Ciao Italia!

Our 9 day "Italian Dream" tour has come and gone. But at least we have the pictures to remind us. :)

Jen's Top 10 scenic highlights:
10 - The Pantheon Plaza (Rome)
9 - Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli (near Assisi)
8 - Duomo of Florence
7 - Colisseum (Rome)
6 - St. Mark's Square (Venice)
5 - Fountains of Trevi (Rome)
4 - Sistine Chapel (Rome)
3 - Statue of David (Florence)
2 - The Map Hallway of the Vatican Museum (Rome)
1 - The Inside of St. Peters Church (Rome)

Top 10 thoughts on Italy:
10 - You need strong ankles for these cobble roads!
9 - One 12oz Nestle Ice Tea Soda cost us 3.5 EUROs. (almost $5)
8 - The 'church-attire' rule helps sell a lot of souvenir scarves
7 - Dogs are good at walking with their owners off leash around here!
6 - Gelato = never pick just one flavor even if you're only getting one scoop
5 - Most prominent meat is Ham, Wild Boar and other forms of pork
4 - Northern Italy - Watery Coffee. Southern Italy - Creamier/Better Coffee
3 - No Starbucks
2 - Majority of the cars are small enough to park vertically on a sidewalk and fit.
1 - Using nasty, smelly, rim-only toilets will probably cost you 1 Euro.

We definitely hope to go to Italy again, but we'd be more confident without a tour guide. We tested out the train and taxi system on a few our on-our-own nights and have a better sense of how to get around now. So if we go again, we'd stay somewhere more obscure but walking distance from a train station and seek out the less trafficked locations to sightsee. There are definitely more beautiful spots that to discover...