We're back. I have a million stories about Italy. Jenn, Lisa and I had the best time. I think everyone should go to Italy with their girlfriends because the best part of the whole trip were 3 hour long dinners we'd have every night, drinking house wine, eating the best food imagineable and laughing our heads off.

Venice - loved it but was unable to find really good food.

Florence - loved it - found a fantastic restaurant the renewed our hope that Italy would have the best food ever. We had a funny waitress (who was British and had never actually eaten at the restaurant before). At closing they actually played "When the moon hits your eyes like a big pizza pie", but I swear they were all Italians and we were the only tourists (really).

We missed our train to Rome because we were trying to find "The Best Gelatto in Florence"... after eating the best gelatto (this is 10am) we sat down in front of a church and had a picnic with bottles of wine we were carrying, salami from the Salameria, bread, cheese and apples dipped in Nutella.

Brad, your advice on Florence: "Eat at Zsa Zsa and see the David" was perfect. I'm just re-reading it now... we found Zsa Zsa on our own if you can believe it. We tried to go to the place next door but they weren't serving food and directed us to Z.Z. It was fantastic. And I don't know if I would have gone and say the David otherwise and I'm so glad I did.

We made it to Cinque Terre for a day (thank you Ming and Jackie for your fantastic advice). It blew us away. It was not what any of us were expecting (it was just special...). We did the soft-core hikes and visited 4 of the 5 towns.

Then Rome. We saw (not quite) all of the sites. At this point (half way through the trip) we were drinking a lot of vino. At dinner we were working our way to a 3/4 litre each, and one night we were invited to drink with some Italians and a man from London Ontario (none of who were creepy). We drank Limoncella and Grappa - both very Italian. I think this was the night that we actually attempted to go to a bar after dinner (dinner was normally 9-12). But at the bar we ordered cappucinos and nearly fell asleep.

Our third day in Rome we realized how desperately we needed a guided tour (we had 3 books with us, 2 borrowed, but when you're in the Roman Forum you don't know what you're looking at). We were in this, "Wow, that's old" place. So we went on a walking tour which was so, so worth it.

I saw the Pope on Sunday. He didn't speak in English and was sooo far away. We went to the Sistine Chapel which is in the Vatican Museums. The whole experience was hell. We were cattle being herded through this museum that no one was interested in (we did our best but it really was awful). We made it to the Chapel and it was fantastic but the experience wasn't. You're in this room with 800 other people all looking up. And every 10 minutes a booming voice comes over the intercom telling everyone to shut up in 5 different languages (quite ironic actually).

We really did do all of the touristy sites. Going up into the domes in the Duomo (Florence) and St. Peter's was phenomenol. But what else can I say...

Jennie and I bought 4 pairs of shoes in total and bought 8 bottles of alcohol in Duty Free... One was a 2L bottle of Chianti.

Overall, great vacation. Ciao.