May 2006

May 01
Italy - in slightly more detail
As prmoised, I am going to give you a bit more detail about the trip. For the sake of convenience, I'll break it into three parts, as with the pictures - Rome, Florence and Venice.

Rome

First we took two flights to Rome from Toronto, stopping in Amsterdam. I'm not going to bother describing the flights, too many of them to talk about every one. So the first day in Rome we went to the Vatican. The first group of pictures are from the Vatican Museum and the Pope's garden. We went to see the Sistine Chapel as well, but you can't take pictures there, but I was able to take pictures of the staircase leading out. Beside the Sistine CHapel is St. Peter's Basillica and square. The Basillica is huge and is the place where they put all the dead popes, as you can see. Then I have a bunch of pictures from St. Peter's square including the current Pope's residence. From there we went to the Colluseum, which is the second major group of photos. Later that night we went to the Pantheon, which is the large domed temple with the hole in the roof. From there we went to a large fountain which is quite famous and beautiful. After that we walked to a restuarant built in the ruins of the ancient amphitheatre I think, which is where Caesar is rumored to have been assasinated. The musicians serenaded my Nana.

Florence

So the next day we headed to Florence by bus. In Florence we saw numerous Churches, including Santa Maria Croce where Gallileo, Dante, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Rossini and Florence Nightengale were buried. Also a bunch of pictures of statues including copies of the David. We did see the original, but it's no cameras allowed. In the evening we headed just outside Florence to old Monastery that's worth millions of Euros but only houses 6 monks who spend their days making really potent liquor and honey. Anyway, it's really beautiful. So, the next day we headed off to Verona, where the story of Romeo and Juliette comes from. I took pictures of Juliette's balcony and Juliette's oft molested breast. Apparently, it gives you good luck in love, or something like that. We only stopped for lunch and then moved on.

Venice

So in Venice. The first thing we did was go on a Gondola ride. Our Gondola was half full, so there was more champagne to go around. I took quite a few pictures of the "streets" of Venice this way. After the tour, we ended up in St. Mark's square for more pictures and obese pigeons. There are also some pictures of St. Mark's Basillica and its four horses of the apocalypse. Also the Palace of the Doges. We also did qute a bt of shopping in Venice. From there, we had to head back to Rome via Orvieto, which is a classic Etruscan settlment on a hill and is famous for wines. We had to take a cablecar to get up there.

The next day we got up very very early to go to the airport and catch our flight home. I'm a complete idiot and lost my ticket, but we were able to get it replaced in time to catch the flight to Amsterdam. We had four hours there so much shopping was done. Then we headed back to Toronto.

5:38 PM