Italia!

Ciao! Wow-I feel as though I was in Italy for a month! How do I tell you about my adventures in Italy in one succint post?! How do I choose 5 pictures out of 300? I'll do my best...

We started the trip with an insane amount of traveling. Seriously, it took us 13 hours to get from our rooms in Reading to our hostel in Rome. Here was our path: We walked to the station in Reading, took a taxi to London, rode the Tube to Liverpool Station, Bought tickets for and boarded the Stansted Airport Express Train, checked in at the airport (which included me being completely patted down and my bag dumped out and searched...) waited for an hour, flew to Italy, found our way to the bus stop, waited 45 minutes for the bus, rode the bus for 1.5 hours, wandered around Rome searching for our hostel, and FINALLY checked in! Wow. Needless to say, we were ravenous, tired, and cranky when we arrive. However, a delicious pizza and some gelato later, and we were back in action!

On Saturday morning, we set off bright and early for the Colosseum. SO COOL! We just stood there staring up at it, saying, "We can't believe what we are looking at right now!"

After a quick lunch stop for some phenomenal panini's, we could finally eat what we came for...

The gelato! Honestly, we half-heartedly chose our lunch and dinner locations based on price and convenience, but choosing the right gelateria was an entirely different story. There were criteria: We had to be drawn in by the window disply; we had to get a good "vibe" from the gelateria, owner, and overall atmosphere; we had to see a flavor that we couldn't live without; etc. It was sort of silly but entirely necessary.

Oh, so good! We seriously ate gelato after every meal, and I tried two new flavors each time. My favorites were Bacio (chocolate with some sort of nut?) and mint. Ooooh, and this green one that I can't remember the name of. And the mango one. AHHH!!

On Saturday night we took a train into Florence, and on Sunday we explored. What a beautiful city! (Erica, I thought of you at least 6 trillion times on this day!!) We saw the Duomo, the cathedral, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Medici Chapels, and some beautiful churches. We hiked up to the Piazzale Michelangelo for this great view, and it was so worth it!

Then we walked across the Ponte Veccio...so beautiful!

Does this make me a creeper? I couldn't help it-they were such a cute little Italian couple!

Quick gelato fix...

Along the Arno River!

Our last stop was Pisa. There is nothing in Pisa besides this tower...and great gelato, of course. :)

We had decided to stay the night in the Pisa airport, since our flight left early on Monday morning. We trekked over and settled down in the uncomfortable chairs, and just as I was drifting off the sleep, a worker from the airport came over and delivered some devatstating news: the airport was closing until 4am!! Since when do airports close?! What on earth could we do for 3.5 hours in the middle of the night in Pisa?? We headed outside and put on all of our clothing and huddled together on a bench, feeling sorry for ourselves.

BUT THEN I looked up to see a gleaming beacon of hope in the distance: A parking garage! (cue music.) Jessie, Jamie, and I headed over to scope out the place. It was circular, and we started doing laps. Pretty soon we had timed a lap (3 minutes), counted the number of steps one lap took (450), and calculated roughly how many laps were in a mile (12). We then proceeded to walk 3 miles around the garage, talking, fantasizing about food, and playing silly games like, "I went to Italy and I bought..." (You know the one? Where one person says, "an apple!" and the next person says, "an apple and some blueberries!" and you keep going until you make it through the alphabet? I could still recite all 26 items that we came up with if you are interested...) It sounds ridiculous, but the laps and the games kept us warm, occupied, and helped the time to pass rather quickly. It reminded me of Relay for Life, and I regaled the girls with epic stories from my previous all-night walk-a-thons around Wallace Field. They were impressed.

So, at 4am we went back into the airport, and after about 6 more hours of traveling, we finally made it back to Reading. Of course, it POURED the entire walk home-one last attempt by the forces of the earth to disrupt our traveling. Nice try Mother Nature...it was still an incredible trip!! Now, I must sleep. :)