Travel Thursday!

In December of 2009 my family and I were going to spend our first non-traditional Christmas in Italy where my sister, Amanda, had been studying abroad for the previous 4 months.  Plans changed when my darling Mommy was diagnosed with breast cancer in October of that year.  Her treatment would keep she and my Dad from coming but, awesome parents that they are, they still urged me to go and stay in the apartment that they had rented for the family.  It was a scary time for my family but my sister and I decided that the chance to travel in Europe just the two of us was too good an opportunity to pass up- so we stayed up until a few days before Christmas and then flew to California to be with my parents for the actual holiday.

This was my first time traveling abroad by myself, which was an adventure in itself.

I landed in Rome and had to make it to the hostel where I would meet Amanda.  That was were the adventure started.  I got on the train and eventually found myself gazing out at the beautiful Italian country side - wait... country side?!  My hostel was in downtown Rome!  Okay no big, wrong train.  What's a lone 24 year-old American tourist to do?  Find other lost American tourists, of course.  I started eavesdropping on a nice thirtysomething, Midwestern couple who were in the same boat and latched right on to 'em.  The husband had been stationed in Rome several years before so he talked us into a couple of train transfers that turned out not to be the right ones and felt so bad that he paid for my cab right up to the hostel's doorstep.  It was only around 10 am but I was jet lagged out of my mind so I snoozed in the lobby (the rooms weren't available for check-in until 3pm) until a strange man who was also staying in the hostel asked me to lunch.  Now I'm a very safety conscious traveler, so naturally I wasted no time in saying... "yeah, sure".  And thus, I enjoyed my first Italian pizza.  Delicious- the pizza in Italy is so unlike the pizza in the US - really fresh and simple, so good!
Amanda eventually met me at the hostel and we spent the next day exploring Rome.  It's very Eurocentric of me, but there is nothing that interests me more than European history.  It was like a dream come true getting to visit the places I'd spent so long learning about.

The wonders of Roma...

 The Trevi Fountain

 Saint Peter's Square

 Pantheon

The Coliseum

And... GELATO!

Our next stop was Siena, Italy- where Amanda had been studying.  It's a really beautiful little Italian town.  We're talking narrow, cobbled streets and everything. 



The next city we went to was beautiful Florence.  Amanda and I spent the day looking at the famous duomo in Florence and priceless works of art at the Uffizi Gallery.

Seriously, where else can you find sidewalk chalk art like this?

Venice was the last city we visited in Italy.  It was a stunning city but it snowed the first night we were there and the streets were totaly flooded the next day - they set up catwalks all throughout the city that all the tourists walked on, the locals just wore thigh high wader boots and walked through the water.  Still an experience!

The absolute best thing about Italy is how very Italy it is.  There's really no other way to describe it.  Everything that you read or see about Italy is true - it has such a strong sense of self and it's unlike any other place.