Italy

- my mom and sis with St. Peter's in the background

William is going to Italy for Christmas - that sounds so wonderful :) I've only been to Italy once, not long after college, but I enjoyed being there very much. A few years ago I posted about my one trip trip to Europe, and here's what I wrote about the Italy part of the trip (all photos except the one above of my mom and sis are from Wikipedia) ...

Day 9 - Italy. We took an overnight boat from Greece to Brindisi and then stayed in Bari. It's the town where St. Nicholas' relics lie, but at the time I wasn't a Christian, so all I noticed about Bari was the pasta :)

The next day we piled onto the bus that would be our transport for the rest of the trip, and stopped at Pompeii (interesting but a bit creepy) on the way to beautiful Sorrento ...


- Sorrento

From there we took a boat to the island of Capri. One of the great things about the trip for me was seeing all the places I'd read about in art and philosophy and history classes .... Capri was the hangout of the emperor Tiberius and as we drove up to the top of the island, I remembered a teacher saying Tiberius would have people he didn't like tossed from the cliffs. One of the big tourist draws of Capri is the Blue Grotto - I remember the grotto especially because I was almost decapitated by the low chain hanging across the entrance :)


- Capri

Leaving Capri, we took a boat to Naples but I don't really remember being there - odd, as it's the traditional home of pizza :) - and then we boarded the bus to drive to Rome. If only I'd been a Catholic then, I probably would have visited many more churches, but still we did visit St. Peter's, along with the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Museums, and history geek that I was, I loved seeing Hadrian's tomb and the Roman Forum.


- Vatican Museums

Next, we went on to Florence. For some reason I don't remember much about Florence either but I do have a (bad) photo of the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistry.


- Florence

Day 13 .... we stopped off in Padua at the Basilica of Saint Anthony, and then went on to Venice ... this at least I remember. The tour visited a glass-blowers workshop and the Piazza San Marco and then we walked around on our own.


- Santa Maria della Salute, Venice

After that we left Italy and went on to Austria through the Alps :) Here's my sister and sitting on a railing at a stop along the way. Bad photo, but you can kind of see the alps in the distance ...