We made it back from our vacation. It was fantastic. We’re in the process of unpacking and sorting through the five hundred digital pictures we took. I’ll be starting the process of developing all the b&w negatives we shot tonight. Yay!

This morning I picked out a few pics to share from each of the places we visited. Our first stop was Venice, we spent one day on the island. We spent a bunch of time in the piazza and in the church, palace and museum around the piazza. You would not believe how many pigeons there are. It’s really quite gross. But, overall, Venice was much better than I’d anticipated. Everyone warned me it was dirty, stinky and crowded, and some people even suggested skipping it altogether. It was just crowded and the pigeon population was high. The architecture was amazing, I would definitely recommend visiting Venice.

While walking around in the morning we saw a bunch of gondolas parked, waiting for fares. We opted not to take an insanely expensive gondola ride, but instead took the ferry down the grand canal, which was (I think) equally cool.

Next stop was Castelrotto/Kastelruth (the town has both Italian and German names). This town was so cute, very traditional. Lots of people spoke German, which was good for us since we speak a little German but no Italian. We saw people wearing lederhosen

The next day we started the hike through the alps to Schlernhaus. It was supposed to be a 3 hour hike, it took us 6 hours. The scenery was beautiful, but I’m not particularly fond of backpacking at high altitudes. Most of the hike was through cow pastures, we actually saw the highest altitude cow pasture in the world. Or so we were told. The cows all wear bells, so every cow pasture sounds like a giant windchime.

Here’s Schlernhaus, where we stayed for one night. It’s at an elevation of about 1.5 miles above sea level. It has no showers, no hot water, and its only source of heat is a couple of fires in the kitchen/dining rooms. We were totally unprepared for how cold it was, I wish we had done more research and thought to bring hats and mittens. We got snowed on a little on our hike down the mountain.

Next stop was Florence, where there was no snow, and the weather was much warmer although still unseasonably cool (about 60 degrees F). Florence was one of my favorite cities from the trip, it’s very small so we were able to walk to all the sites we wanted to see. This is the Ponte Vecchio, an old bridge that is lined with jewelry stores. Also, it’s very close to an excellent gelato shop.

Here’s fake David. Real David is awesome, he lives at Accedemia, but you cannot take pictures of him.

From Florence we took the train to Lucca with a brief stop in Pisa. The leaning tower is much shorter than I’d imagined. Also, the tower is much further from the train station than I’d imagined. Note for those going to Pisa: take the bus from the train station to the tower. The walk is not at all scenic. The tower is cool, though, and worth a visit. It’s fun to watch everyone in the grassy space by the tower pose for their “I’m holding up the tower” picture.

Lucca is great. It’s a medieval town with its city walls totally intact. We rented bikes and toodled around the ramparts. The town is full of clock towers, guard towers, church bell towers… there are more than a dozen towers. We climbed to the top of Torre del Oro, a really old bell tower. Below is the view from the tower.

This is the machinery inside the tower that keeps time and rings the bells every hour. For some reason I expected the gears and stuff to be much larger, but the whole thing is about the size of 3 file cabinets. You can see the pendulum on the left.

On to Rome, which was one of the highlights of the trip. The Colosseum is truly impressive. We took a guided tour, which I would highly recommend. Guided tours are great because informational signage is scarce and not always translated into English. (This was really the case everywhere, but the Colosseum is one of the few places we took a guided tour.)

We visited the Pantheon, which is right across the street from some archaeological ruins that double as a cat sanctuary. Seriously. These ruins are more than a millennium old and they’re now a giant litter box. Kinda weird. Around the Pantheon are some of the best gelato shops in Rome. We came here every day for gelato. I <3 gelato!

We spent a whole day at the Vatican, which has an astoundingly large art collection from all over the world. At the end of the museum is the Sistine Chapel, which is amazing. Here’s one of the many, many hallways we saw filled with marble busts.

Next up is Sorrento, just south of Pompeii, were we stayed for two nights. The view from the town is spectacular.

We visited Pompeii for a day. It was really, really impressive. The site is acres and acres, and lots of it has yet to be unearthed. The picture makes it look so peaceful, but really it was as crowded as Disneyland.

From Pompeii we went to Naples. This was the view from our hotel in Naples. Also not so peaceful. The piazza was filled with street vendors hawking crap. In the evening, after they left, the whole piazza is filled with trash, plastic bags and newspaper are strewn everywhere. So sad! The archaeological museum in Naples holds most of the artwork from Pompeii and is definitely worth going to. Naples also has exceptional pizza

From Naples we took a train ride back to Rome for one more day of sightseeing. We opted to take public transit around and just see as many monuments as we could. Which was a lot. There are a TON of monuments, ruins, fountains and churches scattered thru Rome. Like this pyramid. I don’t know the whole story about this pyramid, but it was built sometime shortly after the Mark Antony/Cleopatra scandal that brought Egyptian stuff in to fashion. And then sometime later it was incorporated into the wall that was built around Rome.

On the way home we spent one night in Amsterdam. On the way from our hotel to the train station there was this neat village of shipping container housing.

Right outside Central Station there is a parking ramp. Full. Of. Bikes. Amsterdam is so quiet and orderly compared to Italy, I think because there are hardly any scooters there. Our whole (five hour) visit in Amsterdam we saw a handful of scooters and a bajillion bikes. I <3 bikes!

Anywho, that about sums up my trip. Enjoy the pics