The plan for Saturday was to spend a night in Switzerland; Jamie had dreams of seeing the Matterhorn and Heidi frolicking in the mountains. Unfortunately, due to our last minute reservations and the sheer expensiveness of Switzerland, we were not able to find accommodation in our price range. Instead, we decided to stay in Northern Italy. This decision actually worked out for all of us - especially Jamie. The town we stayed in, Valtournenche, was directly south o...

Friday morning, we went through the usual routine of packing our ever-expanding suitcases and planning our day out over breakfast. That morning we were heading to Venice - which was only an hour and half from our hotel. We drove to Venice, and crossed the long bridge and parked our car on the west side of the city. Venice is a city of canals - no roads - so everything is adapted for life on the water… instead of having city buses for public transport, they hav...

On Thursday morning, we made the short drive to Pisa from Florence. We successfully found the parking lot, where there were many friendly salesmen selling "rolex" watches for the unbelievable price if 20 euros - what a deal! (We later saw some in Venice selling for over 20,000 euro!). We walked to the piazza Duomo - the home of the leaning tower of Pisa. I was so happy to finally be seeing it… it's such a well-known landmark, so it was definitely on my bucket ...

Wednesday morning, we woke up early to drive into Florence to spend a day in the city. Getting into the city was a little difficult - we had to fight with aggressive Italian drivers at rush hour in the morning. In the end, we made it downtown in one piece. We walked into town, and towards the Duomo. The Duomo is a beautifully decorated church - I have seen countless churches on my European travels, but this one takes the cake. The building was enormous, and ever...

Tuesday morning, we left Rome early and made our way to the airport to pick up our new rental car. Seeing as we are a group of 5 now, we needed a bigger car - so we have a roomy minivan that we and our luggage can all fit comfortably in. We programmed the GPS and headed toward Pompeii. We arrived around 2:00 pm and made our way through the archeological site that was once a thriving little village. I had been to Pompeii before in 2008, but the eerie feeling of e...