can't sleep

It's almost two in the morning, but I still can't sleep.

A couple Tylenol pm's and a Benadryl and I still can't sleep.

Thank goodness for Netflix.

I'd work on an Italy blog post, but my brain isn't working too well.  It went to bed hours ago.

It's this stupid cough.  At first it was allergies. 

Once upon a time I would insist that we plant winter grass.  What's the point of having gorgeous Arizona winters if your grass is all brown and dead and icky? 

Then a couple years ago I began to "react badly" to this time of year.  Namely the thought of thatching (cutting our lawn down to nothing to plant winter grass) made me want to claw my own eyes out.  I consider my eyes my best feature, and I like to see, so I don't think that would be such a good idea.  I also don't ask John to plant winter grass anymore. 

Anyway with the itchy eyes, there is also the sneezing, and the general miserable-ness, and this year I got a cough.    The desire to gouge out my eyes has mostly gone, but the cough is still here.

Last week John and his dad (who spent the week with us) were telling me to go to the doctor.

"I'm not spending $15 on a co-pay so a doctor can tell me what I already know.  You have a cough, take some medicine, drink plenty of fluids, get some rest."

I started to get bored repeating myself.  "I'm fine... it's just allergies....I'm fine...it's just a cough..."  (apparently the sight of me hacking out a lung has a few people worried)

So, just to amuse myself, I 've started to change my tune.  Ask me if I'm "okay" after a particularly nasty coughing spell and depending on my mood I might tell you I'm dying. 

I told Maddie she could have all my jewelry.  Even my wedding ring.  Burying people with jewelry is just a waste.

I told Nick to say nice things at my funeral.  I told him to tell everybody how pretty I was.

John doesn't think I'm that funny.  He's been having to field questions from the kids. "Is mom really gonna die?"

No, it's just a cough.  A really obnoxious cough that won't let me sleep at 2 in the morning and leaves me dragging but and lazy and devoid of energy during the day, but still-  JUST.  A.  COUGH. 

The end.

But when I do eventually die (in  40 or 50 years or so), I'd like it stated for the record that I would rather not be buried with my jewelry.  Even my wedding ring.  What a waste, sitting there, in a box, six feet underground, while my corpse rots around it.  And also hopefully my kids will say something nice at my funeral.

(But while we're on the subject, I also think viewings are stupid, I don't need anybody staring at my dead corpse saying stupid things like "how life-like" I look, and it's a good bet to look for the "in lieu of flowers..." announcement asking people to donate instead to their favorite charity, or my favorite charity, or whatever.  Just sayin'.)

Accommodations

I'd like to take a slight detour from the vacation slide show to talk about hotel rooms.

I didn't take any pictures.  I should have, but I wasn't sure I'd care when I got home.  "And this is the hotel we stayed in in Rome, and this is the one we stayed in in Venice..." 

Boring, right?  Nobody cares.

But I've been thinking about them since we got back, and a couple places have stood out in my mind, and so I beg your indulgence while I discuss our sleeping arrangements. 

( I realize the only people left reading this at this point are either related to me, planning their own trip to Italy, or are procrastinating doing something else super important like picking their toes or watching paint dry.)

Anyway, obviously we mostly stayed at Marriotts and their partner hotels so we could use points.  Which meant we stayed at pretty nice places - for free.  

The hotel in Venice was actually the former French embassy.  (It was really nice)  It even had this super cute (and pretty big) garden in the back (unheard of in Venice!)  I did take some pictures of that.  John and I kept thinking how much the kids would love to run around and explore, and it was perfect for playing hide and seek, except it was a nice place and probably didn't cater a whole lot to families with "active" children.  Other than the cute couple from South Africa, we were by far the youngest couples staying there. 

And then there was the hotel in Milan.  Being a platinum member, John is used to getting upgraded almost every time he stays at a Marriott.  Only this time I was sure I didn't hear correctly- "Welcome, Mr. Berrett, thanks for staying with is, we'd like to upgrade your room to the Presidential Suite..."  In the elevator ride up I asked if I heard that correctly.  He didn't think I did either.  Nah, can't be.  Umm, yeah, it was.   It was the biggest room ever.  It had a walk in coat closet, a hallway, entertaining/living area, huge bedroom, two bathrooms, and a huge corner patio with tables and seating for 12, and room for more.  (now I'm gonna brag) Guess how much we paid?  Nothing.  Seriously.  

 In all fairness though, I think the room was on the list to be renovated.  It was slightly dated, the gorgeous wooden table had huge scratches in it, the body jets in the shower didn't work, one of the hair dryers died so I had to go into the other bathroom, and there was a noise coming from the ceiling in one of the bathrooms which was slightly disturbing.  If we had paid full retail for that room, I am sure we would have been really annoyed.  But even if we had paid for a regular room and gotten that instead, we would have been totally ecstatic.  My suspicion is they are currently just giving it out to whatever lucky Marriott rewards member with the highest points happens to be staying there that night.

But dollar for dollar, I think I preferred the simple B&B's.   Free is the right price, but we didn't have enough points for EVERY night, and we wanted a bit of a different kind of experience so we stayed in a couple B&B's.

They were a little harder to find, (at one point I got out and wandered down an alley on foot...) and both nights we got in late, but the rooms were comfy and breakfast was good.  And the proprietors were super nice.  Just genuine, nice people.  For the most part they barely spoke any English, so I was the translator for the group (as I was the only person who tried to learn any Italian before arriving there) and so communicating was a bit of a challenge, but fun.  At the bigger hotels, the staff is always polite and friendly, in a professional (fake) way, but at the B&B's it was real, and personal.  One time this little old lady was showing us pictures of some festival in the local town that takes place in the summer.  They "paint" murals with flowers on the town square floor.  Pretty amazing.  She proudly showed me her work, and she didn't speak a word of English. 

Another night we stayed in Padua.  We found the place at the last minute (we were trying to keep the schedule flexible,) and John found a place on his phone in an internet cafe in Florence. We arrived late, and the part of town we were staying in looked a little scary.  Bars on windows...seemingly abandoned buildings... We were all thinking "oh crap..."  But the place was really nice on the inside.  Modern looking, comfortable beds, fancy bathrooms, our shower doubled as a sauna, and our friend's had body jets, but once again, it was the people who really made the place.  For breakfast the guy who owns the place (Lorenzo?) made me some hot chocolate.  I think I've only had hot chocolate like this one other time.  It came powdered in a packet, and you just add hot milk, but it was like drinking a melted down dark chocolate bar.  And good chocolate at that.  It was so thick and rich.  The guy was super nice, and was asking me (his English was better than my Italian, but that's not saying much) "You do not have hot chocolate in America?"  And then I tried (and probably failed) to explain that yes we do, but it's nothing like this.  He ended up giving me several packets to take home with me.  And to think that we made him nervous.  He got all sweaty and nervous practicing his English on Nolan and Mindy while John and I got ready.

We'll always be Marriott Loyalists, (cause 'free' totally rocks) but I do admit that if it comes to actually paying money out of my own pocket for a hotel room, I'd think very seriously about a small family owned B&B.  Even if the staff doesn't speak impeccable English, and we don't get "upgraded" and the room doesn't automatically come with extra pillows.  (it's in John's profile.)

Pisa

Because it was on the way, we made a quick side trip into Pisa.

There's not much there but the famous leaning bell tower, but we figured since we were in the neighborhood and all that...

And actually, it was a little more impressive than we all thought it would be.

I thought it was prettier in person.  White marble with colorful marble inlays.

And there's a matching church and baptistry to go along with it.

The funny thing is though, you get there and even though you know it leans, it is famous only because it leans, you're still like "Holy cow!  that thing is really leaning, isn't it?"

And because I love those little tidbits of info- it took a couple hundred years to build.  It was built on marsh land, so it started leaning right off the bat, but they kept going anyway.  Then for some reason after only four levels, they stopped.  For a hundred years.  Then another guy came along and started building it again.  He added three more levels, but tried to adjust the tilt, so if you look at it at the right angle, you can see how levels those three levels are a little straighter, and then it sat again for another hundred years, when someone else came along and added that little top level, and adjusted the angle again, to make the top level straighter. (does that make sense? am I explaining that right?)

Oh, and here's the obligatory picture of Mindy "propping up" the tower.

Ancient Rome and other stuff

Day two in Rome we spent mostly exploring ancient Rome.

Practically across from our hotel was a little church with a crypt attached to it.  Not every day you get to see artwork made out of the bones of dead Capuchin Monks.  Weird and morbid and fascinating all at the same time.

We headed out on foot towards the Colosseum and the Forum.

Of course on the way when an opportunity too good to pass up presented itself, I had to take advantage.  "Hey, Nolan, do me a favor.  Stand right here.  Smile!  Perfect."

I guess living in a country that's relatively young compared to almost any other country makes it pretty amazing but at the same time impossible to wrap my brain around the fact that certain things have been around for so long.  "Hey, look-  that's Trajan's column.  That's been standing there since AD 113."  Just a century shy of two millennia.  The little statue of St. Peter on the top is newer, it replaced a statue of Trajan in 1587.  It only celebrated it's 400th birthday a couple decades ago.  

The big white building is only like 50 years old.  It's a monument to the first king of a united Italy.  (Italy as we know it is actually younger than the USA.)  Many Romans hate that building.  They call it things like "the typewriter" or "the dentures".   It's big, it's showy, it's expensive to keep that white marble clean, and it is plopped on some ancient ruins which shall now never be excavated. 

We passed the ruins of what I think were Nero's palace. 

This is Nero.

I say "I think" because they were pretty expansive, and I would sooner believe it to be a whole section of a city with hundreds of homes than one man's palace.  Of course many believe that he was responsible for burning down a huge section of the city just so he could have a place to build his palace...

We finally made our way to the Colosseum where we found a tour group to join (I mentioned before that you do pay extra, but you get to skip the long lines, and get an informative tour- so usually worth it, unless you have all the time in the world and are already an expert on the subject).

Did you know that just like modern day stadiums, the doorways were all numbered?  And in Roman numerals too.  Imagine that.

As impressive as it is nowadays, you stand there and look around and try to imagine the place in it's prime. Gorgeous white marble facades and stairways, columns and plastered ceilings.  It's really nothing much more than a skeleton of it's former splendor. 

Our tour guide was quite descriptive with his tales of the battles fought on the arena floor.  Apparently once they even flooded the place and the spectators got to watch battleships going after each other.  The crews of which were comprised of prisoners who were promised their freedom if they won. 

Afterwards we toured Palatine hill (that's where the word 'palace' comes from) 

I think this is a former courtyard? (so much info to take in, so little room in my brain to retain it all)

  

And I just like this ancient bit of flooring.

Once again the mix of ancient and modern day never ceases to amaze me.  The laundry just looked so out of place.

The Roman Forum - according to my Rick Steve's guide book "ancient Rome's birthplace and civic center... Just about anything important that happened in ancient Rome happened here... Arguably the most important piece of real estate in Western civilization..."

There was so much to see in Rome, two days was not enough, (but when is it ever?)

The Vatican and the real religion in Italy- soccer

We spent the afternoon touring the Vatican.  There's a big museum, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's.   On our way there we had to cross a bridge, and we found the most curious thing. 

Big giant clusters of padlocks on the bridge.  I snapped a couple of pictures, then headed off on our merry way. 

Later I figured out that it's the thing to do in Europe. Basically, two people (best friends, soul mates, married couple, whatever) will write their names on the padlock, lock it onto a bridge somehow, then each of them will chuck their key to the lock in the river, thereby symbolically "locking up" their relationship forever.  Kinda cheesy, but whatever.  My question is though- what's up with the combination lock? Somehow I think that couple didn't get the memo on how it's supposed to work. 

(and no, John and I did not participate in this little ritual. Besides not having a lock, it's a little too cheesy for me, and I figured those marriage vows we took 15 years ago are still sufficient.)

We had an appointment to go on a tour of the Vatican.  That's the way it's done over there.  You can stand in line for hours on your own, or pay extra (about twice as much- sometimes more), get a guided tour, and skip the line.  (It's usually totally worth it- of course some tours are better than others. )

We saw some pretty cool stuff inside the museum. 

Supposedly though, the museum is supposed to be huge, like the Louvre, with all the Catholic church's acquisitions over the centuries, so my guess is we didn't see that much.   This really rare purple marble bowl was supposedly filled with wine during the days of Nero (if I got my story straight- it could have been a different emperor who was fond of the drink)

Recognize that ceiling?  Yep. It was patterned after then Pantheon. Told ya so.  

And that's the floor.  I kinda felt bad walking across it.  It's actually a mosaic comprised of tiny little colored tiles.  Crazy.

Apparently I have a thing for ceilings.  This was the ceiling in the map hallway, or the tapestry hallway.  I don't know, I was too busy looking at the ceiling.  I think though, it would be dangerous to have a ceiling like that in my own house.  I run into too many walls/furniture/door frames as it is.

The Sistine chapel was pretty cool.  Sorry, though.  No cameras allowed. 

Personally I liked St. Peter's Basilica. 

Holy Moley. Biggest and grandest church on the planet.  For reals. You just kinda stand there with your mouth open, trying (and failing) to take it all in  

Words and photos cannot express....   Every inch of it was carved and gilded and decorated with colored marble inlays.  Personally I don't know how people can actually go to church and listen to the sermon with so much to look at.  And all of it amazing and gorgeous and huge.  That brown canopy thing?  I think I heard it was SEVEN STORIES tall. 

Those words up there? Each letter is 6 feet tall. 

But a personal highlight for me was seeing Michelangelo's La Pieta.   A couple of years ago, I taught a lesson on this sculpture to Nick's 6th grade class.  Michelangelo was only 24 when he carved it. It's the only piece he ever signed.   It's really, really breathtaking in person.  It's behind bulletproof glass cause some nut job attacked it with a hammer screaming "I am Jesus Christ!".    

After that we had to run to participate in the real national religion.  Football.  Or soccer as we Americans call it.   

So fun.  Roma vs Atalanta (I think).  Roma (the home team, therefore the team we were rooting for) won.  I personally really enjoyed watching the fans (probably more than the actual game itself, although that was fun too.)  Mindy and I missed the singing, we were in line for concessions,  but apparently that was very entertaining.   John made a friend with a lady sitting behind him.  At first sight glance she looks like a conservative, well dressed lady in her 50's.  Turns out she's a rabid Roma fan.  Even though John speaks barely a word of Italian, even he could tell her vocabulary was pretty colorful.  I think she gave John a hug or a high five or something after the game was over.  She was pretty happy her team won.

  

  

Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time the day was over.

Italy- part 1

I've been home for a few days now, but I've been putting off blogging because I just don't know where to begin.  I want to get it all down before I forget, but there's just so much, and I've been kinda feeling run-down lately and don't know if it's jet lag, exhaustion from the whirlwind trip, or the allergy medicine I've been taking to curb the desire to scratch my eyes out, or some combination of the above.

Anyway.

This was another "work" trip for John, but it worked out just right that some good friends of ours got to come with us.  They were (are?) a little wary about traveling outside of the country alone, and were happy to let us be the tour guides.  (And with a little help from Rick Steves, we were happy to do so)

Our first stop was Rome.

Rome is crazy.  I loved it. It's a big city, full of cars and people, modern life mixed with ancient life...Afterwards I always wish I had taken more pictures.  I took lots of pictures of the usual stuff, but very little of Rome LIFE.  Of course I probably wouldn't know how to use pictures to describe how they are the craziest drivers ever.  I think they think signs and stop lights and the lines painted on the roads are more like suggestions.  I never saw so many scraped up cars.  I could have taken a picture of the crazy parking spots, at least.  I found it pretty funny that many drivers of Smart cars would 'perpendicular park' their cars in the 'parallel' parking spots. (I've mentioned before that I'm easily entertained?)

So, Rome.

First we hit the Spanish Steps.  It's like a hang-out spot for tourists and locals alike.  So naturally you will find those unsavory types trying to make a quick Euro off Stupid American Tourists.  They're at every major attraction in Europe.  Mostly they just try to get you to buy cheap junk.  One guy practically shoved roses into Mindy's and my hands then demanded payment from our husbands.  It kinda ruins it, which really annoys the snot out of me. 

I thought this guy was hilarious with his crazy eyes.  Not sure who he is.

Next, the Trevi fountain. Besides being a pretty amazing fountain, you're supposed to throw your coins in backwards to ensure your trip back to Rome. 

We made our way to the Pantheon.  I was pretty excited about this stop.  It was high on my list of "must see things".  I wasn't disappointed, I thought it was pretty amazing.  Crowded, but still... a few fun facts- "Pantheon" means "all- gods."  It was built as a sort of temple where you could go and worship whichever pagan god was your current favorite.  Later, it was converted to a Christian church. (that's why it survived) It's the best preserved building from ancient Rome.  The outside has been stripped of it's marble, but the building is still completely intact. The building is almost 2000 years old, and was an engineering marvel in it's day.  It's exactly as tall as it is wide.  The dome has inspired other famous domes throughout history including St. Peter's (which I will talk about later) and even the US Capitol building.

Sorry, my "inside" pictures aren't that great.

This Egyptian obelisk is just outside the Pantheon.  There's a few of them scattered around Rome, treasures brought to the city from conquered lands.  They are pretty much the oldest pieces of art in Europe.  (Of course, I can't not mention the cross plopped on the top of it.) 

After a few hours of walking and sight seeing, it was time for some gelato.  

Guess what flavor John is sampling?

(he was joking around and asked the guy if it was one of their big sellers.  The guy offered John a sample.  So he tried it.  ) 

That's all for now.  I'm not even slightly finished with day one.  but it's late, and I'm tired.