Buena Vista B&B Rome

... Renaissance, Papal collections, Cardinal collections, Family Collections, Modern, Contemporary, Pasta, Archaeological, Catacombs, and Literary. About 40 major museums, not counting …

the Vatican Museums – acquisitions and commissions enabled by indescribable, sustained wealth and power. Nothing else like it, beyond financial measure. 6 square foot Raphael paintings sell for $50 million. He painted something like 6 ...

We woke up feeling a little worse for wear, but not too bad, after the previous night's festivities. We had a quiet morning, then set off onto the streets of Rome for more sightseeing. After a quick look at the Quirinale Palace, the next monument we discovered were the "Golden Arches" – what can I say ...

... Then out of nowhere, it started to rain so hard!!! We had a 10 min. walk to the metro, where we both got drenched from head to toe! So we decided to call it a day, and headed back to the hotel. The next day we didn't do much. Unfortuantely, it was still raining. We had lunch, tried some amazing gelato, did some shopping and walked around the city knowing it was our last day here. Next, we are headed to Milan, Italy!!!

... When the train got to the station, we planned to help the couple we had met with their luggage, because they had way to much to pull onto the train in the time allotted at each stop. The doors that were closest to us when the train finally stopped didn't open, so my mom pulled one of the doors so we could get in. I was second with one of the couples' bags and my enormous backpack on, and the door shut on me. Not gently. I had to force the door open and ...

This morning we started with a Contiki tour of imperial Rome. We got to see Il Colloseo early before all the hawkers line up outside it, the day was beautifully sunny (we've had amazing weather in Italy, apart from the first two days it's been brilliant sunshine most of the time) and everything looked very pretty in the morning light. We then walked past the Arch of Constantine (it's amazing what they could build back then) through to the roman forum which ...

... 30 August Day two of our traipse around Rome. Today we gave 'route 6' a go. We started at 'the Roman tomb of the unknown soldier' which I though was pretty cool but apparently is hated by Romans due to its oversized monuments. We then went past a white marble column that stood 50m tall and had engravings in it which were pretty cool and worked our way down the road, past some ruins that used to function as a shopping mall and to the Roman Forum which now is also ...

... to see my sister! Michelle, is on a school trip in Italy so we met up with the group. It was so weird to be surrounded by Whitehorseans again, but once we recovered from the shock we had a great time catching up with all our friends. They let us join them for dinner and Michelle, Gwen, her friend Luke and I all hung out in the evening. The next day we got to tag along with the group. We hopped on their ...

... Bought our tickets to San Giovanni Valdarno this morning - we leave here mid-morning and arrive there around 1:30 - Col's at the hotel brushing up on some last minute homework and doing her entrance test as we speak. We bought an Italian sim card for our phone today as well, and plan to have that in from time to time, but we'll be back with our NZ number 99% of the time.

Wow! What a wonderful trip. Roma was the city. Although I am not as fortunate to have travelled as much as others, I can say that it was one of my favorite cities. The people, the food, the scenery, and the history was all just too much for me. There was so much to see and do...it was overwhelming...so much so that I really didn't care what I did while I was there... While in New York, I could not help but ...

... In the afternoon we strolled about the Boboli Gardens, the Porcelain Museum (not as garish and ugly as expected) and the treasures museum (where we managed to find the ugliest "thing" we have seen on our whole trip - will explain another time). The following day we visited the famed Uffizi gallery, home of many well known works of art. On the advice of guidebooks we had set aside the whole day to wander about in there. However ...