Oh, the places Connor and Sam will go!: 2014

Sorry this post is so late!

Rome highlights

1. Vatican tour on our first full day. Our guide went to UT! She was great! Vatican is a must do! With a guide and early access!

2. Connor and I went to mass at St. Peter's Basilica after our tour!

3. Day trip to the Tuscan countryside. We visited the towns of Montepulciano and Pienza. Stopped by Sant Antimo to hear the priests do their daily before lunch Gregorian chant! They chant 7 times a day! We also had lunch and a wine tasting at a vineyard in Montecino. Yumm. Last stop was Pienza where we did a little souvenir shopping.

4. Bone crypt. Go see it! The bones of 3700 Capuchin friars organized into art. "What you are now, we used to be. What we are now, you will be."

5. English mass on Saturday night with a Paulist father. Great homily!! He was happy to hear that the Church we go to in Austin is run by the Paulist fathers too!

6. We met some cool travelers in Rome while watching soccer games! Ron and Linda, who were on a 1-on-1 trip with their 13-year-old granddaughter, gave us some great advice about life, marriage, and travel. We met Graham and his Australian family by the river. We were given some more good advice about life and traveling.

We have decided that pictures really don't do Rome justice so we didn't take too many.

Day 2

Touch St. Peter's foot for a blessing.

Hook em! Our tour guide graduated from UT!! She was GREAT!

See that waterfall? That's rain water! Torrential downpour!

Teeny tiny car!

USA vs Germany game.

Tuscany pictures!

A scene from Twilight's New Moon was filmed here.

We heard the Gregorian chants here at Sant' Antimo.

Next stop was Pienza.

I found a pretty ring I liked in Pienza, so Connor bought it for me:)

Waiting in line for "the best" pizza back in Rome.

It was good but not the best.

So many vendors! We came back the next night again!

We stumbled across a really cool Gospel choir.

After a short ferry ride, we arrived back in Split at 11:15a.m. We decided to grab two vegetarian omelets at our favorite Split breakfast spot as well as a bottle of wine for later before heading to the Radisson Blu. *Remember this hotel was the one I booked after our first night in Split with the monster snorer.*

We arrived to the beautiful hotel a little after noon (3 hours before check-in). Our room was ready, so they let us check-in early (as I had requested)! The check-in guy loved us! He was very interested in why we chose to come to Croatia. We told him that we had heard it was beautiful here. He said he was so happy to hear that his country was famous!

Con and I did a major happy dance when we saw our room! Let me tell you...this room was no hostel! A backpacker's dream come true! Then we found out that the balcony was huge!! With a great view! Best "standard" hotel room I've ever booked!

Now it was time to explore! So we put on our swimsuits, and we were off.

It didn't take us long at all to realize we had many activities to do!

Order of our activities:

1. Private Beach

2. Outdoor Pool

3. Indoor Pool

4. Jacuzzis

5. Sauna

After the sauna, we figured it was time to freshen up for dinner. Let me tell you how nice it was to shower without worrying about the water turning off every 10-15 seconds or the water becoming cold. We have stayed at quite a few "environmentally friendly" hostels that have timers on their shower heads. It's a very nice sentiment that gets extremely annoying especially with long hair.

Before dinner, Con and I went to an olive oil tasting! We learned so much about how to distinguish between good and bad olive oil as well as the process of making it. We have decided that we could very well make olive oil tasting a hobby of ours.

We paid $30/person for an all you can eat buffet. It was a good buffet! And we stuffed our faces! I haven't eaten that much during one sitting in a long time.

The original plan was to sit on the balcony and drink our bottle of white wine, but my stomach was so full that I just passed out...for night. I think Connor watched a World Cup game before going to sleep.

The next morning I ended up sleeping for a lot longer than expected. But we still went to the ***included*** breakfast buffet around 9am. It was soooo good! So much variety!

Also maybe even better than the buffet, we woke up that morning to an email from DB Bahn saying that they were giving us a refund of 140 Euro for our overnight train experience! Woohoo! So pretty much they just paid for our wonderful experience at this hotel!

After breakfast, we sat on our balcony for two hours before checkout and drank our bottle of wine. It was lovely!

We appreciate hotels so much more after staying in hostels.

Flight to Rome at 4:05pm. Delayed an hour because of terrible weather. Thankfully, it was only a 50 minute flight. We landed in Rome around 6pm.

Enjoy the pictures! To our families and friends (and Hopdoddy and Mexican food), we miss you a lot!!

Thank you for reading!! Stay tuned for Rome and Barcelona!