Visitors, Visitors, Visitors

The month of June brought lots of visitors to Vicenza. And I wouldn't have had it any other way. The beginning of June, on our trip to Cinque Terre, we met up with the Stegall's and Morris'. We met up in La Spezia, right after they flew into the country. Let's just say that they were champs. James and I trained down from Vernazza to meet at the train station and head to their hotel. They were our first visitors that weren't family and I was beyond excited to see familiar faces. Then the nerves set in...as we waited in the McDonald's at the train station, the anticipation of their arrival was getting to me. It had been SO long, and I was SO ready to see some familiar faces. Let me just say that it is so WEIRD seeing people that you know from home in the middle of a train station. The rest of teh day and night slipped away from us...we walked around La Spezia, drank bottles of wine, ate some tasty food (except for Jess- who got food poisioning), and then James and I hung out with some homeless people for a while because we missed our train. Let's just say that after the night we had been having, we felt quite confident in our Italian.

The next morning- Blake and Lora met us to hike up to Monterosso, while Jessica recovered back in the room...bless. It was beautiful hike and it was just like being back at home. We were so glad to be hiking with other people- sharing the views and the experience made it so much more special.


Sadly, James had to go back to work...so we left with the hopes of having Blake and Lora and Jessica and Blair spend their last night in Italy with us. And it did. Sunday morning, I picked up the world travelers at the airport and came to Vicenza. We spent the afternoon walking around the heat, hiked up Monti Berico, and then came home and laid on the floor. (One of the upsides of having marbles floors- they are so cold!) It is so fun to show people around the little town- it makes it feel even more like home. That night we ate at Aeolia’s and introduced everyone to their famous fagotini- delicious pasta stuffed with pear and ham…to die for. Dinner was wonderful- but it was even better to be sharing it with our friends.

A couple of weeks later Mary Kathryn, Kaylyn, and Elizabeth joined. Mary Kathryn and Kaylyn joined from Florence. Kaylyn only stayed one night before she headed back to Raleigh to start another internship, and MK was here for the rest of the summer!! Elizabeth was ending her European adventure and spent the last week with us. IT was really low key- James was leaving, so we were really limited on where we could travel, but we did make one trip to Jeslo- a nearby beach. It felt so good to just get away for a couple of days and do nothing but sleep, read, and get a tan. The best part of the trip was finding this awesome arcade. There was HUGE Fruit Ninja touch screen that I spent wayyy too much money on J Then there was a silly little horse race game, basketball game, air hockey…we loved it!! It was a great way to conclude our trip.

We also watched a SERIOUS amount of Modern Family….and spent the whole week quoting it. Only slightly embarrassing that we watched ALL 3 seasons back to back. Thank you Apple TV, and Wendy for getting us hooked onto it.

And of course, you can’t visit and not go to a winery- so we spent one afternoon at Villa Scierman- a local favorite. This places it awesome. You can taste all the wine you want for free, then buy a bottle, and drink it outside on the Veranda, or underneath an awning of vines. The villa also sells asigao cheese, bread, prosciutto, and olives. Lets just say we spent several hours there…

Let's just say that James and I seriously have the best family and friends ever.

Block Leave Week 1

We had two weeks, two whole weeks to do whatever we wanted! After James being gone for March and having family in town the week after, staying at home was exactly what we wanted and needed.

Even though it was only a couple of days we fell into our routine. We slept in, made huge breakfasts, went to the gym, ran small errands, drove around Vicenza, watched movies, drank wine, and did nothing. It was exactly what we needed- time to be with each other once again, catch up on the previous month, and spend precious quality time together.

I had booked our "big" block leave trip for the 2nd week, knowing full and well that James wanted to just "chill", but to my surprise he came back from the MRE ready to travel!! On his way back from Germany the boys drove through Austria and into Italy. James said he woke up from a nap some of the most breathtaking views of mountains he had ever seen and that he really wanted to take me. He had driven through Brenner's Pass. This pass is the lowest crossing point through the Alpine Mountains and it in this area is is one of the only passes. As you drive along the highway you can look down and see pastures filled with farms, vineyards, and pastures and then you look up and all you can see is mountain. Huge mountains that tower over the road on both sides. It truly was a majestic sight to see! James and I ended up taking a detour...of course and drove through the Italian portion of the Alps- another sight to behold. It took us 3hours to go about 75km....the "roads" snaked up the mountains and went through several towns tucked away from what seemed to be the rest of the world. We stopped at several places along the way, took pictures, walked around, looked down into some deep valleys, and James tried to throw me over the rail a couple of times. Typical.

Once we drove through Brenner's pass we drove about 45min more and got to Innsbruck, Austria. Innsbruck was an awesome place! First of all it was really, really clean. We kept noticing how nice all of the streets looked- even around the train tracks...which I feel like are usually covered in graffiti.


We ate dinner at this really fancy restaurant...much fancier than we had originally anticipated...called 360 Bar. Bar...thus the confusion about how nice of place it was...oh well. This "bar" was located in the historic part of downtown at the top of a VERY tall building. It took us about 20minutes of walking around to find it. But we got a beautiful 360 view of the town and the mountains that surrounded and the whole city glowed as the sunset. We did forget to take pictures because we were slightly uncomfortable. Whoops.


On our way home we found this cute little bar, "Down Under" and decided to stop in and have a beer. We have just started feeling more comfortable traveling, so we never just drop into bars late at night...but we are SO glad that we did. We chatted it up with the bar tender, asked her about what Austrians drink- which apparently is Jager...without the blood in it and we met a friend! His name is Frank. And he told us that we "sort of" spoke English. **Side note- which actually makes a LOT of sense, the whole time we were in Austria, people were snickering at us and we COULD NOT figure out why...its because we have American accents.** We spent the rest of the night talking with him and his friends about his military experience, learning that he is now in the oil business working for some company that I can't remember and he thought it was awesome that James came from an oil family. We then continued down the very normal conversation of gun control laws in America. Why did we do this? No idea. But it was fun. And we debunked their myth that all Americans walk around with a gun in their back pocket shooting people.

We were SUPPOSE to get up the next morning- explore downtown, go to the Swarvoski Crystal museum and then head home. Instead, we were forced to stay another night because neither one of us were functioning until about 3:00 in the afternoon. Awesome. So, we slept the morning away, drank lots of water, and spent the afternoon walking around. All I wanted to see were the colorful houses along the Inn River...not sure why that was so important, but it was, and it turned out that I got some pretty awesome pictures. We walked around downtown, ate strudel, drank cappacino's, tried on Sound of Music hats, and tried to go into the Emperor's Palace- but we got there too late- only 45min till close and the lady said we needed and hour. Whatever. We did stumble into some beautiful churches- very elaborate and grandiose decor inside. The beautiful moment was short lived as we were slowly outrun by a massive Asian tourist group taking lots of pictures.

The last part of our spontaneous adventures was Swarovski's Crystal World!! I had no idea what to expect, but this was the Swarovski Crystal factory- so it was calling my name. You enter through this massive head...which you find out is basically the B.F.G- Big Friendly Giant. You walk through a maze of displays by several different artists that used crystals in their artwork. It was 10x better than we had initially expected- which was the history of Daniel Swarovski and his glass cutting factory.

The best part of the trip....James got me a present!!!!!

...Just realized you can't see inside my box...sparkly earrings!!

When In Rome Do As The Roman's Do...

...except when the men wear legitimate purses. James refused. Understandable. This past weekend James had a 4 day weekend, so we decided to head to Rome!

While everyone thinks that Europe is awesome (and it is) because of the train system, you are wrong. Well, partly wrong. The trains are awesome, but depending on where you are going they are EXPENSIVE. Definitely a surprise. It is not as inexpensive to travel by train as it use to be. For example, train tickets to Rome were upward of 300euro. So we debated driving. Long drive. 6hours. Not a winner. Especially because parking in Rome is ridiculous and once again very expensive. So we decided to drive to a little town about 4 hours away and catch the train into Rome from there. We were able to park our car for free and experience the train! It was a pretty great deal. The drive was beautiful- we drove through the Tuscany and Umbria regions. Parts were covered in snow. Untouched snow. You could see it for miles. And every once and while you could see where the animals had roamed. It was beautiful.

Fun fact of the journey: We didn't have our GPS. I had let a friend borrow it the week before so she could get to church and completely forgot about it until we were pulling out of our street! For some reason, I had pulled up the directions to the train station on the ipad and we were able to navigate our way through Italy via ipad directions. Once again, not as easy as it should be...our iPad isn't 3G, so we just had directions and a picture of a map. Thank goodness for James' ability to read maps!

Orvieto train station=why I am not a good traveler. I just want to know what to do. It really shouldn't be that hard, but for some reason we struggled. Well, maybe not struggled, but just took a little while to figure out everything we were doing. And somehow my broken Italian was able to help us figure out where to validate the tickets. We got on the train. Safe and sound. And headed into Rome.

Another fun fact: Rome as 2 train stations. TWO. Rick Steve's did not prepare us for this. We picked the right one though.

Once we got into the city, we bought the ROMA pass. I highly recommend this pass!! It is 30euro for 3 days. You get free admission into 2 sites (so go to the most expensive ones first- Colosseum and The Roman Forum) and reduced prices at other galleries and sites, but the real deal is that you get all of your transportation for free! Buses and Metro.

Rome's public transportation: Gross, gross and gross. We were definitely spoiled in Paris. Also, the metro system is not very accessible, but the buses went everywhere.

We stayed at this awesome little bed and breakfast. We got coffee and a pastry every morning at the cafe next door, free internet, Italian Tv (which is so entertaining), and the ladies that ran it were so helpful and showed us where everything was on a map and how to get around!

Another fun fact: SUPER disappointed in the food. I had only one dish that really good- it is a traditional Roman dish called Caio e peppe (pronounced like catch-eh eh pep-eh). It is basically spagehetti with pepper and 2 different types of cheeses- caico de roma and pecorino de romano)

The first day we walked. A lot. We spent the morning at the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica. The museum was pretty cool- there were a LOT of things to look at. It kind of reminded me of the Louvre. We spent a lot of time looking at all of the sculptures and tapestries- which were unreal. The best part was the Sistine Chapel. It was beautiful. I had no idea. We listened to a Rick Steve's podcast about it- so we picked a seat on the side and sat there for 25ish minutes while he explained everything to us. I am so glad that we did that! It really put things into perspective and he pointed out some incredible details that I would never have understood or probably seen. I think the best part of the ceiling was seeing Michaelagenlo's rendition of God creating Adam. It is such a popular painting, but seeing in context- beside all of the other frescoes, was seriously unbelievable. James and I decided that the whole trip was worth seeing the Sistine Chapel.

Sadly, something was going on at St. Peter's so we were unable to get inside or climb the dome. But we did get to hear some absolutely beautiful music that they were broadcasting from inside the basilica.

The rest of the day was spent running around and seeing the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Campo di Fiori, and Piazza Navona. It was exhausting. But as we wondered our way through Rome, we were able to see some beautiful buildings and eat some tasty gelato! Piazza Navona was our favorite. There were so many vendors and painters! And the beautiful baroque church that lined the square. We even caught a little show put on by some traveling artists- bare stage, minimalist costumes, absolutely hysterical even though we could not totally understand.

Funny moments throughout this day: James almost took out one of the men trying to hand out roses at the Spanish Steps. He would not leave us alone, kept trying to put roses in my hand, then finally got them in my hand after he told us we didn't need to pay him, and then harassed us for money anyway. James was over it and finally got in in face and told him to back off. Then...as we were wandering around, we had stopped to pull out our map to see what our next turn would be and this man came up to us- only speaking Italian. We thought he was asking for directions so we pointed him in the way of the Spanish Steps- but he kept on trying to get us to follow him and then trying to get us to go somewhere. We tried to tell him that we knew were we were going and that we weren't lost, but I haven't learned those words in Italian yet...so it turned into a game of charades. Once again, irritated, we walked away and he threw his hands in the air at us. Oh well.

We ended our night in Trastevere. It's this artsy little area in the south east area of Rome. We were really trying to find this chocolate bar that we had been told about and another Rick Steve's recommended trattoria, but it was a bust. We ended up in some sketchy area and we were starving to death, so we picked out a random place to eat. Pretty good homemade ravioli with mushrooms and prosciutto. Getting home was a whole other adventure in and of itself, but we somehow figured it out. The good thing about big cities is that the public transportation system is usually pretty dummy proof, so once we figured it out we were good to go. Once we figured it out.

The next day, we slept in a little bit and then enjoyed the rest of the day at the Colosseum, Palentine Hill, and the Roman Forum. We even got to see a Bolivian parade in front of the Capitol. The ancient remains were awesome. All of the marble and columns is what I had envisioned in my head of Rome. I have a hard time even comprehending how the Romans were able to build such magnificent buildings!

Today was the day that we did not eat very Italian. McDonald's for lunch and sushi for dinner. That evening turned into a rainy one and we were unable to get reservations at the Borhgese gallery, so we called it a night and enjoyed a little walk around the neighborhood we stayed in.

Now, I wouldn't really mention the drive home, except for the fact that we drove through a snow storm. James drove us through it. I hate driving beside trucks- and there were way too many on the road, let alone the fact that we were driving in the mountains. So when the snow storm hit, I was glad to be sitting in the passenger seat!

This picture looks a little more like rain- but at this point you couldn't even see the trees that were right beside us to see all of the snow on them, and then I got distracted.

Last funny story and then I'll stop. So for some reason on the way down to Orvieto we didn't listen to music or a podcast. James was sleeping and I couldn't reach the iPad...Did I mention that we don't have a radio in our car, yea... So on the way back home I was tried to play a playlist on the iPad. SOMEHOW I had deleted ALL of my music except Celine Dion Christmas, Carolina Girls, and Body Language. Did you know that James hates Celine Dion? He does. So we listened to Carolina Girls and Body Language on repeat for a while until the snow storm hit. Then it was concentration time.