Across the Pond: Pictures and Stories for Collette: You lose track of what day it is in Europe.. easily

So today is Saturday, and it's been about a week since I last posted. We left France (which was SO fun) and got to Italy. We stayed at this cool bed and breakfast, but they had no internet, and we didn't really stop to go to an internet cafe, there was too much to see in the city.. I'll post some pics and give some quick highlights to the week.

Before we left France: We went to see Notre Dame and St. Sulpice (from the Da Vinci Code). They were pretty cool. Then we saw the church of the Sacre Couer, or Sacred Heart. It was so beautiful. I lit a candle for Gramma Martie and we watched about three hundred people as they sat on the steps and overlooked the entire city of Paris. It was really awesome.

We then walked around Montmartre, which is supposedly the most romantic neighborhood in Paris. It was really nice, and we stopped for an overpriced dinner. It was ok, not as good as Le Marmite, the best restaurant ever.

We ate some gelato on the steps of the Sacred Heart and then went back to the hotel. The next day was our last day/travel day/craziest day of perhaps my entire life. Long story short, we were late for our plane and they still let us on. Very thankful for that. Before we left though, we went to the Gardens of Touilleries (pretty cool) and the Orsay Museum. At Orsay, we saw a couple famous paintings, including Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

Once in Rome, we went to the Coliseum the first day. We don't really know much about it, but it was cool to see. They charge you a ton of euros to go into any attraction in Rome. The upside to that is that there aren't that many attractions, because the city itself is really pretty. We didn't stay in the prettiest part of the city, so we didn't see "beautiful Rome" until yesterday.

Thursday we went to the Vatican. I would say this was our best day in Rome. We went to St. Peter's Square (Piazza di San Pietro), inside St. Peter's Basilica, up to the top of the dome (where I took pics I'll paste below), and into the Vatican Museums. Part of the Vatican Museums was the SISTINE CHAPEL. You had to walk about an hour and a half through twenty museums before you got to the Sistine Chapel, it's the Vatican's way of making sure you REALLY want to see it. And we did. You can't take any pictures in there, but Katie and I stared at the ceiling for at least a half hour. It was truly beautiful. We've seen nineteen nuns in Rome so far, I've been keeping a close count. I don't want Katie to go, but she insists that her body will shut down if she doesn't have Applebees in the next 48 hours. Ok, so she didn't say that, but I wish I had some boneless buffalo wings right now.

We walked around Rome for five hours straight yesterday, covering at least half of the city. We saw the Trevi Fountain, Circus Maximus, and the Pantheon (we saw a ton of other stuff I can't spell too).

We've eaten loads of gelato, and I had whipped cream on mine last night, it was sooo good.