Italia!!

Hello from Italy! If you have been checking this blog for news from The Boot, I'm sorry it's taken so long for a message to appear. The good news is that the reason I haven't written is that Diane and I have been busy, busy, busy getting to know as much of the country as we can in just a short period of time.

First, the boring kinds of stuff that is interesting to people like parents: our flights were fine, our accomodations are (mostly) good, and we are eating well. Now, for a fuller picture of the last 3 days. Diane and I managed to find each other in the Rome airport with minimal trouble. We headed into the Eternal City and started walking and I don't think we've stopped walking since. We've seen the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Bascillica, the dome of St. Peter's, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum (my favorite so far). We took a night walking tour (for those parents again, yes, it was perfectly safe) and went to the Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain (threw in 3 coins each...there's a rumor that will lead to a marraige for each of us), and the Spanish Steps. Oh and ate ice cream...lots and lots of ice cream.

We left Rome this morning at 6:52 am (yes, that's oh-six-hundred-hours in the morning, sir!) to come to Venice. Most of the countryside was shrouded in fog, and for much of the ride my brain was shrouded in fog as I slept, but it was good to be out of the city and into the interior of the country. We arrived in Venice at around 11:30 am and have walked through most of the city by this point. What an amazing place! And what amazing wine! And the tiramisu! Let me sing the praised of the Tiramisu! And the ice cream! Truly, though, the canals, the palaces, the Bascillica of St. Mark's are all truly amazing.

There is a lot I would like to reflect upon about this trip so far --about the effect that so much world travel is having on the culture of places and the experience of travel itself, about the wonder of literally walking on the stones of so much history, of the excitement of seeing places you have only heard about, about all the mis-conceptions I had of Italy (did the rest of you know that the Sistine Chapel isn't in St. Peter's -- and, if so, why didn't you tell me???) But, I think those will wait for another time...I only have a half hour to use the internet and this keyboard is hard to understand. In the meantime, please know that we are safe, happy, having a good time and truly wish that you were here (well, not really, because it would have been a lot harder to find rooms if ALL of you were here, but you understand the sentiment).

It's not likely that we will have internet access while hiking in the Dolomites (we head to Belluno tomorrow) -- so this may be the only Italy post. I'll write more when we return and post pictures.

Buonasera.