We got up Wednesday morning and headed to the airport which was about fifteen minutes from our hotel. Our fairy tale of living in a foreign land has come to an end. We now shift our focus on the realities that have become our own lives. Since Yvonne was flying back separate from us, on a different airline, we went our separate ways at the Leonardo Da Vinci Airport in Rome. Our flight was scheduled for 11:00 am, Bertha, RJ and Robert headed to Chicago, a ten hour flight, then on to LAX where cousin Ron was there to pick us [View Full Entry]

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I don't think I have ever walked up and down so many stairwells, through so many halls, through so many corridors, as we did to get to the glorious Sistine Chapel, Michangelo's masterpiece! Each hall and walkway had just thousands of pieces from ancient Rome. Art work, marble furniture, statues, carvings, mosiacs, tapestries, coins and what seemed like an unending number of interesting artifacts. (Keep in mind, there is no AC). Some of the marble "bath tubs", I am sure the Romans referred to them as something else, (but that is what they were) had to be probably 10 feet long [View Full Entry]

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Ahhhh....Roma, "The Eternal City". We finally get even with Rome. What a beautiful city. It seems everywhere in Rome there are sacred ruins that can be found strewn everywhere. RJ really loves this city, says he want to go to school there. Yesterday, as Yvonne previously mentioned, we got to the Coliseum in the early evening after the last tour had long since finished and it seemed like we had the place to our selves, with a few vendors still left on the grounds packing up their wares for the day. It is hard to explain this stucture, one of The [View Full Entry]

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Rome...we dont have our rental car so we can now be dependent on public transportation without headache on these crazy streets. NOT! We made it on one of the few trains to Rome...why...there is a strike! We booked our trip from Venice to Rome days before in anticipation of the rumors we heard. Lucky us cause all other trains were canceled. Well, not so lucky. Not only were the trains on strike, so were the buses. We hurried to our hotel in a taxi so that we could catch up on our Rome site seeing. Since we had such bad luck [View Full Entry]

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After a long train ride from Florence to Venice, we arrived in the afternoon around 3 oclock. We checked into our hotel so we could immediately site see. We stayed in a little city named Mestre just outside of the island of Venice. A bus from the front of our hotel that runs 24 hours took us across the bridge to Venice. We ate in a little restaurant there. I had sea bass with spaghetti in a fish sauce. I did not know that the fish sauce was filled with shells of muscles and other shell creatures including shrimp that was [View Full Entry]

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Just after we blogged you the other day, Bob and I arrived back to our hotel to find out that Bertha fell in the bathtub. She fell against a fixture in the tub shower. Her ribs hurt and she has a bad bruise on her back about the size of a fist. Her neck hurt her a lot the next day but all in all she is ok. It could have been worse and we are thankful that it wasnt. Ice was sent up from the front desk to put on her bruise but Bertha was concerned to not get anyone [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday July 7th 2008: We got up early in Florence (Firenze) and caught our train to Rome. It took us about five hours to get to our destination. Our train cabin reminded me of the old movies where you have six seats in a cabin, facing each other, with a sliding door that opened and closed. We met a young couple ( in their early 30's) that were traveling to Rome for a couple of days. They were newlyweds. They spoke a little English and we had a nice visit with them. Bertha always seems to initiate the conversations. It always [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday July 2 Bob, Bertha and RJ stayed local around town in Perugia. I was not feeling well so I slept the entire day. Our days long starting as early as 7:30 am and not going to bed until 12:30 or 1 am. While I slept, they went to explore this little town. They went to the univerisity of Perugia which is an old castle type structure. There are beautiful botanical gardens there and had lunch at the university's student union. This was the equivelent of a sandwich shop with a patio. They visited the cathedral in the center of town [View Full Entry]

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I cant be related to these people no way. They dont drink water, they wait to eat at 4pm and make me suffer from hunger. Theyre like camels. ITs weird how everything closes from 1 to 4 in the afternoon but im starting to adjust so i have to plan out my snacks for myself because no one else seems to be hungary. I bought a guitar yea so wat. Im tired of everybody influencing me to not do what i want to do. I have come to conclusion that i am the only logical person left on this trip. Sleep [View Full Entry]

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From Perugia we traveled in one day to Florence and then to Pisa. Bertha keeps calling it Pizza and we laugh everytime she says that. It was two and a half hours to Florence and one hour to Pisa on the train. From the train station we got on a the bus with all of the pick pocketers to the site. It amazes me that each time I see a site like Pisa that we've seen in books all this time, it is really more beautiful and more amazing in person. RJ was the only one that took the challenge climbing [View Full Entry]

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