National Lampoon's Italian Vacation

Since my mom's whole side of the family is having "Christmas in July" this weekend, and the theme is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, I thought I'd post about our Italian adventure a couple of weeks ago :)

My aunts, uncles, and cousin had been in Italy for about a week when I met them in Pisa on a Friday morning. When I woke up at 3am in England (way too early for me), it was 50 degrees, and when I landed in Italy it was 85 - heavenly! We headed off to the leaning tower of Pisa, which was beautiful. I have to say though, the rest of Pisa was rather disappointing. Well, there really wasn't much more to Pisa. I'm still glad I got to see it though ;)

Aunt Terri taking the classic leaning tower picture of Uncle Alan :)

On our way back to the villa, we pulled off the road at some small town and had the BEST meal. It was seriously so good, and it was made even better by our hilarious waiter. He was whistling when he came out to greet us, and when he figured out we were Americans he started whistling "Yankee Doodle" - it was hilarious!! (Get it, because we're Yanks?!) We probably spent two hours there enjoying our meal and homemade wine - yum!

My family had rented a villa in San Gimignano, which is in the Tuscany area, so we headed back to "San Jimmy" as my Aunt Mary Jo called it. It is this awesome walled medieval town in the middle of the Italian countryside, with great shopping and lots of wine and Italian leather purses ;)  After some shopping we spent the rest of the evening enjoying the beautiful weather on the villa's patio, complete with wine and chocolates and... Well, you don't need anything else when you have wine and chocolates!

San Gimignano

View from the villa

Nate and Uncle Ted

 Saturday morning we took the train down to Rome (after running into a family from Carroll, Iowa when we were dropping off the rental car - small world, huh?!) and explored a little bit. It was nice because we'd all seen the main sights in Rome, so we got to soak up the environment and culture (and food and wine). We had another amazingly long meal near Piazza Navona, with another great waitress - the food was so much better this time around!

The aunts and uncles on the train to Rome, keeping it classy with champagne ;) 

Piazza Navona

Pantheon

Nate: "Look, my belly is as big as Uncle Al's!"

Trevi Fountain at night

Spanish Steps...with the super annoying guys trying to give sell you roses

Sunday we walked to Vatican City for Mass, and afterwards we heard mention of the Pope possibly speaking from his apartment window, and sure enough we heard him! We ran over and there he was, giving his blessing - in like 7 languages! It was so overwhelming to see him, we weren't expecting it at all.

Our view on the walk to Vatican City

Alan, MJ, Terri, and Ted in the Vatican

Pope Benedict

Beautiful

Our last dinner, with another great waiter!

Before I left Monday we explored the ruins and the Coliseum area. There were these guys around the Coliseum who were selling cheap stuff (like umbrellas, sunglasses, etc). My favorite part of the day was eating gelato and watching the Rome Police chase those guys out of the Coliseum area. It was hilarious - the guy would run around the gelato stand, and the police would chase him in their car, so the policeman was essentially doing donuts around the stand! I wish I would have taken a video, maybe it's one of those things you had to be there for ;)

It was such a fun weekend, I can't believe I got to meet up with my family in Italy! Only thing missing was Thomas...I might have stayed in Italy if he wasn't waiting for me at home :)