A Dream Come True

So we decided that we couldn't sit around and wait in Kiev for another 2 weeks. So Instead we found super cheap airfares and jumped on a plane to Milan, Italy!! I was super excited to be going, because it is literally a dream come true for me. I have wanted to go to Italy my entire life and have never allowed myself to do it. However, once we were sitting on the plane I was struggling to be excited about our adventure. All I wanted, was for the plane I was sitting on, to take me home. It didn't, so now we are in ITALY!!

view from the plane over Italy

View from plane

Just landed. Excited to see the sun!

So happy to be in Italy! I was doing a dance

in the Hotel bus

Milan airport

We have been making the most of not being home, by seeing as much as we can for as little as possible. If we had of stayed in Kiev, we would have been paying for accommodation and food, just like here. So really we are just waiting in a different, and less dreary place! So now I am going to be excited.

Our first stop was Milan. I felt a little under dressed to be there, but I enjoyed it all the same. All day I kept asking Mike if we were really in Italy? It was hard to believe. We dropped our stuff of at our room and headed straight out to see the sights.
We saw some of the most amazing buildings and art work at the Duomo. I was awe struck.  We tried to stop and see Leonardo DaVinci's Last supper, but the tours (you have to pay for a tour, they are every 15 mins) were all sold out until Feb 20th. We unfortunately couldn't hang around in Milan until then, so missed out on seeing one of the most famous paintings, but we did look around a little at the building it is in. It was very beautiful. We saw a HUGE castle and lots of statues all over the city. The city was stunning and I could have walked around for a lot longer than one day. Sadly it was time to move on.

We had a bidet in our bathroom. That was quite a sight!

Enjoying the sun while waiting for the bus

We decided it was cheaper to drive then to catch buses and trains, so here is our Panda!

Made in Italy!

On our way into Milano

Saw this on the way in! Love Vibrams!

random street art

One of the many statues

We didn't ride one, but these are for rent everywhere

One of the cool buildings we drove past

We stayed over night in Milan, ate a delicious complementary breakfast and headed out to Verona. I had asked Mike to stop in Verona, because I had seen the movie "Letters to Juliet" and I wanted to see Juliet's house, balcony and letters. Turns out you can't actually leave letter stuck to the wall anymore (like they were in the movie) But they have a wall that you can write messages on, and if you really want to you can hand write a letter and leave it in a mail box for the secretaries to answer. I didn't have time to write a proper letter, hehe, but we did leave our mark on the wall! (and a mark for Dave and Kaila! Now your blessed by Juliet!)

This is the small court yard of Juliet's house. You can see the balcony that she supposedly stood on and said her most famous line "Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo?

This is where people used to stick letters to the walls. The gum and bandaids that were used to stick them are still there. People have even written their names in the old gum! You can no longer write anywhere on these walls.

The famous balcony

Here is where you are allowed to leave messages

A description of what you can see in the Juliet Museum. We didn't go in but it sounds cool.

It is apparently good luck to rub the right breast of the Juliet statue. So we did! We need good luck

What a romantic place! (the balcony is above us, over my head)

I wanted him to pretend he was Romeo! This was the best he could do!!

Mikes attempt at leaving a message for David and Kaila! Not really easy to see. SO i tried...

This tell you about Juliets house

some of the messages in the gum!

My messages on the wall

We walked and walked and saw more statues, a cool castle, beautiful apartments and the 3rd largest arena in Italy. It was very cool. Verona is my favorite town so far! I could easily live there :)

We were not sure exactly what this is but it was old and it was cool!

I just liked this tree. It was covered in moss

This was the entrance to Verona

A statue of an anchor and some dolphins. I don't know why!

I was trying to capture the little streets, but instead I got a picture of two Italian people

I love the apartments here

Some kind of government building

More cool apartments. They have an awesome court yard

This is the arean.

People dressed up like statues

More of the arena

I love to walk down these little alley way roads! The apartments are so cool.

This is a huge wall that used to go all around the city

Fountain in the park

Mike enjoyed some Gelato. It was so good it made him shed a tear!

After some Italian food, we jumped back in the car and headed for Florance. We decided to not take the toll roads (we have had a couple of incidents at toll booths hehe), trying to save ourselves a little money, and drive through all the little towns. It was really neat to see the farming communities and the vineyards along the way. The sides of the mountains are all terraced so they can use every possible piece of land they own. We also got to drive through the little alley ways and skinny roads that the locals use instead of the big freeways. It was way cooler!Even though it was a little scary at times because of the fog.

This does not capture the fog but it shows a little of the countryside we got to drive through

Beautiful vineyards all along the way

Country homes

The vineyards have special nets over them to keep the birds off the grapes.

More fog

We arrived at our B+B in Florence

We don't have the best maps so we took kind of the long way around (the scenic route as some would call it) but eventually made it to Florence, where we had to navigate our way through many side streets, round abouts and one way alleys to find the little bed and breakfast we are staying tonight. It has already been quite the adventure and it's only been 2 days. I can't wait to see what Florence has to offer tomorrow.

This was written Feb 13th. I was too tired from driving to add the pictures and post it. I have so many more pictures, I wish I could post them all. This is just a small sampling of the things we have seen,