On to Italy

Under the concept that a picture is worth a thousand words, I will now continue our trip into Italy with lots of photos. The plane ride from Belgrade was just a quick hop over and we stayed one night in Rome then headed to Tivoli to the house our family was staying in. Sort of.



John had printed directions off Google maps but driving through Rome and reading the street signs didn't even remotely resemble what we had on our papers - the names of the roads were different and somehow we ended up driving up the coast of Italy along the Mediterranian. We turned around and after several hours found ourselves in the center of Rome. Completely lost. We stopped in to a street-side cafe that I mentioned in my last post and after a couple cappuccinos, realized that we needed some techno-therapy.

We drove around until we found an electronics store, purchased a GPS with European maps and voila' - all was well with the world again. Funny thing though - the GPS will only speak English with an Italian accent. Turna lefta quindici kilometers thena turna righta. I'm not making this up - we're thinking of keeping it in our car at home - you can hear for yourself. Hilarious.


What can I say? It's Italy - mountains, trees, beautiful weather. I hear it's over 100 every day at home. If we could understand anyone, we'd probabaly want to stay forever but honestly, we can't wait to have people speak to us in English.

The parents picked out a fantastic villa with this pool overlooking the mountains - our kids and the cousins lived in it for days.

We take long walks through the countryside and I love seeing all the things growing - there are countless grape vines and gardens around every corner - I have been inspired to start my garden as soon as we get home.

We drove to Pompeii - very cool. Like walking right back in time. If you are really interested in History, you'll be disappointed by this post - It's not my thing - old buildings, things happened a long time ago, blah blah - still, it was really neat to see old stuff.

OK - this was creepy - the people of Pompeii preserved in their last moments.

Gerano is the town closest to the villa that we are staying in. All the streets run straight up and straight down. Cobblestone, flowers and stone walls all over the place make it very pretty.

I have tons of pics of our two trips to Rome that I will bore you with in a later post but we were just randomly walking around and turned a corner and saw this. This is a common theme in my Rome adventures - same thing happened below when we were walking through the streets and came upon the Pantheon. Huh. You would think it was off on a hill somewhere but no, it's right there in the middle of town - shoved in between some tall buildings.

Apparently Europeans eat Gelato at least 5-6 times a day because there is litterally a Gelateria on every block in every town we have been to. As the saying goes, when in Rome.....

Oh, look, it's the Pantheon.