Italy!

Yay DigiCert for flying us half way around the world! We had a whirlwind week-long trip to Italy as our summer vacation/last hurrah without a baby (or at least one that cries and requires a stroller).

In order to maximize our days in Italy, James worked a double shift, meaning that he was up all night long, then flew for 14 hours. I don't think it was his favorite day ever. When we arrived in Rome we found out that our 2 hour layover was extended to 3 and then 4 hours. By the end of that, he had firmly decided that he didn't like Italy and it would take some seriously good food to convince him otherwise.

We did finally make it to Palermo. We had to take a web of buses to get to our hotel, and when we finally got there, James crashed. I would have too, but my stomach won the battle and I went in search of a fruit guy and some bread. That day we polished off our first kilo of tomatoes.

Later in the evening, we managed to rip ourselves out of bed (beds, actually. The whole trip we slept on 2 single beds shoved together), and get enough food to keep ourselves from being sabbath breakers the next day. We walked along the waterfront and found this great little outdoor pizzeria.

One bite into his delicious pizza and James informed me that all the hate he had for Italy was gone. It was good stuff.

The next morning was the reason we came to Italy to begin with. Sicily finally pulled it together and became a stake! It was an excellent conference and everybody was so excited. I think there were around 850 people in attendance, including some previous mission presidents. (One of them from 32 years ago came all the way from Argentina!)I had a blast seeing everyone again and James was a trouper. He perfected his Italian skills for introducing himself and saying "E' maschio". They were all thrilled as he is that it's a boy.
Here we are with my mission president and his wife (they got home before we did!) and the Harris's. Bro. Harris is James's old scoutmaster and their families go way back. It was pretty neat to see them on a mission.

And here we are with Lea and Andrea, my favorite people in the world. They got our baby a Catania soccer bib, just to put him in his place. The greatest thing for me was to see people we had taught on the mission still progressing and active in church. These guys are rocks. So awesome.

The Harris's gave us a ride from Palermo to Catania which was SO nice! We went to Monreale on the way back and saw this amazing cathedral. It was built in 1172, I believe and the entire ceiling and all the walls were covered in mosaics. So all that stuff that looks like gold leaf and paintings is actually a bunch of little tiny pieces. It was incredible.
We spent the next day in Catania. (This is a picture of us being elephants.) I could've spent the whole week there, but then we would've missed the rest of the amazing trip. We went to Catania for 3 reasons, Savia (best arancini in the world), Ciocolato e Gelato (ditto ice cream), and to see people. Well, the first two were closed, which was a real dream wrecker, but we did get to see a lot of neat sights and spend the evening with Lea, Andrea and Francesca.

During the morning we made a run to the market for some more tomatoes and ties. I think we bought 8 ties. Later, we went on a little tour train around the city and I left the bag of ties on the train. Sad day! Just as I was feeling really awful about it, we saw the train go by again with another load of tourists. We went screaming down the street and Andrea stopped traffic so that the train would have to stop. We made a really big scene. Anyway, may wonders never cease, the bag was still on the train with all the ties in it! Best day of my life. Thanks, Andrea!
The next day we took a train to Siracusa and spent the day walking our feet off. We went to the Greek Theatre and all the old stuff that goes with it. Here's James taking a lovely zombie picture in an ancient sarcophagus. About 2 seconds later he got kicked out by the sarcophagus guard guy. (The resident sarcophicer, if you will.)I think that was his only job. I mean, they could put up a sign or ropes, but paying a guy to pace around is good too.

In the market we met this cheese guy. He was awesome and cut us a sweet deal on some ricotta for lunch. We put up a couple of pictures of him on Facebook and it turns out that he's pretty much a Siracusa legend.

We spent the evening with Gianni and Patrizia, a really awesome couple that was in my English class. They went all out for us. The drove us around to all kinds of awesome sights (my favorite was a to-scale model of the Madonna delle Lacrime church made entirely of match sticks. So stinking cool). They took us to their house to meet their dog and parrot, took us out to eat an amazing meal, and drove us all the way back to Catania. I'm not really sure how to make it up to them because I'm not ok with giving them our baby. We'll have to think of something else.
The next day we spent mostly on the train to Naples. We got kicked out of our seats twice before we realized that we had been assigned a seat. OOooohhhh. I didn't think transportation in Italy was that organized. Naples was awesome. Very narrow and dirty, but we loved it. We walked our feet off, once again, and vowed to buy walking shoes for our next vacation.
A friend told us where to go for real pizza napoletana, and of course we did. It was delicious, naturally.

We managed to hit a few museums and cathedrals in our short visit there. There's so much to see that we'll just have to go back again. We're pretty proud that we didn't get robbed or even seriously ripped off while we were there.
We spent our last day in Rome. The Patane's from Ravenna drove 4 hours down to spend the day with us. It was so fun to have some traveling buddies that kind of knew what was going on. We destroyed that city and saw everything that was free.
Rome was a very clean city, at least compared to what we'd see earlier. Here's proof that it's still Italy though. It looked like the car on the right was rammed from behind by someone who drove away. That caused a 3 car crash, no body can get out, and who gets the ticket? The car that got mashed from both ends. Nice.
The only thing we had time to see in the Vatican was St. Peter's Basilica. It was seriously impressive though. Here's Michaelangelo's Pieta'. I think you could spend a whole day just seeing art in the Vatican, but we were hungry and so we left. Besides, you have to pay to get into the Sistine Chapel.
Here we are in front of the Trevi Fountain. You can't see it because of the mobs of people, but it's really nice. According to the travel book (Provo Library has a billion, if you're interested), when Bernini was building it there was a barber that came out and gave him a hard time sometimes. The barber didn't think the fountain would work out for him. Bernini showed him by not only building an incredible fountain, but he also sculpted this random pot on one side that completely blocks the public's view of the barber's sign. It's still there, the barber is not.

Another, more recent, story is that, since people toss money into the fountain, a local bum collected it every day with a magnet. He made over $1,000 a day, but gave it all away to other homeless people. They tried to arrest him, but couldn't because it's not illegal to pick money up off the street. When they came out with the Euro, his magnet didn't work on it anymore so I guess he had to find a new job.

And there you have it. We ended the week so tired that we didn't even mind the eternal plane ride home. We're ready to do it all again though (with walking shoes this time).