We head back to the US in the morning. We wont have any more blog posts until we get adjusted back to US time and get settled in.

Today we saw the Pantheon and went on a wine tasting tour. Both were fun. I've posted the pictures for them.

Time for bed.

We started out the 4^th of July thinking of the US and the most honored tradition: The Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest. The one US channel we have was highlighting the American hopeful and his goal of over throwing Kobayashi to reclaim the hot dog eating crown for the US. We are dying to find out who won.  We’ve got our eyes glued to CNN News but it sort of runs in a loop so we might night find out until later when we have internet connectivity. (I just checked and yes, American has regained the crown!, go USA).

Today was cranky Jeff and Angie day. We had a tour of the Vatican setup and were picked up at our hotel around 7:15 a.m. The tour was through Green Line and I would never ever recommend them for a tour again based on this experience. Everything we had read about touring the Vatican was that after seeing the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican to not leave and to go to St. Peter’s Basilica from there. This would keep you from having to stand in line. As our Vatican tour was ending we asked our guide this and he said the buses would take us over there. We figured he knew what he was doing and that maybe there was a group entrance we would go through over there too. Well it turns out that basically we got to get back in the tour bus and driven to a gift shop and that’s where the tour ended. So we had already exited the Vatican and now we were outside St. Peter’s Basilica with no way to get back in without standing in the line that went all the way around the outside of the square.

 It turns out that the Basilica was closed and had we been in the Vatican we might not have been able to go in anyway, but we saw maybe 1/10 of the actual Museum in the Vatican and would have preferred to see more if leaving with our guide was just to be driven to a gift shop.

Because of the early morning start, heat and the tour guide we were cranky. We went over to Castle Sant Angelo and saw some angel sculptures done by Bernini. They line a bridge that crosses the Tiber River. An interesting side note was that this bridge used to be lined by gallows, so I guess the angels are appropriate. We also went through the castle but nothing of real note to call out.

After the castle we took a cab to the Spanish steps and had an overpriced quick lunch of pizza and then took the subway back to our hotel for a nap.

After our nap we headed out to dinner, our hotel is nice but it’s not in a very central area and we wanted to go somewhere that had some more nightlife. We headed over to the Piazza Navona area to a restaurant our hotel recommended. We both enjoyed dinner. I had a homemade pasta dish that had some chili spice in the pasta with a tomato and thyme sauce. The sauce and tomatoes was a bit sweet but combined with the slightly spicy pasta it was very good. Angie had ravioli with ricotta and spinach stuffing that she enjoyed. We shared a meatball and potato main dish that was pretty good too.

After dinner we walked over to the Piazza Navona and saw the Fountain of the 4 winds (another Bernini work). It’s currently being restored and there was some information on what is being done to it. All around the plaza there were street performers and artists selling their work. We found an awesome gelato stand (Blue Ice) and for 2.50 Euro got a giant gelato. Best gelato deal of the trip and it was pretty good quality.

We saw a crazy street performer from Chile that had a pretty good act. At one point he was parading around a tiny little stuffed turtle and he made him parachute into the crowd. After he was done with the turtle he tried to prop it up so people could applaud for it but it kept falling over. Each time it fell over he would pick it up bang it on the ground and prop it up again. The turtle kept falling over and the violence against it increased. At one point he was slamming its head in a suitcase. I thought Angie was going to pee her pants she was laughing so much at it.

Tomorrow we’re going to see the Pantheon and try and squeeze in the last few places along the path of Illumination from Angels and Demons. We also found out about an afternoon wine tasting tour that we’re going to see if we can do.

New words coined by Angie on this trip:

Grawesome – When something is both gross and awesome at the same time. It was used first in Venice after visiting Saint Mark’s Church and the Tesoro room (treasures room). In this room there were body parts of saints and other important religious people….It was definitely grawesome.

Terawesome – When something is both terrifying and awesome. First used in the cab ride back from Trevi fountain to the hotel. The taxi driver knew how to accelerate, turn and slow down with race car driver like precision.

We’re a few days behind on posts as we were out late last night and too tired to figure out internet when we got back to the hotel. Angie will likely cover today’s tourists activities tomorrow but we’ll post pictures from today now.

Tomorrow we go to the Vatican (no shorts allowed!) and see all the splendor that it is. It will mark an important milestone in the trip for me as I will have seen original works of art by Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael and Leonardo. That’s right folks, all the artists that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are named after. We saw a few of Donatello’s pieces in the Duomo museum; he had a few scary looking statues that I could respect.  Today we saw a few of Raphael. If there was ever a 5^th turtle he should be named Bernini although the rare art snob + TMNT fan would know that he is considered to be from the baroque not renaissance period. But Bernini had some impressive skills.

Food updates:

Nothing of real note about food, we’ve had some decent meals but nothing I would say are of the level that I’d recommend you definitely go to  if you ever come to Rome/Florence. Although last night Angie was disappointed that the pasta dish brought to her had a face (a whole prawn was brought to her as a decoration for her dish).

The last night in Florence we sat in the Piazza Signoria (where the bonfire of the vanities happened) and had dessert. We had been in search of Tignanello wine to try as someone had recommended it to us. This restaurant listed it as available by the glass and everywhere else we went it was by the bottle or half bottle and was at least 35 euro. It was 12 euro just for a glass but we thought we should try it.  1 of 2 things happened; we either didn’t know what we were ordering or the guy charged us for one and brought us something else. What we got was basically straight clear alcohol, and not tasty either. We paid 12 euro for it so we drank it but it was not what we were expecting. We double checked the menu and it was listed in a section that had other non wine listed so we weren’t sure. Maybe the wine experts can tell us what the heck it was we had.

We are reasonably sure we are going to miss our connecting flight to Seattle in Cinccinati as it's only a 1 hour layover and I think we have to go through customs. We're going to see what other options we have but we might be stuck in Cincinnati for a few hours while we work it out.

The website was done for a bit so this post is a day behind. We'll catch up once we hit Rome.  

In the last 24 hours 2 monumental things have happened: I ate pizza in Pisa, and I joined high class society as I now own a Rolex. To all those chumps in the US that are spending thousands of dollars on a Rolex, save yourself some money: buy a plane ticket to Florence and there are guys selling them on the street. The merchant I bought mine from wanted 75€ but we worked out a deal for 30€. It has the Rolex logo all over it, even on the band, so I’m sure it will be of quality.

With my Rolex on my wrist we set out for Pisa this morning. It was really easy to get there and was only about 25€ roundtrip for both of us. On the way there we bought 2nd class tickets which seemed fine. For only 5€ more we bought 1st class tickets for the way back. There is really no difference between 1st and 2nd class aside from there are slightly bigger seats, but there is no extra leg room. It might be different if you were on a longer or different train as I think some have little personal cabins but our train didn’t have any of that. We were also a bit confused that the train ticket we had was basically like a bus ticket, there were no assigned seats and you could use it anytime you just had to validate it in a little machine near the train track prior to getting on whichever train you wanted.

The leaning tower was impressive. I did the actual tour up the 300 steps to the top of it. Angie decided not to as it was 300 steps on marble with no handrails. It wasn’t too terrible of a climb, going down was harder as the marble steps were slippery. There is actually a few other things right near the tower that is all part of Piazza dei Miracoli. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time in Pisa, we had our pizza saw the tower, took some photos as proof we were there and then headed back to the train station.

There has been a breakthrough in the Florence gelato situation. We have discovered that in Florence you tell them what size cone you want and they fill it with the appropriate amount of gelato for that cone. You can do multiple flavors etc just tell them when you pick your cone. Angie is starting to grow tired of gelato and is looking to branch out into other Italian desserts. I’m still committed to at least a cone a day.

Last night for dinner we went to a nice little restaurant that was next door to the laundromat we used. Angie votes it #1 meal so far and I put it a #2 behind Galileo’s in Venice. She had a tortelloni dish that looked  like it was stuffed with spinach but from the translation on the menu it said black cabbage. It was very good though. I had a gnocchi dish that was tomato, basil and mozzarella and it was good too. For our 2nd plate we shared a chicken dish that turned out to be the same exact dish we had the night before. It was chicken in a mushroom marsala sauce. We both felt it was better than the same dish the night before.

Tonight we are going to try going a bit early to a restaurant called Il Latini. We have heard several people talk of it as being a great place to go. Last night when walking back from dinner we found it and there was probably 40 people outside waiting for a table. The whole time in Italy we have never seen anyone waiting for a table so we figure that it’s probably a pretty good recommendation. If it’s too busy for dinner we’re going to try lunch there tomorrow instead.

It looks like doing a wine tasting tour isn’t going to happen. There are a few tour companies that list wine tasting tours but most are visits to a single winery and we haven’t really been able to pin down all the details of any of them. The other ones I found online that seemed to go to a few don’t do tours on Sundays.  Instead we’re going to see a few more things in Florence and try going to a wine bar to try lots of different wines.

Florence 6/29/07

Today we did the museum thing. Angie will tell you all about it. It was pretty interesting to actually see David and the famous paintings in the Uffizi, something you definitely have to do in Florence if you are here. My feet are pretty sore from standing in line so long.

Geeky moment of the day: So we are looking at all these 400-500 year old paintings and after a while they all just kind of blend together. There is one picture of a person with flowing hair in a pink robe. The painting is a portrait and the face somewhat fills the picture aside from the shoulders. The person looked very feminine to me except for the fact he had a beard. I made a statement to Angie about “What was this the first ever bearded lady?” She laughed and explained to me that it was a painting of Jesus and showed me the crown of thorns on his head. Well I never said I was art critic but we both found this pretty amusing. Note to famous old painters, if you’re going to do Jesus don’t put him in a pink gown and don’t give him such a feminine face. Oh one other note to famous old painters, what is up with every single one of you dudes doing a painting of Madonna with Child? Seriously, dudes have been painting this scene for a long long time. I think we’ve seen enough of that one, thanks. Although I did like Michaelangelo’s version he buffed out Madonna and baby Jesus and change the perspective.

Day 2.5 in Florence and the gelato situation hasn’t improved much. It’s still readily available but 2x as much as in Venice. They have too many options of cones that can cause you to end up with a 5E cone when you really just want a scoop of chocolate and strawberry. 

We saw some interesting stuff just walking around. We are going to go to the Duomo at some point when we are here and that looks to be just as impressive as St. Marks Basilica in Venice.  We took some pictures of the outside of it and we’re posting those now too. Near the Uffizi is the Piazza Della Signoria with a whole bunch of different statues. This is where the David was originally and there is a copy there now.

Just a side note for the people who offer to take your picture for you, thanks for being all nice and helping but could you try not to cut the heads off of the statues that are behind the people you are taking the picture of? Thanks.

We walked around and did some shopping but mostly it was just looking. There is tons of leather stuff to buy; they even had leather baseball hats! Everyone really seemed to like us and kept offering us “discounts”. There are some purses that Angie was looking at that we might end up buying, maybe tonight I’ll by my knockoff designer watch, those guys are only out at odd hours and they run pick up all their stuff and move on when the police come.

Tommorow we take the train to Pisa where I will fulfill my destiny of eating pizza in pisa.

Today we took the train from Venice to Florence. It was a pretty easy trip, the hardest part was riding the vapareto to the train station. That was really only difficult by the mass of people that got on and off at each stop. There was some yelling at americans to move to the back to create room but it wasn't yelled in our direction.

Prior to the train I got to ride on a traghetto. A traghetto is an old gondola that you can pay .50€ to ferry you from one side of the grand canal to the other. In the travel shows we had seen of Venice they always showed people standing in them and riding them across. Angie wasn't too excited to try this out so she waited while I took a ride. I was fully intending to just stay in the boat and then have them take me back for another .50€, however once I was in it I realized how dorky I was being and decide to take a quick walk away from the traghetto to look like I was actually doing something. I walked around for about 2 minutes and came back and then rode it back the other way. Being me I'm due at least one geeky thing a day and I guess this qualifies as it. I had my whole "gangsta" thing the day before. I'll save writing about my geeky thing from Sunday night for another day but Angie and I still laugh about it every day.

Lately we've been sort of skipping lunch or just grabbing a piece of pizza from a shop, this has helped to deal with the expensive food prices as we can still have a decent dinner. Last night for dinner we didn't have the best meal but Angie and I can honstly say we had an authenticate Italian meal. We walked over one of the bridges crossing the grand canal and found a small Trattoria (family restaurant). We weren't looking for anything in particular this place just seemed to look nice and rustic. The waitresses were a grandmother and her daughter, while the other staff we saw appeared to be grandchildren. The grandmother seated us. She didn't appear to speak english, or rather she just kept speaking italian to us, but she seemed to get we didn't understand much. We were seated at a table that could hold 6 or 7 people and later during our meal they seated a woman with her son at the same table. At one point Angie noticed one of the waiters (the teenage-esq grandson) acting sort of silly and carrying a plate over his grandmother's head. When he went past she spanked him! The food was very homestyle and decent, we would recommend it more for the ambiance/experience than the quality.

Tonight we ate at a restaurant called La Posta. It is next door to some big building called Posta in doing an internet search quickly I couldn't figure out what it was though. The dinner was very good. Angie said she considered it the best meal we've had so far but I would put it behind Galileo's in Venice. We had a really good chicken in a porcini mushroom sauce as well as some really tasty bruscetta. Angie had an asparagus risotto with hers and I had a beef tortellini dish. Dinner was a bit expensive but it appears that Florence will be less expensive than Venice. Although we had some crazy 6.50€ gelato tonight.

To Allie and Lisa, no shopping yet because we are too busy eating! Angie has plans for buying some stuff tommorow, I might buy a fake italian watch from one of the street vendors, we can start a pool going for how long before it breaks.

We'll have some more pictures tommorow.

As Angie points out there is some discrepancy between us about which day we are on for our trip so I’ll just put the days of the week for the titles of the my posts. We’ve also decided that Angie is going to write more about the actual site seeing and I’ll post about other random things, culinary adventures, etc.

Random things

When you first look at this picture you might think, “Oh, that’s a butcher shop and the owner likes horses so much he put a picture of a horse on the window”. Well the owner does like horses: to eat! Our Italian is very limited but we are pretty sure this was a horse meat store.

Having crooked buildings is all the rage in Italy, sure the leaning tower of Pisa is the most famous, but Venice has its own leaning towers too.

The other day we put up a picture of Jesus and his disciples done in mosaic. It was hard to really appreciate the scale of the mosaic so here is another picture of it. There is a black pigeon sitting on top of one of the columns just below center on the left hand side. My guess is the mosaic is about 15 feet wide. This mosaic has nothing on the ones inside Saint Mark’s Basilica. Imagine the entire roof of Key Arena done in mosaic tiles and you have the inside of the Basilica. Angie had told me that there were mosaics in the ceiling; I didn’t realize the entire thing was covered in mosaics though. You can’t take pictures inside but we bought a few postcards to bring back and show people.

If you go to Murano take the #5 vaporetto which you can get on just south of the Doge’s Palace. It is a direct route; we found this out after taking a combination of the #81 and #41 vaporetto’s to get there. Note: if you’re going to try and be sneaky and not buy a vaporetto pass you probably won’t get caught unless you take a direct line like we took back from Murano. We were legit and had purchased a 2 day pass already but so far this has been the only time we have been asked for our ticket.

I think we’ve figured out the best way to get blog posts and pictures on the site for the least amount of money at the internet café. We are writing our posts on my laptop and then copying them to a USB keychain along with already resized pictures.

Culinary Adventures
Angie had her emotional day a few days ago, mine was today. Am I getting homesick? Oh no, nothing like that, but there was a bit of a gelato incident that resulted in the majority of gelato ending up on the pavement in the Piazza San Marco. In lots of places I might have gone for the 5 second rule, but with the number of pigeons that are around here I would have very likely been eating pigeon poop gelato. Total gelato count for the day 2.2 (will likely be 3.2 after dinner).

For any future visitors to Venice I do not recommend the gelato shop in Piazza San Marco; much too small of sizes and not nearly as creamy of texture. The best so far has been a place near our hotel that is in between Campo Manin and Campo San Angelo. There is also a good one in Campo San Angelo (we found that one last night because the other one had already closed). The chocolate is very good but the strawberry is a solid choice too.

Not much to report in the way of fantastic meals in the last day or so. Last night we had an OK meal but nothing remarkable, decent cheap wine though. House wine is cheaper by the ounce than Coke is. So far our dinner at Galileo’s the other night was the best. I had gnocchi (potato pasta) with a tomato and eggplant sauce, and Angie had tagliatelle (wide noodles) with a ragout (meat) sauce. Tonight we are going to try a slightly different area and see what we find for dinner there. We will still be using the caprese pricing system that we have developed.

 For some reason not all the blog posts are showing up on the home page, so if you want to make sure you see them you can use the link on the right or this one

I'm behind a day in writing as we are really finishing up day 3 but I haven't posted much about Day 2 yet. There is so much to write about and the internet cafe charges by the minute, so it's an interesting exercise in prioritization.

We started the day by going to the Piazza San Marco. This is where all the big tourist stuff in Venice is. It was only only about a 10 minute walk from our hotel. The square is famous for all the pigeons and for 1€ you can buy a bag of corn to feed them. They are very used to humans as you can tell by the photos. 

After feeding the pigeons we went to the Doge's Palace. Basically this is where the"King" of Venice lived. He actually had very little power and from what we can tell people spent all their lives making artwork of him and for him because there is a ton of artwork in the palace. We payed a few extra euro and got an audio tour device that was worth it. We learned a lot about it but after 45 min of so all the Doge's started blending together.

After the palace we walked around the shops a bit and I had my first of 3 gelatos for the day :-). We headed back to the hotel for the afternoon and rested up a bit prior to dinner. We had a really nice dinner at an outdoor restaurant called Galileo's and then went for our gondola ride. The ride was fun to do but not quite the romantic experience I thought it would be. You get thrown onto a gondola with other people and there is a constant stream of them in front and behind you. We were close to a signing gondola though and got to have a soundtrack with our ride. We even heard a few songs that are in Olive Garden commercials.

A few random side notes.

• Angie and I are developing a restaurant pricing system based on the cost of caprese (tomatoes, mozzarela and basil). Most restaurants have a menu posted outside so we check the price of caprese to see if we can afford it. We've seen it for as low as 7€ (which is still a lot considering what it is) to a high of 16€. For dinner it was 12€ and based on the price of the rest of the meal that is about as high of a price that we can afford for a restaurant.
• Yesterday was hot, but much better today. There might even be rain tonight.
  
• Today we went to the original ghetto, the rialto and the correr museum but I'll write more about that another time. Angie covered some of it too. Tommorow I'll upload the picture of me with my best gangsta pose while in the ghetto.
  

We successfully made it to Venice, but not without a few difficulties.Our flight from Atlanta was delayed 4 hours (for a total of 8 hours sitting in Atlanta) and we had to get off the plane and switch to another due to equipment failure. Delta Airlines isn't our best friend at this point. Angie hit the jackpot with seat assignments, she had a giant man in the seat behind her who felt the best way to get out of his seat was to use her seat as leverage. In the seat in front of her she had someone who chose to keep the seat reclined the entire time. It was that seat or sitting next to a stranger in the middle seat where I was.

Venice has been pretty neat so far. We made it to our hotel without much trouble, the only issues we had was us not understanding that narrow alleys are actually streets that we might need to turn down to follow the hotel's directions from our water bus drop off. Our hotel is right on a canal and we have a "view" of it. By view I mean if you open the window and look down 4 stories you can see it. Gondolas do go by frequently and even singing ones, with our window open we have our own little personal soundtrack to Venice. Last night we were worn out from the flight so after dinner we sat on a bridge near Campo Manin (a square with a statue of Manin the last Doge of Venice prior to the end of the republic) and watched the gondolas go by. There was also a guy just hanging out and playing guitar. It was a very surreal experience, felt like something you would see in a movie.

No pictures just yet as the internet cafe doesn't have a camera card reader. Tommorow we'll bring my laptop over so we can upload the pictures. We had a pretty easy paced day today but I'll write more about that tommorow as we are off to get some dinner and take a gondola ride. 

Turns out the first plane we have been sitting on for the last 2 hours isn't going to be able to fly to Venice after all. We're now waiting in line to get another boarding pass for the new plane they are going to use. Hopefully this one will be good and we'll be out of here in the next hour.

We're currently hanging out in Atlanta waiting for our flight to Venice. So far no suprises with the trip.I tried being all tricky and tethering our smartphones to my laptop so we could get internet access for free. I seem to be missing some setting or magic combination to get it to work. I know it's possible but I don't have windows device center installed yet on my new laptop which may be the issue, I think there is some secret sauce in there.

 Even though we hadn't left Seattle yet, this morning we saw Pisa. Well actually La Pisa Cafe.

Delta seems to enjoy moving our gates around. It's changed 3 times since we got our borading passes in Seattle.

Just a few more days to go. Angie and I are excited and a bit stressed. We can't wait to get going on the trip but it seems that there are a million little things we have to remember to do prior to going. Every museum in Italy that you want to go to likely suggests reservations if you want to avoid standing in long lines so we've got a million different confirmation codes for various things. We're ahead of the curve on laundry and packing as Angie has already gotten Allie all packed and Ryan is getting pretty close. We did some shopping on Sunday to pick up a money belt, power converter and books to read.

We had a bit of drama with our flights last week. I logged into Expedia to check our itinerary and noticed that we no longer had assigned seats for our flight from Atlanta to Venice. Angie called Delta and they said we had seats but they were middle seats and we weren't going to be sitting next to each other! This was the 9.5 hour leg of the flight and we were not happy campers about that. Just today Angie checked and it there were other open seats on the flight and we were able to change our seats to be together. We originally had seats on the side and wouldn't have to sit next to anyone else, now we're in the middle row and will have someone on our left. Much better than what we thought we were going to end up with, though.

It seems that everyone we talk to has been to Italy and has some great suggestions of other things we can do. I'm sure with any trip you take you can always find more to do than you have time so we'll see what we can fit in and what we can't. We don't want to be constantly on the move to see something else and not just enjoy the time there.

Things I'm looking forward to:

• Taking a real vacation with just Angie. We haven't done anything like this with just us ever, the closest to this would have been a weekend away without the kids.
• Seeing all the various historical sites / museums / artwork etc. More importantly will be licking the Coliseum and other historic landmarks (this is an inside joke).
• Food! Trying real Italian Pizza, Pasta etc. As I've told others, I'm going to have pizza in Pisa.
• Just about everything.

Things I'm not looking forward to:

• Long plane rides. We'll watch a movie or 2 on my laptop and I've got a book to read but I will be bored out of my mind on the flight.
• Not so much not looking forward to, but more a bit concerned: our hotel in Florence. As we are reading more and more reviews of it it sounds like it's a Jeckyl and Hyde type of experience; hopefully we'll get the good experience.
• Paranoia about getting pick-pocketed. Rome seems to be the place this is most likely to happen. I'm sure I'm going to be a psycho about this and keep everything in the money belt.

The plan will be to blog and upload pictures fairly regularly based on finding an internet cafe or connection.

A little more than 1 month till our trip. Angie is going to work on making our train and museum reservations this week. That will be the last of things we need to take care of prior to our trip. I started updating the itinerary to include some details. There is a lot more to add still.

Italy Itinerary

I've told Angie that for our anniversary I'm taking care of everything. If anyone has any good suggestions for ideas feel free to let me know. I have a few things in mind but I haven't finalized any plans yet.