After eighteen months of living in Australia without a visit home, I couldn’t put off seeing the fam any longer. Thus Rodd and I set out to the travel agent with the aim of procuring return tickets from Sydney to Chicago for sometime around the 4th of July. We were shocked to learn that a single return fare was going to cost us about $2000AU. As we pondered our options, Rodd asked the agent how much a “round-the-world” ticket would cost. These allow you to make a certain number of stops as long as you keep going the same direction around the globe. It turns out that we could get them for $3000AU each. “Why not?” we said. “We haven’t had a proper vacation in years and we’ll be spending almost that much anyway.” So we bought the tickets and started making plans.

After a layover in Los Angeles, we landed in Chicago and headed to Indiana for the family portion of the trip. I’d only seen my little brother Joey once before, so I was excited to get to know him. Isn’t he a cutie? He wasn’t shy at all; he knew our names and let us carry him around and everything.

He loves having his picture taken.

After ten days or so in Indiana, we joined my Dad and his wife Cindy on a trip to Chicago for the Taste of Chicago Festival. We also went to the Museum of Science and Industry. This is my Dad posing as the first man to break 500mph in a rocket car.

Still at the Museum… It’s Kristy the submarine commander!

And Snookums the navigator!

After Chicago we flew to Boston, where we spent a couple days exploring the city and walking the Freedom Trail. In Boston Common we took a ride on the famous swan boats. Here’s Snookums enjoying the ride.

And here’s me on the boats too. I kinda like this picture.

Here’s another one where you can see another swan boat behind me.

Here’s the Snook and I posing on the little bridge over the swan boat lagoon.

Okay, here’s the thing about random scenic pictures: I don’t like to take them. I think it’s incredibly pointless to spend your vacation taking pictures of things everybody’s seen on television or postcards. The only way to make them interesting is to put people in them. That’s why I usually try to get either the Snook or I in most of those pictures. That said, I will take a scenic picture if I think it’ll make an interesting photo in its own right or if it’s something I don’t think many folks have seen before. I took this picture of the statue of George Washington in Boston Common for the former reason. It was just so cool and imposing and I thought it would look neat against the blue sky. Anyway, I just wanted to prepare you for the lack of pictures of famous stuff later on in Italy…

Make way for ducklings! (And Snookums.) This statue commemorates the famous children’s book by Robert McCloskey.

Paul Revere’s grave. Pretty cool.

As Boston has been a predominantly Democratic city, the Old City Hall has a statue of a donkey out front. (The donkey being the symbol of the Democratic party in America.) A sign nearby welcomed visitors to ride they donkey if they were so politically inclined. Bleeding heart liberal that I am, I couldn’t resist.

Near the end of the Freedom Trail you come to the USS Constitution, aka “Old Ironsides”. Here’s the Snook examining a cannon on deck.

And here I am driving her!

A shot of the ship’s rigging. They still take her out in the harbour once a year, but nowadays she gets towed rather than unfurl the sails.

This is my college roommate Eileen, who we stayed with in Boston. I hadn’t seen her since graduation four years ago. She’s the same as ever! (Apologies to all the other friends we visited who didn’t get a photo. Up to this point in the trip I’d been worried about running out of memory space on my camera. In Boston the Snook and I decided to rectify the situation by buying an additional 256MB card.)

Me, Rodd, and Eileen…

On our last day in Boston we went to the Sam Adams brewery for a tour. I highly recommend this if you’re in town. It’s free, it’s short, and you get to taste three kinds of beer afterwards. Plus they let you keep the glass! We had a great time.

Next we flew to London where we spent a few days catching up with friends. I also took the Snook to the Tower of London since he’d never been. Here he is getting close to one of the famous ravens.

After London we flew onwards to Venice for the touristy part of the trip. We arrived in the evening, had some dinner, and got a good night’s sleep in preparation for tackling the city. The next day we travelled by vaporetto (ferry) to Murano, which is sort of an island suburb of Venice. It’s where all the famous glassblowers live and work. This was my first view of it.

Good grief. I don’t know why I bother trying to take self-portraits.

After Murano we went to Burano, another small island known for lace-making. It’s also got a crazy leaning belltower at this church.

Burano is so twee and beautiful. The houses are all painted different bright colors.

Here’s a much better self-portrait of the Snook and I on the vaporetto. After Burano we headed out to the Lido, which is Venice’s beach island. (It’s also where the famous film festival is held every year and where Kristen and Mark stayed on their honeymoon.)

Here’s me on the beach at the Lido, dipping my toes in the Mediterranean for the first time.

This is Venice’s famous “Bridge of Sighs” as seen at night. Apparently it’s called that because convicts would walk across it from the Doge’s palace on the left to the prison on the right. There were probably 250 tourists all crammed together trying to take pictures of the thing, why is why this is so blurry.

Here’s the famous Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal as seen by vaporetto. (You can see a live view here.)

We left Venice and travelled to Milan for a day. I was excited to see the Milan Cathedral, the 4th largest church in the world. It can seat 40,000! Here’s a bit of the facade.

A view of the Piazza Del Duomo, where the Cathedral is located.

The coolest thing about the Cathedral is that they let you climb up on the roof! Here are several shots of flying buttresses and statues and other gothic goodness.

More from the roof of Milan Cathedral…

Peekaboo!

Here’s the Snook with a famous modern Milanese apartment building in the background.

Here I am squintin’ again.

After the Cathedral we went to Castle Sforza and checked out some of the museums there. Here’s the Snook near the old (drained) moat.

After Milan we caught a train through Genoa and down to La Spezia. La Spezia’s nothing special but it is close to the Cinque Terre, which we wanted to explore. They’re five tiny villages nestled in the cliffs along the coast. You can just see the first one, Monterosso, in this picture.

Fishermen in Monterosso…

Waves crashing in Monterosso.

I was trying to take a picture of my reflection in the Snook’s sunglasses but it didn’t work. It’s still a cool picture though.

Here’s the next village, Vernazza. This one was probably my favorite.

Vernazza had a small castle tower perched up on the cliff with phenomenal views.

From the castle we could see all the way back to Monterosso in the next cove.

A heart carved in the wall of the castle in Vernazza.

Looking down at Vernazza’s harbour.

Need I mention that the Cinque Terre are really, really beautiful?

I hate my camera. You hold the button down halfway to focus, then all the way to take the picture. Nobody seems to get that though, so whenever I ask a random person to take a picture of us they hear the focussing noise and think that it’s been taken. So this is me leaning forward like a dork to make sure they’d pushed it down all the way. This is also the only shot from Corniglia, the next little village which is perched crazily high up on the mountain. I wasn’t such a fan of this one.

The fourth village is Manarola, which was another favourite. We got some amazing focaccia for lunch here.

We ate our lunch sitting on the sea wall with our feet dangling in the water.

The Cinque Terre area is a national park with hiking trails that connect them. You’ve gotta be pretty hardcore to do them though, which is why we stuck to the train. We did venture up one far enough to take a few more pictures of Manarola.

One last shot of Manarola. I don’t have any pictures from the fifth village, Riomaggiore, as we weren’t there for long. We were just too tired. We went back to La Spezia and caught a late train to…

Florence, the setting of A Room With a View. Here’s my first view of the Duomo.

My favorite new Italian word is “companile”. It means “bell tower”. Here’s the Duomo’s.

Here’s a view of the Piazza della Signoria, which is where the statue of David used to stand (before they moved it inside). There are still lots of cool statues outside though.

This replica of David still stands in the Piazza, and this is as close as I got. We figured we only had energy to do one museum in Florence, and the Uffizi seemed to offer more bang for your buck. We’ll save the Accademia (where the real David lives) for next time.

I thought this statue of Perseus holding up Medusa’s severed head was pretty neat.

Here’s a shot looking up the Duomo’s companile. It really is done in cotton candy pink and pale green marble. It’s beautiful.

Another shot of the Duomo. We didn’t actually go inside as it was full of tourists and I hadn’t brought a skirt. (A lot of the big churches find women wearing shorts to be unholy or something, apparently.)

This is the church of Santa Croce, which I think is the one where Lucy first talks to Mr. Emerson about George in Room With a View.

My first view of the Arno.

We spent some time in the Boboli Gardens, which have great views of the Tuscan countryside outside Florence…

Me and Tuscany.

Looking back towards Florence.

Here’s Snookums imitating the statue of Bacchus in the Gardens. Apparently the figure was modelled on Cosimo Medici’s dwarf, Pietro Barbino. (Just some random trivia I learned on the Internet.)

While we were in Florence we took off for a quick day trip to Pisa. Here’s a view of the Piazza dei Miracoli, with the baptistry (the building cut off on the left), the Duomo, and the companile (you know, the one leaning). 🙂

Be careful Snookums! Don’t let it fall over! (In my defense, this was his idea and everybody else was doing it too.)

If you get the angle right, voila! No more lean!

Every time I saw anything tall I took a picture like this. I don’t know why. I just have the impulse to crane my head back, I guess.

I confess that I took this photo simply because I thought I could use the little marble decoration between the arches as a quilt pattern. Too bad you can’t even see it here!

After our short excursion to Pisa we headed to Lucca, a nearby medieval walled city recommended by our friend Alex. It was fantastic. Beautiful place, lots to do, great food, and not a lot of tourists. This is their little Duomo and companile.

Lucca’s never really been attacked so the city walls are all perfectly preserved. It’s really a massively big embankment about as wide as a road, and you can rent bikes to ride the 4 kilometers around it (which is what we did).

I like my camera’s timer feature. Here’s the Snook and me with our bikes.

I was surprised to learn that Puccini was born in Lucca. This famous composer wrote my favorite opera, La Boheme, which was the inspiration for my favorite musical, Rent. So of course I had to track down his statue and pay homage.

Next we headed to Rome by way of Assisi. This is looking up towards the famous Basilica di San Francesco, which was founded by St. Francis. Unfortunately the fact that I had to put a skirt on over my shorts (on an incredibly hot day) just to get inside the church rather predisposed me to not like the Franciscans, no matter how cute they look in their little tunics.

As I understand it, Assisi is really two towns: one perched way up the mountain, and one way down the bottom. This is the Snook up top looking down an alley with a view all the way to the bottom.

This is the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which literally means “Santa Maria on top of Minerva”. In other words, it used to be a Temple of Minerva but the Christians turned it into a church. The columns and facade are all original, which makes it a little weird to go inside and see crucifixes and images of Mary all over the place.

This was in the lower part of Assisi. I fully admit that I took this picture intending to use it for my 26 Things submission.

On to Rome. Our first stop was the Vatican and specifically its Museum. This is the big entryway. I didn’t take any pictures of the Sistine Chapel because you’ve all seen it a hundred times already, right? What surprised me was how small it was. You know the picture of God reaching out and giving Adam the spark of life? I thought it would be huge. Instead it’s just one tiny panel amidst many, many others. Anyway…

This is St. Peter’s Basilica, my favorite church from the whole trip. It was built on the spot of St. Peter’s grave and is surrounded by a huge open piazza.

St. Peter’s has one big dome and several smaller ones, so it’s not as dark as you expect. Here’s a shot where I tried to capture the light coming in from one of the smaller ones. (However it was too dark for my picture of Michelangelo’s Pieta to turn out. Sorry.)

I liked this statue of a dragon, which I think was from a larger work depicting St. George slaying it.

St. Peter’s was so nice I didn’t even mind putting on a skirt. This is the view from the front doors out towards the Piazza San Pietro.

See! Here we are looking back towards the Basilica.

Here’s the Snook looking at his favorite Roman bridge, the Ponte Sant’Angelo. It leads directly to the front of the Castel Sant’Angelo, which is where the Popes used to live.

Next we went to Piazza Novona, which has some fabulous fountains. This is a bit from the Fountain of Neptune.

Detail from the Fountain of the Four Rivers, which stands in the center of the Piazza. It depicts the Ganges, the Nile, the Danube, and the Rio de la Plata.

This is a view of the Roman obelisk that stands above the Fountain of Four Rivers.

This is the Pantheon, another cool classical pagan temple that the early Christians turned it a pretty boring church.

There are public drinking fountains all over Rome, and not the crappy modern kind. For instance, here’s one I liked. (I have no idea where it was.) They still pull their water from the ancient aquaducts and it’s cold, clear, and delicious. Free good drinking water is truly the mark of an advanced civilization (at least from a tourist perspective in the summer), if you ask me.

View of Trajan’s Column, which tells the story of this emperor’s battle against the Dacians. Pretty neat.

It’s me and the famous Trevi Fountain.

Legend has it that if you throw a coin over your shoulder into the Trevi Fountain, you’re sure to return to Rome. Throw another and you’ll fall in love with an Italian, and throw a third and you’ll marry him! This is me throwing two in. (As the Snook claims to be only “a little” Italian, I only threw in pennies.) 🙂

Here’s a bad picture of the Snook throwing in his coin.

These are the famous Spanish Steps, which were apparently in some movie that everybody else has seen but me.

After climbing the steps we found ourselves in a big park (part of the Villa Borghese) overlooking the Piazza del Popolo, which you see here.

The Snook and I overlooking the Piazza del Popolo.

We climbed down from the villa and headed into the Piazza, where the Snook took the opportunity of cooling off at one of the fountains.

Detail of fountain.

I have no idea what these two buildings off the Piazza are. I just liked the way they mirrored each other.

The next day we were off to the Colosseum. Yeah, it’s me and a gladiator. These dorks stand outside in costume and tourists pay to have their picture taken with them. I couldn’t resist.

Inside the Colosseum. We had to wait twenty minutes or so to get in, which you can avoid if you do a group tour. Most of the tour guides annoyed the hell out of me though, so we decided to just pick up an audio guide and explore ourselves.

Snookums in the Colosseum.

More Colosseum.

Ack! Please ignore my horrible double chin. Another bad self-portrait.

This 4th century triumphal arch near the Colosseum is dedicated to the emperor Constantine.

Ruins of the Temples of Venus and Rome, which you can see from the Colosseum.

Visitors have not always been kind to the Colosseum. This wall has names carved and graffitied all over it.

Here we are near the floor of the Colosseum. It originally had a wooden floor which served to soak up spilled blood. (Ick.) They could also flood it with water and stage mock sea battles, apparently.

Our tickets also got us onto the nearby Palatine Hill, which used to be where all the rich folks and emperors had their houses. Here’s the view back towards the Colosseum.

Kinda scary multiple-breasted statue from Palatine.

More Palatine ruins.

Snookums consults our guidebook in silhouette.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, I have since found out that these elegant buildings were once the twin pavilions of Vignola’s aviary. Hm.

Here’s the Snook and I overlooking the Forum, which lies at the foot of the Hill.

Now we’re down in the Imperial Forum proper. I thought these doors were pretty. I can’t identify which building they’re from, but I think it was a church.

This is the Temple of Divus Antoninus and Diva Faustina, which is another that got turned into a church.

I have no idea what this plaque was for or what it said, but I thought it was neat.

The church of Santi Cosma e Damiano, which is probably a converted temple.

This pile of bricks was once a monument known as the Umbilicus Urbis Romae. That means “Navel of the City of Rome”. Yep, it’s Rome’s belly button, and it marked the very center of the city.

This little building is where Caesar’s body was brought to be burned, thus this is where Marc Antony gave his famous speech (at least in Shakespeare’s version). Here’s Snookums striking a passionate oratorical pose.

These are the remains of the temple of the Vestal Virgins, who were charged with keeping the sacred flame of Rome alive. They served for thirty years and undertook a vow of chastity. (Those who broke the vow were buried alive!) Here’s me as a Vestal.

We ended up with an extra day in Rome so we headed back to the Villa Borghese and rented the silliest bike EVER. Two people sit side-by-side and pedal while one steers. We thought it would be fun til we realized it had no gears and the Villa is pretty much all hills.

Yeah, we were dying!

Ahh, now this is a much nicer way to travel. We rented a row boat and had a paddle around this little lake. (And check it out! The Snook’s actually smiling in a picture!)

My turn!

This little temple dedicated to Aesculapius was in the middle of the lake. We were more impressed by the dozens of turtles that were in the water with us. I’ve never seen so many turtles in my life!

After Rome we left for Naples. Naples sucks. We dropped our bags off at the hotel and headed for Herculaneum, which got torched in the same eruption of Vesuvius as Pompeii. It’s less famous but the Snook (who’s been to Pompeii) thought it was far better. There were less tourists, anyway.

Here’s Herculaneum with Vesuvius in the background. Apparently the last eruption was in 1944, at which point the everpresent plume of smoke finally disappeared. Somehow that didn’t make me feel any safer.

After seeing all these ruins made of stone, I kinda thought that that’s what the houses looked like. Turns out I was wrong. Houses in Herculaneum were plastered and frescoed with bright colors and intricate designs. You only see bits and pieces, but it’s enough to get the idea.

The best thing about Herculaneum is that they just hand you an audio guide and set you loose. You’re free to walk around into all the ruins. I couldn’t help but compare it to stupid Stonehenge, where you have to stand behind a rope fifty feet away. Anyway, here’s the Snook with some more frescoes.

A pretty alcove. I seem to recall that at least one of the paintings at the top was a recreation to show you what it would have looked like.

Here’s me and Snookums in the College of the Augustals, which was some sort of cult of freemen dedicated to Emperor Augustus.

Another pretty fresco. They seemed to do a lot of trompe l’oeil stuff where your eye would be tricked into seeing three-dimensional moldings and fake windows.

Herculaneum had some fairly well-preserved mosaics, including this one from the public baths. I confess I’m thinking of using it as a knitting pattern.

Another pretty mosaic.

The houses have all been given names based on their defining characteristic, thus this was called the “House of Neptune and Amphitrite” after the beautiful mosaic shown here.

This awesome mosaic was from the floor of the public baths.

More Herculaneum. The Snook is way down at the far end.

I like mosaics. This one’s from a bench.

This was called “The House of the Deer” because of these statues of deer being attacked by wolves. Yeah, just the thing I’d want in my garden.

Snookums on our way out of Herculaneum.

We took another day trip from Naples to Sorrento, where we caught a jet boat to Capri. This is looking down towards the Capri ferry terminus.

Since Capri is way up on the mountain, you have to use a funicula to get there. (Now you’ll never be able to get that stupid song out of your head.) I was all excited because I thought it was going to be some sort of dangling cable car. Instead it’s just a train that gets winched up the mountain.

Looking out the funicula window and down the track…

Capri is really beautiful.

The Snook and I did a little hiking to find this “Arco Naturelle”, or natural arch. It’s on the side of the cliff and you can see all the way down to the ocean below.

More near the arch.

Leaving Capri, this is the view from the ferry terminal back up towards the mountain.

One last shot of Capri.

Sunset back in Sorrento…

I’m wiped out. Is it time to go home yet?

We spent our last day back in Sorrento at the beach. The town is on top of a cliff and there are elevators that connect the hotels to the private beaches. We paid extra to get sunbeds out on the big enclosing deck that protected the beach from the sea. This was our view back towards the cliff.

Looking up at the hotels…

This is looking over our shoulders back out to sea.

This is quite possibly the most unflattering photo ever taken of me in my life. I’m all, like, floppy and blobby! I blame the Englishman who took it. The Snook looks good though.

After the beach (where we both got horribly sunburnt) we headed back to Rome for the night before flying out the next morning. The trip wasn’t really that bad. The best part was flying over Australia during the next day. The pilot jigged the flightpath so we could see Uluru (aka Ayer’s Rock) on both sides of the plane. Pretty neat, huh? I thought it was a fitting way to end the trip.