Italy: Part 2

I literally was in heaven this entire week.

On Wednesday (Feb 2), we had a very relaxing day. It was nice to have a day where we didn’t have to run from city to city. We did end up driving through the country and viewing the beautiful countryside. Even though the grapes weren’t in season, it was still gorgeous. We stopped at some famous guys castle (he was the person who first mapped out New York Harbor). We had decided we didn’t want a tour of it, when a tour guide came outside and said, “let’s go.” I guess we didn’t have a choice. The funny thing was, was that for the tour, we only walked by the castle part. The majority of the tour was showing us how they made their wine. So much for seeing the castle. 

Florence was a sweet city. We got to taste some amazing pastry… pizza in the states doesn’t even compare. We went to the Duomo (pretty much a church/cathedral). That was cool, not quite as impressive as the cathedral in Milan though. The best part of the day was just walking around town down their narrow streets. Italy is definitely on my list of places to return too.

Roma (Rome): we were there from Saturday to Sunday. The apartment we stayed at was literally 100 yards from the Vatican. Pretty sweet. We paid for a bus tour so we didn’t have to walk everywhere. On Saturday, we just drove past most of the sites, planning to actually stop and see them on Sunday after church. The ward we went to was an Italian ward, so in Young Women’s, I had no clue what she was saying. Luckily in Sunday school and sacrament meeting, we had translators. So we didn’t completely die. After church, we went to the coliseum and the pantheon. I didn’t know that there are tons of ruins in Rome. That was way cool to see. Rome was a really cool city.

Monday we woke up at 4 and started driving back to Milan to catch our flight later that afternoon. On the way, we stopped at Pisa and saw the leaning tower of Pisa. What I want to know is how it is still standing. We then finished the drive to Milan. Since Internet has been very rare, we didn’t know exactly when our flight was. We were panicked to get to the airport asap. It ended up that our flight wasn’t until 4:20, but it got delayed until 5:20. So we sat at the airport for a while. After getting to London, we went straight to our hotel and conked out. Since we had to get up early to make our flight to Entebbe the next morning.

Italy has been worth every minute of our time there. As I said before, I hope to return there someday. What a week!