Italy

A few weeks ago Louis and I were on our wonderful trip to visit my parents in Italy.  Our trip got off to quite a rocky start and ended kind of rocky with the travel back home, but thankfully everything besides the air travel was terrific!  Tuesday, very early in the morning, we were dropped off at the Salt lake airport for our flight.  We were having trouble pulling up our boarding passes on the machine so we went to the counter for help.  This is when we discovered that OUR FLIGHT WAS THE DAY BEFORE!!  What??  Are you kidding me?  A few months before our trip I had gotten an email saying that our flight had changed.  When I booked the flight it left at 7:30 a.m. and the email I got said that it would now leave at 6:30 a.m.  Okay, no big deal.  What I didn't notice though was that the day had also changed!  Yes missing the flight was completely my fault, I should have read the email more thoroughly, but the dumb thing is that they had the same exact flight on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  So why in the heck change the day of the flight when we could be on the same flight on the original day.  Since we bought our flights on a travel website we had to call them to get things figured out.  In the end, we got on the same flight that left on Wednesday morning instead.  So we got picked back up from the airport and went and took a nap!  Later that afternoon we ended up going to a hotel close to the airport so we could take an airport shuttle in the morning instead of having to have someone take us to the airport super early again.  The hotel was cheap, but surprisingly nice.  They had a restaurant in the hotel that we went to for dinner and it was delicious!  I had the hugest teriyaki chicken rice bowl ever.

Finally heading to Italy

Finally on Wednesday morning we were able to start our journey to Italy.   We had a stop in Chicago with about a five hour layover, then a very short stop in Madrid.  Our layover in Madrid was only an hour long.  We had to run through the airport, go through passport check, onto a shuttle to get to our terminal, and finally made it to our gate to catch our last flight.  We finally got to Venice at about 11:30 in the morning.  Customs were ridiculously relaxed in Italy.  A guy stopped us after getting our bags and just asked us a few questions.  Why were we visiting, what did we bring with us, and how much money did we have.  That was it.  I remembered from England that we were in line for a long time and we had to fill out a paper that included the address of where we'd be staying.
We met my Dad at the airport and we traveled back to their apartment.  We had a quick tour and got our stuff put away.  That afternoon they had a District meeting to go to so we were able to meet their mission president and several of the young missionaries that are serving there.  I just wished I didn't look like I had been travelling for 20 hours.  Oh well.  We enjoyed a yummy dinner from my Mom that evening and went to bed at 8:30 that night!

My parent's church

The next day was Friday and we had a busy day exploring.  We started the day in Modena, which is the birth place of Enzo Ferrari.  We first walked to the indoor market and walked around looking at the different booths with meats, cheeses, vegetables, fruits, flowers, and more.  We bought bread from one vendor and took it to another vendor for him to put some meat and cheese on the bread and grill it.  We ate our lunch there before heading over to the Ferrari museum.  There are two Ferrari museums in the area and we went to both.  The first I believe is called the Casa museum and it is supposedly where Ferrari's childhood home once was.  Despite not really having an interest in cars, the museum was very interesting!  You walk in and follow a timeline on the floor talking about what was going on in the world when each car was made.  They also had a video that talked about Enzo's life and how he got to where he did in his life.  The second museum was the factory museum, it had a lot of newer cars as well as some race cars!  My Dad's favorite part of the whole experience was being in the parking lot when a Ferrari started up and drove off!  After the museums we went and took a quick walk around the Torre (tower) church in the town center.  That night my Dad had arranged for us to all stay at a Bed & Breakfast.  My parents had stayed there a few times before and had gotten to know the owner.  When he called to arrange our stay the owner told him that they were closed for the season, but she would open for the night for us.  That tells you the kind of man my Dad is, that she was willing to open just for one night.  One of my favorite things of our trip was seeing my Dad interact with people.  He loves people and loves to learn about them.  I was also very impressed with how well he spoke Italian.  After getting to the B&B we went back into town to a pizzeria my Dad had eaten at before.  We got two pizzas and took them back to the B&B to eat them.  We all know I love pizza, I could probably eat it every day, and my first Italian pizza experience did not disappoint.

Tower of cheese at the market!

This picture is for my sister Sarah.

A door inside a door!

Beautiful side street

One of Louis' favorite Ferrari's of the day

The Torre Church

The B&B we stayed at

The next morning we headed to Mantova, a beautiful town.  We walked over the river on the pedestrian bridge and went to walk around the San Giorgio Castle.  While we were in this town we walked through a church, down the city street looking into the shops, enjoyed watching a man making giant bubbles and balloon animals for the kids, and really enjoyed eating a Nutella crepe.  My Mom hoped to go into the San Giorgio Castle on the way back out of town, but with how long we had spent walking through town and how much it cost to get into the castle, we decided not to.  We were however able to walk through the beautiful courtyard before heading out of town onto our next destination.  Our next stop was Verona.  It ended up being an incredibly busy day for Verona.  Number one, it was a Saturday.  Number two, there was a race that had gone on in town that morning.  Number three, Saldi (or sale) was going on, which is sale season in Italy.  We first walked around the Verona Colosseum, which was built in the first century and is still used today for opera performances.  Then we walked down the shopping center (with about 1,000 other people) looking into the shop windows.  Down an alley along the street is Juliet's balcony!  We stopped in there for a short bit, but again, there were so many people that we didn't stay to look around at anything there.  Once we got through the long street we crossed a bridge and walked past the Roman theater which was also built in the first century.  On our way back through the shopping center street my Mom's ear drum burst!  She hadn't been having any previous pain, she just said that it popped a few times before there was one giant pop and lots of pain!  There wasn't much we could do about it so we continued walking back to our car with a quick stop at McDonalds along the way.

The view of Montova from across the river

San Giorgio Castle

The ceiling of the church in town

The bubble man!

I like how you can kind of see the buildings from

across the street in the bubbles

The courtyard of the castle

My Mom and me

The Verona Colosseum

Louis and I outside the Colosseum

They had all the doors around the Colosseum numbered in Roman numerals

Can you spot them?

What is left of the outer wall of the Colosseum.

It was knocked down by an earthquake in 1117 and 1183

Juliet's balcony

Looking over one of the bridges in Verona

Through out the night my Mom had had a lot of pain and drainage from her ear so she stayed home and rested while the rest of us headed to the hotel where Stake Conference was being held.  On Monday she was still not feeling well so she once again stayed home while we headed out on our adventures for the day.  Our first stop was in Maniago to the street market that takes place every Monday.  I bought myself an apron, and scarves for Avery, Mary, and my mother in law Annette.  In Italy they wear scarves in the winter, it is said to keep the bad air away.  This wasn't something I knew about Italy, so I thought it would be a fun souvenir for the girls.  We stopped in to this little hole in the wall doner kebab place my Dad had eaten at before.  The doner kebab was huge and it was delicious!  After lunch we headed to Spilimbergo to the school of mosaics.  Here you can walk through the school looking at all of the mosaic artwork that is literally everywhere in the building.  On the floors, the stairways, the ceilings, the walls, etc.  It was really beautiful, most of the time I didn't know where I should focus my attention.  After the school we headed to Gorizia, there is a sister missionary companionship that lives here and we were to inspect their apartment late that afternoon.  Before inspecting the apartment we headed to the castle in town.  It was a steep walk up there and once we got to the castle we discovered that it was closed on Mondays so we couldn't go in!  We still enjoyed walking around it and looking at the views all around, including being able to see into Slovenia.  That evening on our way back home we stopped at an outlet mall and went to the Lindt chocolate outlet.  (We also got another Nutella crepe)

The street market

The little restaurant we ate at

The gigantic Doner Kebabs, with Louis' hand for reference

The school of Mosaics

Even the outside of the building had mosaics

My Dad's favorites are the portraits

This was the bathroom wall!  

(spoilers, they were squatty potties.  I chose not to use them!)

This was an in process mosaic that was in one of the classrooms

I liked this Picasso mosaic

The view on the way up to the castle in Gorizia

My Dad and me outside the castle

The outside of the castle

On Tuesday my Mom was doing better.  In the morning we headed to Nove to the ceramic factory outlet.  On the first floor of the building is where their factory is.  We walked in and I wasn't sure if we should be there!  However, when you head upstairs they have rows and rows of ceramics to purchase.  I'm pretty sure this is where we spent most of our money during the trip!  This is also where I encountered my first squatty potty.  It was not an enjoyable experience.  I'll just leave it at that.  We headed back to my parent's house so my Mom could go to a doctor's appointment for her ear.  Louis and I relaxed a home while my parents went to the appointment.  That afternoon my Mom and I went to Pordenone to go shopping.  We walked through town and stopped to get gelato, I chose strawberry and it was wonderful.

The ceramic outlet.  I definitely wouldn't want to take kids in here!

The lovely squatty potty

In the city of Pordenone, this is their city hall I believe

This building was cool.  The buildings are made of brick, then covered in

plaster and painted.  You can see in this picture how the plaster has

fallen away, but there are still places here and there where you can see it.

I liked looking down all the side streets, they can be so pretty!

My first gelato experience

Wednesday was a big walking day, we went to Venice!  Venice is only an hour away from my parent's apartment and they have been there several times in the years that they've spent in Italy.  We started by walking to the onion dome cathedral that is across from the train station.  We then headed down alley after alley and over bridges until we make it to St Mark's Basilica.  I was amazed by its enormity and its beauty, but mostly I was amazed with how many stinking birds there were!  I was certain we were going to get pooped on.  Thankfully none of us were.  My Dad opted to stay outside while the other three of us went inside, the lighting was dim, but it was still astonishingly beautiful with everything so intricately designed.  Louis and my Mom chose to walk up to the roof, but I was feeling pretty done with being on my feet so I went outside to sit with my Dad.  Louis and my Mom ended up being upstairs for about an hour.  You can look out over the courtyard, but there is also a museum up on the roof.  It is filled with different art pieces, tapestries, some of the original bricks from the building, statues, etc.  Once they came back down we headed back on our long journey to the car.  We got back to my parent's town and had dinner at a restaurant.  Louis got breaded veal with fries and I had spaghetti carbonara, they were both delicious.

Louis feeling very Italian with his scarf and hat

So absolutely beautiful!

Looking over to the Bridge of Sighs

The Bridge of Sighs and a row of gondolas 

The clock tower across from St Mark's Basilica 

The view from atop St Mark's Basilica

St Mark's Basilica.  I'm not sure how there are no birds in this picture

A jewelry store named Rebecca!

Everywhere you looked it was just beautiful

Thursday was our last full day in Italy, after all the walking the day before I suggested we do something more low key.  We ended up taking a drive to the Dolomiti mountains through the San Boldo pass.  Going on drives is something I remember doing often as a kid so it was fun to just go on a drive with my parents now as an adult.  The San Boldo pass goes over 11 miles up the mountain with 17 switchbacks getting you up those 11 miles.  Including 5 one way tightly curved tunnels at the top.  I was just glad it was my Dad driving and not me, I don't think I could have done it!  On the other side of the mountain you come into Belluno and can see the snow capped Alps off in the distance.  We turned around and headed back down the mountain to Castle Brando, a castle sat high up on a hill.  You get up to it by taking a glass funicular elevator.  My Mom did not enjoy the journey up or down, but the views were great.  We didn't stay too long, just walked around a bit then headed back down.  That night my Mom made us some Italian hot chocolate, something she had been promising for days to make for us!  It was thick and chocolaty and delicious.

Looking down through the mountains when we were almost to the top

The tunnels through the mountain

The view from the top of Castle Brando

Friday was our day to head back home!  We left at 4:30 in the morning to head to the airport and was met with some intense fog the entire drive.  It slowed down our drive a lot, but we were still to the airport two hours before our flight.  You would think that would be plenty of time right?  RIGHT?  No, apparently it wasn't.  We were in the check in line for 2 HOURS!  It wasn't even that long of a line, they were just moving so. slowly.  We finally got through the line and through security and to our gate.  Just to realize that while the lady printed off all of my boarding passes she only printed off one of Louis' boarding passes.  And it was the one for our last flight.  Thankfully they were able to pull up our reservation on their computer at the gate and we got on our flight just in time.  We were hoping we wouldn't have a problem in Madrid with Louis not having his boarding pass because we would again only have an hour layover there.  The Madrid airport is crazy, we had to walk (run) down a long hallway, down several escalators, onto a shuttle, through passport check, up several escalators, down another long hallway, around a corner and to our gate.  We got to the gate as they were making the last call announcement for our flight.  They took a little longer to get Louis' reservation pulled up, but thankfully they were able to and we got on our flight.  In Chicago we went through customs and got our bags to recheck.  After all that was done we had about two hours before our flight was to leave.  We were very glad to not be in a rush to make another flight!  We got on our plane and thought everything was good until the pilot came on saying he was just informed that there was maintenance issued with the plane.  I have heard horror stories of people being basically trapped on their plane on the tarmac for hours while things were being figured out, but thankfully we were all asked to get off the plane while they figured out what they were going to do.  About 20 minutes passed when we heard the announcement that we were being moved to a new gate onto a different plane.  Once we took off it was about an hour past when we were originally supposed to leave.  We were just glad to finally be on our final leg of travel for the day.  Despite all of the trouble with actually getting onto our flights, they were all really good flights.

This was the first time I've ever boarded a plane like this!

So glad to be heading back home

We made it home and dropped our luggage on the floor and fell in bed.  It was a long journey home and we were glad to be back!  We had an amazing trip, we really enjoyed being able to spend that time with my parents and we are looking forward to them being home soon!  On our trip I was blessed to not miss our kids too much.  There were times where I'd see other moms with their kids and I missed being able to parent.  I wanted to go and help those moms, but figured I probably shouldn't!  Although I did help a mom get her stroller down some stairs in Venice.  Being away from your children for an extended period of time really helps you to appreciate the little things!