Welcome! Before the travelogue begins, I thought it would be appropriate to explain how I ended up going to Italy with my entire family. For years and years, my mother has been telling my family that "some day" we'd all go to Italy. My mother's ancestry is full-blooded Italian, and she's always been extremely proud of this. We never really thought much of this promised trip to Italy, especially after my mother and grandmother went on a trip in 1994. (Their trip started in Sicily and went through a lot of Southern Italy before heading up to Rome and Florence.) We figured that her trip would lessen the desire to go again with the whole family, and that was that. We were wrong. If anything, it strengthened her desire to go. Finally, we were told to get some time off of work in April, because we were all going to Italy. As my sisters and I are in our mid-to-late 20s, we were fortunately still at the stage where it was considered all right to go on an all-expenses paid trip to Italy. Then again, I suspect I still wouldn't say no if I was 20 years older. Only my mother had been to Italy before. None of us speak Italian. My younger sister had never even been out of the country. This would be a fun trip.
SOME GENERAL NOTES: More often than not I use the English spellings of places. This isn't because I have some horrible disrespect for the Italian language; it's because this travelogue was written in the English language. For the anal-retentive types out there, however:
At no point on our trip did we go the "tour bus" route. My mother did that on her first trip, and while there is a certain convenience to it (you don't have to figure any of the travel arrangements out, for instance) we all decided we'd rather not. My mother planned the entire trip using almost entirely one book: Rick Steves' Italy. While the rest of the family (myself included) loved to make fun of this book, I really do have to recommend it. It's a great guide to not only sights, but hotels, travel plans, and so forth. It's well worth picking up a copy. Anyway, that's enough prattling on. You're here to see the pictures and read all about
the horrible things that happened. To that I say... read on and enjoy! |
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