Destination: Italy - Venice

Finally.  The recap of our Italy holiday is coming to an end.  I feel like these posts summarizing our trip have been dragging on forever.  Thankfully, this is the last one as Venice was our last stop on our eight days spent in Italy.   

After leaving Tuscany, all of us were pretty worn out and ready to get home.  Geoff was coming down with the flu and we were running out of clean clothes between all the spaghetti dinners and throw-ups that occurred.  Plus, in case you get any funny ideas otherwise, it's simply exhausting traveling with small kids.  This Italy trip was just that.  A trip.  Definitely not a vacation.  You know, that thing where you actually relax.   Come to think of it, I'm not sure if we've actually had one of those vacation things since Olivia was born.  :)  Anyhoo, I've digressed.  If it hadn't already been planned, we probably would have skipped Venice at that point and gone straight back to London.  I'm so glad we were forced to go on though because Venice tied with Cinque Terre as my favorite part of our trip.  I loved Venice!  It's such a unique and beautiful city.  It's filled with brightly colored buildings hovering over all the interconnected canals and gondolas meandering along.  Unfortunately, we missed out on George Clooney's big wedding ordeal in Venice by a couple weeks.  But I easily can see how Venice can be very romantic.  Not that Geoff and I got to experience any of that during our brief stay there.  

View from breakfast of the Grand Canal

Campanile di San Marco

After a wait in line, we took an elevator to the top of the famous Campanile di San Marco.  With picture perfect blue skies, the views from the top overlooking Venice, the Grand Canal and Piazza were gorgeous.

Piazza San Marco down below

When walking around the town, there are little bridges like the one below everywhere to get you from one side of the canal to the other.  However, they are all unique from each other in their design and size. 

There are no cars in Venice because there simply aren't any roads.  Only canals for boats and alleyways/ pedestrian streets for walking.  It was funny to see delivery boats parked out in front of various hotels, shops and restaurants dropping off supplies, but that's how it works there.

We wouldn't be tourists in Venice without taking an overpriced gondola ride

Love this picture and these girls.  Anytime we travel, I always shake my head in disbelief that we've been able to take them to as many places as we have and give them these experiences.  I know they probably won't remember much (hopefully Olivia will some), but we'll always have the photos to show them of their world travels and young adventures.

Standing on the famous Rialto Bridge (built in 1591) overlooking the Grand Canal

Waiting for the water taxi to begin our trip back to London

Ciao, Italy!  Thanks for the memories!

Destination: Italy - Tuscany

Oh, Tuscany.  Everyone said you would be lovely and you were.  Here is part 2 of our Italian holiday recap.  If you missed Part 1, check the sights from Cinque Terre and Florence out here.

After getting to and around Cinque Terre and Florence via train, we picked up a rental car at the Florence airport at the conclusion of our stay so we could drive around the Tuscan hills for a couple days.  First of all, let me just say that driving/navigating around the streets of Florence was awful.  Between Geoff's driving and my feeble attempts to navigate us via Google maps, we were close to not speaking to each other by the time we finally got outside the city.  What is it about driving and getting lost multiple times over that brings out the worst in people, or at least in me???  Fortunately, we really like each other so we quickly made up.  :)  

Part of what makes Tuscany Tuscany are all the little Italian villages smattered across the landscape.  Throughout our two days in Tuscany, we visited several of them.  The first one we stopped at while making our way towards Siena was San Gimignano, which charmed us with its history, medieval streetscapes and enchanting rural setting overlooking the Tuscan hills.   

San Gimignano was once known as the "city of beautiful towers".  Here are 3 of the remaining 14 towers in the village, which date back to the 14th century.

Piazza della Cisterna

I absolutely love these medieval, walled cities.  My imagination runs wild trying to visualize what life once must have looked like there 

Next stop, Siena: such a cool medieval city!  It's another walled city, with most of the walls that enclose the city still being the original ones built back in the 11th century.  If you ignored the modernization such as spotting stores like the Gap and Apple, it's really like you're stepping back into time.  Siena is also built on a hill, giving it extra dimensions up and down as we meandered around the narrow alleys.

Piazza del Campo - the heart of the city

This piazza is the location for the famous Palio, a medieval horse race tradition that occurs every summer.   Thousands of spectators pack the piazza to watch the race.

After exploring Siena in the morning, we hopped in our rental car and spent the afternoon driving around the beautiful Tuscan hills, spotting vineyards and olive farms everywhere we looked.

The manager at our hotel in Siena recommended we stop off at the castle below for a tour.  When we reached it, the girls were napping in the car, so we decided to drive on for awhile longer before circling back.  Well, when we arrived back a couple hours later, we noticed a sign at the parking lot indicating the last tour of the day was 4:00.  Time on the clock in the car was 3:53.  We sprinted (or as much as you can sprint with a 1 and 4 year old) up a hill to the ticket office, arriving a couple minutes after 4:00.  Too late.  The castle doors were closed.  Those Italians are timely people, I tell ya!  Despite the frustration of being turned away, we were at least able to explore the grounds a bit which gave the girls the chance to briefly run free.  

Good morning, Siena.  (view from our hotel bathroom!)

The next day, on our way back to Florence to return our rental car before hopping on a train for Venice, we stopped in the village of Monteriggioni.  A classic Italy town dating to the 12th century, we were eager to wander around this village.  Actually, the real reason we stopped off was to buy Tuscan souvenirs while we were still technically in Tuscany.  Which, as usual, proved to be a stressful event as we attempted to keep two very curious little people from knocking over shelves of expensive vases and other breakables in the shops.

Making a new friend

Last stop: Venice.  Coming soon!