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.

In the Sistine chapel alone

This morning we got up early to go on a tour of the Sistine chapel that we per-ordered. Justin really wanted to be able to enjoy the famous place and we decided to book a tour that would let us in before everyone else. What we didn't realize was that it would be a private tour....we were all alone with our own personal tour guide, and we were first in line. Our tour guide was fantastic and very sweet. We walked toward the chapel and she explained things along the way. We learned a good bit about the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.  So it turns it the Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor instead of a painter to go along with his "spit-fire" personality.  This lead to him denying the pope in the 14th century "aka god on earth" his requested services the first time he was asked to paint the fresco. When he did finally paint the ceiling it took four years in which he locked himself in the chapel without an audience. Michelangelo's hatred of painting the ceiling seemed like something of a legend.  So just a few stories...... in the creation scenes It was the first time that God was portrayed as a half dressed man where his rear end was painted in the scene where he is creating the trees.  Also for accurate imagery when painting Jonah and the whale he brought a live fish from the wharf into the Sistine chapel.  Apparently however, no matter what kind of crazy antics he pulled he was so good pope Julius II asked him to come back and paint the altar. Now, according to Catholicism the Sistine chapel is to worship to the Virgin Mary, however Michelangelo drew about 40 naked men in his portrayal of the final judgement. In fact there is only one portrait of the Virgin Mary in the entire chapel...haha. There was one member of the church with which he had a disagreement and he unfortunately ended up being painted as the gate keeper of hell. When this person complained to the pope he said there was notching he could do.  He only has jurisdiction over heaven not hell. So when we got to the entrance to the chapel we had to wait for 15 minutes for it to open. Then when it did I was the first person in the chapel with Justin behind me. Abut 30 second as later there was a tour group of about 10 people behind us but we were still only in there with a small group of people. It was an amazing feeling you were really able to appreciate the painting for what it was. We had 15 minutes before the rest of the public was allowed to come in to the chapel. When that time came we left with our tour guide who showed us how to get to the other parts of the Vatican museums that I wanted to see.  After we found the way we decided to have breakfast. Our idea to grab breakfast on the way in the morning failed because nothing was open.  After a pastry each and two cups of espresso in a cafe over run by an "asian invasion" we were happy to keep exploring the Vatican museums.

The whole ceiling. 

Awesome whale right?? Yea it looks like a fish from the market!

Seeing half the sights in half a day

After we arrived at the parking deck we went ahead and started heading towards our apartment with the plan to arrive there make sure we knew where it was and then go explore.   We were set to meet our rental agent at 4.  Well we started this process at 1pm and I'm sure glad we did! We didn't find the place until 3:30. That was 2.5 hours of walking around in circles and going the wrong way. We found a pretty overlook though on accident due to getting lost.  Good thing our apartment really only is 5 minutes from where we parked our car.....whoops. So then we got our keys and went back to the car to stow our luggage in the room. Then it was off to explore. First stop was piazza navona.

This is a very famous square in Rome and has local painters and a market in the morning, we missed that  unfortunately. It's square is so full of life and lined with outdoor cafes. It is a tourist location but doesn't feel cheesy in the slightest. It was fun to walk through and see the art, I will probably purchase some before we leave. Next we went to the Pantheon which was once a pagan temple and is now converted to a Christian church. 

 It has a 30ft diameter hole in the ceiling and 5 rows of imprinted trapezoids in circular rings around the dome that used to be decorated with bronze stars. That is before The Vatican stole it centuries ago and Bernini used it to decorate St. Peter basilica.  On the way home that evening we found the back of the building which shows how it once would have looked. Then we marched onto the Trevi fountain we got gelato on the way and a couple cups of coffee...nothing like caffeine and sugar to keep ya going. 

Once we got to the fountain we saw the masses of people I have come to expect around large touristy areas. Justin was surprised the fountain was so large and also that the square around it so small. We took some time to admire the fountain and then braved the crowd for a picture in front. We got the picture but then tried for a second with us throwing our coins into the fountain meaning that we will come back to Rome. Over 120,000 euro gets pulled out of the fountain each year and most is donated to charity each year. Then we walked over to the Spanish steps. 

We reached them from the top and were able to walk down them then taking a picture going back up. There were again many people, but most were taking a break on the steps. We also sat down and planned up move for dinner. We picked out one in the guidebook and started that direction with the plan that if we saw something different on the way we would stop there.  We ended up near the piazza navona and found a small little restaurant that offered bruschetta (toast with fresh tomatoes and olive oil) and the either pizza or pasta and beer or wine for 12 euro. Also they had free wifi so we could update everyone that we got to Rome in one piece. I of course had to have the roman specialty pasta carbonara and Justin got spaghetti with white clam sauce. Both meals were delicious and the wine was amazing (remember this is their crappy wine) we ended up sitting for a bit longer and having and extra glass of wine. Then made it back to the apartment for a good but short nights sleep. Tomorrow it's up early for an early tour of the Sistine chapel.

Driving to Rome

Our journey started early to Italy. Our alarms went off at 3 am and our flight left st 6. Good thing we feel asleep the night before or should I say afternoon at 3!  So Justin was the brave soul who decided he would drive in Italy since I drove in Germany two years ago. The car rental went smoothly until we saw that it was a manual...well we looked at our booking papers and we booked a manual on accident after carefully only looking for automatics. Good thing Justin can drive a manual we just wanted him to not have to worry about having to drive a manual and drive in a foreign country. But we couldn't get an automatic so we just went on about our drive.

We quickly decided driving in Italy was not easy when it took 10 minutes to find our way out of the parking lot. We were warned that the Italians were crazy drivers and so when someone tried to pull out in front of Justin he refused to be a push over behind the wheel. What followed was a game of chicken that Justin won. The side effect however included Justin almost running over his first Italian and speeding through a red light intersection. After that his confidence was shaken but once we got on the highway he did great despite the ridiculous diving patterns in work zones...  at one point oncoming traffic was diverted on to our side of the autostrasse. **Quick note: this is a divided highway at 120 km/hr**. Its kinda scary to be diving down the high way then....wtf, there are cars on our side of the road going in the opposite direction. 

Turning into Rome brought on higher anxiety. At one point I was laughing so hard because they really just do whatever they want. Men and women on mopeds whipping in between cars while texting and talking on cell phones....cars missing turns and going the wrong way on roads to get where they need to be....crazy!  if you cant tell the mopeds are those to watch out for (not to take away from the crazy car drivers...haha) for they go into tight spaces and get to the front of the lines at lights.  

Most roads don't have lines and people just drive where they want to...most cars have dings because the drivers are crazy. Justin did a great job an we found our parking deck on the first try. Justin was very happy when he got in there...here is his relived face.

Whew!

Amsterdam in a day

Our flight landed at 5:30am and we had our bags and had gone through customs by 6am! It was very smooth and easy to get through the airport that early. We purposely found a hotel within walking distance from the airport. Our flight the next day leaves at 6:30 am to get down to Italy. This hotel was awesome when we walked in, very modern and very helpful. All of their signs have funny sayings and their rooms are very clean, futuristic, and Ikea like. We paid a little extra to check in early and get a hot shower before our day started. That was a great decision! The room has a single remote that controls the whole room, tv, temperature, blinds, lights, ect. It's crazy awesome...so needless to say we didn't get out of the hotel until around 8:30 after we played around with the room features.

In this picture I am standing with my back to the door and to the left is the toilet and the right is the shower with the bed flush to the back of the room...it's tight but that's normal for a total in Europe. The shower is a rain shower which was pretty neat. 

Then it was off to explore Amsterdam. We went straight to the tourist center to buy an iamsterdam card which gave us free public transportation and entrance to over 10 museums and a boat cruise. We thought that was a good deal...until we found out the train from the airport to the main part of the city wasn't covered.... All in all we got our money's worth in the ticket but would advise others to think twice before getting it if staying near the airport. Amsterdam is beautiful and has a very unique feel. The first thing we noticed when we got off was holy bikes.....whoa we had never seen so many bikes in our lives. This town we found out has as many bikes as people. 

This platform next to the free ferry holds 1,100 free parking spots for bikes. We stepped out at rush hour and almost got flatted by bikes not cars...yikes we learned quick to look both ways before crossing any streets.

Justin was adventurous and convinced me to walk to the museums from the central station...in hindsight that was great because we wandered through the back residential side of Amsterdam. The city is built so close to water that they have many canals and also many houseboats and regular boats on these canals. They do not have gondolas....that's Venice :). 

House boats on either side with the river cruise we took going through the middle.

We saw the Vincent van Gough museum which was very cool. It had many of his early pieces and really did a good job of showing his progression of an artist and how he learned from other artists. He used many tools to help him with perspectives and drew grids on paintings and sketches that he was copying for practice. The only let down was that his starry night piece was not in the collection. 

It was very interesting but this museum is where both Justin and I lost steam....we were soo tired from not sleeping on the plane and getting up early for our flight. We pushed through with coffee and sweets. :)

Next we decided to go on a riverboat tour an rest our legs. It was a little over an hour and took us through the canals and pointed out famous houses and districts. The fact that we walked along one of the main canals to get to the museums was nice because we had seen the sights before and could recognize them and appreciate what they actually were. We both dosed off during the tour and took turns kicking each other to wake up. After the tour we picked up some souvenirs and made our way to the houseboat museum which is something I really wanted to see. It was a houseboat that had been in full use until the late 1990's until it was used exclusively as a museum. It showed how a family of four could live in one of them, honestly it was tight but not any tighter than a single wide trailer. 

Then in our way back we picked up another delicious and nutritious snack...a Belgian specialty but we saw multiple stand with fries and mayo....best fries I've had in a long time.

Justin is a great guide and really learns cities well, I'm glad I'm traveling with him!

After our snack we made our way back to the airport and to the hotel. The plan was to sleep until dinner and get up eat and go back to sleep....currently it's 11:30pm and I woke up about an hour ago, chose to blog and will go back to sleep so our plan didn't work. We have to get up at 3am for our flight to Naples tomorrow where we will rent a car and arrive in Rome around lunch tomorrow.

Bye bye Amsterdam!