The Eternal City

We finished our Italian Adventure with a very quick day in Rome. There is so much to see there...the city needs a trip by itself! So we made the best use of our time and hit the Colosseum and the Vatican. It was so hot there. The killer was actually the humidity. You walked outside and just started to sweat. Actually, we were sweating in our air-conditioned hotel as well! Despite the heat, we had a fun day and would love to be able to go back and see more of Rome. Here's David and I in front of the Colosseum.



This is a view of the Colosseum from the Roman Forum (which is across the street). It is truly a phenomenal building. Thanks to our good old Rick Steve's book, we learned that it was built by over 50,000 Jewish slaves as a punishment for their revolt against the Roman Empire. I love all the history behind these ruins. There's simply nothing like it in the U.S.



Here's a shot of the inside of the Colosseum. It's amazing how well this building has survived over all of these years, and all of the tourists!

Here's a better picture of the mazes that were beneath the original floor. This is where they kept the animals (there are also cages that you can't see in this picture). It is amazing how complex it is. They would also flood this area and stage naval battles. How they did that, I have no idea!!

Our second and last Rome sight was Vatican City. We unfortunately didn't have enough time to go through the Vatican Museum, but we were able to go inside St. Peter's Basilica. Here's a picture of St. Peter's from the square.

Here's a view of part of the square and the church. You can see the gigantic TV monitor...there were three or four of these set up in the square. I'm not sure what they're for, but I'm guessing they're there to broadcast the Pope on his weekly address.

My pictures inside St. Peter's didn't turn out too well, but I had to post a couple of the OK ones. The inside of this church is massive!! It houses Michelangelo's Pieta (which was amazing, but behind bulletproof glass and harder to get a picture of), among many other artifacts. This is a picture of the altar that sits directly on top of Peter's tomb. I thought it was very significant!

Here's a picture of the inside of the dome, also done by Michelangelo. The detail was amazing! We would have loved to climb the dome, but carrying Abby up all those stairs didn't sound quite as appealing!

This is a bad picture, but it's the only one of all of us in St. Peter's Square, so here it is! We were standing just in front of the entrance to the church, so it gives a small idea of how huge the square is. I'm glad it wasn't packed with people!

Here's David and Abby enjoying the pigeons in St. Peter's Square. We truly had a great time!! I hope we can go back to Italy someday...it is a wonderful country!

Il Frantoio

The villa we stayed in was one of the best parts of the trip! Because our family is so big, we couldn't all fit into one place. So David and I and my married sisters all stayed together in beautiful Il Frantoio. The kids had so much fun together and we absolutely loved having a home base. We will miss this home sweet home!



Here's all of us (minus the Stewart kids) in the villa the day we left.

These are some pictures of our drive in...the first one is the view from our villa looking down the road you enter from, and the second is the road up to the next villas, where the rest of the family stayed. It was truly a beautiful spot surrounded by olive groves!

We were lucky enough to have a Smart car as our rental. We got the four-door version (since we had to put a car seat in the back), but it was still a sweet little ride! Driving in Italy really is quite scary, but David did a great job. His California driving skills came in handy! The roads are so narrow and everyone zips in and out of traffic, but so were we after a few days! I was amazed at the tight spaces this car could fit into. It was awesome! David's already looking to buy one to drive at home...

I have mentioned before about how positively wonderful the food was. Well, here's the lady behind it! Our sweet chef, Teresa, was the best part of the trip for me, and not just because of the great food she made for us. She was so cute with the kids and was always mindful of them. She told us that she was so excited when we came because she loves to cook for families. It "made her heart grow big" (as she put it!). She truly is a wonderful lady, and I am so glad we got to know her. We will definitely keep in touch with our favorite Italian friend!!

Here's Teresa and Andrea (the cute girl that helped Teresa and did the housekeeping duties) in the kitchen of the villa. We love these two!

Here's a random picture of Abby that I just had to post! She found David's socks (luckily they were clean!) and loved putting them on! I thought it was so funny! This picture was taken at our villa, so it kind of goes with everything else...

Our Day at the Beach!

Our last day in Tuscany was spent at a beautiful beach in Viareggio. It was only about 30 minutes from where we were staying, so it was an easy side trip. The beaches in Italy are very different from those in the U.S. The beach is a business there, which means you pay to go! A daily fee buys you a spot on the beach, usually with an umbrella and chair. We were in a great spot with cabanas, nice changing rooms, a salt-water pool, and of course, lots of sand and sea!



Here's a shot of the cabanas and umbrellas that you buy a spot in. The different colors and kinds of umbrellas show the different beach clubs.



Abby loved the beach! She is a little too fearless for my liking! She would run right into the waves without even looking back. The water temperature was really nice...a bit chilly when you first stepped in, but it warmed up quickly. We love the Mediterranean!

Here's David and Abby chilling in our cabana. We even had a storage table that could be locked so no one had to sit and watch the stuff. This is definitely the way to do the beach!!

The beach club had this great little children's play area that was well used by us! Abby spent half of the day making sand/mud castles with her cousins, Zach and Max. It was a perfect spot for kids...fenced in and in the shade!

You had to wear a swim cap to swim in the pool, so here's Abby modeling the cap! Her dad was proud!!

The Cinque Terre

Yesterday we spent the day at a gorgeous spot of the Italian Riviera...the Cinque Terre. There are five little towns nestled right along the coastline that are only accessible via train or hiking to them. With the stroller, we were only able to walk from the first town to the second. We had to take the train the rest of the way. But these towns are amazingly quaint, even with the thousands of tourists. This is a shot of the first town, Riomaggiore. This stretch between the first two towns is called "Via dell Amore." We definitely loved it!!

We spent most of the afternoon in town #4, Vernazza. The town has a little breakwater, a small harbor, and a very small beach. But David and Abby braved the crowds and the cold water and can both now say that they swam in the Mediterranean! My scary white legs didn't mesh too well with all the brown Italians...

Here are a couple of pictures of Vernazza...I loved all the laundry hanging out the windows! And there's a shot of the harbor and beach as well. Italians are very free, and there were a few topless women hanging out there amongst all the children!

We loved the Cinque Terre!!!

Pisa and its Leaning Tower

We spent a lovely Sunday in Pisa. We went to church in the morning (there is a wonderful little branch there that had a translator there for us so we could understand the talks!), and then spent the afternoon at the "Field of Miracles." The drive into Pisa from Lucca is beautiful!! You come over a hill, pass by an enormous field of sunflowers, and can see this pretty little town by the coast. You can even see the Leaning Tower from quite a distance, so it was a nice sight! This is a shot of the Baptistery, Duomo, and Leaning Tower just as you walk in the city gates.



This picture is pretty self-explanatory! It really is amazing how that building is still standing. They've done a lot to try and stabilize it...but it should be set for the next 300 years or so!



No kids under eight are allowed to climb the tower, so I climbed it while David took care of Abby. Here's my sister Suzanne and I and the very top of the tower with Pisa in the background. There were incredible views from the top, as you can imagine!

This is a view of the Duomo and the Baptistery from the top of the tower. It's a nice birds-eye view of the cross-shaped cathedral.

There's David and Abby waving to us at the top! (They are right in the middle of the picture.) They have beautiful grass there with signs all over the place that say "Keep Off the Grass." (The signs are strictly heeded, as you can see...) Every twenty minutes or so, a policeman will wander the grassy areas and blow his whistle to get people off. It's quite humorous!

I had to include a shot of the staircase we had to climb. It was narrow, with slick marble steps, and no railing! And you could definitely feel the lean of the tower as you walked up! We braced ourselves with the walls quite a bit.

Molto Bene!

Truly one of the best things about this trip is the food we get to eat! So, one of the first Italian phrases we all learned was "molto bene," which means very good! We are lucky enough to have a wonderful chef who feeds us very well. Abby loves Italian food...she has eaten everything we've been served. We've had ravioli, minestrone, gnocchi, homemade lasagna, bruschetta...just to name a few! This is where we eat breakfast and dinner every day. It's dreamy!!



This is usually what Abby does every meal. We can only keep her in a seat long enough to eat the antipasti (the first course), and then all she wants to do is play with the rocks!

Michelangelo's Carrara

A few of us drove up to Carrara this afternoon to see the marble quarries. It is a town about an hour north of Lucca. It was so cool! As you see the mountains, it looks like they are covered in snow. But really you are seeing the marble that has been cut out of the mountain. Michelangelo visited these quarries to pick out the marble for his sculptures, so they have been cutting out marble here for hundreds of years. I bought a cool marble cheese cutter that will hopefully last for a long time!

Firenze!

Florence is a CRAZY but very fun city! It was incredibly hot when we were there yesterday...it hit 102 degrees in the afternoon. So we drank lots of water and stayed in the shade as much as we could. It was nice to go into a couple of air-conditioned museums as well! The city is fairly small and was packed with tourists, but it is still a pretty amazing place!



We first hit the Accademia (where David is housed) and this is what Abby did through most of the museum. She was enjoying it!

You're not allowed to take pictures in the museum, but my little sister Jessie took some on the sly! I thought they turned out pretty well, considering she had to be so secretive about it. There's my David with Michelangelo's, and the others are Michelangelo's unfinished Prisoners. They are all pretty amazing sculptures. David is huge! It's hard to believe that Michelangelo was only 26 when he did it.

After the Accademia we walked down to the Duomo with the famous red dome. It is massive!! The line of people to get in was also enormous, so we just admired it from outside. It was made of beautiful pink and green marble and was a lot more colorful than I expected.

These are the famous baptistery doors done by Ghiberti. They are often referred to as the "Doors of Paradise." These are really only a copy though...the originals are in another museum in Florence. But they still look cool!

We went to the Uffizi later in the afternoon and found this copy of David outside the museum. This one we could pose with! The original sculpture used to stand in this square, but they moved it inside when his hand was knocked off during a revolt.

We ended the day with a visit to the Ponte Vecchio, the most famous bridge in Florence. It is filled with shops and lots of tourists! Here's a picture of us on the bridge and one of the bridge itself. We could have spent another few days in Florence, there's so much to see! It is a beautiful city!