Our Married Life

Look sisters!!

I’ll get them all up some day….but it’s difficult going through and making sure each picture is properly edited, etc. Anyway here is day 3 of our trip. Still in Rome…

Ok, I know at this point people start making resolutions. I’m going to call mine a checklist. Here’s what I want to accomplish in the year 2010:

• Top on my list…be consistent with working out.
• Work on the house. This includes…
• Change out sink
• Replace carpet downstairs with wood floor
• Repaint the living room
• Get living room furniture
• Organize master bedroom closet
• Move money from savings into retirement fund, open an IRA

I think that’s it. These are pretty big goals, so hopefully we can accomplish them all.

We do plan on taking a couple small vacations this year. We want to go back to Mexico sometime in the spring or fall, and another smaller vacation.

Yay I get to see snow!

Somehow Leah has to be the center of attention.

It snowed pretty heavily and briefly on Wed. Too bad it melted before lunchtime.

I’ve been meaning to post more about Day 2, but geez life got in the way. Plus my computer sucks. Thank goodness Brian updated the OS to Windows 7. It works much better now.

Anyway, I’ll have to post an abbreviated version. Trying to retell the entire vacation is probably boring. Instead, I’d rather sort through all the pictures and share them.

I was able to go through the Rome set and cut out 2/3 of the unwanted pictures. The result…400 pictures to share. Between the two of us, we had 2 cameras. I haven’t even begun to look at the pictures from the other camera.

This is Rome – Days 1 and 2.

So on Day 1, we spent the remainder of the day exploring the neighborhood. We walked to the Tiber which was about 3 blocks from our hotel.

My thoughts, it’s unfortunate that the Tiber is so neglected. Not only can you see the ever-present graffiti on the wall, but the water was murky. I read somewhere that after one of the major floods, the Romans built a high wall and dam and forever neglected it. It’s too bad, but I’m sure 2000 years ago, it was probably beautiful.

Since I’m picking on Rome, the other atrocious thing was the traffic. I wouldn’t dare to drive around in Rome. Those drivers were insane. I think the only rule is not to hit a pedestrian.

Despite all of this though, the sites made up for it all. It was beautiful nonetheless. I have to say that we were captivated and “romanced” by the city. We headed back towards our neighborhood and found a local ristorante called Vito’s. I ordered the quintessential pasta carbonara, and Brian ordered veal marsala, we also split a pizza topped with prosciutto as a appetizer. The pizza was plenty of food. Here’s a dining tip, restaurants charge a cover fee, and the bread the place on the table also cost you money. Rick Steve’s gives a good overview on dining in Rome. The food was good, but the pasta was a little too al dente for my taste. I found this “quality” everywhere we went. Italian food in Rome is not what you expect, be prepared. I’m not saying it wasn’t good, it’s not like your local Buca di Beppo. Everything tasted fresh and handmade. The restaurants are run by families and are typically quiet.

That pretty much wraps up day 1.

Day 2… We had an early morning start. We caught breakfast at the hotel, and were picked up by Grayline Tours at 8:00am.

The first excursion of the trip was a Classical Rome tour. Our tour guide was great. The bus took us across town to the center of the classical sites. We got off the bus and on foot, they took us to our first stop, the Trajan column.

Next up was the famous Trevi fountain, where we got to take some pictures. Bernini is a genius. His work is found nearly all over Rome. We each threw a coin into the fountain. Of course the legend states that if you throw the coin using your right hand over your left shoulder, you will most certainly come back to Rome. Since it was early morning, the site was pretty quiet.

After we got our 15 minutes at the fountain, we headed up the the highlight of the tour. The Pantheon. Of course we saw other stuff in between, but you’ll have to see the pictures once I’m done going through all of them. The Pantheon epitomizes the engineering skills they had 2000 years ago. Not only that, but it’s the most well preserved site probably in the world. I actually got chills. It was grand and beautiful and perfect. Also, something I didn’t know, the oculus at the top is actually open, so when it rains, it actually rains into the building, but the Romans were smart enough to build in a drain inside the building.

We made a 20 minute “pit stop” at the gift store, after the Pantheon. These pit stops seems to be a scam since we certainly didn’t need 20 minutes at a gift store. But whatever. We headed out to the other side of the river to see St. Peter’s Basilica.

And since it was Wednesday morning, the Pope was actually there leading the mass. How cool is it that we saw the Pope. There was a large crowd, so we walked around. We didn’t spend too much time there, since we were going to come back on our own. So we waited around the bus.

The tour ended after 3 hours. At that point they dropped us off at the location of our choice. Since we had pretty much half a day left, we decided to have them drop off us at the Spanish steps.

We found a restaurant in between the many shops off located right off the steps and stopped for lunch first. I ordered pasta carbonara again while Brian got some other pasta dish.

I’m not sure what the purpose of this spot was, but I guess it was just a place for people to sit. We decided to go up the steps and explore an old church and take in the views. The crowd around the steps was pretty large. We even saw a few puppies and one that looked like Reesey. We couldn’t resist taking a picture.

After being sweaty from walking all day, we decided to walk back to our hotel. We crashed until dinner time.

I’ll have to finish up Day 2 later…