Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Rome - The Eternal City

We're finally getting around to uploading, organizing, and captioning photos from the Italian leg of our honeymoon.





Here's the link to our photos of Rome. We hit the high points - The Vatican, Palatine Hill, Roman Forum, Coliseum, Spanish Steps, and the Trevi Fountain. Not bad for essentially 2 days.


In addition to the fun of watching Matt experience all these sites for the first time, I thoroughly enjoyed the moment in St Peter's when, 30 minutes into our 40 minute Rick Steves podcast, Matt quietly came up to me and asked if I was listening to the podcast for St. Mark's.


"Umm no, we're in St. Peter's in Rome. St. Mark's is in Venice. Like the title of the podcast says. So I'm listening to St Peter's"


"Oh, that would explain why I'm having difficulty"


He was really jetlagged

Monday, September 7, 2009

Quick update

We're wrapping up in Florence (spent today in the Tuscan countryside tasting some fantastic Brunello wines) and heading to Cinque Terra tomorrow.

The internet connection at the hotel is crazy slow (yes, we're taking lots of photos but not nearly enough to warrant 7 hours of upload time). Blogger's "Post via e-mail" function let us down so we're going to give SMS and MMS updates a try. This feels dangerously close to Twittering but I'm going to try to ignore that and focus on the band-aid solution it offers for the next week.

"I don't think 'casual' means what we think it means"

(Since we now have to pay for Internet access posts will be slightly less frequent, there will be no photos, and filled with a lot more typos since I am relying on Matt's iPhone)

When Di moved to Seattle, she lamented that her "Boston casual" was apparently "West Coast formal." Knowing that East Coasters tend to erron the formal side, Matt and I were reasonably confident that ourcasual attire would meet the "casual" requirement for our hotel'srooftop restaurant with the panoramic Views of Rome.

We were wrong

we walked in - the waiters were in coats and tails, all the malecustomers were in dark suits, and the women were in cocktail dressesand fab jewelry. In contrast, Matt was in jeans and a dress shirt andI was wearing a t-shirt capris and flip flops. Nothing but class.

Only one thing to do in a situation like that: own it.

The meal was amazing and I was able to survive with only a minor complex.
More from our next city - Florence - soon (I hope)!