Dave and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary in Italy! We spent 10 days traveling between Rome, Tuscany, Pisa, Florence and Venice. Dave did lots of work planning it for us and my parents were kind enough to come watch our kids while we enjoyed some much needed time away.
Rome
The Vatican was our first stop in Rome. Jet lag is real, people. I think I remember most of our tour...let's just say lots and lots of marble, statues, artwork and people.
This is the Sistine Chapel. Dave was naughty and took a picture of it despite the signs and guards all around. There were so many scenes and vignettes that it was quite overwhelming to try and understand all of it.
One of my favorite places in the Vatican city was St. Peter's Basilica. The pure scale of everything inside was astounding. For example - do you see the letters at the far end near the top of the picture? Those letters are 9 feet tall each - bigger than any of the tiny people in the foreground. And everything was done in Mosaics, so it looks like a painting but it's really tiny pieces of marble or stone.
Michelangelo's first famous sculpture also resides in St. Peter's Basilica - the Pieta , or The Pity. I think it's a beautiful piece.
The walls around the Vatican city are pretty impressive, as is the whole history of the country itself.
The brand new temple for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was also one of our early stops in Rome. The difference between going through the Vatican and the Temple (what we believe to be the House of The Lord) was palpable. I'm grateful for the knowledge of Christ's restored gospel and the peace we can find in the Temple.
Next stop - the Coliseum and the Roman Forum. Again, the scale of everything was just insane. We could not get over how old some of the ruins actually were. Neither of us had ever seen anything that was preserved for that long.
The Trevi Fountain was spectacular. It was amazing how parts of the sea shore were built into the building behind it, making it look like it was overtaking the building. Lots of tourists for good reason!
The Capuchin Crypt was one of the most memorable/disturbing things we saw. Underneath the Capuchin Chapel are several tiny chapels decorated solely with bones from the Capuchin Friars. They also had soil from the Holy Land there that Friars are honorarily buried in. The walls and ceilings were covered in bone art - definitely a little creepy. Apparently they view skeletal remains and bones as a was to look forward to the resurrection. These were the only crypts we saw in Rome, but it was enough for me.
The Spanish Steps
Tuscany countryside
After Rome we rented a car and drove though the Tuscany countryside to get to these amazing hot springs tucked away in the hills. The water was crystal clear, steamy warm, and absolutely beautiful. I could have done without the old European men in their loose Speedos though.
And of course Dave found the only guy offering "white-water rafting" in Italy. It was definitely a scenic boat ride down the river, but not many rapids. It felt like we were somewhere tropical, with the bamboo and vines everywhere.
Dave and the guide jumped in at a small rapid. If you can't tell by the look on his face, the water was very cold. No thank you.
Seafood on the Coast. Shrimp with everything still intact is about as adventurous as I get with seafood.
Pisa
Next we drove up to Pisa to see the leaning tower of Pisa. Pisa itself was absolutely beautiful, and their leaning bell tower was as magnificent as it looks.
We climbed to the top of the leaning tower, and it was extremely disorienting. The minute we walked into the building (even just on the ground floor) I started getting nauseous and motion sick. Climbing the stairs was like walking through a fun house that had different angle floors that kept switching back and forth. I was glad to be back on the flat, level ground when we were done.
The baptistry in the same square as the bell tower was also quite spectacular.
Florence
We ditched the car in Florence and opted for Segways instead. It was a first for both of us and a fun way to take a city tour. We didn't even fall!
There is a big beautiful river running through the middle of Florence, and the bridge in the background is particularly famous. Apparently the Medici Family built passages above the streets connecting buildings so they didn't have to mingle with the commoners. There were several of these overhead passages throughout the city. This is also where we saw a Dolce and Gabbana model during her photo shoot (who we later saw on posters all over Venice).
Dave signed us up for a cooking class in Florence to mix things up - it was so fun! We learned how to make pizza the Italian way and how to make Gelato (as if we weren't already eating way too much of both of those things).
These guys greeted us as we climbed to the top of the dome in the middle of the city. There were great views once we got to the top.
Apparently the architect of the dome was not planning on tall Americans using his passageways. It was a tight squeeze to get up there!
Venice
Here is my hero/"beast of burden" (as the Italians like to call work animals), carrying most of our luggage up and down the bridges crossing the canals in Venice.
One of our first stops was St. Mark's Basilica, and it turned out to be one of Dave's favorite places.
He liked it so much because of the story of how it came about. Apparently the city was looking for a new patron saint and the people at the time really valued any sort of relics from the saints. A group of Venetians went down to Egypt (where St. Mark's remains were), stole most of his bones, and smuggled them back to Venice. They knew the Egyptians wouldn't let them cross their borders with his bones, so they hid them in the bottom of a barrel filled with Pork. They used pork because they knew the Muslims did not want to even see pork, let alone touch it, so they wouldn't search through that barrel. This whole story is depicted in the Mosaic below. Can you believe that all of the artwork is actually mosaics?!
Seeing the canals and the waterways throughout the city in person was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I have been to a lot of places around the world, but I've never seen anything like this. It was truly amazing.
I was so interested in the fact that the water was actually creeping up over the front steps of many of the homes that had doorways onto the canal. In many cases the water was actually overtaking the first floor and people simply moved up a floor.
On the day of our 10-year anniversary, May 9th, Dave set up a gondola ride for us through the canals with a couple Italian men serenading us and all. I sure love him and am grateful every day we found each other.
Dave's favorite part of our anniversary was dinner. The food was everything.
A different day in Venice we took a boat tour around to several of the various islands. Murano is the island famous for it's hand-blown glass and we were able to watch one of the masters make a stallion right in front of us. I was in awe of how much skill it took to make something so intricate when they had to work so quickly with such hot material.
We stayed in one of the bed and breakfasts in Venice proper and our room came complete with a hand-blown glass chandelier. Not exactly my style, but very cool to see.
This was Burano, where they are famous for making lace. I learned that each of the houses is painted a different color for each family. The same colored homes were in the same family. I thought they just painted their house their favorite color. ;-)
Venice is also apparently famous for it's beautiful masks. Unfortunately I couldn't take this one home so we snapped a picture.
Here's to many, many more years together!
