Xmas in Balestrate

So I spent my first xmas holiday away from Prince George this year. I would have like to have been home for the break but this was pretty sweet too. The day after our disappointing loss in the pocal semi, I set off for Italy with Erin to meet her parents. We spent a total of 18 days traveling around all of Italy. Our journey followed this path: Rome to Napoli to Balestrate to Lipari to Florence to Venice to La Spezzia and back to Rome. Sooo much happened in these 18 days that I don't have time to write about all of it. So here are the highlights and lowlights.

Highlights:
-Rome, this city is crazy, almost overwhelming. There is sooo much to see in Rome that I could have spent the whole trip there and not seen everything. We took a bus tour of the city on our first night to get a general overview of the area. This was a really good idea because we got to see a lot of the city in a short amount of time. The coliseum was wicked, I have trouble comprehending how people build such massive structures way back in 77 ad. The Vatican was also pretty cool, the Sistine chapel is a much see.
-Hiking Mt. Vesuvius. I really enjoyed this. Amazing view from the top. It was also just nice to get out of the crowded cities for a bit.
-Pompeii was pretty neat too walk around in too.
-We spent 5 days in Balestrate, which is a small city in Sicily. This was super relaxing, I did a buttload of reading here. The whole atmosphere in this small town was very relaxed. Everything closed from noon to 4pm so people could eat lunch. The whole town was deserted during this time...kinda weird at first. After this nap/lunch period most of the town would meet in the town square and just hang out and talk. It was nice and warm here too.
-The aeolian islands. This area is extremely scenic...took about a million photos.
-Florence was also cool...new years was a blast just touring around the walking streets drinking and watching all the crazy Italians fire off fire crackers into crowds.
-The best part actually came towards the end in the Cinque Terre region. We hiked along the coast here where there are 5 towns connected by a path through the mountains along the cliffs overlooking the ocean. The view here was unlike any I've seen.

Lowlights:
-the traffic, Rome and Napoli were the worst for this. Italian drivers are nuts! Street lights and crosswalks seem to merely be suggestions in Italy. They take offensive driving to the extreme. Pedestrians beware. The craziest drivers of them all were the scooters who infested the roads. They were all over the place weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds. They were not scared to rip down the wrong side of the road. I can't believe that I didn't witness any actual accidents.
-Napoli was the dirtiest city I've ever been to. I don't know if the garbage disposal people were on strike or what, but there was garbage everywhere!
-The Italian people. I tried my best to give them the benefit of the doubt but time after time we kept running into super rude people. I thought maybe it was just us, but other travelers we talked to confirmed our stories. We found the Italians to be very unhelpful and rude in general. We met some real beauties on the train that i can't even describe, you would have to see them to believe them. This wasn't true of everyone though...We did meet some great people who were very nice and very helpful but these people were few and far between.

anyways that's all i can think of for now...Everwood is on!