Ahh, Tuscany

I think it is safe to say that this was our favorite spot. We loved Italy, but most of all we loved Florence. Florence is actually 62 miles inland, so our ship docked in Livorno, which is very industrial and not pretty AT ALL. From the port, we took a cab to the train station in Livorno to get to Pisa. (We did see a trailer park on the way from Livorno to Pisa - I thought, "Italians, they're just like us".)

Pisa is definitely a step up from Livorno, but still not anything to get excited about. The Leaning Tower is about all it is known for, so we only spent about an hour there. The Leaning Tower, Cathedral, and Baptistry are all in this really pretty, green courtyard, but the rest of the city doesn't look anywhere near this nice. We took some pictures and got back on a bus to go back to the train station. (Side note: Someone had puked all over the back door of the bus we got on, so needless to say it was a less than pleasant bus ride back to the train station.)

Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (2nd largest Cathedral in the world)

The Tuscan countryside is just like you see in paintings and movies - so green and BEAUTIFUL. Benton and I did a pretty good job of being our own tour guides throughout Europe, but we did have one little hiccup in Florence - we got off the train one stop too early. It's always hard to figure out where you are and get your bearings when you get off a train, but it's really hard when your map doesn't match :) Luckily, it didn't take us too long to figure it out, we got back on the train, went one more stop and began our Firenze adventure.

We decided to take a cab to our first stop, Accademia Gallery, to see the Statue of David. We had to wait in line for awhile, but it was worth the wait. David is amazing! It is so huge and every detail is so precise from the curls in his hair to the veins in his arms/hands down to his toes. We did observe that Italians love naked men statues - they were everywhere.

After David, we walked down to the Duomo and went to the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, which was beautiful and massive. Talk about a serious center aisle! Then we went next door to the Bell Tower and walked up the 414 steps to the top for a great view of the city. We left the Duomo for Piazza della Signoria, which is the city's largest square.

Our final mission in Florence was shopping - my favorite thing! We were on a mission for wine, but stumbled across some great markets both before and after. I got some fantastic pashmina's for the best prices you could hope for, Benton got some gorgeous ties for even more gorgeous prices, and we found the cutest boot/mitten set for the baby (unisex of course).

Our wine adventure was so much fun...I just wish we had the wine we ordered to remember it by. We stumbled on this cute little wine shop with the nicest owners who spoke perfect English. We wanted to buy some great wine for my dad, the wino. After talking to the owner, Franco (who sounds and semi-looked like Al Paccino), for a bit, he tells us to go across the street and try three Chianti's (which I immediately turn my nose up at, only to be pleasantly surprised later). As it turns out, his daughter (Lucino?) owns the tiny restaurant/wine bar across the street. She was so sweet, very knowledgeable and hospitable, and we loved all three wines (yes, I tried all three and they were fabulous!) and yummy bruschetta. So, we went back across the street and ordered a case of wine and also met Franco's wife of 30 years who is from Chicago. We had such a great time meeting all of them and sadly still don't have any wine to share :( I am still hopeful that it will come, but it's been almost a month now. The good news is we paid with AmEx, so we don't have to pay for it unless it comes, but we would rather pay for it and have the wine.

We had our first experience of paying to use the bathroom at the train station in Florence. At least this one was nice. Needless to say, we were exhausted on Wednesday night after our Tuscan adventures, but we can't wait to go back and spend more time there.

Cote d'Azur

On Tuesday morning, we anchored out in the harbour and took tender boats to shore. Benton and I were up and ready to go on the first boat to France then made our way over to the train station to head to Monte Carlo.

The view we woke up to on Tuesday morning in Villefranche, France:

Monte Carlo was probably the cleanest city we went to. We loved it, but my goodness, there is so much money there it is unreal. Massive yachts, great condos, and LOTS of them.

We made a pit-stop in a cute farmer's market/square for a drink then took a rather long uphill walk to the Prince's Palace of Monaco. The view of the city (and water and boats) from there is spectacular.

We took the Palace tour and went in Monaco's Saint Nicholas Cathedral. The ornateness of the architecture in Europe never ceased to amaze us.

We ate lunch outside at a cafe close to the palace and the church, then took a bus down to hit up the casino. I've never seen so many fancy cars in one place (outside the casino and Hotel de Paris). The design and feel of the casiono is more like a church or museum than it is Vegas. Both the inside and out is very ornate and not flashy and obnoxious like Vegas. You do have to pay to go in and there really weren't very many people actually gambling while we were there; most were just sightseeing, including us. (Again, that Dollar/Euro game hurt too much to lose money on gambling!)

Tired from our fun first day, we took the train back to Villefranche and found this Tex-Mex restaurant while wandering the streets. We weren't hungry and I'm not sure it was open, but I would definitely be interested to taste their version. I had to at least get a picture of our little "taste" of home in one of our first cities.

In hindsight, it doesn't sound like we did that much in the French Riviera, but it was a lot of walking and we were definitely exhausted at the end of the day.

Celebrity...not exactly

We got on the ship Sunday afternoon and discovered fairly quickly that we were not going to be big cruisers. It was a fabulous way to see so many places in a fairly short amount of time (which was exactly our intention), but the ship/cruise part wasn't our favorite thing. Despite the initial disappointment, we had an incredible time and I can't imagine enjoying the trip so much with anyone but Benton.

We only had three days at sea (Monday - day after we got on the boat, between Naples/Capri and Santorini, and between Athens and Dubrovnik), which are also the formal dinner nights.

(We only have two pictures because I got sea sick mid-dinner on the 2nd night so we didn't get a picture.)

on our balcony before we went to dinner
at our table with dessert

While we didn't love the cruise part, the days at sea were a nice time to rest since we were doing so much running around in the cities. We checked out every part of the ship, played HORSE and PIG (and I kicked Benton's butt!), checkers (where he killed me), Scrabble, worked out, and layed out by the pool. We didn't do any gambling because we figured we were losing enough money in the fun game of Dollar-to-Euro exchange.

First Stop, Barcelona

We left Dallas on Friday and got to Barcelona via JFK on Saturday. Landing in Barcelona was interesting. We "parked" in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, got off the plane via stairs to the tarmac where all employees were wearing swine flu masks. Then all plane passengers took a shuttle bus that dropped us off at the customs/baggage area. We got our bags and found our driver fairly painlessly, but he took us on what seemed like a wild goose chase to get to the car. The driver was a nice guy, knew where he was going, and did his best to give us an English-speaking tour of the city as we drove in.

**I will go ahead and put this disclaimer in now for the remainder of all Europe posts. The Europeans we encountered spoke English a million times better than we spoke any of their languages, so I'm not knocking them. **

We stayed at the Neri H&R in Barcelona and it was very nice, but of course we couldn't check in until the afternoon, so we wandered around Barcelona in our plane clothes for awhile.

Pictures of us in a random square not too far from Las Ramblas:

We decided to take an open-top bus tour of the city which was a great, lazy way to see the sights. We definitely had a hard time adjusting to the time change and jet lag, so we probably didn't experience Barcelona as much as some of the other cities.

My view of Barcelona in a nutshell: the town is pretty sleepy until well after 10am, many of the streets are so narrow that cars don't drive down them, the streets are super crowded when the city does wake up, there are tons of street "entertainers/artists," the food is not good, and it's not very warm there in May. It was a cool place to see, but my desire to go back is pretty slim.

Leaving On a Jet Plane

Packed up and ready to go - us to Europe and Dutch to Grammy's beach house.
Benton on the plane to JFK. Thanks to my dear ol' dad, we were upgraded to 1st class, which made our 13 hour journey to Barcelona super comfortable.

The seats were fantastic - it was like being in a new car - there were so many buttons and gadgets to play with. The seats layed flat (but we still didn't get much sleep) and we had individual tv's with lots of movie choices. Roundtrip I watched Bride Wars, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Taken, Defiance, Frost/Nixon, Bedtime Stories, and started Gran Torino. They also served a five course meal for like 4 hours of the flight both ways. It's not great food, but you definitely don't get off the plane hungry.

I'm Back!

I guess it has been about a month long hiatus from blogging already, but it has been a crazy month. We were in Europe for two weeks and the two weeks since we have been back have been total chaos. I took a small tumble down a few steps in Dubrovnik and broke my camera :( which contributed to the lag in updating the blog since I didn't have any pictures. My mom so kindly left me with her camera so I could get the pics off my memory card and we are back in business now! We took a lot of pictures on our trip, so I am going to do a post for each destination. Hopefully, I can catch up quickly on the past month and then keep up with my goal of at least weekly updates going forward. Lots more to come...

12 Week Belly Shot

I need to stop taking this pictures first thing in the morning - that is not my best hour :)! This was taken the morning we left for our Euro-trip.