European Holidays...

Happy Labour Day!!  You may think we are crazy, as Labour Day to us takes place in September, but apparently all across Europe, May 1^st is Labour Day.  This was a big shocker to us, arriving in Rome without a reservation, but more about that later!!!

Florence, Itay; April 25 to 29

This blog was started on the train from Rome to Florence, and we are continuing it on a plane to Athens.  We spent four days in Florence with our cousin, Alex, and had a wonderful time in this city.  Florence is a great Renaissance city, filled to the brim with beautiful masterpieces of art.  We visited both the Uffizi Museum as well as the Accademia Gallery and really enjoyed our time there.  We have to let you in on a little travel secret—we’ve been travelling with Rick Steves!  Well, his audio guides anyways!  He has made a number of audio guides for the major European cities and sights, which you are able to download onto an MP3 for free.  We found that our time at the museums was truly enhanced by having these guides, as we aren’t really art aficionados.  But he takes you through the major pieces in the museums and gives you background information about the time period and details of the artists life that really enhances your time there.

Other than art, we enjoyed many great Italian meals and lots of wonderful wine.  We started things off by Alex picking us up at the train station when we arrived, and the three of us ordered pizza from a tiny corner restaurant with an amazing pizza oven.  We took our pizza (and local Italian wine!) to one of the many Piazza’s in Florence and enjoyed our dinner with many many locals.  We arrived on Italian Independence day, so the square was alive with locals and a band was playing live music.  We then capped it off with some Italian gelato and made our way over to Al’s apartment.

We had two days in the town of Florence which we filled with art galleries, Rick Steve’s walking tours and heading up to the little town of Fiesole to see Al’s University.  You head up the hill, overlooking Florence, and the views alone are worth the bus ride!  It was great to have Al showing us all these local secrets, cause otherwise we would have had no idea how beautiful the area surrounding Florence is. We are not really art or museum people, but the art galleries in Florence were great.  A big part of the draw in Florence is the museums and they lived up to the hype.   One of our highlights from our time in Florence, and all thanks to Al, was being introduced to the weird and wonderful world of Italian coffee!  Italy is known for being a country of big coffee consumers, and we figured this all out!  Each little corner shop has an espresso machine, one worth at least a few hundred dollars.  They all drink top notch coffee--be it espresso, americano or cappuccino.  The best part is, a coffee is not a $7 affair as it is in North America, but rather a reasonably priced addition to a morning breakfast.  Steve fell in love with a morning cappuccino, so we'll have to see how the Greeks do coffee!

The famous bridge in Florence, the Ponte de Vecchio.  This bridge is famous for being very very old, and also for still having working shops built right into the bridge.  Very picturesque!

The view of Florence from up on the hillside, where Alex's university is located.  This was our view as we ate lunch on their patio.

Steve and Ang posing on the courtyard of one of the buildings of Alex's university.  The university has bought large properties and villas around the Florence/Fiesole area as they have needed to expand, and Alex's building is located in such a villa.  It has a very nice garden, complete with it's own orange trees (although, these oranges are VERY sour!!)

Candid shot of Ang in the town square of the town of Fiesole.  

Panoramic shot of the Florence skyline from the town of Fiesole--breathtaking!

Steve posing with Michelangelo's David--a truly stunning statue that is huge!  The Accademia gallery was well worth the visit to see this.

Pic of Alex in the Florence morning market.  Please note, Al refused to pose for any other pics, so we had to catch this one candid!!  We really enjoyed visiting the markets, sampling all the fresh produce and local treats.

Our final day in Florence, we took advantage of the proximity to a small town with lots of character, Siena.  We took the bus to Siena and enjoyed exploring churches, the large central town square and walking along the old town wall.  One neat thing we found in Siena was a wine collection called “Enoteca Italiana”.  All of the Italian wine makers have gotten together to make these collections, and this particular establishment contained all 1600 types of wine grown in Italy.  They let you go down into the cellar, and all the wines are divided into the area where they are produced.  Upstairs was a nice tasting room, and here we decided a trip to Sicily is in order next time—their wine is just delicious!

Ang and Steve atop the stone wall which was once the fortified wall of the city of Siena.  You can see the Basillica in the background.

View of the skyline from atop the stone wall.  Steve is enjoying the view!

Another skyline pic.  Seriously--this place was breathtaking!  Here you can see an old fortified building/castle, just beyond the houses of Siena.  Also note the hills of Tuscany in the background.

Ang posing with one of the Enoteca Italiana wine displays.

The storage area of Enoteca was quite impressive.  Like we said, they have over 1600 wines from Italy in this area, so the cellar just goes and goes.  

A final piece of Florence info and an important update for the Logan family—we got to spend some time with ultrasound photos, as Al and EJ just announced they are expecting a baby boy!  This makes the third great-grandchild for Nanny in 2012, with Tim and Gen expecting their second girl anytime now, and Jeffrey and Shevaun awaiting their second in July.  We were happy to share this news with Al in Florence, and look forward to meeting all the new arrivals once we are home!

Rome, Italy; April 29 to May 2

Now onto our last Italian blog (and we are definitely writing this with tears in our eyes (or maybe with tears in our stomachs...)—this country is wonderful! The food is delicious!)  So as we hinted to above, we arrived into the capital of Italy on a huge national holiday.  Yes, Labour Day isn’t that big of a deal in Canada, but apparently in Europe, it’s a big deal.  This would be like arriving into Ottawa on June 29^th and being confused about why you couldn’t find cheap accommodation!!  Oh well—live and learn!  We ended up going to about 10 hotels before we found one with room, and we had our first travelling sucker moment—we paid WAY TOO MUCH for our room, but what other option did we have??  Our first night, we set out onto the town of Rome and wandered around looking at the major sites.  We stopped by the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain, finding that all the people who had booked into these hotel rooms were at these very sites enjoying them!

Our first full day in Rome, we had hoped to see the Vatican.  We were planning one and go do the Coliseum first, but just as we were about to leave, a tour guide asked us to join a tour of the Vatican.  Normally we aren’t too interested in this (especially since we had Rick Steve’s to guide us through!) but we listened to her for a few minutes, when she informed us that everything was closed tomorrow due to the holiday. The lineup waits were three to four hours long to enter the museums.  Yup—we now had to try and cram all of Rome’s sites into one day, instead of the two we had thought we had!  So enter our second tourist sucker moment—we had no choice but to join the tour, to get line bypass, in order to try and finish all the sites we had hoped to see.  But, it was definitely a great morning, getting to see the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel with our guided tour, as well as quick entrance into the St. Peters Basilica.  We really enjoyed our time here, and only wish we could have spent longer to more fully appreciate everything we were seeing. We were satisfied in the end that we took the tour, but the line by pass in front of thousands of people was worth the extra money. There is no way we would otherwise would have been able to get to the different sites.

Our afternoon was full of hustle and bustle too, as we then quickly jumped on the metro and made our way to the Coliseum.  We arrived around 530pm, with just enough time to get in and enjoy it at approaching sunset. We really enjoyed this experience, and are glad we could fit it all in.  We didn’t have enough time to get into the Forum or the Pantheon, but this just gives us lots more reasons to return to Rome! We visited the major sites, but just as impressive is walking on the streets.  It’s a city with beautiful buildings, the site of ruins crammed on top of each other and in between new buildings, makes Rome a great place to visit even without the tiresome experience of crowds at the major sites.

Our final day in Rome was spent enjoying the streets of Rome, as all the sites were closed as it was Labour Day in Europe.  We made a point of getting up early, to get to the major sites before the crowds arrived.  We got some great photos of the Trevi fountain, and found it much more enjoyable without a thousand of our closest friends!  This city really is amazing—every corner you turn, there is another beautiful Piazza with a fountain or some piece of art, a beautiful building, or some other Roman ruins.  We made a point of stopping in all churches we walked past as we read some of the best sites are little known spots such as churches not marked on the major tourists tracks—some of these buildings are just stunning!  There are obviously the big churches that the guide books mention, but literally ever few blocks has a church with some major works of art—Caravaggio’s and sculptures by Michelangelo, that you can enjoy without all the crowds of the art galleries.  Our evening was filled with another hour of Rick Steves, this time a walking tour through one of the original neighbourhoods of Rome known as the Trastevere.  We really enjoyed hearing the stories of how this city began, and ended off our evening at a quaint little Italian restaurant.  This place was run by a family, all the cooking done by the wife and the serving done by her husband and her son.  They only had about 10 items on the menu, and made nightly changes depending what was available at the market.  We had an amazing meal and were able to try an Italian delicacy made with a recipe dating back to Julius Ceasars time.  It was a delicious pork dish, very rich in flavor, and its evident why this recipe has survived thousands of years!

A view of the top of the front facing of St Peter's Basilica. J.C  flanked by the apostles (Judas is replaced by John the Baptist).  The ring around the square on top of the columns (see columns in photo below) also have statues on top of them.

Our tour guide walked into the photo as it was taken. The people in the shot in the distance is  line up to get into the  church. The lineup to get into the Vatican museum is equally as long. 

This shot is from the balcony inside the Vatican from an area within the museum that was only opened to the public in 2008. It was interesting to see the large park in back of the Vatican City within the giant urban city of Rome. 

Out tour guide pointed out that this piece of art was a gift to  JP II when he was the Pope.  It represents the fact that he was the most traveled Pope in all of history. 

The crowds of people within the Sistine Chapel. It was a real shame they let people cram into this area.  It was chaos with people jockeying to look at the ceiling and elbow through to get to their tour group.  The paintings were impressive on the ceiling though!

The the far right bronze door of St. Paul's Basilica that is only open  for one year at a time, every 25 years. Don't worry, there are two other large doors to enter into St. Pauls. This one did have impressive art work on it. 

The Colosseo! It's one of the many sites that is much more impressive than the pictures do justice.   .  

The view outside of the Colosseum in the direction of the forum.  

Take me out to the ball game?

A picture of the Coliseum facing the opposite direction of the  picture two shots above. We really enjoyed the city lit up at nighttime while enjoying vino and pesto.  Its amazing to think that we all consider the Colosseum to be a major piece of history, yet the Romans just drive by everyday!

No we did not edit out the ten thousand tourists that are normally standing around this fountain. We  went to the fountain early in the morning to get a snap shot without the crowds.  The Trevi Fountain is one of the more under rated sites in Rome. 

We are trying to show in this shot how these great sites such as the fountain,
Pantheon and  many others are  packed into neighborhoods. One can see the shops and apartment buildings that surround the monuments. It's fun to try and find the spots in the confusing city. We would wander with the map trying to get to the next site and then all of a sudden you turn a corner and there it is. 

We are writing you this on our flight to Greece, where we will spend the next week in the sun (cross your fingers we get some nice weather—finally!!)  And our travel companion returns—Susannah is back!  We think the lure of another cameo on the blog was an opportunity for she just could not pass up. We are excited to have her and can’t wait to see what trouble we can find in Greece!