And, this part is going to be extremely difficult to chose...

C. Italy, one of the main reasons for selecting this area as our trip was because Ron and I traveled here almost 19 years ago for our honeymoon to the Italian Riviera. We were both pleased to see that it had stayed very close to what it was like back then and it had not become a beach filled with huge skyscrapers and condominiums. The quaint little streets are lined with orange trees sagging from so much fruit. Who would have ever thought all those years ago that someday we would have the opportunity to bring our children here.

Diano Marina, San Bartelomeo, San Remo. These small coastal communities are all along the Mediterenean coast of crystal teal colored water, the majority of the architecture is all a beautiful range of sandy colors and hillsides covered with olive trees. For this part of our trip we stayed in a small apartment at la Meridiana Residences. It was fantastic and the girls met some friends similar in age from Germany, and in the evening they would hang out playing games and tennis on the tennis courts. It was super practice for their German. They exchanged addresses and are now penpals.

Most our time in this part of Italy was very leisurely and relaxing on the beach was a plus. Although the water was REALLY cold, Jacoba & Ruby just jumped right in. There is a large boardwalk area that you can rent bicycles and go along the shore, so we sampled a 4 person bike/cart. Ruby couldn't reach the pedals, which was funny and Jacoba was taken with the scenery so Ron and I basically took the girls for a ride. It was super.

From here we traveled to Pisa. We spent an afternoon there enjoying lunch while we waited for our allotted time to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was really funny watching all the tourist taking photos, but what a cool place.

The minute you step into the tower you're being pushed up against the wall and what makes it really goofy is that the steps are eroded away from years of people climbing the stairs, so even your feet aren't balanced flat or square either. We are SO glad we took the time to do this, it made all the hours driving in the car totally worth it.

Next, we stayed in a camping village about 15 minutes outside of Rome. We had like a mini-modular home, it was a hoot. The best part though was not having to drive, park or manuveure the streets of downtown Rome and pay over 750 euro for 2 nights accommodations. We had a bus & train stop just outside of the camping village. It was most convenient.

Bright and early we started out to go see the historic city of Rome.

I am not really sure how one can sum up everything there is to see in this place. We enjoyed seeing the Colosseum, Capitoline Hill, Trevi Fountain (by day & night), the Pantheon, the Vatican City Museums & Sistine Chapel and Basilica, the Vittoriano, the ancient Roman Forum, the Arch of Constantine, Piazza Novona, Castel Sant'Angelo, etc. Gasp-and the list of fabulous foods we enjoyed would even be longer than that! Also, a highlight was the Circus Maximus of crazy tourists, drivers, buses, Roman soldier wanna-be's that you can have your picture taken with, motorcycles & mopeds, and most alarming, little old ladies on bicycles without helmets that would ride right through jammed round-abouts over cobblestones-not even worried about their canneloni's bouncing out of their bicycle baskets! It was a sight!! But to top it all off, it was the weekend celebration for the Beatification of Pope JP II, so we had nuns, monks, priests, cardinals and every other religious leader filling the streets of Rome. (I promise, we were on our best behavior...) Oh, but we did put in a call immediately to GUCCI about their window displays-simply unacceptable. Oh, one more thing, we found a lovely shop where you can buy all your Papal products in one stop. Our time in Rome was jam packed, but full of sights we will not soon forget.

After a glorious drive through the Italian countryside we stopped for a night in Venice. It is everything everyone that's been there says it is: crowded, cramped, stinky, romantic, ancient, busy, dirty and most importantly, beautiful!!! We are so glad we stopped here, we took the public transportation boats and went completely around one side of the island and then went right through the middle via the Grand Canal. We skipped paying 100 euro for a gondola ride and saw everything we needed to. After dinner we did a sampling there of Italian Gelato but really felt the best flavor and creations of gelato went to Rome. What was very unique was the combination of style of architectures and you could see a real influence of Turkish, which I didn't think we saw so much of in Rome. You'll notice in the first Venice photo that Pisa has a little competition sneaking up on them-Venice is also going for the "leaning tower" tourist attraction. Our hotel was actually outside of the main city area and having been there now, I am glad we were, we saw people dragging their luggage over bridges and on/off boats, it would be a huge hassle, unless you had one little overnight bag-and who travels like that?

We saw everything from bad beach attire to mummies, jeweled Faberge Eggs, the entire world population of Nuns, funny cars, amazing yachts and we spent over 150 euro in Toll charges driving through Italy (fortunately we knew about that ahead of time). Our trip was incredible.
So, after being away from Dresden for almost 10 days, it felt great to sleep in our own beds again but I wouldn't say that the girls were all that keen on going back to school Monday morning...