Italy: Part 1

So, our first 2 and 1/2 days here have been fantastic. We arrived at around 3:30 Monday afternoon in Milan. We went to an amazing cathedral. No joke. It was at least 100 ft high, or higher. It is amazing how people can build something so architecturally beautiful so long ago. Can I say it is very different than Utah. People here always look at us funny. I don't think they are used to so many kids. If only they knew...

After spending the night at a lovely bed and breakfast in Verona, we drove to Venice. What a beautiful city!! We had so much fun walking down their beautiful streets (I guess I should say rivers, because they hardly have any streets). We where able to ride a gondola (those fantasy looking long boats). Our driver was sweet! My mom told him to start singing for us... surprisingly he did!  We got so see some parts of the city we wouldn't have been able to other wise. It is amazing that some of their buildings can have their "front porch" on the river. I wonder how they are still standing after all these years. Once the ride was over, we walked to San Marcos square. It was kinda a bummer because there was scaffolding on parts of it, so we didn't get the full effect. We sure had fun with the pigeons though. We would have crumbs of break on our hand so they would fly up onto our arms. We kept feeding them until a police man told us to stop. It didn't matter, because the pigeons would fly on our arms anyway. Hopefully, none of us get rabies.  In all, it was such a fun day!! The weather was perfect. Not too hot, but not too cold. We all had taken off our jackets because it was so nice. That caused a lot of people to look at us funny. One cute old lady came up to us and told us that "he (Eric) is going to get sick because of the cold." Eric was wearing shorts. Not a surprise for him. I hope I can someday come back here!

After Venice, we drove to a little town outside of Florence where we are staying in a little villa. It is so cute! Definitely Italian. I do admit, that the beds are like boards!! So I didn't get the best night's sleep. Still, none of us woke up this morning until 10. We pretty much just lounged around the rest of the morning. It was nice to not be driving or running anywhere. After lunch, we drove to some small towns around where we are staying. We went to Giovanni Da Verrazano's castle. We had decided we didn't want a tour, but one of the workers had other plans. He walked out and said, "here we go." The tour included a walk by the castle (no joke), and an entire run threw of how they make wine there.  Pretty funny. They also had a wine tasting part at the end, but we told them we don't drink wine. They thought we where crazy! He said that we weren't experiencing their culture. I think we got a pretty good feel of their culture though. It made sense to him though when we told him we where from Utah. He said, "oh, Mormons." Yep, it's nice to know that in other countries, people know about us!

Italy has been wonderful, if you can't tell. And I'm sure it will get better. :)