Stuff I do not want to forget about in twenty years:

• The swiss franc was about equal to the dollar so it was easy to calculate how much things were really costing me (hint: a lot). The euro was very high to the dollar, so I would add 60% to every price to get my true cost. Converted from both francs and euros, $60 seemed to be the usual total for meals, both lunch and dinner.
• Italian showers are all little. Even if the rest of the bathroom is spacious there will be a tiny little shower in the corner, always a pre-fab unit. My personal theory why it is so small is because Europeans use the bidet frequently so they don’t care about a large shower.
• Favorite parts of Italy: driving to Volterra, Pigelleto Nature Reserve, the hilltown of Cetona as seen from a distance (did not stop there), the belvedere Etruscan park with the caves near Cetona, the waving wheat fields in Val D’Orcia, the villas along the shores of Lake Como.
• Favorite parts of Switzerland: All of it I’ve seen. Driving to Lauterbrunnen, the mountains around Lake Brienz, the giant mountains along the austostrada heading to Belinzona.
• Kevin and I were checking out a cave in the bronze-age Etruscan dwellings near Cetona when Kevin realized there were bats in there with us. One was flying around us to check us out.
• Kevin and I carried matching Eagle Creek bags. Mine had a pink tag, Kevin’s had a blue tag.
• There is no fresh-brewed ice tea available. Some places have Lipton in a can.  When I ordered Coke Light (Diet Coke) and Kevin ordered regular coke, the restaurant would always put a lemon slice in Kev’s coke to differentiate it from mine.

Everybody is asking about pictures. Since Kevin and I took separate cameras and we both love to take pictures, we have several thousand pics from our trip (over 10 gigs worth!).  Some are great, some are duplicates, and some are boring, so we are going through all of them to cull down the collection to a manageable set.  Even for an 18 day trip, you probably don’t want to see more than 200, right?  Even that may be too many. I’m working on it for a few hours every night, so hopefully we will have them available for viewing soon.

Remember that I talked about taking our GPS? Because of my GPS data logger I have timestamped location information that I can match up with my pictures. That means you will be able to view my pictures on a map and see just where each picture was taken.  If you have never seen this before, click here for an example.

After 21+ hours of travel, we made it home. We left our Rome hotel at 6:30am (11:30pm Austin time) to catch the subway/train/plane, and arrived home in Austin at 9:00pm (4:00am Rome time). Getting to the plane in Rome was stressful, but after takeoff we were able to relax.

The best part of being home is spending time with Katie, our cat. She was very upset with us for being gone for so long, and let us know it. Her little voice sounds hoarse from howling for us, and she hissed at me (something she has never done before) when she first saw me. But she is recovering, and clings to me like duct tape. She’ll be fine, but Kevin thinks we shouldn’t be gone for so long in the future because it was so stressful for her.

Much thanks to Nathan, Chris, and Elvia who all helped to watch our house, take care of Katie, gather our mail, and mow our lawn while we were away.  You guys rock!  Without you there we would have worried the whole time and probably couldn’t have been gone so long.

Short post today. We just cannot get over being tired, so we slept in again today. We skipped doing the Angels & Demons tour that we had both looked forward to, but it just wasn’t something we could do this morning.

However, we did make it to Capitoline Hill Museum, which overlooks the ruins of the Roman Forum.   The museum is fantastic, and little visited.  This place was a highlight of Rome, and we stayed until they closed at 8pm.

We’re all packed  and ready for the morning travel.

We got an earlier start today than the past few days. We were dressed and packed up for the day by just after 8am, went down for breakfast, and was disappointed to learn that they were out of formaggio, so all we would have today is bread. This hotel is fantastic location-wise, but the food service has been pretty lackluster – which is funny since this place is primarily a restaurant with a few rooms.

We took the subway to the Spagna stop, home to the Spanish Steps area. Since we were on the subway at about 9am on a Thursday it was jam packed with locals on their way to work. It was so packed that there was trouble getting in through the door, then challenging to find a place to hold onto while we stood for the ride.

The whole reason to be out in this area at this time was to visit the Levi’s store to get new jeans and maybe a new shirt for Kevin. Well, the store didn’t carry custom jean lengths like you can find in the US, all were 4 inches longer. They could custom hem them, but pickup wouldn’t be until after 6p tomorrow, which is the night before we go home – what’s the use? Plus, the jeans and shirts were all way more expensive. After money conversion, the polo shirt we looked at would have been $125, waaaay tooooo much $$ for Kev’s wardrobe.

Then we went on a hunt for a store we saw on the map that sells Cuban cigars. Didn’t look to be too far away. Hmm, we ended up getting our city tour this morning, in an unplanned fashion, as Kevin hadn’t even brought his camera with him. We saw Piazza Colonna, Piazza Parliamento, Trevi Fountain, etc as we wound through the streets. After leaving Trevi Foutain we got turned around and walked the wrong direction, by the time w realized it we were far from a subway station. So we walked all the way back across town. Kev would want me to mention that he did most of this walking carrying a bag of groceries, since we bought a few things when we thought we were about to get on the subway to go back to the hotel.

The good part of the walk was that we found an excellent little hidden restaurant called Mario’s. Excellent service and food, with an outdoor patio under cover of ivy that was tucked back behind the ruins of Forum of Augustus on via Grillia.

After all the walking, we came home (to the hotel) to relax for a few hours. We have a lot of walking to do tonight at the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel and want to be rested and refreshed. I’ll write about the Vatican tour in a separate post.