"Holy Roman!"

We started Day 2 at a run. Our first stop was the 110Open, an open-top bus tour. We've found that one of the best ways to see an entire city, with limited time, is to do it by bus.

I won't include many of the photos, because we ended up spending some actual time at a few of the spots, but here are some of the places we didn't go, but got to see and learn about on the tour:

1) Vittorio Emanuele II Monument -or- Rome's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

 2) Palazzio Venezia and the balcony (click to enlarge, it's in the center with the flags) where Mussolini gave his speeches during WWII. It's now a museum.

 3) "Tim" is the Italian cell phone carrier. :-)

 After we completed our two-hour trip around Rome, we headed into the Basilica Santa Marie di Angeli, which is located a few hundred yards from the Termini station.

 Based on the exterior, we weren't expecting much from the inside...we were wrong. It was beautiful!

Here's the dome...

 Their organ...

 They even have an astrological clock inlaid into their marble to help tell time throughout the year.

 Tim had a mini-photoshoot happening and got this shot of a rainbow behind the angel.

 After exploring the Basilica, it was time to point ourselves towards the Vatican and our afternoon tour. We had our first Roman metro experience (decent) and got lunch near the city wall. Our tour was meeting outside of the vatican wall and we wanted to make sure we had enough time to find the small cafe.

Once we met up with our tour guide and the rest of our group, it was time to head in.  I'm sure you've heard stories of people waiting hours to get in, with lines winding around the block...well not for us! We waited, maybe, two minutes and we didn't even have reservations. Go in the afternoon, it's way better! Once inside, we headed towards the courtyard, so Jimmy (our tourguide) could explain the Sistene Chapel in detail. 

 Yep, you read that right, he explained it in the courtyard. (This was our entire group...6 people!) The museum has pretty strict rules about the chapel, one of which is "no talking," and unlike other tour guides, Jimmy obeyed them. To compensate, he brought a parchment of the ceiling and we gathered in the shade to look at the details. It was fantastic!

Of course, there are other parts of the museum (to see it all, you would put in 8 miles of walking!), and we got to see some great things on our way to the Chapel.

This here is Emperor Hadrian, the first Roman Emperor to have a beard. Timmy appreciated that...

 And this is Nero's Bathtub. The tub measures 6m in diameter and is made of one of the rarest stones in the world, Egyptain Red Porphyry. Want to know how expensive this stuff is...Bill Gates is the only private collector to have a piece and he only has a paperweight. (A $1million+ paperweight, which he bought from the Vatican, who owns 98% of the world supply).

 After our tour (Sorry, due to copyright laws, photos are not allowed in the Sistene Chapel...Fugi Films paid for its restoration and got all of the copyrights to it), we headed to St. Peter's Bisilica. Here is Michelangelo's "Pieta."

 Tim was more interested in taking artistic shots...

  We left the Basilica and headed out, only to find oursleves some Swiss Guards.

 I mailed some postcards from the Vatican City post office...

 And we gazed over at the giant photo of Pope John Paul II, who just went through his beatification the week prior. There were posters and flags all over Rome with photos of him and some of his quotes. Our tour guide said something along the lines of "Can you imagine how Pope Benedict feels about seeing photos JPII everywhere?" So true...

 We got a picture in St. Peter's Square (click to enlarge and you'll also see our photobomber...)

 We were getting pretty hungry, so we headed back to Piazza Barberini and The Hard Rock for dinner. Afterwards, Tim wanted to check out the Pantheon. On our way, we got a nice surpise, in the form of a parade of Ferraris!  Literally, a police-escorted parade of Ferraris.

It was no surprise the Pantheon was closed, but we stuck around and spent around 45 minutes taking pictures of the building and the square and just enjoyed the Roman evening.

Side Note: If you ever go to Rome, book a Vatican Tour with Jimmy at Epic Rome Tours. He blew our minds with his art and history knowledge and made it, not only informative, but an absolute blast. His Irish accent also helped!

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When in Rome...

That title should probably say "When in Florence..." because that's where we are, but I'm going to do some back posting to catch up. You may be wondering why I'm choosing to spend any time blogging when I could be exploring? The answer is pretty simple: 1) Our (AMAZING) hotel has free wifi, 2) it's a Sunday evening in a country that favors limited work hours, and 3) the weather isn't too great right now (i.e. rain and wind with spots of sun).

To back it up, we landed in Rome on Thursday in the mid-morning. Our flight from Seattle - JFK - Rome was turbulent and uncomfortable, but we both managed to sleep and/or deal with it. (One ::big:: issue was the lack of entertainment. I didn't realize how normal it was to have a tv in the seat back until we had to try and watch it from overhead TVs in the center of the plane...)

We did get a great look at the Italian coastline as we landed!

Once we got through customs (what a breeze!) and into the train station, we caught the Leonardo Express to the Rome Termini station. Our hotel was maybe a two-minute walk from the terminal.

Quick Story: We had opted to make our train reservations once we got into Italy to avoid spending a lot of extra money to have the tickets UPS'd to the US. I had read that this was a pretty common thing to do and didn't think about it again. I did, however, want to make our reservations ASAP. As soon as we got to Termini, we started the search for the reservation desk. For some reason, the direct train from the airport goes into the most-out-of-the-way-platform-EVER! It took us a good 30 minutes to figure out where we could do the reservations. Part of the issue was that we were looking for the Eurail Aid Office and not the main ticket counter...turns out they're one-in-the-same. Anywho, we waited 20 minutes in the line to make our overnnight reservations from Venice to Paris, only to be told "Sorry, train full" for three different days. We were exhausted, sweaty, irritated and a gamut of other emotions and I seriously almost started crying. Thankfully, Tim kept his cool and we had thought to bring computer along to upload pictures. We headed to our hotel, started searching booking sites and managed to make reservations for a hotel in Milan and a flight from Milan to Paris within 30 minutes. Plus, we managed to do it all for less than what the overnight train was going to cost if we had even tried to book full-price tickets. WIN! Tim later commented on how amazing it was that all of that could be done so easily these days.

Here's an inside view of our hotel (Hotel Palladium Palace) in Rome:

 Gotta love how a "double" is really two twin beds stuck together...with separate bedding.

We took an obligatory nap (seriously the BEST way to cure jet lag...Tim and I adjusted to the time zone without any problems) and then headed for the Spanish Steps. On our way we passed the Santa Maria Maggiore...

 Crossed through the Piazza Barberini and the Triton Fountain (we would see this many times during our trip)...

 And we found ourselves at the Spanish Steps...

 It was a beautiful and relaxing place to watch the sun go down over Rome with the rest of the tourists and some locals.

 After a bit, we headed south to the famous Trevi Fountain or Fontana di Trevi, as the Roman say...

 After needling my way down to the water's edge and tossing a euro in, a woman kindly offered to take our photo...

 That evening we ate our first Italian meal at Il Chianti. Pruciutto with melon and pizza is a great way to end the day!

Once we got back to the hotel we started researching for day #2, but when I looked over, I couldn't help but laugh and take a few pictures...

This will end up being a common theme every evening.

Ciao!

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Baking FAIL (and a win!)

Every once in a while, all of the stars align and we have the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies. And when that happens, we like to take advantage of it! This makes it twice as disappointing when it turns into a giant FAIL.

Why so smirky?

Yep, that would be the ENTIRE egg in the mixing bowl. I even dropped it in WHILE the mixer was running, to make sure it really ::got:: in there. 

Now you may be thinking, "But Arianna, it doesn't look like you were that far along in the process. Why not start over?" And I would say "We totally started over. Absolutely nothing was going to stop us from enjoying delicious, chewy chocolate chip cookies." HA! Except that we, as evidenced below, can ruin any recipe. 

Want a crispy-flying-cookie-saucer of doom?

On a happier note, I did get a big WIN later in week. In trying to be more self-sustaining (and all-around awesome), I made my very own biscuits! From scratch!

And, yes, you do need a butcher's knife to make rolls. I'm almost certain I read that somewhere...

 These suckers turned out delicious!

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Flying back with a bloom!

Although I've been able to post text and single-photo blogs, I've had a lot of restrictions on my blogging capabilities because of the whole photo issue. To recap: the storage site for blogger photos alerted me that I was at my storage capacity. After erasing hundreds of photos from the site, I was still at 98% capacity! Truth be told, I had pretty much given up. I didn't want to or have time to deal with it. After realizing we're leaving for big vacation next week, it was time buckle down and figure out the problems. After painstakingly going through every single photograph (over 1,000) and resizing them, I am now at 12% capacity! Lesson of the year: Resize your photos before adding them to blogger!!

Now on to the goods...

On Easter weekend we were invited to join two of Tim's coworkers for a flight on their plane. Yes, THEIR plane. I am pretty nervous in small planes, so I had actually been dodging their invitations for a good year. (Tim joined them last year for a jaunt up to his hometown.) I finally decided that it was time to bite the bullet, but with stipulations. I wanted to go to my hometown and eat at my favorite Mexican restaurant. They were game!

D, our pilot, is explaining the safety procedures and helping to calm my nerves.

He even gave me a map to follow our flight path...we were in the air for about 20 minutes.

Lookin' good in the aviators and headgear.

The Olympic Mountains from the air! 

We made it! YES! :-)

 As we were leaving A-town's airport, we passed these gliders waiting to be pulled into the air.

 I asked D if we could fly north to see the Tulip Festival in bloom...

 The fields looked amazing and we were so glad we missed the huge traffic jam getting there!

 Look at all those tulips! 

 This is a really beautiful "english-esque" garden.

 My favorite field, with its rainbow of tulips

On our way home we passed over the Hood Canal Bridge...

And had an amazing view of Seattle.

 D took us on a fly-by of the shipyard! This is where Tim works!

 And here's the mothball fleet...there are 4 aircraft carriers sitting there!

 Of course, no flight is complete without passing over your own house! 

 We ended our evening with one of our favorite summer-time activities...the drive-in! Yes, I know it's not summer, but the weather was hovering around 70 the whole day, so we had to take advantage!

And don't forget...Support Your Local Drive-in! 

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The Happiest...Birthday Weekend

Since my blog has decided to hate me, I've been trying to figure out different ways of posting pictures. You may have to just deal with an increased word count...if you'd like to photos from the trip, I invite you to view my Flickr slideshow at this link.  (Hopefully I'll get this blogger issue sorted in the near future!)

About a month ago, I was invited to join my S.I.L. for her 28th birthday celebration in Disneyland. Technically, it was a 10 year anniversary of her 18th birthday and we sure did celebrate!

The parks were jam-packed with families on Spring Break, but we still managed to fit in several rides.

We munched on ice cream, corn dogs, and had a scrumptious birthday dinner at Ariel's Grotto. Because of our dinner reservations, we also had a special reserved viewing area for the new World of Color show in California Adventure. It was fantastic! I took several videos on my camera and my iPhone, just so I could show Timmy when I got home!

The changes they're making to the California Adventure park are impressive...and expansive. The entire entrance is partitioned off, but they've set up a small gallery with blueprints and miniature displays of what is happening. Plans include a "Hollywood Land" and a "Cars Land," which should include several new rides. It looks like another trip needs to be planned in a few years when this is all finished! :-)

You may know that Tower of Terror is my favorite ride...well...it used to be. That title now belongs to Francis Ladybug Boogie. I imagine everyone is thinking "What is that?!" This requires a bit of a backstory...back when Tim and I were living in Japan, Laurie came to visit. We spent one day at the DisneySea park in Tokyo and it was one of the best Disney Park experience I've ever had. Mostly it was because we went on a weekday, so the park was empty! Due to a lack of other guests, we were able to go on every ride SEVERAL times. This was Tim and my third trip to the park, but there was one section that we had never been to, Tim had deemed it "kids only." Seeing as how he was outnumbered 2-1, Laurie and I were able to push him down into the depths of "Mermaid's Lagoon," an underwater playground of...kid's rides. Most of them were pretty tame, but we found one ride that deserved several spins. It used centrifugal force to spin a seashell. We had never seen this ride before. Ever. After about six times, we finally figured out the best method and had that shell spinning like crazy. Flash forward to this trip, they've created a new pathway in CA Adventure that leads through the Bug Land. We were walking through this and in the corner of my eye I spotted some spinning lady bugs. My heart jumped a little, but I didn't want to get my hopes too high. I stopped and turned enough to watch the ride a little while the others discussed our next stop. As soon as I was sure, I yelled at Laurie and ran towards the line. Seriously. And...it was still awesome. And the best part? The ride operator spoke English and gave us tips on how to make it go faster. A luxury we did not have the first time.

I guess Tower of Terror still has to be my favorite, considering that it was because of that ride that I even found the Ladybug Boogie. In three trips to CA Adventure, I had never even stepped foot in Bug Land, seeing as how it was "kids only" and a dead end. Thank you CA Adventure for actually connecting your park and making it more accessible! I appreciate it.

So, despite pinching a nerve in my foot and waiting in the slowest, most painstaking line EVER (Space Mountain...I'm looking at you), it was a GREAT trip. The birthday girl got several good wishes from other guests and Disney cast members (personalized birthday t-shirts helped with that) and we even discovered new (to us) areas of the park.

I'm sorry I couldn't post pictures in the blog, but I wanted to post this before it was too late and the Flickr slideshow is still pretty sweet.

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Luscious Locks of Love Lopped

12" down!

P.S. I have a lot of pictures from our last two weekend adventures (Disneyland and a photography class), but my picasa account is currently full, so I can't add any pictures until I clean it out.  I'll try to do that soon!  Sorry!

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