All Things Must Pass

Friday, May 25, 2007

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So we made it home. The travel went relatively well and the trip itself was great. We learned a lot about Italy and ourselves. I'm having a really hard time just telling people how it went, I mean it was two whole weeks, that's really hard to summarize. I'll give a brief description of the entire trip and if anyone has any questions besides what I've said, I'll address those as well.
We flew out on time for Munich. Eric and I got the two very middle seats on the plane. International flights are generally set up like this:

ab defg jk

We were E and F. A little cramped, yes, but Lufthansa has a remarkable amount of leg room and the guy to my right (G) was very courteous. The flight to Munich took about 9 hours and Eric and I didn't sleep at all. From Munich we went through passport control and then headed on to Rome. Our car was there to pick us up and bring us right to the hotel. Not a very impressive room, as you'll see in the pics, but we soon discovered that it was a stone's throw from the Pantheon. Lovely. Rome was definitely one of my favorite places for the trip. We saw so many amazing things that you see pictures of and hear about your whole life, but I was there, I touched them and sat on one of the columns of the Pantheon and went into the Coloseum and walked the streets of the Palantine and the capital of ancient Rome. It was really an incredibly modern city there, mixed in with all of those ancient sites. I liked Rome a lot.
From there we took the train into Naples (Napoli) and then connected on to Sant'Agnello, the small town right outside of Sorrento where we were staying. The entire travel time took about 4 hours from hotel door to hotel door. Our Sant'Agnello hotel was a remarkable improvement, with a lemon grove right outside our window. We did a lot of sightseeing there, had a beer out on the terrace by the sea when we first arrived. The next day we went to Pompei. We absolutely loved it, but let me tell you, as a tourist attraction, it's a tough one. I think it would take the greater part of a day to actually get through the entire city. We were there for about 3 hours walking around and then we'd had our fill. Definitely check out the pictures from Pompei and if you ever make it to Italy, go there. Very interesting stuff. That night we went out to Sorrento proper. It wasn't that great. Only really different from Sant'Agnello in that it was much more loud and crowded. The next morning we went out to Capri on the hydrofoil. When we got there, we took a boat tour around the entire island. It was beautiful. Then we went to the other side, Anacapri, and took a chair lift to the very top and saw some amazing views. The next day we explored Sorrento and Sant'Agnello just a bit more before heading on to Cortona.
We took the train back to Naples for our connection and almost missed the very last train out there, but had a stroke of luck and caught it with about 10 minutes to spare. Travel time from hotel to hotel was a little over 5 hours this time. Our hotel in Cortona was very nice, but very expensive. Luckily we only stayed there for 2 nights. On the other hand, Cortona was one of my favorite places, so maybe not so luckily. Cortona is a hilltown in Tuscany that afforded us gorgeous views of the Tuscan countryside. We took a ton of pictures of the views there, so be sure to check those out. There were also a couple great museums in Cortona that we really enjoyed, not to mention the food...
A couple days later, we headed back to the train to set out for Firenze (Florence). Total travel time was only about 2 hours this time from hotel to hotel. Our hotel in Florence was by far my favorite and a good value to boot! We were about 5 steps away from the Duomo and the owner was crazy nice. Eric wasn't the biggest fan of Florence but I loved it. So many beautiful buildings and sculptures just out there for all to see. The Uffizi Gallery didn't impress us much, we were kinda bored, but I loved the Accadamia (where David is). The sculptures there are just downright inspiring and David was everything I thought it would be. Incredible. There is also great shopping in Florence and that's where I ended up buying a lot of my souveneirs. I bought a leather purse and a leather jacket, along with a lot of jewelry. I got a cold the second to last night we were there and I was kinda out of commission (aside from some light shopping/lunch/dinner) for our last day in Italy. It was kind of a bummer, but Eric and I were both completely pooped by this time, so in a way it worked out. We headed to the Firenze airport around 4:30 am and when we got there, it wasn't opened yet. Eventually our flight headed out almost on time and we connected in Munich again, got into Denver, went through customs and headed home.
It was a wonderful trip. Check out the pics and let me know if you have any questions on stuff I didn't cover. Grazie!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eandk (Just so you know, the photos are posted backwards for some reason, from the end of the trip to the beginning. If you want to see them in the correct order, I'd start from the last page and go backwards)

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