Rome-Vatican

We arrived at Vatican City around 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. The Vatican Museum is only open the last Sunday of the month, which it turned out to be, so the line was long. We waited patiently in the heat for 2 and 1/2 hours before we were let in to this 4 mile long museum of beautiful artwork ranging from ancient statues to modern paintings, with Michelengelo's amazing Sistine Chapel as the cherry on top at the end of the museum.


View of the dome from the gardens at the museum.





St. Peter's Basilica: The strict dress code was that shoulders had to be covered and no shorts or dresses above the knee. It was SO hot, that this was a bit uncomfortable.

Inside the church, looking up at the huge dome. This is the largest church in the world, and the richest one!


We climbed the dome of the Vatican. This is looking down into the church.

Outside on the dome. Looking out over Rome.

Vatican City (actually it's an independent country, consisting of over 100 acres, its own police, post office, radio station, train station, etc.)

Venice

We spent one day in Venice. It was a wonderful city, with no cars, only boats. The main boat transportation system called the vaporetti, is like the bus on water. We explored Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica and wandered around town. We found a cute little restaurant out of the guidebook (Rick Steve's is awesome!!) and had delicious cinchetti (little appetizers) and pasta with crab and tiramisu. Jacob enjoyed partaking in the 1 euro glasses of house wine (ordering this was his best Italian phrase:) Over the course of the trip I slowly developed a taste for wine too, as it was almost cheaper than water. By the way, turns out Jacob is really good at finding his way around...I would have been walking around in circles all day down the narrow allies, but he knew where we were each time. Venice is a lot bigger than we thought and we only got to explore about half of it while we were there...of course we did have to spend some our time eating the gelatto and pizza that you buy from the stalls in the street.

On the Rialto Bridge (Jacob is looking uncomfortable because I made him wear his slacks in the 90 degree weather so we could get into the church...he conveniently (actually mistakingly) left these clothes in the closet at the hotel in Florence:(

St. Mark's Basilica

The Doge's Palace

View of the canal from the Doge's Palace

Germany

We were only in Germany briefly. We spent one night in Hamburg on our way to Bremerhaven, where we dropped off our car at the port so that it can be shipped back home to us. We took the train from there to Bremen.

We wandered around the town of Bremen, a cute town with beautiful building and lots of shopping.

The train station

Jacob's building:)

We celebrated our 3 year anniversary that night at the Ratskeller Restaurant, where we were tucked away in a liitle nook and served rather interesting German food.

Meeting Our New Car

Monday morning, Volvo picked us up and took us over the Volvo Factory. This place is huge! We were greeted warmly, took care of paper work and then the lady asked if "we were ready for her to deliver our car?" Heck yeah!!

Here we are, the proud new owners of a titanium grey V50 wagon (with red Swedish plates that we can keep on the car).

Even though Jacob got to drive it most of the time in Europe, we know whose car it really is:)

Our car got its first rainbath early on. It rained most of that day in Sweden and while we drove it through Denmark and Germany. But let me tell you, the rain sensing wipers are very cool, they automatically go to the speed needed to take care of the rain on the windshield.

At the factory they took us on a Safety Tour, highlighting Volvo's hightech safety features. Here is Jacob playing a video game...each time he sees the moose he is supposed to brake as fast as he can...then his reaction time is compared to how fast the Volvo safety features would kick in in this situation.

Then we drove our brand new baby 600 miles-down the coast of Sweden and across this 10 mile bridge into Denmark. Then we went through Denmark and into Germany...and here's where it got fun (or at least for the speed freak one of us). In Germany, we drove on the Autobahn. Jacob rather enjoyed cruising along at 115 mph (110 mph on average for one part of the trip), keeping pace with the German drivers in their Mercedes, Audi's and BMW's. It actually doesn't feel like you're going as fast as you are because everyone is very considerate and stays in the right lane unless they're passing. Another interesting sight we saw was many people going on camping trips, pulling their camping trailers with all types of cars. We saw absolutely no full-size trucks on the road anywhere (and only 2 smaller trucks). People use their cars to do everything they want...who needs to use all of that gas anyway.

Europe Trip Day 1-Gothenburg, Sweden

We arrived in Gothenburg, Sweden on Saturday evening. We made it through the 9 hour flight to Copenhagen and then the 35 minute flight on a prop plane to Gothenburg. Our taxi driver drove us to our hotel going about 160 kilometers per hour, in a Volvo of course:) We were so tired that we went to sleep at 7:30 p.m. that night (after a delicious dinner) and then were up at 4 a.m....it took us awhile to get in the groove of this new timezone. We ate an awesome buffet breakfast at our hotel, with all sorts of fun food we've never had before with new flavors (we could already tell that eating was going to be one of our favorite parts of this trip).

We set off for a day of exploring Gothenburg.

We walked to the waterfront and took a boat tour of the port on our way out to the Alvsborg Fortress.

Jacob in front of the canons at the fortress

The tiny church on the fotress (picture taken from the balcony) and Devin on her way up the winding staircase to the balcony.

Jacob in a prison cell...that'll teach him a lesson:)

When we got back we went on a tour of the navy ships and submarine.

Then we took a boat tour of the city through the canal (one bridge we went under was so low that we had to sit on the floor of the boat to go underneath). Then we went to the Universeum where Jacob pet a stingray

We ended our day by going to Liseborg, the theme park, where we ate and wandered around watching people play "lottery" type games where they won humongous candy bars.