Wishing you Happy Travels…..
I, Julia, cannot begin to count how many times my husband, Jon, and I have heard this phrase at the end of a Rick Steves' Europe program. For years as our son, Morgan, was growing up we watched the show while eating dinner. We talked about how much fun it would be to travel to those countries we saw on tv...it looked like so much fun. We wanted to eat those amazing foods and drink the regional wines with the locals. Jon would say to me "we need to do a Rick Steves tour". Of course I agreed. I got the travel bug when Jon took me to Australia for our honeymoon 25 years ago. Up until then, the only country to which I had been was Canada. I hardly consider a 90 minute drive, from my childhood home of Seattle, much of a journey.
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So why Rick Steves and why now?As time passed we did travel...but not with Rick Steves. We took Morgan to Ireland for a week and stayed in B&B's (Morgan now has the travel bug). It was one of the best vacations ever as we visited castles, kissed the Blarney Stone, and visited the Waterford crystal factory. We've taken some cruises and bus trips, but we wanted to have the Rick Steves experience. We wanted to eat and drink as well experience the cities like locals. So I finally said "Let's do it, let me book a Rick Steves trip to Italy." It is on our Bucket List ( yes, we actually have a written bucket list). Our friends all kept telling us, "Jon and Julia you really need to go there. You'll love it!" When I calculated how much it would cost, based on our other experiences on trips including all the extras such as tours, tips etc, I easily convinced Jon this was the way to go….so I did it, I booked our trip.
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Just a couple more things about us....
My passion is photography, so as the family photographer, the only photos of me are the few I took using my tripod and my selfie at the end. The tripod is Jon's second piece of carry on luggage....mine is the camera bag. In almost every photo in which Jon, an engineer , is pictured, he is wearing that Aussie looking hat. He has had it since we went to Egypt Sept 11, 2000….and he hasn't taken it off since…just kidding. But he does wear it on every trip we take. It helps me to find him in a crowd.
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After an hour of wandering, we decided to take one of the "Hop On Hop Off" buses to get an overview of the city. Feeling jet lagged, we decided we would just do the "Hop On" part of the ride.
The scenes to the left were taken as we drove by each stop. We were unable to see all the destinations since there was some type of political (or at least we think it was political) march or parade on one of the streets in our route. Still we had a great time. After all we were in Rome, Italy and our tour was going to start the next day. |
Click on the photos above to enlarge