Ciao Bella!

For the past two weeks we have been in ITALY!!!!! Venice, Florence, Cortona, and Rome. It was the trip of a lifetime (thanks mom and dad) and we loved EVERY.SINGLE. SECOND of the trip. My dad's childhood friends came too, and the eight of us had a blast. We went on a tour group of 27 people and our guide, Russ. Everyone in the group got along and really became friends by the end of the two weeks. Russ was a FANTASTIC guide and made the trip stress free for everyone. He had every hotel, transportation, and tour lined up for us in every city. There was not one bad thing to say about the trip.

I was an absolute nervous wreck about leaving the girls for 2 weeks. I finally had a chance to calm down on the 9 hour flight over! But they had a wonderful time with their Mimi and Granddaddy- so much fun they didn't want to talk to us when we called!!! Thank you so much Mimi and Grandaddy...the girls are still talking about their 'vacation' with you!

We flew into Venice and our first adventure we taking a water taxi to our hotel! We stayed in a little family owned hotel that was in the middle of the everything. It was perfect.

Awwwwww!

We began our trip Gondola rides, tours, drinking wine in St. Mark's square.

The food was GREAT! Bryan and I have a little Italy belly to prove it!

Can you even believe this is real!?

Pigeons were everywhere and kinda gross. They feed them corn with birth control in them so they can't reproduce as much!

The view from the Bell Tower in the square

The people their own boats or gondolas instead of cars! How cool would that be!

More pics of Florence, Cortona and Rome to come!