Day 15: Milan We caught an 8am train for the 3 hour ride to Milan's city center train station, with the plan to store our bags for a few hours, sightsee, then take another train to the airport (45 minutes away), where we have a hotel room for the night. At this point we are both lugging two bags plus a backpack, and things are getting heavy. (My second back is cloth and was originally in my carry on bag for the trip over.) We get to Milan, find the baggage st...

Days 13 and 14: Rome Day 13: This morning was Part II of 'The Really Old Stuff", also known as the Roman Forum and the Palentine Hill. I wasn't enthused about going, and I lasted about 30-45 minutes before confirming that I really didn't care, and I left. Next I headed to a lesser-known museum, the museum of the Italian Resistance (during WWII). (In preparation for this trip, I bought a book on WWII sites in Italy, so if anyone is planning a trip and has ...

Day 12: Rome Today started with an organized tour of the Colosseum, which was excellent. Plenty of pictures for you to view. The most noteworthy thing about the Colosseum: it is (per wikipedia) the 39th most visited place in the world, with over 4 million visitors a year. Let me do the math for you…this is over 11,000 visitors every day. Guess how many women's toilets there are? Seven. SEVEN. Not seven locations, seven actual toilets, total. And the ba...

Day 10 and 11: Rome (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day) Day 10: Today was Vatican, Vatican, and More Vatican. We had an early morning tour of the Vatican (which was mostly the museums and not St. Peter's Basilica. For those planning a trip to Rome, it was through a group called What a Life Tours; I highly recommend them. Anyway, we were out the door by 6:20am to commute across town. The Vatican lets some of these tour groups in an hour before the general publi...

Day 9: Rome Ok, I'm going to try and keep this short. It is already 9:15pm, and I have to be at the Vatican at 7:10am for a early morning (beat the crowds) tour. Up until this point, I've been doing well if I'm even awake at 7:10am. Italy or not, I am on vacation….. We headed to the Vatican this morning for a tour called the Scavi tour, which is a tour of the Necropolis underneath ST. Peters….it dates back to the 1-4 Centuries. It was a burial place fo...