Day 10: Venice
The breakfast buffet at the Bologna hotel was leaps and bounds better than anything else we’ve had in Italy.  I stuffed myself and then waited a bit in hopes I could fit more.  It’s the type of breakfast that would easily fetch 15 euros per person on the street.  Even though we got a good jump on the morning, we barely missed a regional train and the next Eurostar train was sold out, so we ended up waiting almost 2 hours to catch the next train and still didn’t get to our Venice hotel until 2 PM.

Venice is a unique city and as you learn about its history, you just wish you were there to see it in its hay day. We took a vaporetto boat down the Grand Canal and that was cool.  Once you get off a boat though, the water everywhere makes it difficult to get around on foot.  It was neat to see the gondola guys, though it quickly became too cold for them to just be in their gondolier shirts.  Jessica wasn’t dead set on a gondola ride and I wasn’t eager to shell out for one.  We still had fun watching the gondolas with singing guys and accordions.  It started to drizzle while we were in Venice and it was amusing to watch people lifting and lowering umbrellas and they tried to squeeze through walkways that were barely wide enough for two people without umbrellas.  By the time we made it to Saint Mark’s square, the cathedral was closed.  We wandered around and checked out shops as we made our way back to the bus station in the rain.

Day 11: Venice

The weather forecast showed even more dismal weather for this day, with the temperature being colder, windier, and more rain.  I had planned to visit Murano or Burano, but I decided to just go with no backpacks and bundle up with our rain jackets for outer shell.  We actually had more fun in Venice this day.  Because of the weather, there were fewer people on the streets, but we were ok.  We watched people fight the wind with their umbrellas and many of the trash cans were filled with umbrellas.  Again, there was no shortage of Indians hawking umbrellas around every corner…no doubt the same umbrellas that made it only a few blocks before finding their own trash can.  In the course of our Venice wanderings, we crossed all four bridges that span the Grand Canal and ended up exploring quite a bit of the city.

We spent the bulk of this day at St Mark’s cathedral.  We visited the museum portion before the cathedral opened and were able to watch the Catholic Mass services from the upstairs.  We caught up on a few of the audio tours that we hadn’t listened to yet, and those actually gave me a much better appreciation for the city and the sights.  I think two days was just about right to get our fill of Venice.

Day 9: Bologna
We barely missed a train out of Vernazza and had to wait an hour for the next one to arrive.  This day ended up being a 4-5 hour travel day on four different trains.  For our Florence – Bologna segment, I gave in and went with the Eurostar train just to see what it is like.  It was pretty cool but definitely overpriced.  It was amazing what a difference in people there was between the Regional trains that we had been using and the Eurostar train.  Once we got to Bologna, we made our way to the hotel as it started to rain.  I had been planning to use the hotel’s free bikes to cruise around the city, but decided not to with the weather.  This hotel was a steal of a deal and very impressive.  They clearly cater to the business crowd and we happened to need a room on a weekend night.  Our room was only 59 Euros and I am sure that it generally commands a price triple that during peak season.
     

We rode a bus into town and walked around while it rained.  We had our rain jackets on, so it was no big deal.  Bologna is a very different city than the ones we have visited so far.  All the shops are very high end and the people on the streets reflect that.  It quickly became apparent why Bologna isn’t in the guidebooks.  It is a big university town with high end shops.  We wandered around until it got dark and then headed back to the hotel.  The internet connection at the hotel was extremely fast and I was able to upload all my remaining pictures before we hit the hay.

Day 7: Vernazza & Monterosso
Cinque Terre is closer to the classic Italy that we Americans tend to imagine that Italy is like….before the modern world corrupted it.  There are very few cars or vehicles and the primary links between the towns are either the hiking trail or the train line.  Each town has its own personality.  We stayed in Vernazza and rented a room from a local for two nights.  Our first day there, we hiked to Monterosso, which is a rather strenuous hike over the mountainous coast, but has some fantastic views.  We enjoyed the beach in Monterosso and the sea water was surprisingly a good temperature.  We chilled on the beach for a while before walking further into town.  Fortunately we hadn’t gone too far when I realized that I had lost our room key.  We hurried back to the beach and managed to find it.  We hiked back to Vernazza as sunset was approaching and the vistas were amazing.  We stopped at an overlook of Vernazza to try to replicate the most well-known photo of Cinque Terre.  It was here that got me wanting to upgrade my camera, as my best shots were only half-decent and could have been much better with the right equipment.
           

 
Day 8: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza
We took our time getting going this morning.  By the time we got to the train station, the train we planned on taking was also 20 minutes late.  We eventually did make it to Riomaggiore and started a very enjoyable day.  Each town had its own personality and I was continually marveling at the terrace gardens.  In Manarola, I found it ironic that the school and playground was just 30 yards from the cemetery…you start almost right where you end.  The trail between Manarola and Corniglia was closed, so we had to wait for a train.  The trail from the train station at Corniglia to Vernazza was rather strenuous but had some great views.  We polished off the day with a swim in the sea.  I was surprisingly a decent temperature.  Jessica was so hungry that she ordered a 12” pizza for herself and I had one as well.  She took home a box with a few slices and I polished mine off.  Our time in Cinque Terre was very enjoyable and definitely memorable.

Day 6

While in Florence, I scoped out our arrival in Pisa to figure out what buses we would need.  Google Maps had the public transport for Pisa and it made a nice little route for us, including telling us to walk 71 meters this way, then 62 meters that way.  Taking public transport saves a lot of money over taking taxis, so we’ve only used a taxi once as a last resort when I was too tired to deal with the buses.  In Florence, I had saved our Pisa directions as a PDF and copied the file to my phone so that I would have a handheld guide.  When we got off our city bus in Pisa, it took us a little while to find our hotel, Santa Croce in Fossabanda.  All the streets on my Google directions PDF were not named, but we eventually found it.  Our hotel here is a converted monastery, and the rooms were very basic, except when you step into the bathrooms and land in this century.

We rented bikes from the hotel to cruise around the city because it was a decent walk to get to the main attractions of Pisa.  Renting the bikes was a good idea and we got to see more of the city that way.  The lawn near the leaning tower is called the best lawn in Italy and they apparently have city ordinances protecting it.  Policemen shooed off people who ventured onto the grass.  Oddly enough, in late afternoon the police must be on siesta and people went on the grass.  When we arrived there, there were absolutely hordes of people everywhere.  Everyone was trying to get their goofy tourist shots of holding up the tower.  We probably took more than our fair share.  We got tickets to climb the tower and though I balked at the 15 Euro price, I was glad we did it.  It was a cool experience.  It was interesting to see the big wear in the middle of the marble steps, all 620 of them on the way to the top.  At the top, you really get a feel for just how much the tower leans and some of the people were a little freaked out by it.  We did some shopping at nearby stands before heading back to our hotel on our bikes.  We stopped at a little kebab shop.  Eating in Italy, we more or less just follow our stomachs and noses, picking a few of the many shops as we go. 

Day 4

We didn't get to Florence until 2:45 PM because we waited a long time for our bus into town and then we took the slowest train, but it was also dirt cheap.  It was kind of fun to just watch the countryside and people watch at the small town train stops.  Florence is definitely a special city.  There were hordes of people walking the streets day and night.  It is a walking city.  Our lack of internet access in Rome made it difficult to plan for our Florence arrival and figuring out buses.  I ended up buying a bus map for the single bus ride from the train station to our hotel.  We took a piccola bus and marveled how it made hairpin turns onto streets that barely fit the little bus!  We weaved in and out of the foot traffic as was dragged our suitcases to our hotel, where we were met by the nicest little Italian grandma.  She was so nice and didn't speak a lot of English, but took to us like a grandma helping her grandkids.  She described distances in terms of walking and told us about the most beautiful walks, but said we could take the quick route and grab a bus.  Walking to the center of town was a mere 50 minutes in her words.  The room key was old-school and looked like it would open any door in the building.  After we got situated in our room, we headed out for some adventure and attempted to get into the Accademia museum without a reservation.  We were fortunate and got in.  Most of the museum was so-so, but it had the classic centerpiece David statue.  I must say it was rather impressive with its size and detail.  Jessica learned that it was David of the Old Testament...apparently she didn't know that before? 

After that, we took to the streets to be a part of the walking masses.  As night descended, another interesting note impressed me.  The narrow streets and ample lighting makes Florence a bustling glowing city at night.  The streets were very crowded until late in the night.  We strolled by the river and I think I took some of the best nighttime pictures I have ever taken!  Artists lined the streets with their wares and some were doing amazing replicas right on the street surface.  Jessica got her daily gelato fix and we enjoyed the evening before walking back to our hotel.

We tried to get reservations for the Uffizi the next day in the morning because it is closed on Mondays, but Tuesday was all full.  Today we made multiple walking loops around the city.  Autumn was in full swing here and the falling leaves in the park made for a great sight to enjoy.  I wanted to walk up to Piazzale Michelangelo but we took a less common route, dubbed as "the most beautiful jogging path in the world".  We didn't jog and surprisingly saw very few other pedestrians along the way.  The view from the terrace at the top was phenomenal, so much so that we bought a decorative wall hanging of the view at the top.  Jessica has been scarf shopping ever since we got to Italy and there were some good deals at the piazzale, but Jessica wanted to keep shopping.  We walked down to the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge. It turns out that the bridge is the site of all the expensive jewelry shops in town.  Jessica was in shopping mode still and we checked out one of the bigger markets in town.  It became apparent that the best deal on a scarf was back across the river and up the hill overlooking the city.  Along the way, we stopped to eat.  It was here that I learned what real lasagna tastes like and Jessica had some spaghetti. 

Rain was in the forecast, so we came prepared with our rain jackets and in early afternoon is started to drizzle.  We trekked up with the hill and most of the stands had closed, but fortunately the one with Jessica’s favorite scarf was still open and we secured the prize.  We went back down into the city and checked out some unexplored areas and stopped in to check out the cathedral.  I had planned on climbing the tower near the cathedral but I was so impressed by the sight at piazzale Michelangelo that I decided I didn’t need to spend the 6 euros a head and walk another 1000 steps.  Jessica decided that we just had to find a magic goodies shop that we had seen the previous day...so we wandered around until we found it and then started heading back to the hotel.  By the time we made it back to our hotel for the evening, we had pretty much walked three big circles around the city during our stay.  We had a LOT of walking in the Walking City.

The Flight & Day 1

It was a very long route to get to Rome, including a layover in Chicago and one in New York.  Our plane from JFK-FCO was delayed about an hour and I don’t think either of us got any sleep on that transatlantic flight.  I was completely drained by the end of our first day in Rome.  When we got to Rome, we took an 8 Euro shuttle bus to the train station in the center of town and stored our bags there while we enjoyed the first day.  We visited the Coliseum, Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, Pantheon, and Piazza Navona.  I bought Roma passes for us at the airport for 25 Euros and that allowed us free entrance at two sites and free use of the public transportation in the city.  We got into the Coliseum for free and were able to skip the big line, which was huge.  The whole day was amazing and we quickly realized that the whole center of Rome is one big museum.  Jessica had a lot of fun and said it made her feel like she was in the DaVinci Code.  I think the Pantheon was the highlight of the day for me.

We stayed on the outskirts of Rome at Hotel Laurence.  I had forgotten to record which buses we needed to switch to after getting to the last Metro stop Anagnina.  I gave in and took a taxi to the hotel from there, which ended up being 15 Euros and rather expensive.  I was way too tired to battle and was just glad to get to the hotel without much hassle.  Figuring out the hotel nuances was a bit of an adventure.  The hotel was relatively new and was clean.  We learned the hard way that they disable the thermostats in the fall, so the only way to get any air in the rooms is to leave the windows open.  I was exhausted so it wasn’t too big of a deal.  Jessica brought several Mountain House meals and between the time she asked if she should make one and it was ready, I was out like a rock.  We also learned that we needed to keep our hotel key inserted in a slot to have any lights in the room.

Day 2 & The Vatican

The hotel staff repeatedly insisted that they had wireless internet available in all the rooms and it was free, but I never found it.  In the process of resetting my internal clock, I was up at 5 AM with nothing better to do but look for some internet.  I walked around with my phone and found some neighboring networks that didn’t allow connection.  Finally on our way out the door, the guy told me to just sit in the lobby and keep trying to connect.  I told him I didn’t even see the network, and he finally admitted that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  Lame.  So I’m going to sit and try to connect even when it clearly doesn’t work?  Over the course of our stay, each of the hotel staff seemed indifferent to our concerns.  Oh well.  It was a relatively cheap room.

With no internet, we were unable to make any reservations at sites like the Vatican museum.  We should have gone to that museum in the afternoon to avoid the tour crowds, but we went in the morning anyway.  It was just under an hour or so wait in line.  The museum was amazing, definitely the best museum I have ever seen.  I had no idea they had such a huge Egyptian collection and it soon became clear that Romans did not play video games, the paint and sculpt.  There were endless rooms of art.  The Sistine Chapel was very impressive.  The guard was repeatedly yelling “No pictures!” and telling everyone to be quiet, but dozens of people were taking pictures and quite loud.  The tour groups were like cattle herds and each of the tour guides had a little pole with some unique item attached to the end, identifying their group.

After the Vatican Museum, we proceeded to St Peter’s Square.  That was another phenomenal site to see.  At both the museum and St Peter’s there was a giant line, but not to buy tickets or anything…but just for the 9/11 style security checkpoints.  St Peter’s was unbelievably huge and ornate.  Romans didn’t play video games, instead they built unbelievable cathedrals.  People were gathered around John Paul II’s burial site.  It was very interesting to see Michelangelo’s giant Peter statue, holding the keys that Jesus had bestowed to him to lead the church and a rather ironic symbol that they missed the boat on what happened to those keys after that.

Day 3

On our final day in Rome, we just tried to hit a few places during the day time that we had been interested in.  A temple was announced in Rome and it is planned for the far north of the city.  We tried to visit the area and it proved to be very difficult to get there on public transport.  We traveled all the way up there to a large mall just west of it, Porta di Roma.  I didn’t have much to go off of beyond that other than I knew that it was just east of the mall and I had the address.  To my surprise, it was nearly impossible to cross the roads that surrounded the shopping center.  I eventually took a picture from afar and we called it quits.  We did stop at McDonald’s in the mall and enjoyed the experience of Italian McDonald’s mayhem.  We were well beyond the tourist areas of Rome and had to speak only Italian.  There were 6 or 7 lines of total mayhem and probably 15-20 employees in back buzzing away.  There was a teenage worker walking around in the lines with a PocketPC and taking orders, then handing a sticky note with the order number written down to speed up the process.  I gave him my order.  We waited a little while but eventually landed our Mozarrello di Menu.  They ended up being pretty good.

From there, we headed back into the center of town to the Capitoline Museums.  This was the second site of our Roma pass sites.  The museum was ok, but I was almost more interested in the nice overlook of the Roman Forum.  We made our way to the Spanish steps, stopping to take pictures along the way and throw an American quarter into Trevi Fountain.  We made it to Borghese Gardens and started walking around.  We were kind of tired of walking and saw people riding motor-assisted bike carts.  We rented one for an hour for 10 Euros and started cruising around.  That was a lot of fun and probably one of my highlights of Rome.  We went all over the place and even up and down dirt trails.  There was apparently a concert that night in the Gardens with “Sei Zero” performing.  We really enjoyed the Gardens.  I had been planning to go to the Borghese Gallery, but we lacked internet access at the hotel to make the reservations and I wasn’t particularly interested in another museum/gallery here.  I think we had a lot more fun cruising the Gardens.  We stopped at Piazza del Poppolo before hopping on the Metro and returning to the hotel.

We usually like to stop by the beach when we're in California and this trip was no exception.  We usually visit the beaches in San Diego and Los Angeles, but this time I thought we'd try another beach.  We went a little further up the coast to Ventura and went to Marina beach.  The kids had fun there, but the water was too cold for them and it was a cloudy day, so they played in the sand, but that was about it.  Dallin crashed and went to sleep for most of the time at the beach.  We tried to stay at the Ventura KOA, but their whole campground was infested with cub scouts, so we opted to stay at the county park up the road.  It was nice and pretty quiet.

We had a blast on this road trip.  It ended up being pretty inexpensive and we saw a lot of awesome things.  During our travels, we also listened to the first two Percy Jackson books while the kids each watched their separate videos to maintain sanity.

Some fun facts from our trip:

Time away from home: 10 days

Total mileage: 2430 miles

Average cost of accomodations: ~$20/night (yay for camping!)

National parks visited: Death Valley, Yosemite, Sequoia National Park

Highest elevation: 9628 feet ABOVE sea level (Sonora Pass with 8 feet of snow)

Lowest elevation: 282 feet BELOW sea level (Badwater, Death Valley NP)

Highest temperature: 111 degrees (warm welcome home in Phoenix)

Lowest temperature: 46 degrees (Sonora Pass)

I had planned to camp at Lodgepole campground while we visited Sequoia National Park, but I saw that it was going to be pretty cold, so I opted to stay down in the valley in Visalia at the KOA.  Jessica was unknowingly thankful.  We did get to go swimming at the KOA.  I was hoping to grab some good pictures with the giant sequoias similar to our last visit.  However, I didn't realize last time when we visited that snow was covering all the signs saying that you weren't supposed to go up close to the prize sequoias because it might be harmful to their roots.  So, we weren't able to get an updated version of this picture:

We did hike up Moro rock and Kiara managed to do the whole climb by herself.  I also managed to get the classic "driving through the tree picture".  The last time we were there, the road was closed due to snow and it was a two mile hike to the the tree.  I'm glad we didn't do the hike last time and we just waited until we could visit the tree when the snow was open.

We did manage to get a few of the pictures with the prized sequoias, though their immense size wasn't as noticeable in our pictures due to the restrictions on getting next to them.  We did see more bears in Sequoia than in Yosemite.  The rangers weren't on top of their presence nearly as much as they were in Yosemite either.

Yosemite definitely makes it on my list of favorite places in the world, right next to Tetons and Hawaii.  I planned it to be the highlight of our trip, and it certainly did not disappoint.  We drove through a few years ago en route to a family reunion in Sacramento and didn't have more than an hour or so before sundown to spend in the park, but I knew then that we would have to return soon to pick up what we missed.  With the huge amount of snowfall this year, the waterfalls were unreal this time of year.

At Bridalveil Falls, there was so much water that it spilled over and turned the trail into a small river of its own.  We headed up to Glacier Point, which like Sonora Pass, opened just a few days before our arrival.  I had delayed this trip a couple of weeks in hopes that it would be open, and the waiting paid off.  Awesome panorama views.  It was also on this day that I discovered that I was missing a crosstrainer, so I was stuck with sandals for the duration of the trip.  Not long after that realization, the strap on the back of my sandals broke and I didn't have even a single pair of decent footwear.  This made it even more difficult in the snow at Sentinel Dome trailhead.  I could only last a minute or two in the snow.  We decided to do some sledding on our boogie board and that was fun.  We also realized the next day that we had left our little umbrella stroller with Jessica's jacket tied to it in the Glacier Point parking lot.  Attempts to recover it were unsuccessful.

        
Among our other Yosemite adven ture s included hikes to Mirror Lake, Mist Trail, and Cook's Meadow.  As with our prior road trip to Canada, the picture that inspired this trip was along the trail to Yosemite Falls.  Each of these hikes included great rewards along the trail or at the end of the trail.  Can't go wrong in this park!  On our way to go hike Cook's Meadow, we stopped a bear on our way into the park.  Of course, a horde of people had gathered and the rangers were already on it.  Just as I managed to park and jump out with the camera, the rangers ran after the bear and scared it away!  I only managed a couple shots from considerable distance, much like we did at Yellowstone.

Too many good pictures to choose from!

Also, Kiara was so proud of getting her junior ranger badge.

This day was quite a drive.  We went from 100+ degree furnace at Furnace Creek to 6-8 feet of snow at Sonora Pass, to somewhere in between on the western outskirts of Yosemite.  We stopped in Lone Pine so I could check out Mount Whitney, which is a peak quite high on my to do list in the next few years.

We stopped at Mono Lake, which hit my radar since I saw it featured in the BBC series "Life" just recently.  It's another place that is almost like a moonscape.  We went down to the lake, but with all the gulls, salt, mud, and smell...it was easy to see why very few people went near it. 

At this point, I had hoped we could jump over Tioga Pass, but the road was still closed due to snow even as we enter the month of June.  I had been watching the NPS road crew updates every day, but the crazy winter storms that were still rolling through as recently as last week ruined those plans.  Fortunately though, Sonora Pass opened a few days prior to our arrival, so we added an extra hour or two to our travels but still were able to check out some great Sierra Nevada scenery.  Jessica was more into reading her book or sleeping, but I enjoyed it.  We arrived in El Portal at our campground and soon learned that the campground had no water availability due to a broken pump.  That bummed me out because we had no showers available in Death Valley and now we'd go another day of dirt and grunge with no shower.  Forest camping w/o a shower is no problem, but after almost two days of inescapable arid heat, I was more than ready.  I debated jumping in the pool in the hotel lodge next door, but alas, I arrived 5 minutes after it closed.