Savannah, GA

While I was whooping it up in Rome my husband sent me an email asking if I'd like to go to Savannah with him.  He was going to be going to the boat show while he was there, but thought it might be nice for us to have a little mini vacation together.  I thought I might be in the mood for a weekend away just 5 days after I got back from Rome, so I said, SURE!

We left on Friday morning.  I assumed (wrongly) that we were going to drive to Savannah.

 A photo from later in the trip  :)

What I mean is that I thought we were going to just drive to Savannah and not make a bunch of stops along the way.  Well, I was very wrong.  The 140 mile drive took us six and a half hours. Thankfully, I brought along my Kindle and some water.  I didn't mind that he called on clients along the way, it just wasn't what I had initially expected.  All in all, it was a nice drive.


We ate at a really nice seafood place in Darien, GA.  Tom is hoping that they will advertise in the Waterway Guide, but in some ways I think he just likes to eat at Skippers Fish Camp.  I'd have to agree, it was so good!

Across the street from that restaurant was this lovely place.

It looks like it would make a great halloween venue - or even a great halloween card.  Tom loves to talk realestate, so he inquired about this building and found out that it's for sale for about 1.5 million.  I'm sure it's priced for the location and not for the structure.  Wow.

Eventually we did make it to our hotel - the Marriott on the river.

The inside was pretty cool - this was the atrium and there was a pool inside the atrium as well - so the whole place had sort of that chlorine pool smell.  Not strong, but just enough to alert you to the presence of the pool.  Since it was quite chilly this weekend in Savannah, the pool was a very welcomed treat for some, I'm sure.

In our room the little shelf that held the complimentary soaps and such was very masculine.  I mean the whole thing was masculine - the brown and tan colors against the wood grain backing of the shelf unit - it was very nice, but not girly in any way.  I thought it was interesting.

We walked down on River Street and found a wonderful place to eat.  The next day, Saturday, I spent the day alone and I managed to take over 200 photos.  I guess I'll have to hurry up and talk about this weekend and then get back to Rome as soon as possible.

More on Savannah later.
Have a great week!
Kristin

Hot Chocolate

One night in Rome a few of my friends and I went to the boat restaurant for dinner.  We were so cold and wet from a very rainy day in the city that sitting down in the familiar restaurant was all we wanted - that and some warm beverages.

The rest of the girls ordered some sort of coffee drink, but I don't like coffee so I ordered hot chocolate. 

I was so excited when it arrived because it looked like it was just two sips.  Perfect, that's all I needed. 

However, upon further investigation the tiny cup contained chocolate.  Hot, boiling, chocolate. 

It was literally a cup of hot chocolate.

It was too funny!

I showed the girls and we all laughed.  The menu did say hot chocolate, but obviously I didn't understand. 

The Italians knew what it was, didn't they?  I just can't figure out what they do with a cup of boiling chocolate.

Well, I asked our waiter for a cup of milk if possible - hot.  We discussed the amount of milk and he walked away shaking his head.  I was obviously totally deranged. 

He came back with about three ounces of milk to go with the same amount of chocolate in my tiny cup.  I poured in the milk and it completely filled the cup.  I stirred gently and the waiter just watched with his head tipped to the side - wondering if I had truly lost my mind. 

When I thinned out the chocolate it was a very delicious three sips of hot chocolate. 

The funny thing is that nearly everything that we got in Rome that was supposed to be hot was lukewarm.  The pasta and pizzas - warmish,  sandwiches that should be cold were lukewarm and all cold beverages were lukewarm.  We just got used to it.  However, the hottest thing I had the entire week was that shot of boiling chocolate. 

When I retold this story when we got back to our apartment I was asked if I got a photo.  I said no.  Why?  Because it was a cup with black in it.  There was no other color but black!  Maybe I should have taken the photo to remind me of the story, but at the time it didn't even look like chocolate.

So today is just a story...you'll have to visualize the hot chocolate :)

Be warm.
Kristin

One of those weeks

Have you ever had one of those weeks where your life just sort of gets away from ya?

I got home on Saturday night from Rome.  By the time I actually got to bed, it was 7am Rome time.  I had been awake and traveling for about 26 hours.  So this meant that Sunday was pretty much a wash for having anything productive happening.    Tom and I actually went to Whole Foods together, but he had already been to the regular grocery store earlier in the day, so this trip was just filler.  We got mostly cheese and bacon :)  I was so tired that I think I just wandered and smiled :)

I unpacked, talked with my tenants, snuggled with the kitty, took a nap and watched the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics.  I DVRd the prime time coverage of the Olympics because it was just killing me that I was missing it, but I really couldn't complain too much - I was in ROME!  and that folks, was great.

 So that was Sunday and today is Thursday.

What happened to the week??

I have been on the computer a lot.  An awful lot actually.  I've been editing my photos from the trip and that seems to be taking a million hours.  I have the Olympics on in the background, too.

I took a ton of pictures and I want to show them all to you. 

How interested are you in seeing 1533 photos?

LOL

I didn't think so.  That's a lot of crooked pictures.

Here's just a sampling of what I've gotten edited so far.

I had to edit out the crookedness.  I swear, all of my photos are tilted about 2 or 3 degrees.  

Enjoy!

This was the street where were were staying.  At one end of the street was the Coliseum and at this end was this rounded building, which was a church.

I think this is part of  St. Paul Outside the Walls..  Love the row upon row of columns.

One of the churches that we visited had all of these little white heart confetti pieces all over the parking lot.  It was Valentines Day, but I think the hearts were for a wedding.

Candles were seen in nearly all of the churches we visited. 

...but some of the churches only had these electric ones. 

Pyramid Cestius - Wikipedia info "The pyramid was built about 18 BC–12 BC as a tomb for Gaius Cestius Epulo, a magistrate and member of one of the four great religious corporations at Rome. It is of brick-faced concrete covered with slabs of white marble standing on a travertine foundation, measuring 100 Roman feet (29.6 m) square at the base and standing 125 Roman feet (37 m) high."

We drove by this on the bus, as it really isn't a touring kind of pyramid.  It's sort of stuck in the middle of a wall now.  

This is just an interesting section of one of the large doors of a church.

This is part of the church that had the heart confetti in the parking lot.  This gate/door is just gorgeous!  We all got out picture taken next to it :)  But once again, the photo of me is on someone elses camera. 

You can see how big this door is - Ann was one of my travel-mates.  She's from Boston and I kept asking her to say "Leather" so I could have a laugh!  She says "Letha" tee-hee!

Be sure and click on this photo to enlarge it.  The pieces of glass are tied with a thick cording and hang like a strand of Christmas lights.  It was truly unique.

Just some candy at a cash register.

This is believed to be the original manger that was used by baby Jesus.  It took me a few minutes to find the wooden manger under all of the glass and gold, but it's there.

This was a cute sign inside of a department store that we visited.

Ahhh, the Sexy Shop! 

I saw this as we were driving by on the bus.

Interesting bit of detail in an outside parking area.

We went to this very interesting overlook of the city. There was a war memorial there and maybe a hundred of these busts of men who were instrumental in the Italian military.  This guy reminded me a bit of Colonel Sanders, so I thought it might be interesting to get his profile looking over the city.

The sign above (in the B/W photo) said that the Holy Stairs may only be climbed on ones knees.

I love a row a snowglobes. :)

and I'll end with a photo of me standing next to the River Tiber.  I had someone take this with my camera so I'd be sure to have one photo at least!

The red windbreaker was my signature piece.  I wore black the first day but on the second day when I wore the red jacket in the rain, it was just determined by the group that I was much easier to keep track of when I was in red.  Not sure why I needed to be kept in line, but I went with it :)  I usually wore my black jacket under this, so it worked out well. I was warm and visible.

Have a great weekend folks! 

Kristin

Google funny!

My husband came home this evening and I was watching one of the taped Olympic programs that I made while I was gone. It was the Men's Moguls. My husband said, "Do you remember when Moguls became an Olympic Sport?"

I said, "Well, I remember that it just all of a sudden appeared, but I don't know when."

So I did what I always do - I Googled it.

This is what I got... (you can click to enlarge)

Oh, I hooted and hollered at that one!!

Too funny!

I did find out that the Moguls became a part of the Olympic Games in 1992.

I'm glad he asked, I hadn't had such a good laugh in days.

Have a great day!
Kristin

Smashed Euros

What happens when you take a single Euro coin and a two cent Euro and put them into a machine? Why you get a smashed coin of course!

Before I left for Rome, I went to the Penny Collector site that I use and found that there are many international cities that have coin smashing machines.  I was determined to find a machine once I arrived in Rome since it looked like there were so many.  

Fortunately, I was able to find two separate machines! This one was at a souvenir shop right across the street from the Colosseum.  It had four options, but I only had two - 2¢ coins so I chose to get the Colosseum and the Wolf image. 

According to Roman legend, mythological twins,  Romulus and Remus were given nourishment by a wolf when their mother was imprisoned by the King.  Later, Romulus named the city of Rome after himself and killed his brother when he made a mockery of his efforts to protect his new city.  Romulus then became the King of Rome.

The image of the wolf feeding the twins is seen throughout the city.

This machine was at a souvenir shop near the Vatican.  The 2¢ piece above shows St. Peter's Bascillica and the coin below is of Papa Benedicto (Pope Benedict.)

I really like getting smashed pennies as my main souvenir because they are inexpensive, easy to carry and are fun to make. 

I brought the pennies home and put them in my book with the other smashed pennies that I have collected and of course, blogged about my good fortune!

I have missed being here each day.  I hope that the past two weeks have been as good to you as they were for me :) 

Kristin

just photos around Roma part 2

There are eight of us staying in one large apartment here in Rome.  Another nine live in four other apartments in the same building.  The final two live two doors down.  Most nights we have gone out to dinner at the nearby restaurants in small groups of four - six, but on this particular night almost everyone came to the patio in the large apartment and we had a picnic of sorts.  This is nearing the end of our dinner feast, but everyone wanted a picture of the destruction.   We had bread, grapes, cheese, cheese, cheese, salami, wine, more bread and more wine.

It was so much fun.  

I don't have my notes in front of me, but I think this is the interior of a church called St. Paul Outside the Wall.    It's a Papal church and it's outside the original ancient walls of the city of Rome - hence its name. 

During one of our bus tours I spotted this scene outside the windows.  It's not an uncommon site, but I hadn't seen the laundry hanging underneath the shutters before, so this was fairly unusual.

This is a detail from a gate in a church that kept the masses from going into certain sections of the church. 

Beautiful scroll work.

This was a meringue dessert at one of the many restaurants we visited.  Those little coated candies were a popular item in the pastry shops.

A statue of Mary holding baby Jesus is in the background of this beautiful gate.

One of my favorite pictures of the trip of the girls.  I came up to this beautiful lookout and I saw all four of them holding their cameras like this!  I laughed so hard that they put their cameras down, but I made them pose it again because it was just too funny.

My flight home is tomorrow.  It's an all day event.  10 hours in the plane from Rome to Philly, then a flight to Charlotte before I get to catch the next flight to Jacksonville.

More Rome stories when I return!!

Kristin

just photos around Roma

The Pope giving his blessing on Sunday after Mass. 

One of the girls standing in the light coming from a stained glass window across the church.

This last photo is all of us, taken by the bus driver.  The woman in front who I said looks like she's doing a Stevie Wonder act, is Aunt Jean, and she really just didn't smile for us - oh well.  She's such a hoot.

Having a great time - seeing the Pope today for a special event at the Vatican for Ash Wednesday.  Gotta run - miss you all so much.
Kristin

Roma

Hello Hello!!

I could get used to this city real quick.  Wow.  Rome is really something. 

Now that I have found a few moments (It's 6am here in Rome) and I've gotten connected to Blogger (a feat in and of itself), I'm just going to show you a few photos.  No descriptions as I really do need to hurry along.  We are going to Mass today at the Vatican.  I'm not Catholic, but I am truly honored to be able to go.

Already this trip has been incredible.

disclaimer - these photos have not been edited, cropped or straightened.  Most of them are giant sized because I am trying to get the photos downloaded first - so if the page loads slow it's because of the photo size.

Enjoy!

I am tossing a coin into Trevi Fountain (and standing next to the kissing couple!  how funny)

This was a "zooming by on the bus" photo. 

Alrighty, I'm going to hop into the shower before I wake everyone. 

It's another full day in Rome. 

Have a wonderful Happy Valentines Day!

Kristin