Italy

We got up at 2:30am again on Friday December 16th to begin our journey to Rome, Italy! Emily was perfect on the flight!!!! She never cried at all!!! We were so proud of her!!! We got to Italy late morning and had a very busy but fun day! We found our hotel and checked in there first. Then we went to the Colosseum. That was really neat!!!! It was fascinating to hear the stories about battles and everything that took place there. We really enjoyed walking around seeing it all! Then we took a bus to Vatican City and saw St. Peter’s Basilica at night. There were a lot of people in the Square and there was a huge, beautiful Christmas tree!!! Then we went to the Trevi Fountain and tossed coins in, hoping our wishes would come true! :-) It was dark, but there were still a lot of people at the fountain!!! We had dinner at a pizza place that Theresa (a friend from college who has been to Italy lots of times for archeological digs) recommended. It was delicious! Phillip ordered a marinara pizza – would you believe that it didn’t have cheese on it?!? We were shocked – guess we thought all pizza had cheese! Haha! It was very good though! The sauce had such a unique flavor! We got gelato (very rich, delicious ice cream) at a place that Theresa recommended also! The gelato was so good that we decided we should get gelato every day while in Italy! Even though it was a long way back to our hotel that night, we walked so that we could see everything! It was cold and we were exhausted, but we saw a lot that day and had a ton of fun!

We spent most of the day Saturday in Vatican City. We went in St. Peter’s Basilica and Emily just loved it…she was looking around at everything!!! We went to the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel! We also enjoyed looking in the neat little shops. We loved looking at the Nativity Scenes that were everywhere! Everything was amazing! It is now hard to believe that we were really there!!!! Saturday evening, we went to the Spanish Steps! We had a long walk to get there too…we certainly got our exercise that weekend!!! We ate dinner that night at Hard Rock Café, Rome! Emily slept in my arms the whole time we were at dinner…sweet little baby girl! We walked back to the hotel afterwards and got Gelato on the way there!!!

On Sunday, we went back to the Trevi Fountain so we could see it during the day. We tossed coins into the fountain again and repeated our wishes…maybe they are double likely to come true! Even Emily tossed a coin in this time…we said her coin was for good luck! Hehehe! Then we headed back to St. Peter’s Square to see the Pope! (On the walk there, we got Gelato again!!!! Yes, that’s right, we ate ice cream in the morning!) The Benediction was at noon and there were lots of people there to watch/listen! Pope Benedict talked for about 20 minutes, but only about 30 seconds were in English! His English was very hard to understand though! Phillip actually understood more of his Spanish section than the English section! We thought that was funny! We headed back to check out of the hotel after that. We ate a quick lunch at McDonalds at the train station. We tried some weird foods there – a burger with some sort of weird spicy sauce on it and veggie balls…mushroom, carrots, peppers, cheese, and marinara sauce fried in the shape of a ball. Weird but good! Anyway, after McDonalds, we bought our train tickets that would get us back to the airport. Then we had 7 Euros left. Once we left Italy, we would no longer have any use for Euros…soooooooo…we bought Gelato AGAIN!!!! That’s right, twice in one day! Yes, we realized how pathetic that was, but it was so delicious you probably would have done the same thing if you were in our shoes! ;-) And we certainly couldn’t let 7 Euros go to waste!!!! (good excuse anyway, right?) Each Gelato place let you get 3 flavors in your cup. We got to try tons of weird flavors like banana chocolate, forest fruit, green apple, yogurt, triple chocolate, fudge, vanilla bourbon, etc. They were all absolutely delicious!!!!!

Our flight back to England was over an hour late! We weren’t thrilled about that since we knew we still had to finish packing for the US once we got home! Emily was TERRIBLE on the flight! She cried and cried and cried and cried and cried!!!! She has never done that on a plane before! She wouldn’t eat much, walking with her didn’t help, she didn’t want the pacifier…seriously nothing helped. She was super tired, had the hiccups, and had gas…BAD combination! ANGRY baby!!! Even the flight attendant tried walking with her to calm her down. Poor little Emily! (And poor everyone else on the plane!) Emily FINALLY fell asleep while Phillip paced with her in the back of the plane. She was so tired that she was even sound asleep in the airport while we waited for a taxi to pick us up. We put her on a seat between us (don’t worry, we didn’t take our eyes off of her on that little seat – so there’s no way she could fall off!!!). We thought she was so adorable sleeping there!

We were so happy to get home that night! We were exhausted but so excited as we unpacked from Italy and repacked our bags for our flight to the USA the next day!!!!!!!!!! Most of our bags were already packed…we just had to pack the bags and stuff that went to Italy with us. We didn’t get back till around 9pm from Italy though, so it was a late night, finishing up all the last minute things! USA blog coming up soon…