Italy, Switzerland, France and Spain.... Oh My!!!

Yes, it is true. I am finally posting about our trip to Europe that happened back in October (only 4 months ago).  I simply changed the date of my post so it could be included in our 2011 Blog book. 

Well, we started out our trip by flying from Phoenix to LA and then made the incredibly long flight from LA to Rome. At least I could cuddle and watch a million movies with my hubby the whole time. That made it much more bearable!

Just FYI, Justin is an incredible travel agent/tour guide. He had the whole trip planned out (after much research) and we landed in Europe with our itineraries all scheduled out. Now another disclaimer... you might think we are crazy with how much stuff we did in such a short amount of time but that's how we roll on so called "vacations." Just ask anyone who has travelled with us :) We like to make the best use of our time and see as much stuff as we can!

So moving on, we landed in Rome at about 2pm in the afternoon, picked up our awesome rental car, a little Panda, and checked into our hotel room.

The bus to Rome was leaving so we literally ran up into our room, threw down our suitcases and ran back downstairs to catch the bus. The bus dropped us off in downtown Rome and we had 6 hours to see all of Rome before the last bus left to go back to the hotel.  I'm not going to include all the pictures of what we saw and nor do I remember everything but we pretty much saw everything in that amount of time!

This was a beautiful little park that was located near the La Bocca della Verita or The Mouth of Truth. We opted to not wait in line for forever to put our hands inside the mouth but instead took a picture of it from the outside, 

Of course we saw the Colosseum and the Forum located next to it. The Forum are some ruins of the marketplace where politicians and business people interacted.

We saw a ton of Piazzas one of which was the Piazza of Campidoglio in which Michelangelo designed.

 We are pretty sure that what this guy was really doing was checking his email on his smart phone too.

We went inside the Pantheon and saw where Rafael was buried there.

We stopped by Piazza Navona where the Fountain of the 4 rivers is located.

By this time it was getting pretty dark but it sure did make for a pretty picture of Rome all lit up.

The Trevi Fountain was a must where we enjoyed some gelato, some people watching, and we simply marveled at how beautiful (and huge) this fountain was!

We also stopped by the Spanish Steps on our way back to the bus. 

When we got back to the hotel, we crashed. I think it had been well over a day since we had last slept and walking all over Rome definitely helped us to sleep soundly until our alarm went off the next morning waking us up for our drive down to Naples. 

It was a  beautiful 2 or 3 hour drive down to Naples where we went straight to Pompeii. We got there a little later than we would have liked but we still had time to see quite a bit.

It was pretty amazing to see just how well preserved everything was. The paintings on the walls, the tile floors, the writings on the walls, the statues and of course the plastered dead bodies. 

After about 2 hours there, it started pouring down rain. We were freezing and poor Justin didn't have a jacket on. We seem to have not so great of luck with the weather when we see ruins! For example, here we are just on the outside of the amphitheater in Pompeii,

thoroughly soaked in Turkey, 

 and then of course sportin' our awesome ponchos in Machu Picchu. 

See what I mean?

Back to Pompeii, we had seen the majority of the stuff there so we decided to head back to the car. We didn't realize that we were about a 3 mile walk from our car though! Once we got to the car, we were famished! We stopped by a McDonalds and had the best cheeseburger of our entire lives! That's just how hungry we were I guess. :)

Since it was still raining in Naples, we went back to the hotel and got cleaned up. We went nearby to a restaurant and had some amazing pizza and the best spaghetti that I had ever had. We aren't the type of travelers that spend our money on the "food experience" of foreign countries, we'd rather eat cheap and see things instead but wow, that was some good spaghetti. A lot of people have asked us if we loved the food but really we aren't the best ones to ask. I was in my first trimester of this pregnancy and was nauseous most of the time. I couldn't stomach the thought of anything besides bread and after a few days that didn't sound good anymore either. I'll save the food experience for another trip I suppose. 

Since it was dark by the time we were all cleaned up we opted not to explore downtonwn Naples. We had heard that it wasn't the safest place. So when we go back we really want to go see the Artifact Museum, Naples (the Spanish Quarter, etc) and Herculaneum, which we hear is even better and more impressive than Pompeii. 

The next morning we drive up the Almafi coast. SO beautiful. We would love to go back there again too someday. Because of our tight schedule we only made it to Sorrento but it was still super pretty.

On our way back to Rome (that same day) we stopped at Monte Cassino Abbey. It was a site of a major battle in WWII and was destroyed. The Allies thought that the Nazis were there (they weren't) and  bombed the heck out of it. After the war they felt bad and then spent a ton of money in rebuilding it after the war and boy did they do a great job. It was gorgeous.

White doves instead of pigeons just made it that much more beautiful!

Here you can see the Abbey in the distance. This was taken at The Polish Cemetary located nearby. Thousands of Polish soldiers died on the assult of Monte Cassino and there was a beautiful cemetary there remembering them.

On the way up the mountain to Monte Cassino.

After that, we drove back to Rome and saw the Vatican. We didnt have time to go in (the wait was ridiculous) so we are saving it for our next trip there. The outside was impressive in and of itself.

We also hiked down the street to see Castel San'Angelo- connected to the Vatican- we all remember this from Angels and Demons.

Thank goodness for no speed limits in Italy because after the Vatican, we booked it up to Pisa and barely made it with enough sunlight to snap a few photos of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I think the pictures actually turned out kinda pretty with the darkening sky!

We had fun doing all sorts of super cheesy, typical tourist shots. At least we weren't the only ones.

We walked around for a bit and then we drove even more and finally arrived that night into Venice. That's right...In one day we went from south of Naples all the way up to Venice and saw things along the way, impressed?? You should be :)

Venice was gorgeous. Just like you imagine it. So romantic.

In sum, we saw Saint Marks Basillica, rode around on the vaporettos (water taxi's), decided to save $50 plus bucks and NOT ride a gondola (we dont feel bad about it), and roamed around the quaint, cute streets of Venice (both on and off the water).

We stayed in Venice for 2 nights and then left for Verona. On the way to Verona we saw this beautiful castle off the beaten path. The Castle of Soave.

I know. Impressive, right?

It was a small little town with this gigantic, gorgeous castle plopped right in the middle of it. Oh and to top it off, they had beautiful grape vines like this all over the place. So storybook. 

InVerona, we saw an old colosseum/ampitheater, roamed the streets for a little bit, saw the beautiful view of the river from Castelvecchio, and also saw Juliet's balcony from the movie Letters to Juliet. Apparently this specific balcony was used as inspiration for the Romeo and Juliet story.

Even though we had a lot of our trip planned out, we also went to some places on the spur of the moment as we were driving along. Sirmione was one of those places.

This little town was so, so, so pretty. I loved it. One day we will go back here and stay in a quaint little hotel and enjoy the beauty that this place offers. Someday.

After Sirmione, our last stop for the day was Milano to stay the night. Even though it was dark, we made the trip out to see some of the sites of the city. We saw Il Duomo and this gothic style cathedral was MASSIVE! It was closed inside but the outside was impressive enough. 

We woke up the next morning and said Ciao to Italy and Guten Tag to Switzerland!

By the way, we totally could communicate in Italy by using our Spanish. We could understand them and vice versa. We thought we were pretty funny though how we spoke Spanish to them and then tried to throw an Italian accent in there at the end. They were probably offended but we thought it was fun :)

Justin's parents were flying in that morning and so we met up with them in Zurich. I'm pretty sure that Switzerland and Austria are the prettiest places that I have ever seen. Absolutely gorgeous!

Switzerland was just how you would imagine it. Green rolling hills with cattle grazing, a cute little house with the Swiss look to it, and the massive snow capped Alps in the back. Picturesque. 

Justin's dad really wanted to go to see some of his family history sites and I must admit that I was not to excited to, but I am SO glad that we did. We went northeast of Zurich to the small little towns of Wolfenhausen and Veccigan. Pictures do not do these places any justice!

Then we drove down to Lucerne and stayed the night. The next morning we saw some of the lovely sights of this beautiful city.

Later that day we drove to Bern to see the temple and then from there we drove along the French Metterranean coast to Cannes, France for Justin and Dad's agriculture conference.

Cannes was so pretty and we stayed in the Carlton Hotel, home of the famous film festival it was located right on the Mediterranean coast.

After 2 days there with the conference we headed on over to Spain. But before we got there we stopped for the night at Carcassonne. If you ever go to France, promise me that you will come here. You won't regret it. 

This is a super old (like everything in Europe) castle and they have rebuilt a city within it's walls. They did a fabulous job reconstructing things to give it a medieval type feel. So cool and so romantic.

I know I've used this adjective a billion times but it's beautiful, right?!

After a night and half a day in Carcassonne, we left to go see some castles known as the Cathar Castles, which were kinda sorta on our way to Spain. 

It was quite a hike to get up there, but it was totally worth it! 

You are SO high up and the views are breathtaking!

After that we drove for a  long ways and arrived in Barcelona, Spain. We saw the extremely weird cathdral that they are building called Sagrada Familia and also walked around exploring another cathedral and some other sights there. 

And after church the next day we left for Cuenca. 

Cuenca was the perfect way to end our trip. This is an ancient city built on a hill with some of the houses hanging over the cliffs. They were called Casas Colgadas or The Hanging Houses.

I had the hardest time choosing between pictures of this place. They are all so beautiful!

In this next picture you can see our hotel that we stayed in on the left...

It was an old monastery turned hotel and it was so cool!

So if you ever go to Spain do me a favor and go here. Again, you will not regret it :)

We stayed one night there and then headed to Madrid to stay the night to catch our flight home the next day. Two weeks was a long time to be away from our kids but I don't think we wasted any of that time! It was such an amazing trip and we are excited to go back again someday. We still look back on our pictures and talk about how much it was. It was like a honeymoon all over again! Thanks to family who so willingly watched our kids and to BHN for allowing me to join my hubby in Europe!!