Day 5: Monday

Since we didn't get to see St Mark's Basilica yet, we ate breakfast, checked out of our hotel, and headed there for opening.

Now I didn't know much about St Mark's Basilica, but I always saw long lines there, so I thought it was a must. But when we got there (before opening) there was already a huge line! I wore my maternity shirt though, hoping to skip through again, but when they opened the guy gave me the stupidest look when I asked if there was another entrance for families with small children. In our Rick Steeves book he said that if you went and checked your bags, you could take the tag and skip the line but I didn't know how that would work any better than my big belly... until we actually saw someone go right to the front with their bag tag. It's because the bag check place will only hold your bags for 1 hour, so they let you skip the line so that you can make it back to get your bags in time. So off we went to check our bags, and then we got to skip the whole line!

Finn rode this lion while we waited for the Basilica to open

Unfortunately we were kind of disappointed. You couldn't walk around in the basilica at all, just along a guided path, and I just didn't think it was very impressive. (I later heard that the ceiling is impressive, with gold or something... but alas I don't think I looked up at all!)

Afterwards I really had to pee, and all the toilets are pay toilets, unless you are in one of the museums. Then we remembered that our tickets from the Doge's Palace also included the Correr Museum, and it was good for three days. So we left our bags at the baggage check and went and did a quick walk through of just half of the Correr Museum. It was dead, I think there's no big name stuff inside, but we were still impressed with the decor and such inside. After we used the washrooms we made our way to get our bags and then hopped on the Vappareto to the Rialto bridge to grab a quick lunch.

Conor likes to point out that we have bad luck with little things. When it came to meals we would see a place with a good deal and decide to go there later for a different meal, and then we would get there and it would be closed. On Sunday night we were just looking for cheap pizza but gave up and finally got $4 big slices or something... then we walked a little farther and saw even BIGGER thick slices for $2.50. So our quick lunch was going to be that. When we got off the Vappareto we would have had to use stairs to get to the pizza place, so Conor just went and grabbed the pizza and came back to Finn and I... and of course they were $3.50 instead of $2.50! haha.

The bridge of sighs - once again, I hate scaffolding!

We hopped back on the next vappareto and headed to the train station to buy our tickets.

Now our plan had been to just take the quick eurostar train to Rome and then head home from there. That would have been under 5.5 hours altogether, but would have cost around 80 euro each. But Conor had been really unimpressed with the eurostars (no seat for Finn and no room for our bags or stroller) and he didn't want to do that for 5 hours. So we decided to take the same route back as we came... which meant stopping in Padua, Florence and Pisa. One of those would be a eurostar train, but just for 1.5 hours... and it would save us 40 euro in total!!

So that's what we did... we bought our tickets and headed to Padova. In Padova we had to wait about 45 minutes for the next train. In Florence we ran and caught the connecting train. And in Pisa the connection was 30 minutes.

We left Venice at noon and got home at 9... 9 hours!!!!! hahaha. Most people would think we were crazy, but actually it worked our really well. Finn did great on all the trains, having those stops made each train feel like it was the first train. The last train was 3 hours, that was the longest one... we gave Finn the iPod for the last hour because he was starting to get fussy. I could have distracted him if I wanted to, but I was getting tired.

And we saved 40 euro!!

The very last picture from our trip

So there you have it. Our awesome trip at it's end.

Day 4: Sunday

First a funny story about Saturday. When we first got to Venice, there were these guys walking around the trainstation and one of the guys was dressed in white and carrying a cross on his back, and two of his buddies were hitting him (jokingly) with sticks. I thought it might have something to do with graduating, as I had heard stories about people having to do silly things when they graduate or being pranked or something... but either way I wasn't especially impressed with this stunt, what with it being Lent and all.

Later in the evening when we were going towards St. Mark's Square we saw these guys again, and this American guy near us asked if the guy was graduating (I guess he'd heard of these graduation shenanigans as well) - it turns out the guy was getting married the next day or something, so this must have been part of his bachelor party

Anyways, on to Sunday :)

Conor was obsessed with the gondola guys

Walking around the night before we knew where a church was that had Mass at 10:30. We had breakfast at the hotel acrosss the way (very yummy, and their coffee was much better than the other hotel!) and then went out to wander around. It was only just after 9am I think, so we decided if we found another church that had an earlier mass, we would go there. This was one thing that sort of messed up sightseeing plans because we had to go to mass, and we didn't know which ones would have an earlier mass. It was about 9:40 when we found one that had a 9:30 mass, but we didn't want to go in late. Too bad we hadn't found it 10 minutes earlier!!

Finn checking out a boat on our walk

We kept wandering around until mass, and made our way to that church. Afterwards we went to the Doge's Palace. It was a toss up between the Doge's Palace or the Accademia... but really I think a person can only see so many museums before it all just melds together, so we decided to do the Doge's Palace because it would at least be more than just art on the wall. The prison cells were pretty cool... lot's of stairs for the stroller though!

Inside the Doge's palace - the entrance courtyard

Finn was sad that we left the prison cell portion of the palace :)

I was soo soo tired after that though, so we grabbed some lunch and headed back to the hotel where Finn and I had a nap, and Conor took the camera and went and wandered around to some places that Finn and I probably wouldn't end up going to.

Below are some pics that Conor took on his walk

After we got up from our nap we all went back out to St. Mark's Square and then to the vaparetto headed to San Giorgio Maggiore (the big church on an island). Unfortunately, again, being there on a Sunday was difficult for seeing sights, the church was closed. But it was a really nice day so we walked around and saw some boats and stuff, and otherwise we just sat by the water and relaxed.

Our pictures don't do this place much justice, google it for a better image.

Conor had already gone over to the Rialto Bridge while Finn was napping, but I had only seen it from the boat, so after we got back onto the St Mark's side we walked up to the bridge. Then we grabbed some dinner and then it was time to wander home to bed again.

Self portrait off the Rialto Bridge

Blown glass (they sell a lot here, because one of the Islands off of Venice, Murano, is famous for his glass blowing)

We wanted to check out the island and see a free glass blowing demonstration, but again, Sunday, we figured it probably wasn't going on.

Day 3: Saturday

Saturday morning we woke up, packed up most of our stuff and had breakfast at the hotel again (being sure to take a few yogurts for the ride!). And then we finished packing up and checked out. There were a few things we wanted to get from the market, but I had wanted to go and buy our train tickets early, as they would be on the eurostar in which you get assigned seats, but we didn't. Instead we just went straight to the market area and bought our things, we also picked up some more bread, meat and cheese from the grocery store for lunch and then headed to the train station.

I should say now that I was pretty darn organized for our trip. Before we left we had a rough idea what what trains we would be taking and when, and how much they cost (so that we wouldn't accidently take a more expensive train). For Saturday morning I knew that the trains from Florence to Padova (aka Padua... seriously, why do we call it Padua when no one in Italy will know what the heck you are talking about!!) left hourly on the half hour... I intended us to take the 10:30 am at the latest, but when we got to the train station just before 9:30am the trains for 9:30 and 10:30 were aready booked full... so we were stuck waiting for the 11:30. We went to check out the big church outside the train station, but you had to pay to go in. So instead we just hung around outside. Finn ran around and I sat in the sun reading up on Padova and Venice. Then we went to McDonalds for coffee and milkshakes and then hoped on our train.

We were really unimpressed with the Eurostar, but in the end I think it was just in the model we were in. There was hardly any space for bags, and this is supposed to be a train that people take when they are travelling... our backpacks wouldn't even fit overheard, we had to put them under our seat. And Finn didn't get his own seat which was awkward because he's so big now... but he did very well. It was just an hour and a half and this nice old lady that was sitting beside Conor got Finn's attention pretty early on. He was looking through a magazine and pointing at cars and trucks, etc, and when he would point she would say what it was in Italian. At one point he had lost interest so she was reading her own book, and when he decided he wanted to look at the magazine again, he kept holding it up to her to point things out. It was so cute!

When we got to Padova we hopped on a bus to St. Anthony's shrine. My back had been starting to act up so we didn't do any scenic walk (or hadn't planned to at least). I'll say right now that we didn't do the Scrovegni Chapel - don't shoot me! haha, we had just seen sooo many things already, and you had to make a reservation anyways which we didn't, so we just went in to see St. Anthony's basilica. We got off the bus as we saw the Basilica up ahead but it looked closed, and it was lunchtime, so we went and grabbed some lunch.

After awhile it still looked closed, to we walked up to it only to discover that it wasn't St. Anthony's at all, but St. Justine's. We asked someone where St. Anthony's was and they pointed us in the right direction. On the way there was a big market and we got some yummy yummy strawberries for really cheap! It was great, because we were really hot! We also had to take a picture of all the asparagus... I'd never seen white asparagus before!

We finally found St. Anthony's baslica so we had a good look inside. We went and put our hands on his tomb... I didn't realize then, but read afterwards that, among many other things, he's the patron saint of pregnant women. We went through and saw his relics in the back as well. When they dug up his body they found that most of it was completely decayed but his tongue was completely incorrupt (still intact) so that was there, as well as his vocal cords, and his bottom jaw and teeth were there!

St. Anthony's Basilica - blah I hate scaffolding!

After that we hopped back on the public transport to make it to our train heading to Venice.

When we got there we jumped on the vaparetto (boat) to our hotel. We took the slow one that makes all the stops so that we could get a look at the city. Our hotel was right behind the Accademia, and there's a stop right there, so that's where we got off.

Rialto Bridge

Venice was beautiful! The weather was so nice, and the town is just so picturesque with all of the canals. I had looked up on google maps where exactly our hotel was, and we had no problems finding it. I also knew, from reading the reviews online, that we had to check in at a different hotel just across from ours. We checked in and went up to our room and it was awesome! Again it was only a one star hotel, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the room. In fact I think we were in a triple room because it was huge, and there was a couch that I'm sure folded into a bed. Not only that, but the hotel that we checked it at was a 3 star hotel, and that's where we would be getting our breakfasts in the morning... so we paid for a 1 star hotel and got a 3 star breakfast! There was no complaining from us!

After we settled into our room we had our dinner (the bread etc from earlier) and then went and wandered around, and got our bearings. We basically just walked to St Mark's Square and then let Finn run around after the pigeons!

St Mark's Square at dusk

Then we went back to the hotel to bed!

Here's the link to the hotel we stayed at in Venice... again we booked through booking.com which I think it cheap than booking directly through their website Domus Cavanis.

Oh, and here's a video of Finn falling asleep on the train. It was hilarious to watch... he also did it on one of the trains home.

Day 2: Friday

Friday morning we woke up and had breakfast at the hotel. It was alright, just a simple "Italian" breakfast (croissants, yogurt, hard buns with jam, coffee, juice)... but luckily we could sneak away some yogurts for our lunch. When there are soo many sights to see, and such a limited time frame, you really have to do your research and plan out your trip. For example, we were originally going to go Friday-Tuesday, thinking that Conor had class on Thursday (which it turned out he didn't that week), but things aren't usually open on Mondays (or Sundays for that matter)... on top of that, some things are only open in the morning, and some things have really long lines to consider.

This may LOOK really cute, but it's NOT.

When Finn would get mad (actually present tense, when Finn gets mad) he throws himself to his knees... or else completely lays down. It's sooo annoying. Luckily we convinced him it was yucky to do this outside, so he only does it at home now.

The San Marco Museum is only open in the mornings, so we knew that we had to do that Friday morning first thing. This was what I was most looking forward to on this trip. I like art, I like museums... but I don't really know much about it, except what I like and what I don't like. Ever since I saw Fra Angelico's "Annunciation" I've known that it was something I would love to see up close. I was really impressed... he has done a number of similar paintings, this is the only one I've seen. The wings on the Angel sparkle :) We actually purchased a picture of the "Annunciation" on a tile as probably our one and only Italian souvenir.

This is just a googled image, like almost all of the galleries and museums on our trip, we couldn't take pictures inside San Marco's museum

After that we had a dilemma. When to do the Uffizi Gallery. Ticket prices were cheaper after 4pm (which would work because then Finn and I could have a nap and then head to the gallery)... but line ups could still be long at that time, and the gallery closed at 6:50. In the end we decided to just walk down there and see what the line was like. It was LONG. But I was wearing my tight maternity shirt, so we went to the line up for reservations and I asked the lady if there was an entrance for families with small children (I was pushing Finn in the stroller and I also had my hand on my belly to accentuate the bump) - the lady pointed at my belly, nodded, and brought me to the long line and told the guy there to let us in... we skipped the whole line!!

Finn loved this lion and kept making his roaring noise whenever he saw it.

This section is right outside the Uffizi Gallery and has original statues... although I couldn't tell you whose they are :)

We spent a couple of hours there, it was great but I was really tired by the end. We ate our yogurts outside as well as some other snacks and then headed home for naptime. On the way we quickly stopped in at the Cathedral - it's definitely more known for it's exterior than it's interior though. Finn and I napped while Conor went for a run. When we woke up we decided to find a supermarket and just buy some bread, meat and cheese for dinner (like I said, we are cheap!) We found one right near a street market so we looked around for awhile and then ate dinner, and then walked around a bit more. We ended up NOT going to the Accademia (home of the Michelangelo's original "David"), but I knew that there were two fake ones in Florence. One outside the Uffizi gallery, and a bronze David in Piazzale Michelangelo. When I looked it up in the Rick Steeves book he said you could take a bus up there. We didn't have anything else to do since all the churches and other sights were now closed, so we made our way toward the hill and eventually found the bus.

This is how Finn survived all the museums and churches - gotta love baby einstein :)

I'm really glad we went up! We got an amazing view of Florence from there - although my pictures don't do it justice. After that we took the bus back down and walked back to our hotel.

Luckily there was no one in the common room to disturb our sleep, but a little 2 year old decided to take 2 hours to fall asleep... blah! When we got in bed I realized that I hadn't felt baby girl kicking all day... just as Finn was FINALLY falling asleep she started going crazy and kept me up for a little bit longer - but it was okay :)

Day 1: Thursday

On Wednesday I had bought our tickets from Santa Marinella to Pisa, and Pisa to Florence.

So Thursday morning we got up just after 6 am, ate breakfast, and headed to the train station for our 7am train.

Finn did SOO well on all of the trains - it was great!

In general I was really impressed with Pisa! I thought that it was just going to be this small little place with just the leaning tower, but it was actually a nice little town (other than the train station, GROSS, and probably a lot of shady things going on outside)

The Rick Steeves book that my brother gave us said that you can walk to the tower, and gives a good little tourish walk, but it said that it would take 45 minutes, so we were going to take a bus to the "Field of Miracles" (which is where the leaning tower is), and then do the walk back, but the buses were on stike. So walk it was. But it actually took a lot less than 45 minutes, and it was a nice walk.

It was bright - so I gave Finn my shades

The weather was amazing, warm and sunny and bright. We walked past all these shops on the way. By the time we made it to the tower Finn was just itching to get out of his stroller (it had been a 3 hour train ride), so we let him out and he went crazy. He just kept running back and forth and back and forth. We pointed out the "big tower" to him, and then he would run away from it, and then run to it and point up, and then run away again. It took awhile but we eventually got him settled down. I didn't realize that there would be the Cathedral and Baptistry right there with the tower (in the pictures I've only ever just seen the tower).

Finn pointing up at the leaning tower

There's also a lot of grass around there, so we decided to eat our lunch there and then see the sights.

You can pay 6 euro to go into the Baptistry OR the tower, as well as the Duomo. Or else you can just pay 2 euro to go into the Duomo. We are cheap, so we just did that... plus we knew what train we wanted to take out to Florence (the train lengths for that trip go from 45 minutes to an hour and a half for the same price, so we wanted to get the shorter train).

After that we walked back to the station and got on our train to Florence.

I knew that our hotel was a little bit off our map of Florence, but it was on the main road with the San Marco Museum, so we used that as our guiding point. Unfortunately coming out of the train station we took WAY too sharp of a left and got lost, we were off the map right away! We finally saw a sign for some market that was at least on the map, so we headed that way. After STILL not finding a road that was on the map, we asked a flourist and we were really close so that was good.

The main times that Finn was not too good on our trip was when we were walking around.

He would want to walk, but would get tired and would want Conor or I to hold him, eventually we would just have to put him back in the stroller, but he would get mad and try to get out.

We got to our hotel and checked our stuff. The room was simple, but we had our own bathroom which was nice. We had booked our hotels on booking.com and pretty much picked the cheapest ones (we could have gotten a cheaper hostel I'm sure, but didn't want to go TOO cheap.) But we were really happy with it. Our room was right outside a little common area, which was perfect for putting Finn to bed and then being able to stay out there and read or something afterwards... more about THAT later.

After that we went for a walk and familiarized ourselves with Florence. As I said we were just up the road from the San Marco museum so we walked past that, then past the Duomo, onto the Uffizi Gallery and down to the Ponte Vecchio (bridge with shops on it).

We stopped for dinner at some point (our most expensive meal of the trip... we planned to eat REALLY cheaply... this place charged us a 2 euro cover charge, we weren't impressed)... and then we went back to our hotel for bed.

Finn behaved better during dinner at the restaurant than he usually does at home - maybe the TV and the toys helped

We all got ready, put Finn to bed (I think it was about 830 at this point, he had only had a short nap on the train), and then Conor and I went into the common area and read. We liked that common area until it was time for us to go to bed (around 930), and shortly afterwards a group of French travellers found the common area and played games and talked really loudly. It was VERY annoying, neither Conor or I fell asleep until after they left that area (after 11)

Luckily they checked out the next morning, so our second night was bound to be better (ha!)

If you are interested, here's a link to the hotel we stayed at. Remember that I booked through booking.com, which gets you cheaper rates. Hotel Benvenuti

I'll be putting up a lot more pictures later on Facebook, and will put up a link of APRIL 2011 on the sidebar once they're up

Off we go

Well my back has been feeling alright (and we realize it could just start feeling worse from here) and the weather this weekend looks GREAT for Florence and Venice - so we are off!!

The plan

• Thursday morning head to Pisa for a couple hours


• Then go to Florence - stay there for two nights


• From Florence head to Padua for 4 or so hours


• Then to Venice - stay there for two nights


• Monday at some point head home

I've got our train schedules all figured out and our hostels booked (please pray that they aren't dives or anything!!). Today will be for shopping, laundry and packing... as well as looking into what we want to do there.

Everyone told us to reserve tickets for the big things in Florence, but you need to book a month ahead and obviously we haven't thought that far in advance... so we'll see how that goes. I don't really like booking that far in advance either, because a month from now I'll be a month more pregnant, it will be that much closer to our big move home, and who knows what the weather will be like at that particular time.

I won't update on Sunday with "22 Weeks" but I will take a picture that day and post it all when we get back :)

Ciao!

Canale Monterano

An historical picture of the town.

The main Church on the top left corner still stands, as well as part of the aqueduct and the smaller church in the center of the town.

Normally on Saturday mornings we have someone over for pancakes, if not we just eat them all ourselves! On Friday Kevin asked us if, instead, we would like to go out into the hills for a barbeque. Of course!

We drove out to an abandoned town called "Canale Monterano" which dates from the middle ages. When we got there we parked and walked for maybe 15 minutes, it wasn't long at all, Finn walked as well.

As we were walking we could see parts of the town up in the hill, and actually walked right past this aqueduct, it was pretty spectacular. Up top there was a guy with horses and donkeys, Finn was very distracted from that point on!

On the map up top you can see the church in the top left hand corner, just below the church there was a nice picnic/barbeque area. That's where we set up, Kevin started the fire while Conor, Finn and I headed into the old town to check it out.

I should point out that I had no idea where we were going, and therefore didn't think to bring my camera, so I got all of these images off of google.

After we wandered around we headed back to the fire for the barbeque. Kevin had done up some eggplant and zucchini, and then sausages and some really yummy chicken wings... it's always nice having a chef for a friend! haha.

It wasn't the sunniest or warmest day, but with the fire it was pleasant and we had a good time. While they were barbequeing Finn spent a good 30-45 minutes with the firewood just throwing it all into a big pile, it was a great babysitter for us!

We got home around 5, Finn fell asleep for a bit in the car, and I was starting to get a dreaded cold. We put Finn to bed around 730 and I went to bed at 930 (I was ready at 830, but didn't want to end up waking up at 5am)

We slept in until after 8 the next morning :)
Splendid!

Our Week

I was going to do a post on Monday, I started it... and then I forgot about it. So here is our week in bullet form, with some pictures.

• Last Saturday we had friends over for pancakes in the morning. (and today we are having them and some others over again for pancakes)
• After Finn's nap we headed to the Australians for a going-away open house.
• On Sunday afternoon some friends drove us to Santa Severa (the town before us on the train line) and went for a bit of a walk on the beach and to see the Castle there.
  
• Then we went back to their place for the usual Sunday night american football. Finn and I didn't stay long, but Conor stayed to watch the game.
• Monday we went into Rome. Lately everytime we've gone in it's been for a mass, or to do the Scavi Tour... we haven't just gone in by ourselves as a family to walk around. So we did that. Conor had to hand in a paper, so we had lunch at the school and then headed to Villa Borghese.
  

  Conor infront of Villa Borghese
  It was beautiful. We didn't go into any of the museums, but just wandered around a bit. I wanted to go to the zoo there, but it was 12.50 euros, and we are cheap! Plus Finn was having a blast with the pidgeons outside and that was FREE!

• On Wednesday the Australians went home (very sad!!!) So we spend most of the morning and afternoon there, either helping clean, pack, do garbage runs, or play with the kids. It was sad to see them go, but I know that they are looking forward to getting home (they went to Dubai for 5 days first, so they aren't actually back in Aus yet)

Other than that we haven't been up to much. Here are a couple more pictures!

This was ALL Conor's idea.

As cute as Finn was in this little car (he was concentrating so hard on steering!) it was way past naptime and he was already having a few meltdowns.

It was GAME OVER when we took him out. Bad Conor. (this makes up for me buying the chocolate advent calendar)

Other than Finn's hand in his mouth, this is a pretty good family photo!!

Papal Mass

So we've been in Rome for over a year and have never attended a Papal Mass. But the Anderson's had gotten tickets, and a few extra, for the Mass of the Epiphany so we decided to tag along. We knew it was going to be inside (bonus) and that it wouldn't QUITE be so crazy full as the Masses at say Christmas or Easter.

We had to take the 7:30am train (GASP, so early!) and I'm so glad we went along.

After the long day the day before for the Scavi Tour, and Finn up all night coughing, I really wasn't feeling to keen on going when we woke up at 7, but again, so glad we went.

Our seats were really close to the front, on the side looking towards the left side of the altar. Unfortunately when Pope Benedict was sitting (like he was during his homily) we couldn't see him, but when he was at the Altar we could!

The kids all did really well, including Finn, for such a long mass, not to mention the hour we were sitting before mass actually started.

When the Pope was making his exit, Conor took Finn up to the barricade, but unfortunately the Pope didn't come by our way to bless the kids :(

Maybe next time! Afterwards we grabbed some lunch and Conor, Finn and I headed back home.