Jay’s and my trip home to Cincinnati for the wedding in July actually began in Italy almost by chance (or luck). We had been keeping an eye on plane tickets home to Cincinnati from Split for months. The prices were exorbitantly high and we kept hoping they would lower, but they never did. Luckily we found tickets to Cincinnati from Venice for about half the price, and once you priced in the cost to get to Venice and a few days vacation, it was a wash. It made a perfect reason to check out more of Italy. We decided to get a small taste of Milan and Venice, spending a day and a half in each city.

To get to Italy, we took an overnight ferry from Split to Ancona, Italy and then caught a four hour train to Milan. The overnight ferry is great because you depart at 8:30 pm, have dinner on board, go to sleep, and then wake up at 7:00 am in Italy. We were quite pleased with ourselves when we got a great online deal with Blue Line Ferries, in which the first few rooms on each sailing are just $35 per person. It was much more affordable than expected and we even got a cabin with two bunk beds, a toilet, a sink, and a shower.

The first thing we did in Milan was head to the Duomo i.e. Milan’s cathedral. To me, the Duomo alone might just be worth the trip to Milan. It is the most impressive cathedral I have ever seen, with 135 spires and 3,500 statues (I know I haven’t seen enough cathedrals to make a full educated assessment, but it is definitely extraordinary. Let me know if there is one you have seen that you think I shouldn’t miss).

The Duomo is one of the largest churches in the world (between number 2 and number 7 depending on what list you are looking at). It took over 5 centuries to build and walking on the rooftop you can see why. The intricacies of every detail are amazing. Here we got an up-close look at many statues, pinnacles, spires, and the graceful flying buttresses.

After the visit to the Duomo, we spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening walking the streets of Milan (in particular Via della Spiga, Via Alessandro Manzoni, and Via Sant’Andrea) people-watching the wealthy and checking out the stores of the world’s most famous designers. I always seem to end up around these types of stores when I look just a touch too touristy. One day I will have to go back looking like I fit in (or at least try to) and be more adventurous in my perusing.

The evening concluded with one of my favorite Italy dining experiences: a late dinner at Pizzeria Spontini. This family friendly restaurant frequented by locals only serves one thing: cheese pizza, and somehow they seem to do amazing business. I guess it is because the pizza tastes so good, and unlike most Italian restaurants, the staff here is working hard and moving fast. Its not the place to go if you are looking for a nice long slow meal, but if you are just looking for great affordable pizza, it is the place to be. The pizza was nice and hot with a deep dish crust and very cheesy. A slice and a half each was more than enough to fill us up. We left full and happy.

The next day we spent a good amount of time in Sempione Park, a 116 acre park in downtown Milan. I always appreciate a big green oasis among sprawling urban architecture. The park is situated between Sforza Castle and Arco della Pace, which were pleasant architectural surprises we hadn’t planned on coming across. It was a Sunday, so Sempione was full of families enjoying picnics, kids delighting in the few amusement park rides, friends sun bathing, couples walking their dogs, young urbanites jogging, and even a group participating in a boot-camp style work out with two Herculean men yelling and blowing their whistles. Jay and I walked along all of the paths and laid in the grass under a sprawling tree before heading to the Trienalle Design Museum just on the edge of the park.

The Trienalle Design Museum is a fairly new museum in Milan – it opened in 2007 – and is dedicated to awe-inspiring design (mostly industrial design) with Italian origins. We enjoyed seeing the range of work and styles from the 1930s until today, including everything from vehicles to furniture to household goods. My favorites were the Alfa Romeo sports car prototype that looks like an old spaceship, the sketches and process work shared from some contemporary chairs and lights, and the distorted mirrors that Jay and I played in front of to see how silly we could look. We managed to take a couple photos before we were caught and scolded by the curators. I’d love to see this museum share even more new technology advancements and design breakthroughs. I certainly hope to visit it again one day.

We arrived in Venice in the evening and took a vaporetto (Venice’s water bus) to our hotel as the sun set. It was a beautiful way to see Venice for the first time. We stayed at the NH Manin Hotel, which was a renovated old palace overlooking the Grand Canal. We booked the hotel by bidding on Priceline, which worked out great. We ended up in a beautiful hotel at a good price. Compared to our hotel in Capri, this was like the Four Seasons. We delighted in walking right out the front doors of our hotel and seeing the flurry of activity on the Grand Canal, and we appreciated not having to haul our luggage all around town and up and over bridges like we saw so many other tourists doing.

That evening we had dinner in a small piazza and then walked around the city to see all of the sights lit up at night. It was nice being able to enjoy the city without the large crowds present during the day. The canals looked peaceful and glistened under the evening lamp lights. I savored holding hands as we walked over small bridges and through the still back streets. The area surrounding St. Mark’s Basilica snapped me out of my enchanted mood. It was still buzzing with crowds and souvenir vendors. We were a bit disappointed that the basilica and other churches in town weren’t lit up as beautifully as everything we had seen during our night stroll in Rome, although they lived up to their beauty in the light of the next day.

The next day was blisteringly hot and Jay was feeling a bit under the weather, so this combination seriously under-minded his enjoyment of Venice. He was a good sport though and trekked through all of the main sites with me and would find a step in the shade to sit and rest while I wandered through the mask shops. There were several parts of Venice that really fascinated me: the canals and gondolas, St. Mark’s Basilica, the Venetian mask shops, and the logistics of a city functioning almost entirely on water.

Some may argue that they are smelly, overrated and expensive, but I thought the canals and gondolas in Venice were beautiful. And the fact that there were no cars around was just an added bonus. We didn’t take a gondola ride because the $120 price tag for a 40 minute ride was quite a turn off, and I really just took pleasure in seeing all of the unique gondolas and people-watching as couples and families were serenaded through the narrow water alleys. They created so many picturesque moments.

St. Mark’s Basilica wasn’t as impressive to me as the cathedral in Milan, but I surely wouldn’t turn my nose up at it. The interior was breathtaking. The ridiculous amounts of gold seemed appropriate for a basilica in a city once known for its grandeur and riches. The ridiculous amount of pigeons outside the basilica was not appropriate and it was a bit disturbing. I couldn’t believe how many people were feeding them from their hands, letting them swarm all around them and land on their arms and head. Eek.

I think I inherited my love of masks from my mom. She has always been fascinated with masks and when she taught art her students always got to make fun creative ones. Venice is obviously the perfect place for a mask lover, as they seem to be sold in almost every shop. My favorite mask shop was Ca del Sol in the Castello district. The store is bursting from the seams with unique, high-quality handmade Venetian masks. I’d love to visit Venice during the Carnival to see the costumes and masks being worn in all the streets, though I imagine Venice to be a logistical nightmare during the festival.

Besides walking the streets and touring the sights, seeing the coordination and engineering it takes to run a city on water is intriguing. It is such a novelty to see postal service boats, trash collecting boats, and police boats. I know it’s an obvious conclusion that almost everything in Venice must run by boats, but that fact certainly didn’t deter my enthusiasm for seeing is all. The police boats were especially fun to to see because they reminded me of the chase scene at the beginning of The Italian Job. I just wanted to see them push the throttle forward and kick it into high gear, though it is probably for the best that I never saw that happen.

After two nights in Venice, we headed to the airport for our flight home to Cincinnati. It’s hard to fully enjoy a city when your companion isn’t feeling well, but I still absolutely loved Venice and I hope we can visit again some day during their off season when their won’t be so many tourists or during the Carnival. Of course, there are so many other places I want to visit first.

We arrived at Pompeii around noon and spent a gorgeous sunny afternoon exploring the ruins before continuing on to Sorrento. Pompeii is a ancient town that was completely buried in volcanic ash in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Due to the lack of air and moisture the entire town is amazingly well preserved. It contains so much information on how people lived nearly 2000 years ago. The immense volume of things to see here was almost overwhelming. There is an entire town to explore. It really made me wish I could time travel 2,000 years back and walk about the town’s some 20,000 inhabitants.

As we left Pompeii for Sorrento, Jay and I shared the best fresh lemon and orange icee we’ve ever had. The south of Italy grows lemons and oranges the size of cantaloupes. We saw lemons everywhere we went after leaving Rome and heading south. Later we sampled some of the popular local liqueur, limoncello. We even bought one large and one small bottle to take home to share with friends and family, but we were foolish and packed them in our carry-ons on the way home to Split. The large bottle ended up in the trash can at airport security. Luckily security didn’t see the little bottle, so we have just a bit to share still.

Arriving in Sorrento we were happy to find that our hotel, Carlton International, was clean and pretty with a very polite and helpful staff. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was first-class compared to our other accommodations throughout the trip. We wished we had more than just one night there.

We had bumped in to Helen and Anthony several times in Pompeii and made dinner plans, so after freshening up at the hotel we met up with them. We walked through the pedestrian-only streets in town and settled on a restaurant in a small side street with just the type of outdoor seating you’d picture in a little Italian town: small tables with cloth table clothes arranged just far enough apart for the waiters to slip by, wrought iron chairs with cushions, and a striped awning with the restaurant’s name in hand-written script. Dinner didn’t disappoint either. I enjoyed a creamy spaghetti carbonara, Jay had a ham and cheese calzone and we share a bottle of white wine with Helen and Anthony. We were entertained by a lively and talented quartet of musicians. Their rendition of That’s Amore brought the lady at the adjacent table to tears as she told us that she was on her honeymoon and this was played at her wedding. It was the perfect Italian moment for her.

After dinner we continued our conversation over gelato. Helen and Anthony are from England (a few hours from London). They both have traveled a lot, so they had many good stories and recommendations. We will definitely have to make it to Vietnam and the South Pacific one day after hearing how beautiful and unique it is. Jay and I don’t usually make random friends on trips, so this was a fun treat.

The next day Jay and I walked through more of town to see the sites and enjoy the beauty. Sorrento is situated up on cliffs overlooking the sea offering many gorgeous views. The town definitely caters to tourists, but it never felt overly crowded and everyone was very friendly, so it was quite delightful. Before heading out on the ferry for Capri, Jay and I bought drinks at a small shop and a pizza-to-go from the restaurant we ate at the night before and we shared it in the public gardens overlooking the sea. My family (sans me) had done this a few years ago when they visited Sorrento during a cruise and recommended it to us. It made for a very enjoyable lunch.

I think the beauty of Capri made it my favorite stop on our trip, though its hard to pick because each place had its own charms. Capri looks like a mountain that someone stuck in the middle of the sea. There are no flat areas at all and this makes traveling around the island interesting. It is only 4.5 miles long and 1.5 miles wide, but it can take 30 minutes just to get between the two towns on the island, Capri and Anacapri, as the road winds back and forth up and down the mountain.

We stayed in Anacapri, the town further from the Marina where we arrived, so that meant taking the local bus to our hotel. This was an adventure. The buses on Capri are very short in length so they can make all of the hairpin turns on the mountain sides. They are also always very crowded. Not only were we standing and trying to hold our luggage and ourselves up, but every couple minutes we would make a quick whipping turn throwing us off balance as we would try not to fall over on top of other riders. It was quite a good workout.

Our hotel in Anacapri, Hotel Loreley, was the biggest disappointment of this part of our trip; it was a dive. Not only was it a dive, but also it was a $120 a night dive. In the United States, $120 can get you a decent hotel in almost any city, but not on Capri. In hindsight, we should’ve splurged for a nicer place or stayed in Sorrento and made day trips (the ferry ride is just 20 minutes from Sorrento). The worst part of our room was the shower. It was old and grimy and had the worst water pressure I’ve ever seen. It was like trying to shower in a drinking fountain. I never felt clean.

I also never flushed the toilet while I was there; I had Jay do it for me because it wouldn’t flush when you pressed the handle. You had to lift up the lid of the toilet and pull the lever up in the tank. We told the front reception that the toilet wouldn’t flush when we arrived, and that is what she did to fix it. She didn’t speak much English, so we weren’t quite sure if she thought she fixed it or expected us to do this too. Everything was very old and just a bit gross. At least the sheets seemed clean and there were no bugs.

Beyond the bus and the hotel, Capri was amazing. It was just so beautiful and romantic. The first night we walked through the city of Capri and to the public gardens. We saw a couple in wedding attire with their photographers and I thought what a wonderful place Capri must be for a destination wedding. We followed our map to different scenic spots as the sun set. The last spot we visited appeared close on the map, but ended up being a hike. We just kept climbing up and up, but it was worth it. It was the best view we saw of the island. It overlooked the town of Capri and Fragoli (the iconic rocks jutting from the sea). Best of all, there were no other tourists. We only saw one older lady, who was from Venice and vacationing at her friend’s vacation home on the island. She started a conversation with us about Capri and said she was surprised to see us there because very few tourists know about the spot. She said she likes to walk there every night for the view. It was just a lucky find for us.

For dinner we headed back to Anacapri and chose the restaurant, Barbarosa, above a shop close to our hotel. It ended up being a great choice because the food was excellent and reasonably priced and there was a large flat screen TV showing the USA vs. Spain soccer match in the Confederation Cup’s semi-final. Jay was very happy to find this. It was an exciting match and the USA pulled off an upset to win.

The next morning we hiked an hour to the famous Blue Grotto. Most days small boats row groups of tourist into the grotto through a small opening in the side of the cliff. The day we went, it was closed due to rough waters. It was disappointing, but the hike we took next made up for it.

We took a four-hour hike following the ancient forts along the cliffs looking out to sea. Capri is full of tourists, but during the entire hike, we only saw four people. We guess people don’t feel like venturing out on a long hike and it isn’t promoted much, but people don’t know what they are missing. It was the most picturesque and romantic hike I’ve ever been on. The forts dated back to 700 AD and were used by Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars in the 1700s. The path we followed took us through a lot of different terrain from white rocks with goats to grassy dirt paths. We only got lost once and by the grace of God, we somehow found our way pack to the path.

Later in the hike, we came upon some cement steps that seemed to lead down to the sea and followed them down. We found a small pool formed naturally by the rocks. We took a dip in the water that was about chest deep. It was cool and refreshing. The rocks protected us from the strong powerful current, yet there was just enough of an opening for the water to continually circulate as the stronger waves crashed just below us. We know it wasn’t, but the view felt like it was made especially for us just for that moment.

The hike ended at a picturesque lighthouse and the view reminded me a bit of photos of Maine and the United State’s northeast coast. We were happy to see the lighthouse as the heat from the sun picked up and the refreshing feeling from the water wore off.

The next day our first trip to Italy ended. We left early from Capri not quite ready for the long journey. Four buses, one ferry, two trains, and one plane later we arrived in Split. Jay and I both felt like coming back to Split was such a good feeling because for the first time here, it felt like we were coming home. Cincinnati will always be home, but now Split is too.

As usual, we’re behind on our blog posts. We have so many stories we want to share, but these things take time, and we always seem to keep ourselves quite busy* with little downtime. So, sorry for our usual lateness, but don’t expect any huge changes. If you’re living and dieing by our updates (crazy person), then follow us on Twitter at @PondJumpers – we do a much better job of staying up to date there!

Anyway, as you may have already seen from the photo gallery* that we published a couple weeks ago, Kelly and I took a vacation to Italy for seven nights, visiting Rome, Pompeii, Sorrento and the island of Capri. I’m covering our four nights in Rome, while Kelly will be following up soon with the three other nights.

*Don’t know what I’m talking about regarding the photo gallery? In addition to writing blog articles, we publish photo galleries of our adventures. You can view them by clicking the links in the “our recent photo galleries” section on the right-hand column of the site.

The galleries are actually posted on larbes.com, which is another web site that we maintain. We have been running that web site for a few years and it used to have photos going back to 2002, but we had to temporarily remove the old galleries when we moved to Croatia. I’ll get them back up and running, some day (soon, hopefully). Anyway, you can keep an eye on the “our recent photo galleries” section – new galleries are denoted with bold text – or just directly visit larbes.com/photos to view the galleries. The photo galleries usually contain many more photos than we include on our blog entries.

This is actually our first of two Italy trips we have planned for this summer. We’re actually back in Italy right now visiting Milan and Venice for four nights, before flying home from Venice to Cincinnati for my sister Jenny’s wedding. We are very much looking forward to the wedding and seeing our families and friends back home! (And I’m excited to eat some Chipotle!!)

Both trips were somewhat last-minute decisions. In the beginning of June, we found out that Kelly had two work holidays at the end of the month and that she was encouraged to take vacation days the other three days of the week so the office could close down for the week. So, we wanted to take advantage of her week off and travel somewhere. We did some research, and the cheapest flight we could find was a flight to Rome.

Also, we had been keeping our eye on flights home to Cincinnati for the second half of July for Jenny and Chad’s wedding on July 25. We were discouraged that the prices of flights from Split to Cincinnati weren’t getting any cheaper (actually they became more expensive), but this led to us searching for flights elsewhere in Europe. Lucky for us, we found a flight from Venice to Cincinnati that was almost ½ of the price of the flight from Split to Cincinnati! So, we booked that ticket! And that’s how we’re fortunate enough to visit Italy twice in a month.

Getting to Rome

Our trip started Friday afternoon – I met Kelly near the Split marina, where we caught a bus to the Split airport for our flight. A day or two before we left for Rome, I had a conversation with my dad and he asked me how long our flight was. He was guessing under an hour, and I thought it was a little over two. Of course, he was right. Our flight was only about 40 minutes long from takeoff to touchdown*. We were amused by the fact that it took just as long to get from the Rome Fiumicino Airport to Roma Termini Station, the main train station in the middle of Rome.

*We flew on Croatia Airlines, which we think runs a fantastic short-flight airline. During this 40-minute flight, they had time to make two full rounds providing beverages and a snack to everyone on the flight. The snack was even a sandwich – small, but much bigger than a bag of peanuts which you might get elsewhere (if you’re lucky).

Once we exited Termini Station, we staggered by foot around the streets near the train station to find our hotel. We found our hotel’s (Hotel Kennedy – yes, named after JFK) street easily enough, but were thrown off because we found ourselves in the middle of an Asian district! We did find our hotel after a couple wrong turns (it sits just outside this district) and checked in.

Hotel Kennedy – Our Interesting Room

We have a couple of interesting stories to share about our hotel room. First of all, we found that hotels in Italy are quite expensive and generally not the best quality. So, in our effort to get the most value for our money, Kelly researched hotels on Trip Advisor (don’t know what we’d do without this site!) emailed a dozen or so hotels in Rome and asked for discounts. We were lucky and a couple gave us decent offers, and we felt that Hotel Kennedy’s was the best.

Of course, since we asked for a discount, we were given a special room – we had a triple room with both a twin and a queen bed, which worked out very well because it gave us room to spread out our stuff. However, the catch with the room was that there was no toilet (we did know this up front) – it was down the hall! We did have a rest room with a shower, a sink and a bidet but had to exit the room and go to a separate rest room with just a toilet and sink when it came time to relieve ourselves. This separate room was only for us – we had a separate key for it – and it was clean, so it was only a minor inconvenience.

The hotel did come with bed+breakfast service, so we certainly took advantage of that and filled ourselves up each morning with croissants, rolls, cereal, juice and hot chocolate (our non-coffee and tea drinking alternatives – yes, we know that we act like we’re twelve sometimes! Most of the time?). We also tucked away rolls and yummy cheese that we brought with us into Rome and ate for a free lunch!

Our other interesting story, and really our misadventure, happened on our last day in the hotel. We stopped back in the middle of the afternoon to drop off our backpack and found that our room was cleaned and our towels removed, but had not been replaced with fresh towels. So, we stopped by the front desk and let them know, and they said that they would take care of it.

Of course, when we returned later that evening after our dinner, we still had no towels. So, we (Kelly) phoned the front desk and again asked if we could have some. We were shocked at their response – “It is too late (9:30pm), I cannot help you! You shouldn’t ask for things this late. You must ask again after 7:00am in the morning”. Well, we were checking out at 7:00am and catching an 8:00am train to Sorrento, so that wouldn’t help us very much. Eventually, we asked if there were any empty hotel rooms that had towels in them that he could get for us. He agreed to this – under the condition that we walk down to the front desk, get the appropriate room key and get the towels ourselves! So, it all worked out for us, but was a funny episode.

Okay, on to the sights in Rome.

Friday Night

After arriving in Rome, checking into our hotel, and eating dinner*, it was starting to get dark. So we experienced many of the Rome attractions by night, which we really enjoyed – even though we were dragging our feet by the end. We started off by walking to Michelangelo’s Santa Maria degli Angeli church. It was a very impressive-looking church. We didn’t get to go inside or see it during the day, but will definitely do so if we ever return to Rome.

*Eating out in Italy has increased our appreciation for our food in Split. We were rarely super-impressed with our meals in Italy – our food ranged from okay to very good, but the portions were usually small and the prices were very high. In Split, we get giant portions – some times one meal is big enough for the two of us to share, and the prices are half of what we paid in Italy! And we have found meals that we find to be excellent! The same goes for ice cream / gelato – we get bigger scoops for one-third the price in Split – and we like it better! (Heresy, I know, but it’s true).

After gazing at Santa Maria degli Angeli, we wandered the streets of Rome and eventually made our way to the insane spectacle that is Trevi Fountain. Before researching Rome, I had never heard of Trevi Fountain and didn’t really think much about it – it’s just a fountain. So, when we arrived at 10:30pm to a throng of hundreds of people observing the fountain, I was taken aback! This was one of the experiences I’ll remember most about Rome – all of the tourists, everywhere. And Trevi Fountain had the most! Don’t get me wrong, the fountain is gorgeous, but still, it’s just a fountain. I’ll never wrap my head around why hundreds of people visit it at all times of the day and night, why random couples enjoy making out amidst these crowd, and will always be amused by the obnoxious gypsy men trying to force roses into the hands of all the female tourists.

Once we somehow pried ourselves away from Trevi Fountain, we continued our night tour and walked down Palatine Hill, past The Forum and a half dozen or so colossal buildings and ended at the Colosseum. The Colosseum was very cool to see lit up at night, except for the fact that a giant advertisement was projected onto the face of it – whose grand idea was that to spoil such a historical icon?

We had a great time wandering Rome by night, but were completely exhausted by the time we made it to the Colosseum. So, we made our way back to our hotel and crashed for the night. Oh, I almost forgot – during this walk back, someone tried to pickpocket me! We had paused to consult our map, and I raised my hands in the air stretching, when some little twerp gypsy guy patted me on the butt and then took off in a trot in front of us and darted into a closed ice cream shop. Lucky for me, Kelly had encouraged me to put my wallet in my front pocket, so the guy didn’t get anything. As we walked past the shop, I peered in at him, and he yelled something to the effect of “did you like that?” to me. That was our closest encounter with pickpocketers, and I guess we were lucky to walk away losing nothing more than our nerves.

Saturday

Saturday was our walking day. I’d be surprised if we didn’t eclipse 10 miles total* over the course of the day. We started the day off by revisiting our final destination from Friday night, visiting the Colosseum. It is such an impressive structure, and cool to think that it had stood more than 2,000 years old, and is still the basic model for stadium design, even today. Kelly was delighted to see brides and grooms getting shuffled around outside the Colosseum posing for photos – I guess it does make for a wonderful wedding photo backdrop! After the Colosseum, we headed into the Forum and wandered pretty aimlessly through its ruins, pausing now and again to listen in on English-speaking tours that were also touring the park. I think if we started our tour over again, one thing we would do differently is get some kind of audio guide at the Colosseum and the Forum ruins, we think we would have had a higher appreciation for them.

*We carried a pedometer around with us during the trip (it’s my newest nerdy toy). I don’t think we have it calibrated correctly for my pace because we think it exaggerates mileage a good bit, but we think it does an accurate job at counting our footsteps. Here are our daily totals for the trip, as well as my mileage guesses.

After leaving the Forum, we trekked back to Trevi Fountain to get a daytime view of the spectacle. Of course, we weren’t let down – it was still buzzing as crazily as the night before! Then, we continued on to Piazza Navona where Kelly was happy to run into a People to People tour group (she toured the British isles with the People to People when she was 13). Next we visited the Pantheon, which was quite cool to see. In case you don’t know, the Pantheon is famous for having an oculus atop its domed roof, allowing sunlight (and rain and snow) to pour in. I remarked to Kelly that it would be interesting to be here when it rained – we actually ran into some people later in our trip who were at the Pantheon on Sunday in the rain! We finished our day by visiting the Piazza del Popolo, relaxing for a bit in a park and walking down the Spanish Steps. Then, it was time for dinner and ice cream and a good night’s sleep to rest our weary bodies.

Sunday

On Sunday morning, Kelly and I ventured to Vatican City to await Pope Benedict’s noon appearance and wave from a window in St. Peter’s Basilica overlooking St. Peter’s Square. Of course, after waiting around with hundreds of other good Catholics making their pilgrimage to get blessed by the Pope, noon rolls around and the Pope doesn’t show. Instead, we’re treated to a giant video screen mass, where the Pope is presiding over a service at some other town in Italy. So, we missed out on getting to see the Pope. Oh well. I wasn’t exactly enthralled with the idea of standing around for a couple of hours just to see him in a window and wave to everyone, so I was a bit amused when it turned out that he wasn’t there!

Once we were done waiting for the Pope to turn up, we visited the biggest church in the whole world – St. Peter’s Basilica. This place is massive. First, we had to wait in line to get checked that we were dressed properly – ladies must have their shoulders and knees covered, and men, the same I guess. Then we walked through the Vatican Grottoes, which holds tombs of the deceased Popes, including Pope John Paul II. That was sobering and interesting to see; many people would leave small prayers or letters near the tomb of Pope John Paul II. We then explored the inside of the Basilica, which as I said, is impressive, incredible and gigantic. Finally, we walked up 550 steps to the top of the dome, where we were treated to a wonderful view of Rome and St. Peter’s Square as well as the Vatican Gardens. We didn’t get to visit the Vatican Gardens because you have to make private reservations ahead of time, but they looked beautiful and we would definitely like to do that in the future.

While we were above the dome, it started to rain on us. But, by the time we had climbed back down to ground level, the rain had stalled. Unfortunately for us, it only stalled for a few minutes. As we began to leave Vatican City, it started to rain again. And the rain turned into a deluge! We did have umbrellas, but they only helped so much because it was quite windy. Since it was pouring outside, we decided to go see a Hiroshige art exhibit that we passed a couple days earlier. We crammed ourselves into a jam-packed bus which took us most of the way and then walked/ran for a few blocks, getting soaked, until arriving at the museum.

The Hiroshige exhibit was very intriguing, and a nice transition from the hustle and bustle of Rome. It seemed that everywhere we went was overflowing with tourists, but this exhibit was not crowded at all – since it’s not a regular tourist attraction. Hiroshige – who I had never heard of but Kelly was familiar with – was a Japanese woodblock-carving-printing artist from the early 1800s. The prints that were on display were mostly of Japanese landscapes, and the lighting and music and art put us in a nice and peaceful mood.

Once we had made our way through the exhibit, it had stopped raining and we had mostly dried out, so it was time for another dinner and ice cream evening, and a good night’s rest.

Monday

On Monday, we returned to Vatican City to go through the Vatican Museum – one of the largest museums in the world. The museum has on display works of art collected by the Roman Catholic Church throughout the centuries. We visited room after room filled with works of art. Kelly’s favorite room from the museum was the Map Room, a long hallway room with giant paintings of the Italian region. It was fun to see Dalmatia, including Split and its neighboring islands on these maps! The tour concludes with Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, which is so amazing to see. Of course, we viewed the chapel with a few hundred other people, so the buzz and bustle in the room takes away from the experience, but only a little bit.

This concludes my mega journal of our adventures in Rome. Sorry that I’m so long-winded, but I guess if you didn’t give up and made it this far, you don’t mind too much! Kelly will be following up with the second half of our trip soon. Until then, ciao!