Chasing Bluebirds

Italy

I know I wrote about our italy trip last summer but not sure if I truly laid out the things I learned about traveling to Rome with kids. I still think London, Paris, Rome are amazing places to take kids (Venice too, by the way) because there is so much to do and easy to get around. While researching for our trip I stumbled onto many wonderful blogs and one of them seemed to have tips that interested me more than otheres. I recently offered to share some of my Rome tips and was taken up on my offer. I didnt realize it would be posted word for word, but I think it came out pretty good!! Here is the link.

Ahhhhhh to be back in Rome! 

time warp

having a few more days off, i was ablet to FINALLY go through my iphotos and fix many of the goof ups that happened when i tried to put all of my photos from my old comuter onto the new. for some reason i had random duplicates all over the place, probably 1/3 of my storage taken up by this goof. i still haven't finished, but i have put a dent into it. along the way i came across lots of fun photos so i thought i'd do a little time warp for 2013:

photos of the mountains and our catalina trip from several years ago (that was a pet cemetery we stumbled on during a hike)...plus one of maggie as a puppy. healing up and getting ready to get back to it!

London, chasing the sun

my mom and i would decide what to do each day depending on the weather. we actually got lucky with a few sunny days

it was a challenge to find the Dulwich Picture Gallery, but we made it! a beautiful park was adjacent to it so we took the scenic route
and caught a glimpse of the London Eye on our bus ride back
one of my favorite trees was in full autumn show:
and on one or our last days i saw a vespa club zoom by on regent street
just out and about

Cemetery tour

London: hmmmmmm.... what to do? been here many times and seen so many things.... let's check out ANOTHER cemetery! Actually, my mom and i have a "thing" for any ancient cemetery. they can be creepy, yes, but i find them extraordinarily beautiful too. we decided to hoof it out to hampstead heath to one of the oldest victorian cemeteries called "highgate cemetery" it is a good 30 minute bus ride and then a little hike, plus you have to go when they are offering tours... only took us 2 tries to get it right. :)

the tour was very informative: i learned that London became industrialized much earlier than many other cities with the population swarming into the city... there became a large demand for places to bury the dead. there were no cemeteries in the city and people were traditionally buried beneath churches where with the increase in bodies, fumes began to fill the churches and made people sick
cemeteries were not allowed within the city so around the edge of London, many cemeteries sprang up. highgate is one of the first
victorians liked to bury their dead in the ground rather than putting them in crypts above ground. they chose decorations from a catalogue, it was quite a big business
a rare example of a crypt
common victorian decoration: upside down torch still burning
church above the cemetery, many victorians visited the cemetery weekly after church services
angels were a common decoration, most were picked from a catalogue but this is a custom made sleeping angel
snake chasing it's tail
i would recommend this cemetery if you could only see one in London, it is very special!

paris dog cemetery

today we visited the paris dog cemetery

 

we also took a walk around the tuileries gardens, it was raining but not too hard so umbrella in hand... we took a little tour
the louvre is here as well

d'orsay museum

fontaine st michel


italian lunch in paris and a metro ride home: fun day!!

paris

two weeks hanging with my mom... london and paris

my mom and i made it to a garden we tried to see last time we were here like 17 years ago!

we spent 2 days recovering from our flight in london then took the eurostar to paris (i think its a great way to go and pretty cheap) my mom was wiped out that first day in paris but i had some energy still so i took a walk to the eiffel tower and around our neighborhood. the sun was out and with approaching rain in the forecast i was glad to get some photos with nice light
here for a week and then back to london... stay tuned!

brodsky contest

so before we left, our orthodontist told us about a photo contest to win an ipad: the girls have to wear their "brodsky" shirt in 2 out of 3 photos of 1: vacation 2: beach and 3: disneyland (luckily they include downtown disney which is a shopping area next to disneyland that is free, disneyland is beyond crowded in the summer so we avoid it like the plague) going through all the photos i found it neat to see all the places we thought would be good for the contest

gelato in rome (the best!)
coliseum
pompeii
top of mount vesuvius

looking into the crater at mount vesuvius

st angelo (castel) in rome
mini coliseum in pompeii As you can probably tell from all the sweat in these photos, it was HOT !!! time to send them off and see who wins. :)

rome due (that's "2" in italian)

one of the highlights of our trip was going to this museum. i found it on trip advisor, just a few weeks before our trip i decided to actually look up attractions, it was number one! check out the website, it is a ruin that was found underneath a federal building that was excavated out. they built glass floors over the top of the house, some places you walk over the inside and also the roof in some places. then they put together a slide show, movie type thing that walks you through the place highlighting certain areas. there are all kinds of special effects and neat modern technology along with the archeological information. near the end they show a movie about trajans column which explains the entire story written around from bottom to top. it feels like the best pbs show you've ever seen and at the conclusion you are sent down a long hall that opens up on to the REAL trajan's column! it is so unexpected too. the premise is that the unearthed house is at the level of the column and was most likely built during that time (other columns have been found during the excavation too). it leaves you with the excitement the archeologist are feeling with this remarkable discovery.

another place we stumbled on (after passing it several times on the hop on and off bus) was the castel sant angelo


(the girls had their orthodontist's t shirts on for a photo contest they participated in)

this is the view from our rome hotel, i loved listening to the swallows as they swooshed in circles around this open area. ciao!

rome

we started our adventure in rome, i chose to do a week here because renting an apartment would be the cheapest way (i found out fast that a hotel room to accomodate 4 is very tricky, most hotels have doubles or triples but for 4 you need to get a "family room" which at a cheapy place can still be 3 or 400 dollars a night). i love to travel slow, really take my time and settle in to a place and a week in rome is very doable. i was surprised at how small rome is and how quickly we could walk from one place to the next.
our first day, checking out the coliseum. i wasn't sure what i would think of the coliseum but i was blown away. it was so ancient looking and well preserved and clean. worries about long lines were alleviated (thanks rick steves) with the purchase of a roma pass and the crowds weren't really that bad.

we enjoyed the hop on hop off bus, there were mixed reviews on trip advisor (we took the green line) which we got lucky to catch without many long waits but they decided to change up their route a couple times which left us stranded. oh well! we learned a lot about where everything was located between the ride and the walking which i love to do on the first couple days in a new place. if you only have two or three days in rome, this bus might not be worth the price. if you have a week? it can help get you around while you get over jet lag and that overwhelmed feeling.
the typewriter or wedding cake
with churches everywhere you look, we stumbled on more than a few weddings. how cool to be married in rome! i love how chris is just walking by and everyone is cheering the couple
out and about, palm trees were a surprise to me
romans built buildings and walls on top and connected to other buildings and walls, it was described to me as one big lasagna. layer upon layer of buildings were built and everything is recycled, nothing wasted. walking around is a architectural feast, even better than i imagined.
i went a little overboard on the shrine photos

i wasn't sure how we would manage eating in rome, with kids and being a vegetarian... just wasn't sure. i bought elizabeth minchilli's eat rome app and this one too. honestly, i wish i used them more but we were so dang jacked up from jet lag and the "american" meal times we never failed to arrive at a place when it was closed. i totally blame myself for being slow to check the days and times the place operated, duh, but once i got hip to checking we wouldn't find a (not to expensive) place anywhere near us when we were all beyond starving. luckily gelato filled in for many a lunch! what was our routine? here goes: breakfast of eggs, leftovers from dinner, cereal and lots and lots of expresso (we bought our own giant one). having ate a huge breakfast, we wouldn't even bother with lunch and instead snack on fruit, cliff bars and stuff like that. we drank about 10 huge bottles of water a day (it was close to 100 degrees in june, whew!) so food wasn't as big a deal as water, water, water. sometime around 4 or 5 we would try and track down a restaurant or pizzeria (here's where i would drag everyone around town to all the closed places on the app) and usually settle for whatever we found was open. guess what? everything STILL tasted great, never had a bad meal in rome, ever. sometimes we had to pay too much, but we always ate well and a lot and it was yummy!
our neighborhood... we stayed down the street from the coliseum a great place to stay as there was two metro stops nearby
shrine love
hanging out... more to come on our rome week, puglia, basilicata and tuscany!

italian adventure

so we are BACK! what a long long long and amazing trip. i could stay forever, but i have to admit it gets hard to really hoof it like you mean it every single day after 25 days. i became somewhat of a zombie by the time we got to istanbul (although the culture shock was exactly what i needed to give me a second wind) i plan on giving out more details of our itinery, in case my huge following is interested so stay tuned. for now, here are a few highlights:

emily at the harem in topkapi palace, istanbul
finding frances mayes house, cortona
pompeii (!!!!!)
trulli's!!!
the kids loved to take their own photos, lecce
recycled art, ostuni
our pad in puglia (dreamy)
so along with the many other things i've got going on, i'll try to get some organized posts together in case you are interested in taking a tour of southern italy. i spent so much time on the research (which i find is half the fun) i couldn't believe how well executed this trip went, there was seriously zero glitches and our expectations were often exceeded. ciao for now!