Title of the Piece: Italy!

Painted at 12:21 p.m. on 2007-03-19

I love Italy.

We had a fantastic time. Links to pictures are at the bottom if you want to skip this and just look at pictures.

First, the mishaps:

1) 2 aborted landings into Rome. We were about 5 feet above the runway when “vvvrrroooommm!!” the plane took off. It was scary, but we (obviously) landed safely.
2) How not to get pick pocketed- find an ATM that will just eat your card for you. Oh yes, day 2 in Rome, that’s what happened to Boyfriend- no card returned, no money, no nothing. The guy at the B&B was very nice and let him use the phone to call and cancel his card. It’s a good thing that I had no plans on doing a lot of shopping b/c we were pretty much on my money the rest of the trip. Thankfully we had our credit card, too for dinner. That was handy.
3) Last room in Rome wasn’t there. They had Boyfriend’s name written down, but eh, why bother reserving a room for us? We were then walked back to the train stop to wait for “Angela” who was going to take us to a different property the B&B owned. After “Angela” didn’t within 30 minutes or so, we decided to find another place on our own. It had a sunk-in, super squeaky (insert porn music) bed, but it was clean and the owner was friendly.

Now! The good stuff:

Rome was great. The pace was more like home, but it was still awesome. We did lots of walking and sightseeing. We did the Pantheon, Colosseum, St. Peters, saw some Caravaggios in a church, saw the Monk Bone Church place. We ate lots of gelato, drank a ton of wine and enjoyed each other. I was pretty much in awe the whole time- I really, really love new places and I think Rome might be a good spot for me. There’s tons of archaeology going on, Boyfriend can do photography… I think I’ll see how he feels about making it our goal to move there in 2 years.

Florence was my favorite. The pace and look and feel are so different from Rome and Chicago. You can walk everywhere, which is great. We hiked to the top of the Duomo, saw David, went to the Uffizi, ate some gelato, drank some more wine, etc. David is spectacular. One of my favorite pieces from the Uffizi is no where to be found online, but seeing “The Birth of Venus” in person is/was amazing. The colors are beautiful. Boyfriend also knew of a church where there is a Pontormo. It was gorgeous. We spent some time looking at it, and he got some great shots of it.

We also hit up a few Irish pubs. My favorite was called “Friends”. Ok ok, check this out- it was an Irish bar, in Italy with Asian bartenders. It was an interesting mix and fun place.

All of our rooms were great. We stayed at an old mansion in Florence. Even though it didn’t feel haunted, I thought that it was/should be. Anything over 100 years old should be haunted, I think. Ha.

The food was delicious. Boyfriend had a ton of meat plates. We’d always stop mid-afternoon for some wine and a meat plate/cheese plate or something for me. America really needs to adopt the whole wine bar thing. It was so lovely to sit outside, sip wine and absorb new surroundings.

It’s hard for me to describe everything. I wrote up a newsletter for family and the theme was that it’s hard to describe everything. I can tell you all about what we saw and this and that, but my words can’t do it justice. We really did have a great time. I can’t wait to go back.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/stella635/album?.dir=bc71re2&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

Starts with a Brush then comes a stroke.

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