Monday, June 2, 2008

Italy

Some Italy pictures with captions :)

We flew Lufthansa to Munich and then Munich to Venice.
We were given a hot lunch and dinner on the flight.
Best economy class food I've had :) and I would definitely fly on Lufthansa again.


Our view over Germany right before landing--very green.
The sky was the bluest sky I've ever seen! The sky was the most amazing electric blue color around 8 pm at night as we were boarding our next flight--never seen anything like it.

Wonderful tasting gelato! Very strong flavors and a cheap treat
too at 1 euro a scoop!
The one below was lemon flavored.

Due to the time difference, we woke up on our first morning in Venice quite early so we headed out to San Marco square--having it almost all to ourselves. The sunlight was amazing in the morning! What they say about the light in Venice being unique is true--so beautiful.

I call this picture, "Catch a tiger by the tail..." :)


Ahhh...watermelon that doesn't cost $50+! And very sweet too! Fruit in Japan is very expensive so we took advantage of the "cheap" and delicious fruit in Venice. The half a watermelon below cost less than 4 euros in the local supermarket!
There was lots of graffiti in Venice and Rome, but it didn't bother us much. Most of the graffiti seemed rather "tame" as you can see by one example below.

If you are ever driving in Italy (especially Tuscany or smaller towns) a GPS system will save your life! We are so glad we opted to rent one of these. It saved us lots of time and avoided the stresses of stopping to look at maps to figure out what obscure street we might be on. Although, a couple times the GPS wanted to take us on some off-road adventures on very rocky unpaved-unamed roads ;) It's not perfect, but was great for our trip.

This is one reason I picked the place we stayed in Tuscany--the gorgeous pool with amazing views. Unfortunately it rained much of the time we were in Tuscany and was cooler also, so besides a quick dip in the pool, we weren't able to take advantage of it like we wanted. The view was definitely worth staying here though.

We really took advantage of our fireplace on the colder nights in Tuscany.

The neighbor's dog (to right of Chris) escorting us the whole way on our walk near where we stayed in Tuscany. Very friendly!

Views that literally took our breath away in Cortona (town where the movie and book "Under the Tuscan Sun" is based). We both highly recommend seeing this town. We also ended up driving to the lake you see in the distance in the picture below.

The variety of doors in Italy is astounding. All very unique! I wouldn't be surprised if there were a book with thousands of pictures of doors that can be found in Italy.

Fuzzy caterpillar by the pool

These flowers can be found everywhere in the countryside and also were spotted in downtown Rome. These are the famous flowers you will see dotting Italian countryside paintings.