Venice, Rome, Santorini (Greece)

Now that we have a little time on our hands, we will try to fill in the gaps about our last few cities. We were in Venice for two hot days, on Sunday and Monday. It really is a beautiful city, but it is also absurdly expensive and touristy. There were more tourists packed into smaller spaces here than in any other city we've visited so far. On the upside - no cars! Navigating the streets of Venice was a little iffy - mostly you just head off in a general direction and hope that an alley doesn't dead end or that there is a bridge to get you over the canals when you need it. Fortunately, Vanessa was born with a GPS system in her head, so I just stand back and let her work. The highlight of the city was San Marco Square - home to some very impressive looking building and also about several thousand dirty pigeons. Vanessa refused to put food in her hair so that we could get a picture of one perched on top of her. Way to kill the fun on the honeymoon, right? Other than that, it was really too hot to do much but admire the canals and eat gelatto. Vanessa likes to experiment with new and exotic flavors (like Lemon or Amaretto) while I prefer to get chocolate everywhere I go. No two chocolates are the same and it never tastes bad.

From Venice, we headed to our final Italian stop in Rome. Right away, we were greeted by a very friendly man at the train station who gave us excellent directions to our hotel in perfect English, thus setting the tone for our time there. We found the city to be spectacular, if a little overwhelming. There is something important-looking on every street corner, leading us to observe that you can't take a shit in this town without someone building a monument to it. On our first day, we saw the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain (which was beautiful), and the Ancient City, including the Colosseum. It was even more impressive in person and we had to suppress our urges to do gladiatorial combat. We were also impressed by the number of potable drinking fountains spread throughout the city. This was one of the few towns where we did not have to waste a lot of money on bottled water (and I do consider it a waste). On our first evening, we met up with Vanessa's parents, who were thrilled to see us. (I am passing the keyboard to Vanessa to write about this).

I think the coincidental events that brought my parents and us to Rome at the exact time needs to be addressed. Believe it or not, we all planned our trip independently. My parents scheduled a trip to visit Southern Italy (including Sicily, Naples, etc.). We on the other hand just kind of winged our planning. Weirdly enough, when we compared our itineraries, we were all arriving in Rome on the same exact day. If this wasn't strange enough, our hotels were literally two blocks away from each other. I think my parents were thrilled about the idea of crashing our honeymoon and we were more than happy to see them. We managed to enjoy the full benefits of traveling with the Schiffs which includes more food, wine, and gelatto than a human can possibly consume. We were also able to join their tour group the following day and get accelerated access to the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Cathedral. We had heard that the line to get into these sites was over 4 hours long, so the fact that we could get shuffled to the front of the line and also get a guided tour was fantastic. Thanks Mom and Dad! It was wonderful to see you!

Now we are on the island of Santorini in Greece. This is really where the vacation portion of our vacation begins. We lie on the black sand beaches all day, we've gone through all of our books and are desperately searching for a place that has the new Harry Potter book. We eat Greek salads and gyros all day. Before our mothers can say anything, the answer is YES, we are wearing plenty of sunblock and we avoid the sun at all moments. We really love Santorini and highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a tropical island vacation. We leave tomorrow for our next Greek island, Ios. It has a reputation of being more of a party island, but Michael and I are certain that we can find a way to make it lame.