Ciao, Venice!!

Our two days in Venice were great, and it was fun to explore the shops and look at the murano glass, Commedia D'ellarte masks, and see the seafood people in the side cafès were eating, but I was happy to head to Rome.

Today we took a nice, air-conditioned 6 hour train to Rome. On the way we passed field after field of sunflowers, as well as two flocks of sheep being herded by a sheperd!! We have arrived in Rome, and we are staying in a "nice" hotel tonight right near Roma Termini (main train station) and the colosseum, so we can get up at about 5am and head to Vatican City and the Sistine Chapel...rumor has it the lines start forming at 6:30am and get progressively worse as the day wears on!!Our hotel is Hotel D'Artists and it is very upscale compared to our usual haunts - we have a rooftop terrace! Sadly, we are staying outside the city the next 3 nights after this, which is much cheaper.

A word about Italy...while it is quite beautiful and full of history, I seem to have forgotten the little idiosyncrasies I encountered when I was in Florence and Pisa 9 years ago; I forgot how much everyone smokes, how dirty and streets are and how long all the lines are because there are typically 4,000 people waiting in line for tellers, cashiers, etc. and only one person working at a very slow pace. I will leave you with that thought for the evening...

Hopefully we'll have an audience with the Pope tomorrow (haha)!

XOXO - C & J

P.S. I apologize for any errors...each time we find a computer the keyboard is different (which is driving me nearly crazy) and there is no spellcheck!