Mediterranean Cruise Part 1

You know how when you first get home from a trip you are so excited to show people pictures and talk about it. But I was so busy I just barely went through the pictures. I was thinking wow, I will have so much to talk about, it will take three posts, but now I have kind of forgotten what I was going to say. Hmmm well see how it goes.

French Riviera - Nice and Monaco
I knew we were going to Monaco and I was really excited because of James Bond and Iron Man being filmed there, but I didn't realize that Nice was so close, and I was really excited to see it. Monaco blew me away, you couldn't go two seconds without seeing a car over $100,000. Aston Martin's and Rolls Royce Phantom's were like Civics.  Nice was really cute. We went to the farmers market and I got a really good crape.  Matt tasted Violet Gelato and said it was the best ice cream he had ever had.

Rome
Matt and I love Rome. It is amazing. The ruins and history, the Coliseum, Pantheon, Vatican, the fountains, the Gelato. We got to see some of the lesser known churches and areas that we hadn't before. We were mad because the Mamertine Prison, where Peter and Paul were thought to have been held has been completely commercialized and ruined. They built a ramp into the basement so you can't stand on the floor, what a joke. We saw the Baths of Caracalla, which are these huge ruins of not just baths, but the gym of their day.  It was really cool.

Pompeii and Amalfi Coast
Pompeii is really cool, last time Matt and I spent like 7 hours there. What was not cool was that our bus broke down on the way there. The coolest thing is that the ash settled around the bodies of the people who died, but then they decomposed leaving air pockets where the shape of their bodies once were.  They fill those with plaster and they can see the body positions people died in from the casts they make.  It is very powerful to see them. The Amalfi Coast is beautiful! It is little stacked Italian colored houses and beaches and steep, steep cliffs.  If you have seen the movie Only You with Robert Downey Jr. it was filmed in Positano.

Florence
Florence was okay, I think it is over-rated.  It has the Duomo church and cool bridges, but the Ufitzi museum is a bust. Just unimpressive naked man statue after naked man statue. I am reluctant to share this story, but it is pretty funny. So when Matt and I were engaged we went to Europe with my family. We went to the Ufitzi and all the naked man statues are on pedistols so you know what is right at eye level. I was walking around and I asked Matt, "Is that what they really look like?" Cause honestly it looked weird to me. He starts laughing because it actually did look weird because the statues are uncircumcised. Anyway, it was pretty funny.

Venice
I LOVE Venice. I was going around taking pictures and I was going a little crazy because every corner I wanted to take a picture.  I love water and boats, I wanted to be a marine biologist when I grew up, so there is just something about Venice. Narrow streets, bright colored buildings. Glass and mask shops, some of which were kinds creepy.  I think Venice is my favorite city in Italy by far.

That is all for now, I sure got a second wind. Greece and Turkey next.