A what...to where???

A field trip to Italy??? Who does that? AISL does and I was one of the chaperones. Sorry the blog took so long to update. I kind of had to go on a field trip to Italy with 29 students. When I say had...I don't mean that my arm had to be twisted, but I must say, it was a lot of work. Anyway, needless to say, I came back to a beautiful wife whom I missed so much, and was super duper exhausted. Here are some of the pictures from the trip in no particular order. Also, as a side note, I was wearing different shirts everyday but only had one jacket, so don't be thinking I wore the same clothes for all 10 days!

P.S. If you want to see the travel blog that I did for the school, go to www.getjealous.com/aislitaly










Here I am at the Roman Forum. This was on the first day of our trip and it was pretty amazing! The weather was freeeeeezing though and so you can see the storm clouds in the background.





We went to St. Peter's Basilica on the second day, and it was HUGE! If you've never been, it's a must see. The funny thing about the Basilica was that they have markings down the center of the floor showing where each of the major cathedrals in the world end...that's the Roman's for you, having to upstage everybody all the time!








We climbed to the top of the Basilica...all 600 steps or whatever it was. The view was breathtaking from the top and the climb was well worth it. Here's a view from inside as we approached the top.









At some point in Rome, we went to the Colisseum. This was nice because we got to go out on our own. So I wandered around the Colisseum and bumped into Don King. Pretty cool huh? I put my dukes up and he laughed.







A shot of me inside the Colisseum.

















We ended up taking a bus trip to Pompei (or Pompeii as we American's spell it). So we saw all of the plaster casts of the people caught in the eruption back in 42 AD. I can't put words to it, you'll have to see it for yourself...it was amazing. So we had a view of Mt. Vesuvius and I was like, "That volcano was huge!" I didn't think we'd actually be climbing to the top of it later that day. Seriously, I had no idea it'd be so easy to climb! This picture was taken as we hiked up.







This view is from the top of Vesuvius looking out to the Mediterranean. Pretty cool huh?












Looking down into the crater. The last major eruption of Vesuvius was in the 1940's. Since then, it's been steaming. It smelt like rotten eggs up there...sulfur for you scientific folks out there.










Another view from inside the crater.









We hiked around the rim and then found where Pompeii was. You can see the city off in the distance. Pompeii is the ruined area between the large city in the distance and where we stood on the mountain. Who in their right mind would build a city this close to a volcano (Does Orting ring a bell???)







This picture was taken in Florence, on the top of one of the campanille's (Bell Towers). We climbed to the top and I got this picture.












A view of Florence from the top of the bell tower. Beautiful isn't it?











We went on a Gondola ride in Venice. It was kind of overrated without my wife there. I can't wait to bring her back so we can kiss as we pass under the Rialto. Supposedly it's good luck or something!












Who goes to Pisa and doesn't take one of these pictures!














Sorry it's out of order, but here's another picture of Vesuvius from Pompei. Look at how huge that mountain used to be. You can see the rim of the original volcano and then the larger peak on the left is the new cone that we climbed to the top of later that day. The volcano was HUGE!

We went to Murano and Burano...on our way into Burano (or was it Murano), we saw this campanille. You're not seeing things...it's really leaning. It's not the leaning tower of pisa, but still pretty impressive. One day this things gonna tip over and hurt somebody. Nevertheless impressive.

I can't remember what ceiling this was, but one of the 6 or so cathedrals we went into. It was beautiful.

View of Florence from a huge hill we had to hike up. It took forever to get to this spot and I was dead tired when this picture was taken. As a matter of fact, I can't think of a time where I wasn't dead tired on this trip.

Our group in front of a cathedral in Florence. I'll look up the name later when I take Kara back to see these places.

Bruneleski's dome was really impressive. Doesn't it look like the Gods painted near the top of the dome are looking down on us/ That was on a 2 dimensional surface...it looked so real!

So that was my trip in a nutshell. I saved a couple things for Kara and we'll probably go to Florence and Venice on our way back this summer. For now, we probably won't be updating this blog until after our trip to Kenya on Spring Break (Starting this Thursday!!!). Anyway, hope you enjoyed. We'll talk to you soon!