Amalfi Coast Pictures

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Rome Pictures – Part II

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Rome Pictures – Part 1

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Tuscany Pictures – Part II

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Tuscany Pictures!

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Pictures, Summary, Etc

Keep an eye out for pictures. I was able to transfer them on my home PC!!!  Also, we are going to have a quick summary of what we liked, where we would go back, etc.. However, my ATT DSL modem decided to crash so I need to wait for them to give me a new one.  Thanks to everyone for the kind wishes and we are happy to be back in town.

Travel back to the states!

We had a long day of traveling back to Sac town.  Our apt host told us that we had to catch a 5:45am taxi to reach the airport in time for our 8:45am flight to Munich, Germany.  Luckily, after our last taxi rip off experience, Luciano was there at 5:40am sharp to make sure that we paid the correct fare for the taxi driver.  The taxi driver showed up on time and we loaded up the little Kia SUV and proceeded to the airport.  Both, Kelley and I were dead tired from a few hours of sleep the night before.  I believe that our taxi driver used to be a race car driver as he was driving around 200km/hour and made the 1 hour trip to the airport in about 20 minutes.   At least we made it there safe but had some close calls with him almost rear ending some cars.  We checked in for our flight and were at the gate by 6:30am.   While waiting, I decided to go check out some things and while I was gone an overweight lady wanted to sit next to Kelley and she told her that it was for me and the lady gave her a disgusted look and went and sat down in the thousands of other seats available.   As luck would have it, we boarded the plane and sure enough she had the window seat next to us.  Being the good husband I am, I decided to take the middle seat (well it was really only half of  a seat after she took up half), and as everyone know I am no slim chicken so we will just say it was crammed.  Luckily, Kelley and I both slept the 1.5 hour flight.

We arrived in Munich and had to go through passport control (which is a simple version of customs) and headed to board our 11:40am flight from Munich to  Washington, DC. After going through a joke of a security at United to board the plane we took our seats and got comfortable, along with taking some sleeping pills.   I will have to say that Luftansa versus United is night and day.  Business class on United was like economy on Lufthansa!!  As we were taxing the Pilot came on and said we were delayed about 40 minutes due to weather which added to the pain of being on this outdated 777.  The sleeping pills kicked in and we were on our way for our 8.5hour flight.

We arrived in Washington, DC around 2:00pm and had to go through customs.  Customs had a very long line and I was uncertain how were were going to get our 11 bottles of wine through customs.  However, it was a smooth process and we made it through without any questions.  We gathered our luggage and I did not see any stains so we were certain that our wine had not broke.  We rechecked our bags and tried to find our gate.  We had a 4 hour layover so our flight was not on the board yet so we decided to go find some seats and wait.  After waiting for a while we decided to go grab Wendy’s for dinner. Was nice to have fast food as we don’t usually eat it.  After eating we were close to boarding so we headed back to the gate.

We boarded our 7:40pm flight to Sacramento and took our seats. Luckily, there was a skinny lady next to the window as Kelley had the middle seat this time.  Once again, we were on an out dated United plane (I think all their planes are outdated!!) and we had determined not to sleep on this flight as we wanted to be able to get back on west coast time.  We watched a few movies on the over head monitors and on the iPhone so the 5.5 hour flight went buy fast. Actually, our flight made it into SMF about 30 minutes early which was nice.  We gathered our luggage and waited for the mother-in-law to pick us up.  After getting picked up at the airport we headed to go pick up Tucker at her house. Tucker was very excited to see us and Kelley’s sister got into town a few hours before us so we chatted for a while before heading back up to the house.  At this point we had been traveling for 27 hours and were exhausted by the time we got home to be reminded of how much I had “f’ed” up our floors.  After giving some needed attention to our cats and checking out the house we un-packed and took some more sleeping pills.  Was nice to sleep in our own bed.

Good night, Tyson & Kelley

Last Day in Rome!

Well, our last day in Rome we decided that we had to sleep in.  We were able to sleep in till around 9:30AM and then proceeded to have breakfast at Luciano’s house that morning.  After breakfast we had decided that our last day in Rome we needed to do some more tourist traps so we decided to head to the Colosseum.  After debating on whether or not we were going to walk or take the bus we finally decided to give our legs  a rest and catch the bus.  We ended up making it to the Colosseum and the line appeared to be very long so based on Rick Steves we headed to  Palentine Hill to buy the tickets to get us into Palentine, Forums, and Colosseum.  We waited in line and it started to get hot outside so Kelley went into the ticket office and luckily found out that we needed to have cash to buy our ticket.  The lady informed us of where the ATM was and we started walking that way.  Unfortunately, this was the day that we could not find an ATM and walked a mile and finally found one. I think we missed the obvious one.  After taking out some cash we walked about to Palentine Hill and waited in line for 30 minutes to get in.

We decided against the Audio tour of Paletine Hill and started to walk.  What we soon realized was that we had no map of the area and did not know where all the famous artifacts were.  Even Kelley forgot our book that contained the map.  No big deal as we had seen many ruins.  Palentine Hill was really big and we saw some cool ruins, however, there was a lot to see and I think we had checked out of looking at ancient  buildings. We walked what seemed forever and then headed over to the Roman Forums to check out some more old ruins.  We walked around some more and I was lucky I had worn tennis shoes instead of flip flops because I do not think my feet could handle it.  After cruising through the forums and missing the major attractions (Julius Caesar’s tomb) we exited toward the Colosseum.

We bypassed all the lines of the Colosseum and decided to buy the audio guys which included a map.  However, Kelley and I could not get on the same page regarding the map and I think we walked the wrong way, but she insisted we walked the right way.  Probably didn’t matter as there was only so many ways you could walk.  We tried to listen to the audio guide, but I think we did not want to be in the hot sun for 4 hours so we bypassed a lot of the fluff and walked around to take many pictures.  After our little adventure we decided we had had it and returned the wasted audio guide. I did get a good idea for an iPhone app for BunchANerds to develop now. ..  We exited the Colosseum and pondered if we wanted to walk back to our hotel but decided to bus it again.  The bus took forever to come and when we got to our stop I could have sworn it was the next one so told Kelley not to get off.  As the doors closed I realized the mistake I had made and we ended up getting off at the next stop and had yet a longer walk back to the hotel.  There goes the theory that we were going to have a easy walking day.

After relaxing at the apartment we decided to go check out some dinner places and see how the sunset was going to be at the Vatican.  After walking around some more we had decided on a place at Piazzo Navona and headed to the Vatican.  As we arrived at the Vatican we noticed no clouds in the sky so the pictures were not going to be good so we headed back to the apt to get ready for dinner.  At the apt, we opened up our last bottle of wine and Kelley got ready for dinner.  After drinking our wine, we headed to the Piazza Navona for dinner.

The restaurant was fairly packed as the sun was setting, but luckly the mobster host was able to sit us in the front so we could people watch.  We ended up having what was one of the better dinners in Rome and some good people watching time.  We also, happened to finish another bottle of wine as this was our last meal in Italy.  After dinner we ordered the world famous chocolate dessert that this restaurant proclaims.  I thought it was really good, but Kelley still likes her gelato.  I am not sure it justifies 10.00Euros($15.00) but it was a good way to end out trip.  After dinner we decided to check out some paintings as Piazza Navona is know as the artist district.  After viewing some painting, or what I call paint by numbers we had noticed that quite a few of them were like coloring books and all looked the same.  I convinced Kelley it was not worth the money and that we could turn some of our pictures into Oil paintings that looked better.  After, the Piazza we headed to get some nighttime pictures of St Peters church.  As we were walking we took some good pictures of the Dome with a sliver of the moon. I only wished I bought our tri-pod as it is really needed for night time pictures.  We decided we were not in a hurry that night as we were going to stay up late as we had a long day of traveling the next day.  After many pictures and with the battery running out on the camera, we headed back to finish packing for our return home.

Good Night,

Tyson & Kelley

Looking back on blogs!

Finally have access to a computer and just noticed all the spelling errors on our posts!!  Sorry about that but typing on our iPhones sucks.. Trying to update photos now.

Day at the Vatican

So for some god awful reason we told Luciano we would have breakfast at 8am. Well it’s a little tough to do that when it doesn’t get dark until very late in the evening and you are staying out later to see as much as possible. But we got up, bright eye and cheery and headed to his place around the corner. Now I don’t think Tyson in our last blog explained Luciano’s personality very well. When we arrived to his place yesterday he stuck his head out his window, which homes in Rome are more like apartment building in a way, and yelled “Kelley!” So this morning, seriously right when we turned the corner there pops out Luciano’s head looking for us and waving us up. He is adorable what else could I say and he LOVES talking and being your tour guide. So we head up say hello to his three cats in his home and go into the breakfast room. Now yesterday he told us we should order tickets on-line for the Vatican which we did but never got a confirmation back. Well when we sit down Luciano hands us our confirmation. We chatted for awhile and used his Internet.

We headed back to the apartment to get ready as we were going to go see the Pope at 10:30. We were up so early and was going to check out the sites to see around Vatican City and then head to the Colosseum. Well that didn’t exactly go as planned instead we spent most of the day there which was fine cause we had no plans for Friday.

First we waited around for about 20 minutes to see the Pope. As he was driving around in his Pope mobile Tyson was getting yelled at by some Italian man about blocking his view. Tyson told him he should have gotten here earlier but I don’t think he understood. Well we saw the pope drive by and then drive up to his seat and then decided to leave and go to the museum. The museum was interesting but we walked around a ton. Then we went to the Sistine chapel. There are a ton of tour groups holding up there umbrella or scarfs, which made it difficult to enjoy. They were probably the most annoying to deal with trying to get around them and stopping in the middle of a walkway. We made it out of there alive and headed to the St. Peters Basilica. We missed the secret door out of the chapel so had to wait in line but it went pretty fast and it wasn’t to hot out. Viewed the tombs of popes included the last one, John Paul ii. Tyson even tried to sneak a picture or two but they were not turning out. Then we headed to the inside of the church. Very Impressive!

We decided we had had enough and headed home to make our dinner. Tyson made the dinner which was very good. After dinner we thought we would walk to get our favorite gelato, which was all the way to the Trevi fountain. By the time we got there they said they had run out so we walked back and was going to try and find another one. Tyson was being picky with his gelato and finally we decided on going to the one Luciano recommend which was pretty good. A definite top 5 I would say.

We headed back to the apartment and decided to repack since Tyson picked up a small suitcase from a street vendor. He tried to bargain with the guy but didn’t get it as low as he wanted but did buy it cheaper. Now off to bed since we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. We have to wake up at 5am to catch our train to Naples for our tour of Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast. Long day tomorrow.

Ciao, Kelley & Tyson