Florence

After our fabulous visit in Rome, we hopped on a train the next morning and headed to one of my favorite cities, Florence. The train ride was great-besides having all our luggage and being unsure of what to do with it :) We arrived in the early afternoon and were able to tour the city and eat lunch before heading to see Michelangelo's David at the museum...which was amazing.

On the train and apparently Ryan missed the striped memo for the day :)

The Ponte Vecchice Bridge (the oldest and most famous bridge in Florence). This was about a two minute walk from our hotel and has all kinds of jewelry stores and other neat shops on it.

Here is a replica of David located in one of Florence's squares. In the actual museum, you are not supposed to take any photos of the "real" David, although my sneaky husband did take a few on his cell phone. Thankfully, the Nazi workers didn't catch him :)

We randomly came across this bronze wild boar statue. From my last trip, I remembered it being famous and rubbing his nose, although I couldn't remember why. I made us take a picture with it anyway...and Micah loved riding it! I recently looked up what this is known for and found out: "rub his nose to return to Florence, and put a coin in his mouth for financial good luck." I guess rubbing his nose last time worked for me!

The Duomo-it was HUGE and really pretty!

Bronze Doors at the Baptistry

Gelato.

They always have the most beautiful displays, which makes it even more tempting to buy (not that you need any extra temptation though).

And yes, it tastes even better than it looks!

Metro Trouble

We learned the metro system pretty easily and most of the time, had no problem getting on and off. After we left the Colosseum, we had to catch another metro and had planned to go to the train station to look at ticket prices and times for the next day from Rome to Florence. We then were wanting to go see the Trevi Fountain at night. Well, we quickly learned that we were trying to catch the metro at the wrong time...several of them passed us up and were completely full, as it was after work hours. We finally devised a plan to all spread out at a different door and to just be "Italian" for a moment or two and push our way on. We sort of forgot to have a plan on how to meet up once we arrived at the train station though...which ended up being a problem! Sara and I made it onto the first metro-thinking that Ryan, Paul, and Micah were on there too. We got off and looked all around for them. When we couldn't find them, we just figured that they had exited the metro and had headed to look at train tickets. We went to the train station and searched and searched for them. The more we walked, the more we realized we had nearly no chance of finding them here. This was a pretty large area where there was like a million people walking everywhere. After about 20 minutes of no success, we decided we had 2 options: 1) to go back to the hotel, or 2) to go to the Trevi Fountain as we had planned. We opted for option #2, hoping they would be there too, and headed down an escalator towards the metro. Right when we got off the escalator, we looked up and saw them coming down on an escalator across from us. What were the chances??? We were so lucky to have found them right there. They explained that they ended up having to wait for another two metros to pass before they found a spot to get on. We were so relieved to have found them and we definitely learned to devise a complete plan next time :) We continued on to the Trevi Fountain and had a great night!

Rome

Day two was spent in Rome on another beautiful day. Plus, we got to spend it with Ryan and Sara, which just made everything even better. We started our day by eating breakfast at a little cafe-the crepes and croissants all around Italy are just delicious. I'm sure we all gained about 10 lbs between the pastries, pizza, pastas, and gelato...but it was worth every bite :)

Then we headed to catch the metro to go see the Colosseum and Roman Forum-two key places in ancient Roman history. Here is the metro with its graffiti galore...Micah liked to call the metro and every other train we rode on "Thomas", after the TV show "Thomas the Train".

Ry holding Micah on the crowded metro.

And there it is...the incredible Colosseum

First we headed over to the Colosseum, but the line was crazy long, so we decided to walk a little further down the road and see the Roman Forum first.

Where Julius Caesar's ashes were spread.

Taking a lunch break at a local Pizzeria (these are literally EVERYWHERE)

And thankfully, our little man was out snoozing for awhile.

After lunch, we headed back to the Colosseum. We were quite sad when we learned that the tour guides had left for the day. That was our fault for waiting so long to return. We ended up having to use our handy-dandy Tour Guide Books as our tour guide (especially the book by Rick Steve's-he saved our day many times and Sara pretty much would only listen to what he had to say. Ha). Thankfully, there were other signs and markers to read once in the Colosseum. We all agreed we wished we had spent more time here. The history is just absolutely amazing!

Pizza, Gelato, and more

We are back from a wonderful vacation in Italy. We are so glad we decided to do this trip while living so close and before Jordan arrives. It was the perfect trip and even better than we anticipated. We were really worried about taking Micah ALL around and traveling from city-to-city, but he truly was a trooper. It also was really good seeing and catching up with my brother and sister-in-law (Ryan and Sara). We all had a lot of fun together and made some great memories.

Well, we were able to take a direct flight from Jordan to Rome-which was so perfect. It was about a three and a half hour flight. Micah slept some and enjoyed having his own TV screen to watch an in-flight movie and play games. He was obsessed with the controller.

We arrived in Rome at about 1pm, we went straight to our hotel, checked-in, and then decided to tour around the city for the afternoon since it was such a beautiful day. Ryan and Sara had arrived a day earlier from the States, so they went to see Pompeii that day and wouldn't be back until the evening sometime. Our hotel was in a great location as we could walk to many of the sites we wanted to see. We ended up seeing the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, and Pantheon that day-all pretty amazing sites.

Our hotel

The view from our hotel to the left.

The view from our hotel to the right.

The Spanish Steps

Exploring Rome :)

The Pantheon

The ceiling of the Pantheon

The Trevi Fountain (one of my personal favorite sites)

Enjoying our 1st (of many) gelato. Yum, yum, yum.

Ciao

We are off to Italy today and sooooo excited! It sort of seems surreal at the moment. This will be our last and final vacation before heading back to America at the end of the summer. We decided we had better do something in Europe while we are living so close...and do it before our little girl arrives in May. We are meeting my brother and sister-in-law (Ryan and Sara) and can hardly wait to see them!

I actually have been to Italy once before (5 years ago), as I had the opportunity to go in college and to take a class. The rest of my travel crew have never been there, and since I loved it so much, I definitely do not mind returning again. :) Here are a few pictures from my first visit that will have to do until we return! Bye.