Italy

For Easter Break we took the WHOLE family and went to Italy for 10 days!! We had such a great time. We drove to Stanstead airport in London and flew into Rome. The next day in Rome we saw Palatine Hill, The forum, The Colosseum, The Time Elevator Roma, the Pantheon and partially did the night walk across Rome before the kids freaked out...it was a VERY long day that included a LOT of walking. They did pretty good considering. We were all very glad to be back at the Bed and Breakfast for the night.

The next day we went to see Vatican City, the museum, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. We all climbed to the top of the Dome at St. Peter's...what a climb! What a view! Last night we discovered a GREAT place to get gelattos (Italian ice cream). It was in a piazza called Campo De Fiori. There were musicians everywhere and they were all very good. We ate, got gelattos and strolled around looking at the shops and listening to the various musical groups.

We took the train down to Pompei and were grateful that they had a place to store our luggage. #Everyone had a carry-on piece that contained everything that they would need for the 10-day trip. Ryan Air charges for any checked bags so we did the European thing and put everything in carry-ons or backpacks.

Pompei was completely amazing...not that everything that we'd seen so far wasn't but this place was pretty cool. We spent most of the day here touring the city and listening to the guides and of course my favorite guide (Steve) and his Rick Steve's guidebook tell us all about the city and it's ancient inhabitants. We wanted to see Mt. Vesuvius but ran out of time. We had dinner at a place right across from the entrance to Pompei. The people were very nice and even gave all of us a free class of their special, fresh OJ blend. Dinner was great and we topped it off with the traditional gelatto.

We took the night train to Pisa and what a miserable experience that was!!! We had girls in one compartment and boys in the other. We (the girls) had someone try to walk in on us twice (the locks did not work) so I "slept" (or not) with my foot holding the door shut. We arrived in Pisa at around 3:30am with 10 groggy, grouchy kids. We got to Camp Darby and into our cabins by 5:00am and were fast asleep by 5:02am.

From Camp Darby we toured Pisa and, of course, the Leaning Tower. Side note: Pisa had, by far, the BEST gelatto we had on the whole trip! We took the train into Florence to see the Accademia to see Michael Angelo's "David", the Leonardo Museum, the Duomo, and the Uffizi Gallery...oh ...and gelatto...see a trend? hee hee hee We walked ALL over and had a GREAT time but we were SO tired by the time we got back to Camp Darby.

We also went to the Chinque Terra...the Italian Riviera. We had great weather for everything but the last 2 days and it rained and rained and rained. Chinque Terra would have been WAY better without the rain. We still had fun but would have been loads funner without the rain. It was a very picturesque place.

We loved the vacation and had an amazing time but we were glad to get home and recover a bit.

Here are a ton of pictures...hope you don't get bored...:-)