#FBF - European Adventure 2014 - Rome Part 1

After returning from our backpacking adventure in September, life got really crazy for me. Because of this, I never shared the pictures from our trip. I thought that I would take the opportunity with "Flashback Fridays" to share them with you now. I'll be breaking up the posts with each city we visited. Today, I take you to Rome, Italy!

Our big adventure started off in Rome. In 2013 we were only able to squeeze in one whirlwind day, however this time we gave it two days for a very specific reason.* The Sistine Chapel.

Originally we had planned our days being consecutive ones, but unfortunately our first planned day in Rome the Vatican Museum wasn't open since it was a Sunday, and it was closed the one day we were there the year before too. I was determined to finally see the Sistine Chapel since I didn't think we would ever make it back to Rome again. So as we finalized our plans for the trip, and realized we would be flying to Greece instead of taking the ferry, we decided to split our two day Rome visit up and come back to it the day before we flew to Greece.

I am so glad we had seen the major sights of Rome the previous year. We landed in Rome at 6:25am this time and let me tell you, we were completely jet lagged. A total mess. We weren't able to sleep on the flight and couldn't check into our hotel until 2:00pm. By the time we went to bed on that first night, we had been awake for over 24 hours.

However, the sunrise we saw from the plane as we landed was worth the early a.m. arrival.

Before we even left the airport, someone had to have a coffee, or should I say, espresso.

Oh my gosh, this trip made me wish I drank coffee. I spent the first few days of our trip a walking zombie.

After the coffee was downed, which took all of two seconds due to the tiny nature of these espresso's, we figured our way to the train to take us into the heart of Rome. Once there, we high tailed it to our hotel to drop off our stuff and freshen up in the restaurant bathroom.

Funny story, while I was in this bathroom I couldn't figure out why it looked so small and different from the previous year. Turns out I went into the men's room. Oopsie! Thank goodness it was a private one. After my sleep deprived mistake, we were off.

To fight off our utmost desire for a bed, we took to walking the streets of Rome in hopes of not falling asleep.

After walking for what felt like miles in the hot Rome sun, we sat down for a minute to rest and tourist watch, but before I knew it this is what I saw...

We eventually pried ourselves off the benches and headed back to the hotel. Once there, we cleaned ourselves up, watched some Italian television and then headed out for dinner.

We had our hearts set on the restaurant we enjoyed so much during our previous trip, sadly they were closed for Holiday. We eventually settled eating at the restaurant across the street as we were tired and starving.

After dinner we rolled ourselves back to the hotel where my eyelids couldn't wait to close. We had an early wake-up call the next morning as we were heading to our next destination, Naples!

*Our second day in Rome will be shared in a future post.

Re-Entry

On August 9th, my honey and I began our second backpacking adventure by hopping on a plane and landing in Europe.

Gorgeous sunrise as were landing in Rome at 6:25 a.m.

The first nine days of our trip we stayed in Italy. We visited Rome, Naples, Sorrento, Pompeii Ruins, Capri, Florence and Venice. We then hopped on another plane and spent the last 10 days of our trip in Greece between Athens and Chios.

Just like our trip last year, this one was fabulous (even despite the fact we both came down with terrible colds 5 days into the trip) and truly felt like we had been gone forever. It was a sad day when we headed back to the States on August 30th.

Well it was a sad day for one of us!

I did major photo dumps on Instagram, Facebook and Flickr every night I had WiFi access. Because of the incredibly late nights, I didn't get to post any here. I really was hoping to, but I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to post what I did elsewhere.

For those who don't follow me on Instagram or Flickr,  I am planning on dedicating a few posts to share some of my favorite photos from the trip. I'll be including some that didn't make it to my other social media platforms during the trip. So there will be some new ones for those who've already gotten a peek at my pictures.

There was also some knitting action happening on this trip. I wanted to come home and say I had finished a pair of socks in the three weeks I was gone, but on my second to last day of the trip when I thought I finished them, disaster struck and I realized I had made a huge mistake on sock number two.

Houston We Have A Problem

The disaster entailed either a little bit of frogging to kind of fix it or a lot of frogging to fix it the way it's supposed to be. By the way, my honey voted for the little bit of frogging which I have done, but am not sure if I am happy with that choice. Any hoo, I will share more of that adventure in another post as I feel my knitting stupidity deserves a post all on it's own.

So for the past week, I have been working on getting back to reality. Thank goodness Monday was a holiday and I did take an extra day off from work to deal with jet lag. Last year I was a complete mess so I was anticipating the worst. To my surprise this year has been a pretty smooth transition back to east coast time. I can honestly say I feel like a normal person now.

MIA and an Upcoming Adventure

I know it's been a couple of weeks since I last posted. I have a real good reason as to why and I'll just say that life left me feeling out of sorts during the past week or so. However, I am back and hope to get some of the posts that I had planned on publishing out here on the blog (one includes a blogiversary which may, or may not, include a giveaway)!

However, the big news I have from this past weekend is that my honey and I booked tickets for our next backpacking adventure together! We are going back to Europe for another three weeks!! (cue the excitement!!!!)

So of course, I immediately got these babies:

Last year we went from Barcelona, Spain, through France into northern/middle Italy. We knew for this trip, we wanted to concentrate the first 10 days or so in Italy, as we fell in love with it last year.

My current travel guides didn't really go into southern Italy past the Naples area (and was really outdated - 2011), so I bought Rick Steves' guide (Sidenote - I used his guide exclusively last year and loved them) dedicated to Naples area and the Lonely Planet's guide to Southern Italy since we want to make it all the way down to Sicily.

And so far the Rick Steves' guide looks a little like this:

And my planning calendar is already taking shape:

This is how I planned our trip last year and it worked out beautifully. Being a super organized person really helps. By doing this, I know where we will be when and how many days we will spend in each place in order to reserve hotels. As for planning what to do, we will go with a rough idea of what we want to do, but not lock ourselves into anything.

After the first half of our trip, we will once again head to Athens, Greece. My honey's father lives there so we will spend a few days with him before taking the ferry out to Chios, where we will be doing a lot of swimming in this:

Uh, yes please!

 

Just like last year, I'll be updating my Instagram page as much as I can with snaps of what we experience. Everyone seemed to truly enjoy seeing them and joining us on our little adventure.

 

The countdown is officially on!!!! Less than three weeks until take-off!