All our bags are packed, we’re ready to go!

Yes, we fit all our stuff for our 10 day Italy trip in 2 backpacks. And there’s even a little room in Scott’s. Wooooooot!

One month!!!

In a month we’ll be in ITALY! 🙂 Anyone excited? No? Just me and Scott? Oh well, I have a blog and I want to share my excitement. Here’s our tentative itinerary at this point…

April 5 – take off!!

April 6 – 9am local time – arrive in Rome
Take the train to Florence
Check into hotel and try to get on local time… Drink lots of local wine.

April 7 – April 9
Scott doing conference stuff intermittently throughout the day, Jamie sightseeing on her own and drinking lots of wine. I’m considering a day trip to Pisa, but still not sure if it’s worth the travel time… We’re going to do the Uffizi together (which is the most popular museum in Italy or something like that).

April 10 –
Last day of the conference, that afternoon we’re hopping a train to Venice! We’re staying one night there and will most likely drink lots of wine.

April 11 –
Sightsee all day. We def need to hit Piazza San Marco and Doges Palace, and probably just do the rest on foot. I read a gondola ride costs 90 Euros. Um, that’s like $150. Yeah, for like an hour.

April 12 – 12:04am – we’re taking the sleeper train overnight to Rome! The plan is to drink a little wine so we can fall asleep. But not too much so we can still figure out the trains in Italian. It’s a delicate balance.

April 12-14 – DO Rome. We want to do a day with the Ruins, including the Colleseum, Forum, and Pantheon. A day walking around and hitting the big stuff like Spanish Steps and Trevi, etc. And at least half a day at the Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica.

April 15 – go home 😦

So yeah… I’m working on getting tickets reserved for the museums we want to go to. That’s a fun (not) thing about Italy – you can’t just go to museums, you have to reserve them to avoid lines or something. We’ve both been very committed to sampling all the Chianti we can find prior to our trip so we are prepared. Good bottles of wine are $6.99 and under, right?? 🙂

Guess Where We’re Going?

Florence and Rome!!!

Scott is presenting at a conference in Florence in early April and he’s taking little old me along! This will be our big vacation to celebrate Scott’s getting his PhD. ** We’re so excited, and we’ve been monitoring airfares all week to try to get the lowest rate. It’s stressing me out, since they fluctuate so much. For instance we were *thisclose* to buying the tickets last night, but didn’t. Bam, this morning they’re up $200. Ugh. So we’re still waiting, and will likely make the big purch mid next week since that’s when they’re supposed to be cheapest. (By the way, I saw an article that online tickets are at their cheapest at midnight on Wednesdays. Untrue, and I had to stay up til midnight to debunk that, too!)

So, just had to share that in an official way w/ the world. 🙂 If anyone has any books that take place in Italy I could read to get any more excited (yeah, like that’s possible…) I’d love some suggestions. I’m looking for a copy of Angels & Demons (which I used to own but think I loaned to someone…)… any others I might enjoy?

And any of you who have been there done that to Rome or Florence, I would love some trip advice, since we have to see the eternal city in 3 short days, and I’ll get to do lots of sightseeing on my own in Florence (possibly even a daytrip, I was thinking Pisa). I think we’re going to take Carmen (our Garmin), and download the European maps. Feel free to email me.

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**IF he passes his dissertation. Which he totally will, but he keeps reminding me it’s not a sure thing. Of course he’ll pass, but I’m just humoring him. 🙂