Rome, Italy

We arrived at Rome Christmas afternoon and David took me straight to the Trevi Fountain that has several statues by Michelangelo - we actually stayed right by it in a place called Barberini.  After four days there, it really felt like home and I was starting to know my way around.  Still, didn't speak to anyone but David so that was limited, but Rome is amazing!  It's a definite tourist place, shops all over with little tourist statues, shirts, food, etc.  We stayed right next to David's favorite tie place (we definitely bought more for his tie collection), next to a really good gelato place, and even next to our dinner out for Christmas!

So we had our first Italian pasta dinner on Christmas at a wonderful restaurant.  But, we have to tell you that food in Italy is expensive!!  Not only do you pay for the meal, but the bread/appetizers are like 6 Euro, the water 3 Euro, sitting at a table 5 Euro.... we still are amazed and missed the free-ness of America for that part.

Next up was Sunday (Dec 26th) and we took this as a more relaxing day.  My luggage came the night before, and David's Sunday night - so I wore a dress, David his jeans.  He got to see several families and friends in the small ward.  I had a translator there to help too!  We decided to visit the temple site location for the soon to be Rome Italy Temple.  It's a huge, very nice and green lot that I can just imagine a great temple being there.  It's not right in the old city/tourist part, but still in a nice area.

 Above are the gates onto the lot and it shows our LDS church as the property owners and that we started building on the lot this fall 2010.

 Monday was the "pack in as much as you can from the top to the bottom of the old Rome sites!!!"  David had it all planned out and to be honest, I was pretty nervous.  It had and was still cold, but I had my jacket now and hand warmers so it was only my feet that froze.  We started at the Trevi Fountain, then up to the Spanish Steps, down to the twin churches, the 3 fountains, the Parthenon, then to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Rome Forum and the Colosseum.  We walked to all and then took the metro to St. Paul's Church.

The Trevi Fountain - we lived about a 5 min walk from here

The Spanish Steps - there were tons and tons from the bottom to top of city - this was the most north part of our Monday walk around Rome...

 Here we are in Piazza del Poplolo - where the twin churches are in the picture below.  This is actually where the Rome riots were the weekend before we were in Rome...  The flowers above have a story... they were given to me by a peddler who just wanted $$ for us to by them for me - he gave us three and we kept telling him no.  Finally he said they were free but after he took our picture and we didn't give him Euro's still, he took them back!  haha, everyone is trying to get money here as it is a poorer area after the Euro's took over.

 Below are just a couple pictures of the 3 fountains area - Piazza Navona.  It's an outdoor plaza with these 3 big fountains throughout it and lots of vendors put their carts up all around.  This was in the movie Angels and Demons where the one guy almost drowned.

Here's the Parthenon from the outside - they're always maintaining their structures so there's always construction.  The inside is the cool part, if you know history this circular hall was created with a hole at the top and I believe one of the first especially w/out pillars to hold the inner part up!

 Tomb of the Unknown Solider WWII fixture below

 Here's a church artifact - below is David standing above the jail where the Apostles Peter and Paul were when they wrote some of their letters to the different groups of people - in our bibles!

Above is the entrance to the Roman Forum - this is the historic area that Rome has kept artifacts, parts of building structures, etc from "b.c."!  It was amazing to see the wide open area that used to have full buildings, and at least Rome still had some.  Wars destroyed a lot and they tried to re-build what they could.

 These are some of the many cobble stones laid many many years ago...

 If you look closely above you can see where we're headed to... the Colosseum!!  It was great, everyone said it wasn't as big when close up, but I still felt pretty small next to it.  This was their area of the time and they would fight animals, fill up with water, etc.

 And lastly was Paul's Cathedral.  The statues of the apostles were great, Peter held the keys, and each had an antidote relating to them.  And inside we didn't take too many but it's a large church with Paul's tomb, all the past Pope's pictures, and many many drawings.

 

 

 These places were amazing!  My favorite was seeing the Rome Forum with all the ruins and also the Colosseum since I've seen that in movies and pictures forever.  I also really liked the church that is David's favorite - they built it after Paul died and brought his tomb there along with many other church things that seem similar to our day...  We made it back to our hotel by 2ish and crashed until we went back out for dinner and gelato (Gelato every day!!)

Tuesday we bought tickets to the Vatican Museum and spent the day looking at art and the Vatican City.  I can't believe all the art they have in that museum and some of the most famous paintings like the School of Scholars by Rafael.

 This is a picture by Rafael that has to be kept in a very cold room...

 These are tombs found

 Above and below - they have full long rooms with tapestries above, and maps, below

Below is a full wall mural that Rafael did - The School of Scholars - amazing!

 And of course, the Sistine Chapel with full art throughout the room done by Michelangelo - this is Rome's temple, like LDS, except they let visitors in all day.  Kind of strange to me!  But it was fascinating, very hot with the crowds of people, and trying to keep looking up at the ceiling for the God touching Adam's hand, etc...

 And outside of the museum and chapel is the Vatican City....

 Awe.... cute couple

We also saw St. Angelo's castle (above) ... at this point the movie Angels and Demons sure does come to life (we watched that around New Year's Eve and it was fun knowing we were just there!!)  Gelato and dinner again along with the Trevi Fountain and shopping for souvenirs.

David's so cute! Here are some of our favorite sandwich and gelato shops!!...

Wednesday we left our luggage at our hotel (on purpose) and headed to Naples... Napoli for a few days. Its a bit more shady so we decided not to drag our huge suitcases all over the place, it was a good idea.  On to Napoli....

Pisa, Italy

Pisa was my favorite city, I think! (There's too many to choose from!)  Pisa is more of the quaint little town where as the other places we went were either totally touristy (Rome) or just too many people (Naples).  We also relaxed a bit more in Pisa since we had just traveled for like 26 hours the day before.  We did have Venice in our plans, but after the lost luggage thing - we decided to cut it out for next time (yes there will be a next, and a next...)

Our hotel was awesome!  It went down hill from here which eased me into the more dirty and weird hotels.  One blessing was just that they gave us slippers, I know that sounds silly, but mine were in Paris and I don't do very well w/out something on my feet in strange places.  And the breakfast also was the best with real pastries, eggs and meat, cereal, fruit, cheese and cookies for later.  Just that made it good.  The first day out (Dec 24th) we took a train to Cinque Terra - the 5 cities along the coast built on 5 different points.  It was so amazing to get out to one point and be able to see a few other cities way up or down the coast!  And the houses were all colorful and built on top of each other - it looked like each was competing to make sure they had ocean view, a place to park their boat, and easy access to the water.

Between the first and second city they have a very easy walk along the mountain wall called the Walk of Love. (below) We planned to go do that, but because of the rain there were possible slides so we just caught the train to the next city instead.  The next city we spent the most time just walking along the mountain for what we could, checking out the houses and just poking around at fun sites.  It really is a different world - I didn't see one car or really anyone out (it was Christmas Eve I guess) but they're all just small towns where everyone just seems to do their own thing, I'd think of a retirement community but a fun one that takes their small boats out and tourists come to swim in the water...

We made it back to Pisa before dinner and had David's famous kebab.  Let me tell you, I didn't know what a kebab was according to Italy.  The Pakastanians or others came to Italy and they roast a huge meat on a stick and when you order some they stick it in the fire while it cooks in like one minute and then they take this shaver to shave off the meat into a tortilla with crazy stuff (fries, salad, rice, cooked salad, etc) or just to eat with the other stuff on the side.  I liked it w/out the fries...  David was raving about this and I just assumed he was having a shiskebab or something very small.  Oh me.

That evening we took a bus - not sure how we survived the buses - they are known to be the best drivers, David says, and I agree, but a bit scary!  We took the bus to the leaning tower and then walked home through the city and over the little river.  It was just a cute little town.

Christmas we woke up, had delicious breakfast, and then headed out to the leaning tower to get a look at it in the day along with the Baptistry and Church next to it.  The leaning tower really wasn't as big as I've imagined or seen on TV, but it really does lean, and actually kind of bows out since they tried to correct it.  Did you know that the ground is actually frozen - that was their way to solve the sinking side! - so it will always be like that - I'm amazed they wanted to keep it rather than just build it up again!

That afternoon we took the 4 hour train back to Rome to have Christmas night there... still without our baggages.  We called Paris a few times and they could mostly just tell us that our bags were somewhere but since the airport had been closed they were more worried about getting the people stranded places.  Well, on to Rome... :)

Traveling to Italy!!!

Our honeymoon #3 was fantastic!!  Yep, we'll be on a honeymoon the rest of our lives :)  Not that we'll be traveling all the time with dental school coming up, but life will still be like a honeymoon.  Although this 24/7 trip is something I will miss as we get back into work and school.

We planned our trip out months ago, and since David had been there, he knew all the cities we should see and sites we should see....  We had our plans all set and hotels booked for the ten day trip.

First - Pisa from Dec 24 - Dec 25

Second - Rome from Dec 25 - Dec 29

Third - Naples from Dec 29 - Jan 1

Fourth - Ostia from Jan 1 - Jan 2

I'll blog about each one separate as it just seems like such a daunting task.

Italy was great, but getting to Italy was another story... We went from Utah to Texas to Paris and then to Italy.  The long flight was actually very nice with pillows, blankets, dinner and breakfast and as many movies/tv that you wanted to watch.  

We finally made it to Italy with about 20 hours of travel.  We waited for our baggage... waited... and no baggage!!  We decided to wait in the luggage service line and I just kept going around and around looking for our bags.  I noticed an airline lady with a list of names on her clipboard and there at the top was "Clark"!  So, hoping she spoke English (because I seriously couldn't understand anyone there) I asked if she knew about bags lost - she did - and ours was one of about 6 that got left behind in France and was headed our way on the next flight.  So, we filed our missing luggage claim and decided to wait the 2ish hours.  We waited, watched several baggage's come off, and nothing.  

The Paris flight never landed!!!  They weren't sure what happened to it and just kept telling us to wait.  We waited 7 hours until we almost missed our train headed to Pisa and finally just gave up!  Ends up that Paris had those crazy snow storms and shut down flights for the night.  

We were lucky to make it to Italy that night, even though we were sad we didn't have our bags.  We did have a few items in our backpacks so that was lucky :)

On to Pisa...

The Birth of our First Stone

So just had to share a crazy, scary moment.  David & I had a wonderful Saturday night date that he planned and surprised me with!  He even sent me out of the house to make dinner secretively and gave me some spending cash :)  Sweet!!  We had some delicious spaghetti, played mario, went ice skating, ice cream, and then crashed.  After falling asleep (or after I fell asleep) David had some stomach pains and threw up several times.  He kept going back to throw up again and I finally woke up and realized he must be sick??  He said that it seemed a lot different than a flu and that his stomach was hurting a lot.  So, I looked up urgent cares and called my mom to research too... the area that was hurting was the right side of his belly button and below - I thought appendix, and starting worrying.  Turns out only the ER is open at 12:30am, so after I got David ready and with a bucket just in case, we got to the Murray IHC ER.  I knew something was really wrong when David said I could take him there anyway - I guess he thought it was just an urgent care until he asked where it was and I said, the ER (figured I'd leave that out in case he wouldn't go) - but he was totally willing and in so much pain.  By the time we got there his face just looked so painful - he's a tough guy and doesn't really make noise or scream with pain, but I could just tell as he was hunched over and going back and forth around the waiting room that he wasn't doing okay.  We had to wait more than an hour which could have been okay except with continuous sharp pain in the stomach, it really wasn't good.  The thing that finally got us in was when David fell onto the floor and was trying to throw up in a trash can around all the other patients waiting.  They promptly called in the back and someone was out pretty quickly!  I should have had him do that an hour earlier!!  So, once in the back we got David an IV and got him hooked to some fluids.  David wasn't looking good at all, I felt so bad for him.  The pain was so bad that he was shaking uncontrollably and just kept saying to put him out of his misery.  Nothing was comfortable and he was going to do anything to stop the pain.   As soon as we got him in the room the nurse suggested that he undress and put on the gown after he left but David heard that and immediately threw his pants off and shirt and I had to help get the gown on while he was wiggling in the bed.  The Dr came in and they said it was either appendix or more likely, KIDNEY STONES!!!  But no matter what, morphine was needed immediately.  That helped immediately and David was pretty out of it.  His body was so exhausted from the pain that he slept most of the time after that (and said some very funny things too that I'll try to remember - I say crazy stuff all the time just when I'm tired, so finally I had something on him!)  I was worried until he finally calmed down a lot and we got him on IV, meds, and a breathing machine because he wasn't doing that too well.  I waited there another hour until we had a CT Scan that would see what was going on.  An hour after that again we did find out it was a kidney stone 3 mm in size, like 1/10 of an inch.  While that is small, I can guarantee it is VERY painful.  They say more painful than labor and delivery.  I totally believe it.  I was just glad it wasn't anything worse.  I didn't sleep all night and finally we were sent home with meds, a strainer, and directions to just wait and drink lots and lots.  I got David in bed and crashed right with him.  Three hours later I had to call all our church people to let them know we both wouldn't be teaching our various classes.  David got up and after the 13 hours of labor... he passed the kidney stone!  His family was on the way to give a blessing so that was perfect timing.  They said we needed to name it :)  hahaha, but David said he'd never name that painful thing!  But I guess we did have our first baby, and now I know I can't ever say that David doesn't know what labor feels like....


I'm just glad he's okay!  He was so strong and I'm glad that I was there to take care of him (and that I didn't pass out or anything! - see David? Maybe I will be able to handle when our future kids get hurt huh???)  That was sure a scary night for us both and we're so glad it's over.  We need another normal weekend.... 

We're back....!

So we just got back from Italy... I'll post about Christmas during the December area and soon to come I'll post our 450+ Italy photos... Okay, I'll definitely cut the # down a bit :) and maybe also give you some fun experiences.  It was a great vacation - honeymoon #3!!  We visited all that we could in the around 11 days that we were there and hopefully I can share a bit of what Italy is like and the memories we made!!


Merry Christmas & Happy 2011 - can you believe it's here?  Crazy me, I put a Christmas CD in this afternoon, I guess I just haven't gotten enough of that wonderful spirit yet!?!?  Lots happening in 2011 I'm sure.  For now just a bunch of snow and work that I get to look forward to here...


Ciao!!