When in ROME...

Reed and I just got back from a 2 week trip to Italy with the volleyball team-and it was amazing! The team's stats guy, Giuseppe, is from Italy, so he planned the whole trip for us. It was so nice-all we did was show up every morning and he led us around the country! In every city that we visited, Giuse set up a "special" meal (which usually consisted of about 4 courses with about 7 dishes each!) for us that featured food that the city is known for so we could get a true taste of Italian food. It wasn't the Olive Garden we were expecting, but we got to try lots of yummy stuff. In an attempt to keep this post relatively short (but let's be honest-2 weeks in Italy is NOT going to be a short post!), here's a picture highlight.

Our first stop was beautiful Trieste, where we visited the Miramar Castle overlooking the Adriatic Sea, that once belonged to Maximilian and later served as US military headquarters during WWII.We then headed over to Piazza Unita d'Italia.
This was our group at our first special dinner. Since Treiste is on the sea, it was all seafood.We spent the next day in Venice. I loved Venice!

Day 3 we went to beautiful Lake Como. We took a boat tour across the lake and saw George Clooney's houses.
We took a few hours to explore the ritzy part of the lake, home of the original Bellagio hotel.
Next up was Giuseppe's home town of Casteggio. This was the view from our special lunch.The guys put on a volleyball camp at the local middle school, where we made lots of friends.

Then it was on to Milan! We visited this amazing cathedral, the Duomo Milano.
After checking out the inside of this place, we were able to go up on top! It was incredible!

The day we were in Milan was the day of the big Inter Milan soccer game. People started gathering in the square in front of the Duomo 6 hours before the game. We heard that during the game, there was 100,000 people there watching the game on the big screen!
Oh yeah-and the guys played volleyball! They won 3 of their 4 matches. The team they lost to is a pro team. The Cougs kept all of the games really close and all agreed it was the funnest match of the trip.
Then it was off the Florence! We were able to visit the Uffizi Museum, one of the most important art museums in the world. We saw work from all 4 of the Ninja Turtles there!Here we are overlooking the city
This picture is of us (duh!) in front of some famous bridge. It was really cool-they were running out of room to build in Florence, so they built these shops on the bridge!Next stop was Cinque Terre. It's 5 small villages built along the coast. So we took the hike that went to each little village. It was so fun!We ended our hike at the beach. We cooled off in the Mediterranean Sea while we got news of snow in Provo!On our way out, we made a quick stop at the Leaning Tower of Pisa.We spent our last few days in Rome. We kept busy the first day at the Vatican.Then Reed played his last game as a Cougar. We never thought it would be in Rome!3 of the 5 wives at the gameDay 2 of Rome:
ColiseumThe Roman ForumThe Trevi FountainThe Spanish Steps (with Giuseppe and his friend)One last special meal-this one was our favorite! Some really good pasta, bread, lasagna, and lamb! This is the "Friend's Forever Club". I'm excited to be the first female in the club-actually I just like how small they make me feel!
As you can see, we had a wonderful time. I wish we would've been able to go to Verona, but hey, now we have a really good reason to go back! We love Italy but are so glad to be back home with Evan! We missed him a ton! Ciao!