Rome

Today, we finally got to Rome! We had planned on renting Vespas while we were there, but when we got to the rental place, and the proprietor asked if I had ever driven one, and I (honestly) said yes, they said they wouldn’t rent to us! Rude! But understandable, European drivers are legit nuts. So instead, he rented us bikes instead. Yes, bikes.

Yes, most of the time, we had to walk the bikes, because there were too many tourists to navigate. And it was a million degrees outside, and we had to wear pants to get into the Vatican. Basically, we spent the day just sweating. But! Let’s focus on the fun. We got to the Trevi Fountain.

As it turns out, the Trevi fountain is closed right now, for repairs. So…this is all we got to see. Sad, but that’s all right. Next on the list: the Pantheon.

We unfortunately didn’t have the time budgeted to go inside, but that’s ok. The outside was pretty cool. And our adventures continued on to the Vatican, and St Peter’s Basilica.

We got to go inside, and boy, is that an extravagant and very beautiful. And the cool thing is we got to see the Swiss Guard! They are SUPER serious, despite their ridiculous outfits.

Next, we went to the Bocca della Verita, something I’ve been wanting to see for years! The line was huge, but totally worth it.

And lastly on our Rome list, the Coliseum. My pictures of it weren’t very impressive, so I won’t bother posting it here, but it was huge and pretty. We didn’t have time to go in, because at this point, we had to bust it on back to the ship, it was going to leave the dock at 6:30, and it was 4:30. By the time we got to the train station, it was 5:00, and the next train was leaving at 5:05. It was a 40 minute ride, so we knew we had plenty of time. Unfortunately, the train left like, 15 minutes late. And then, for some reason, (and by the way, if there’s any advice I can give you, it’s DO NOT trust the Italian train system. They are the worst) our train arrived super late. So we arrive at the train station at 6:25, and we still have to get a taxi to the ship. The shuttle we had taken was no longer running, it stopped running at 6:00.

The train stops, and we SRINT off the ship. I grabbed the first taxi driver I see, telling him we need to hustle. He then waits for another couple to come. DUDE, WE HAVE NO TIME TO WASTE LET’S GO. Finally, everyone is in, and he leaves. At this point, my anxiety had been at like, level 1000065465453640 for the last hour, thinking we’re going to miss the boat. We arrived at our ship at 6:35, and to our great luck…blessing…anything, there was one last group that was on an excursion that ended late, so the ship was still there! We got on! As we were on the elevator going up to our rooms, we all had a big group hug that we made it. We had so many freaking close calls and bad things happen this trip, we were just grateful to have made it.

Florence

Technically, our first stop on the cruise ship was Toulon, but there wasn’t anything to do there, nothing to see, and we were exhausted from our travels, so we actually just had a chill day on the boat. We swam, ate, and just had a good time. But the next day, we got to Florence! Excitement. We got off, and headed into the city. We saw the Basilica of Saint Mary, and it was beautiful. We couldn’t get in, because we were wearing shorts, and that was too bad. It’s nice, though, obvs.

There is of course, a dome next door, also lovely.

And we naturally found the Hard Rock café there, and stopped in to get a shirt. (I collect them)

We also found a chocolate/gelato shop we of course ate in, and then made our way back to the ship. A beautiful city, and I was glad we got to visit.

Barcelona

We have had an interesting traveling day yesterday. We were supposed to catch a train out of Monte Carlo, heading to Nice. From Nice we were supposed to link Montpelier, and then from there, to Barcelona. Instead, we missed the train in Monte Carlo (through no fault of our own! We were there, the train pulled up, we were walking toward it (it had pulled forever forward) and as we were walking, it took off! Gah!) We then had to wait 20 more minutes for the next train to arrive. So by the time we got to Nice, we had missed our connection. After getting a new itinerary, we then went to Marseilles, and then back up to Montpelier. Unfortunately when we got to Marseilles, the only remaining train to Montpelier for the day was all booked up. Now, what we did next, I’m not proud of, but we literally had no other options. We asked a guy about getting on the train, and he said it was sold out, we couldn’t get on. So then we went to another guy, and asked him about it, and he waved us on! When we got on, there weren’t really that many seats available, and remember, we technically didn’t have tickets. So we just chilled in some parts of the train that I think we weren’t supposed to be in. And then, when there was about 30 minutes left of the ride, we found a weird empty car that had neither seats nor people. Probably some kind of luggage place? Whatever, we went there. The problem is that at this point, we had been in some kind of room without any AC and Europe is actually in the middle of a wicked heat wave, so it was a billion degrees in there. We were hot, had no water, and hadn’t eaten anything today yet.

We finally made it to Montpelier, and had 15 minutes to wait for our train to Barcelona. The ride was uneventful, and there was luckily a dining car, so we could finally get some water and food. We arrived, and it was late enough to just grab a bite, and get to bed. We don’t have enough time to do anything, anywhere, it seems! Luckily the next day we had a few hours before we got on the cruise ship, so we walked around.

We met up with a foreign exchange student that had lived with my in-laws for a while, and it was nice to have a local show us around:

It was so freaking hot though, we were dying and sweating buckets. Barcelona was beautiful, I would love to come back someday for more time!

And that evening, we boarded our cruise!

Monte Carlo

We took the train into Monte Carlo today. I gotta tell you, while the train travel over here is just amazing, lugging around our luggage is such a pain! It’s heavy, it’s cumbersome, and makes for some slow moving sometimes. But that’s ok, we will prevail. Unfortunately, Bonanza’s suitcase broke today, which makes for some really interesting ways to move it, but that’s also ok, we will prevail! (Almost the trips motto) Monte Carlo is beautiful.

We got here too late to do anything except eat dinner, and we don’t gamble, so we couldn’t do anything else here. The meal was delicious, and then we went to sleep, since it was about midnight when we got out of dinner. It took a couple of hours to eat, sheesh. The next morning we had enough time to look at stuff and then get on a train to Barcelona!

Milan

We didn’t have very much time in Milan. We had a train layover of maybe 5 hours, so we hustled from the train station to the Duomo di Milano, and it was beautiful. It was 65 million degrees, and we were trying to hurry back for our train, but we did it.

We didn’t have the chance to go in, but that’s all right. We stopped on the way back to the train station and grabbed some gelato – our first for Italy.

We made it back to the train station on time, what a victory! (And the gelato was delicious!)

Geneva

We took an overnight train from Vienna to Geneva this morning. Here’s our bedding situation:

My bed is suspended up there, and Adam’s is below me. These are barely wide enough to fit us laying down, and the room is so tiny our luggage barely fits, standing up. The night of sleep wasn’t too awful, but when we went into tunnels, my ears would pop and wake me up. Geneva was pretty nice – we rode a cable car to the top of a mountain:

And then grabbed a meal at a place nearby in Annamasse, France. I met the worlds greatest baker and nicest man, Miguel.

We had a great evening of just casually walking around, looking at the sights, and ended up going to sleep pretty early, to get some sleep after last night’s train sleep.

Vienna

Today, we took a train bright and early into Vienna. Our plans for the day mostly just included doing a little wandering, and visiting an amusement park we found online called Prater.
Best decision ever.
This place was amazing. It legitimately had rides that are too dangerous to pass inspection in America. They were terrifying and fantastic and I had a great time.

These are the kinds of creepy things they have around the park, they’re supposed to be kid-friendly. More like the stuff out of my nightmares.

These are the signs posted near the signs that tell you to take stuff out of your pockets.

You have to pay 50 cents to use the bathrooms in Europe, FYI. We then found a bakery that online people said you HAD to visit if you went there. It was pretty dang good.

All in all, a fun day in Vienna, I would definitely come here again!

Germany–> Prague

We got up bright and early today, to see what we could visit before our train to Prague left this morning. We saw part of the Berlin Wall, and visited Checkpoint Charlie.

We also tried to see the Jewish Holocaust Museum, but it wouldn’t open in time before our train, alas. Still snapped a pic, though.

After that, we caught our train to Prague. We arrived, and started to explore, since we only had the night there. We went to the castle there.

And it was beautiful. The city was so pretty! It was rainy which was too bad, but lightly raining, at this point, so that was all right.
We had to walk up this GIANT staircase to get there. Getting to the top was so satisfying. We found the best bridge:

It’s called the Most Legii, but we called it the Most Legit bridge, and it was long and nice. By this time, we were exhausted and had to go to a symphony playing some delightful tunes. Since the music was classical and we were tired, I will admit I found myself nodding off. Shoot. We returned to the hotel, and thank the lucky stars, at about midnight, our luggage was delivered! Happy day!

Germany

Well, my friends, some of these will be wordy and some not. Taking off out of SLC, we were delayed by 2 hours. Just enough time to miss our connection from NYC to Germany by about 30 seconds. Yes, the plane that we were supposed to be on left 5 minutes early, and we literally watched it back away from the gate. Gah! We then were re-routed to England, and then hung out there for a bit until getting to Frankfurt.

(us in Heathrow, 9:00 AM there but midnight for us)

In Frankfurt, we had to hop on a train for our final destination, Berlin. We were supposed to get there in the early afternoon, and have hours to explore, but we got there at about 8:00 PM, and everything was closed. Of course. And naturally, with our delays, our luggage was also delayed, and wouldn’t get to the airport until tomorrow. Yup, yup, yup. So we went to our hotel, stopping for a pic on the steps of the train station.

We got there, had a riveting dinner of McDonald’s (literally everything is closed this late on a Sunday in Germany) and then caught some rest, we had definitely not gotten enough sleep on our airplane. Hopefully our luck turns around tomorrow!

And we’re off!

You guys, it has finally come. I don’t remember if I’ve talked about this at all on my blog (and I’m too lazy to go check), but today, I am going to Europe on a vacation. My sister-in-law Fall (not her real name obvs) graduated from high school, and a senior trip is her gift from her parents. Since they’ve sadly passed on, Husband and I were tapped to bring her and her younger sister Bonanza there. It’s been months of planning, and today we are leaving! I’ll definitely be keeping a detailed travel log here, so check back for fun updates and pictures!

We’re off for 24 days!

New Temple Crossed Off

I have a goal, sure, we can say it’s on my bucket list, but my goal is to visit and do a session in every temple in Utah. Today, Chelle and I went to the Payson temple, thereby crossing a third one off my list of … I think there’s 17? But it is a beautiful temple.

And the inside is gorgeous as well. Naturally we took a selfie.

It was a hundred billion degrees outside, so afterwards, we got a drink.

It was a great afternoon, and I’m so glad we did it!

Foto Friday

I happened to be visiting Chelle at work today, and my sister and I were texting as well. Naturally, I forced Chelle to write something nice about me, so that I could send it to my sister, and prove my point and win. Naturally, I kept the evidence so that I could feel better about myself later.