sfter we stwrted speaking English.  Tyring not to oanic we out on our 4-way flashers and the cars behind us backed up.  then a stupid huge truck came up behind us ignoring our flasher and oulled up...crap.... right after the truck blasted his horn Justin had a grewt idea thwt the 2,20 on the screen meant you jut paid thwt and went.  That was it!! too bad we went into a credit card only lane or we would have figured it out alot sooner! The next adventur was filling up the car before we dropped it off....so the gas stations close at closing time in Italy. After Thwt it's self service only which should be easy right...Thwt is what we have at home...WRONG!  So they have stations where you put in money (cash only) and pre pay for a pump. if you overpay...too bad the gas station keeps your money. thank goodness for some help from an awesome gentleman or we wuldnt have gotten gas in our cwr, We dropped of the rental car that night so we wouldn't have to worry about it and then ate a sandwich at the airport. After that it was off to sleep for an early flight to Stuttgart.

Florence

Today we woke up late because we were so tired from the day before, our long day in Venice. The plan was to get up and go see the Uffizi which holds many famous renaissance paintings. We were warned that the lines would be very long if we didn't go early. Well because we were tired and we were on vacation we decided to get a slow start and just enjoy ourselves.  On the way downtown we stopped to have 2 espressos and a croissant each.  I'm starting to love the espressos and will probably only drink those instead of regular coffee when I get home. We were making our way to piazza Vecchio and the Uffizi and walked though the street vendors. I found a perfect present for mom (but I'm not going to ruin the secret). After we went through the market some more we ran into piazza Vecchio  which contains the palace of the Medici. As we walked up we noticed they were setting up for something.  There were large inferno cardboard cut outs of Dan brown's new book. Justin and I both love his books and Justin is currently in the middle of the Inferno.  With all the publicity around it I got excited and looked at Justin and said no way is he here for a book signing?!?!? So we went to the ticket office and asked....yes he is indeed in the city promoting his book and participating in a festival that the Florence city library is putting on.  We found out that tickets were all sold out otherwise we would have stayed in Florence longer and then gone to Milan just to catch our flight.  I'm excited to read the book now that I have seen Florence because the book is set in Florence....a good church of it in the palace Vecchio where we went today which is cool to out an actual place with the book you are reading.

Dante's death mask

About that time Roxy called and said that she was done with her exam and got an A!!! She really is Wonder Woman.  After lunch she had to have a quick meeting with her professor about her Bachelor's thesis and the.

 We were off to explore the palace of the Medici.  The palace is amazing.  I think I'm getting overwhelmed with all the beautiful art and architecture because it is all starting to look the same.  So just a word of caution to all you world travelers...the brain can reach a limit to appreciate amazing culture.

For Adi.

 After the palace we headed up the Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore where we climbed 467 stairs (107 meters high).  the Dome is painted on the celling of the dome and is 4,000 square meters large.  it is the largest fresco painted on a circular surface with a christian theme. the paintings were amazing but then we saw the view.  Talk about breathtaking!!

Walking up the stairs.

All of us :) 

After we were done we took a break at the university and had a coffee with a view of the Dome.  Our last task of the day was to see the real David by Michelangelo.  There are many copies. There is even one in the piazza Vecchio, but we wants to see the real thing.  We went into the museum 30 minutes before it closed and rushed to see the David.  It really is a colossal piece of art.  He was 21 when he did it and just took a piece of marble that was left over from the dome in Florence and started chipping away and finished with this beautiful masterpiece.  It is from right before his battle with Goliath and Michelangelo out the sling around his back to show that David won because of his intelligence and not just brut strength.

A statue of Herculese. 

  After that we went to do an apperativ which is when you buy a drink and then have an appetizer bar for free.  It was very yummy and I got very full on their pasta, caprese, and meats.  The night was spent catching up on blogging and just resting with Roxy since we were all not ready to say goodbye.

Venice

So call us crazy people but when we went to go look at train tickets venice we found one for 18 euro and at 4:30 in the morning.  When we bought the ticket it was 11:30pm....so we didn't have much time to sleep. The real crazy one was Roxy who had an exam on Wednesday (a final none the less). She said she would be fine. We went home for showers and a quick nap....Roxy stayed up and studied.  Our alarm went off at 3am and we were off.  The first train ride was quiet and not crowded. The second contained people on their morning commute to work and school so I kept waking ip to people bustling around me.

 When we arrived in Venice I sighed and said oh yea this is my favorite city. I had been when I was in high school with my parents.  It is amazing, the smell, the colors, and the sights are just breathtaking.  The whole island is free of cars and bikes so there are just pedestrians. What a cool feeling after almost getting mowed over by bikes in Amsterdam, mopeds in Rome, and cars in Florence.

The city is awesome, we didn't even pull out a map just started walking. There are so many shops lining the streets and so many beautiful places to eat.  We were super hungry when we got to Venice by 9:30 since we had been up since 3 so we found the first cafe and gulped downs espressos and all ate two croissants.  After we had walked and stumbled into beautiful churches for about half the day we pulled out the map and made a plan. 

 We saw piazza San Marco.  I remember there bring many more pigeons but it is now against the law to feed the pigeons so I think they have found other places to go.  The church inside was beautiful and has 40,000 sq ft of mosaics on the ceiling.  These collossal churches are just mind blowing.  I think there are definitely more elaborate here than in Germany.

The streets got pretty narrow...

Petrie's sister in Venice.

Coolest bookstore any of us had ever seen.

 After that we decided to find lunch.  We were pretty tired of the cheap set menus for tourists....they  definitely they to go to save money but they weren't always stellar meals. Roxy found a small place that had a set menu but it was all in Italian.  We decided to go there. One thing I can't get over is that their first course is pasta.  It feels like a main course to me. So this menu included a drink, pasta, and a main meat dish.  The pasta dish was huge and then the meat was smaller with a small side salad.  It seems backwards. The food was great I'm glad Roxy got us away from the tourist food.  After lunch we went and saw the covered bridge Rialto. After we gawked over the view a bit we went on a personal adventure.  For Christmas my mom and dad got us a print of gorgeous artwork done by a family friend Ron Morecraft.  It was a picture down a back canal in Venice.  We knew he worked from photographs he took and then modified/painted over top of them.  So when we received it Justin went to google earth and cruised around on street view till he found the canal where Ron took the picture.  So he had the address and we went exploring.  Unfortunately the spot he found on the map wasn't right. So Roxy pulled out her trusty phone and googled a picture of the painting.  So the first guy we asked said he had no idea then a gondolier was parking his boat futher up the canal and she asked him. He said of course it's taken off this bridge and gave us directions.  We finally found it and took a gazillion pictures. It was really cool to see that place in person and have our picture taken with it.  After that we headed back to the train station and made our way back to Florence.  We were exhausted and slept most of the ride back....Roxy of course dutifully studying.  When we got back Roxy took us to the "best pizza place in town" for takeout.  It won best pizza in the world in 2012.  It was awesome. So glad we had an insider to show us all of the great places to eat.  Then we crashed!

Roxy and walle!

Parking nightmare

After leaving Pisa we decided because of the weather the hike at the coast would not be worth it.  We went to Florence with the plan to see the David before we met up with Roxy at 7:30. We pulled into Florence at 5pm..........we then drove around in circles until 7pm until I finally found the train station to park. Between that time there was tears, screaming, and two parking decks where we had to leave our keys so they can move the car. I didn't want to do that because we had all of our personal belongings in the car....it sucked. We got through it and made it with teamwork.  I felt bad for coming apart but Justin kept his cool and kept driving.  He was an amaing trooper for being tired, sick of driving, and in Florence at rush hour with crazy Italian drivers.

After we parked the car we looked around till we met Roxy. (Happy to have parked the car)

She got held up at work but then she took us to a wonderful pizzeria with awesome food.  Then on the way back she stopped into a small coffee shop for "the best coffee in Florence" according to Roxy.  

It was espresso with home made sweet cream. You didn't need sugar or anything it was AWESOME! Because Roxy is studying in Italy (and because she's awesome) her Italian is perfect. She talked to the bar man about his store and we found out that this store used to be a butcher shop and he converted it to a cafe.  The cream is a secret family recipe from his great grandmorether. It was really neat to find this gem in Florence. 

Flipping through the Florence historal book to see old pictures of the cafe.

On the way home we got train tickets to Venice. Call us crazy but the cheapest ticket was 17 euro all the way to Venice so we took them, even though it left at 4:30. So we went home for a quick nap :)

Rainy Pisa

When we originally checked in we told our agent we wanted to check out at 11am. After we had seen everything we wanted to the day before we decided we wanted to leave in time to see Pisa.  There was also an option to maybe do a hike at the cinque terra (villages that overlook the ocean in the west coast if Italy).  We checked out at 8am with no problem and made our way out of Rome. Justin did really well and was way more comfortable with driving when he left the city.  We made our way to Pisa...briefly discussing going to Sienna but then decided to skip it.  When we got to Pisa a huge thunderstorm was looming but we hoped it was moving the other direction.  We were hungry for lunch and I had to use the bathroom (surprise) so we went to the first restaurant for a snack.  I'm glad we did because 5 minutes after sitting down it started to pour.  We were on the terrace and they had umbrellas so it kept us relatively dry. Hoping the storm would pass like most summer storms do we decided to wait it out.  We sat for probably 45 minutes and then decided to brave the rain and see the leaning tower of Pisa.  Before that we went inside to use wifi and research parking at the hike.  Then out to brave the rain for pictures and see the cathedral which was free to enter.

Oops I'm pushing over the tower...

Must save the tower!

Unfortunately the day was a little messed up due the rain so our hike did not happen. We went ahead and made our way to Florence and planned on seeing the David until Roxy got off work...more on that in the next blog post.

Making it a vacation

We were determined to not run ourselves ragged and actually enjoy our trip. So we decided to sleep in because the only other large attraction we wanted to see was the colosseum.  We didn't plan on sleeping till 1 in the afternoon but we sure did (guess we needed it). On the way we passed the roman forum which was by far Justins's favortie part of Rome so it was picture time again.

We went directly to the colosseum but were bummed that we missed mass at the Vatican (we didn't want to go just see what it looked like with the masses of people exiting.)  We has tickets from the day before so there was no wait at the colosseum.

 A guide or audio guide seemed to be a waste so we just went off what our book and what (ustin remembered from all of his readings.  Also because there were so many tours that any time we stopped to take pictures you could listen to what the tour guide was saying.  Interesting that almost everything we overheard a tour guide saying Justin either told me or we read in our book. Fun fact time: when it was first built all the structures under the stage didn't exist and the wooden stage was removable. At that time they used to fill up the bottom with water (once the stage was removed) and have navy battles.  The area was huge but it didn't seem that you could do a navy battle in it!!

The back part of this picture is a reproduction of the removable stage. Also the brick walkways under the stage were only built later and where not there during the time of the navy battles.

Artist's depiction of what it was like at the colosseum.

When we had enough of seeing the colloseum we went to Trasteverti to walk around. It is a cool district away from all the tourists with locals just going about their lives.  We were close to the island again so stopped in for another amazing gelato.  We were thinking about buying some art so we made our way back to the piazza navona but after looking around with so many choices we decided we couldn't make a decision and left empty handed. After a dinner of roasted chicken and gnocchi we headed home. We passed a wine bar close to home every time but never stopped in, tonight we decided we should.  I had seen these orange drinks everywhere.  Happy hour was a big tradition in Italy and everyone seemed to be drinking them.  So I ordered "the orange drink that everyone always has." I sounded like a dummy but it worked :) It was a drink that is prosecco or white wine campari or aperol and soda water. They also had wifi so we wee able to Skype with mom which was nice.  Then it was off to bed so we could check out tomorrow and make our way to Florence.

Roman forum

After we went to the Sistine chapel and finished the Vatican museums we went over to the older part of the city and looked at the ancient ruins. On the way we had gelato, it was a place I remembered being delicious with my mom in an island in the middle of the Tiber.  While eating our ice cream we continued our trek to the forum and passed the circus Maximus, Temple of Portunas, temple of Hercules, and Santa Maria in Cosmedian (which is known for the Mouth of truth).  Afterwards we bought tickets which let us get into palatine hill, the roman forum, and the colosseum.  We saved entrance to the colosseum for tomorrow.  Quick fun fact- when Rome was founded it was originally a swampland that was flooded by the Tiber constantly consisting of 7 unflooded hills.  Those hills was what the Romans started building their cities on until they expanded too much and had to dam up the river to drain the marsh.  Two of those major hills were Capitoiline (capital hill), palatine hill (the roman suburb) and the forum which stretched between in the marsh area.  First we visited palatine hill. Justin was surprised at how much was left and how well it was built.  It was huge, very grand and perfectly made.  It's a shame that most of it was disturbed and we were not able to see it in all of its glory.  The city is full of secrets still, the subways in Rome are limited because everytime they try to expand it turns into an acheological dig.

Justin being a really good tour guide and explaining what all the ruins were so I was able to appreciate them fully. (Temple of Portunas in the background)

Just the sheer size is crazy and most of the building is still underground.

View of the colosseum from palantine hill which we will see tomorrow.

After finishing palatine hill we contined on to the roman forum.  There are many marble columns left mainly becaue they are all made from a single piece of marble!! The most impressive building was the Basilica of Masenetius and Constantine.  It was huge!

The bascilica was being supported a bit....

It's nave is 4,000 square feet an only the north wall was still standing so you only see a third of the building.    Fun fact the wrestling events were held here in the 1960 summer Olympics.  

Just amazing!

On the way home we got soaked by a thunderstorm but had some dinner and found this gem...

So Pinocchio is Italian :)

Also we went by the Trevi fountain at night which is so amazing.