We Want to See the Whole World

We woke up at 9:30, showered and re-packed. We checked out of the hotel, paying the required city tax in cash, and then waited outside for Maurizio. A group of ladies sitting across the courtyard were also waiting on transport to Civi but to another cruiseline...I can’t remember which.  Maurizio showed up on time and carrying 3 other couples in the van all headed to the Jewel. We introduced ourselves and chatted during the 1 hour drive. They were all from Utah and it was a first cruise for a couple of them. I told them they’d now be spoiled for all future cruises!  Maurizio seems to have playlists for his drives and sang a majority of the way there. Thank god the highway was mostly open traffic. He is very skilled at driving in Italy and somehow managed not to hit any of the cars he was speedily passing. I don’t want to discourage anyone from using his service at all! He was very communicative and obviously the price was right for us. Here he is playing the air gui

After the Forum we decided to wander the streets and make our way to Trevi Fountain I had also read a couple of reviews about the elevator to the top at Altar of the Fatherland. We decided to head back that way since it was soon to be sunset and I wanted photos over the city. We were almost to the elevator and I thought the heat was effecting Nate because he needed to sit down. After a while he got back up and we paid the 10euro each to take the elevator to the top. I had to close my eyes and hold my stomach. The views up here are WELL worth the elevator ride and cover charge. 360 degrees of beautiful. We continued to watch the sunset and watch the crowds steadily head back down the elevator. It was soon to close so we didn’t have much time. We wanted a pic that wasn’t a selfie so Nate went to ask the employee up top to take our pic. Little did I know... Nate came back to put his arm around me but instead he dropped to his knee and proposed...right there at t

Our room was not ready so we dropped our bags and headed out to enjoy the day. Our plan was to stay up until night in order to adjust to the time difference. With all of our Excitement we did not sleep on the plane so we ended up being awake something like 36 hours when it was all said and done. Prior to the cruise I also downloaded the Rick Steves app and an app called Visit A City. Both worked out to be great! I downloaded the guides on RS app for the things we were interested in most of the ports...not for the audio guide but to be able to quickly refer to the text of it for info on what we were seeing. Visit a City allows you to map out your day to make it the most efficient and worked well for us too. We left our bags at the front desk and with map in hand headed out to explore. At this point we were both overheated and dehydrated so decided to make our way back towards the hotel. We ended up stopping for lunch too. my first experience with buffalo

Nate and I recently returned from a 10 day Greek isles cruise onboard the Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas.We booked this cruise last October and got an amazing deal way too good to pass up. Balcony cabin at $1600 each with $225 total onboard credit for a 9 night cruise. I was a bit worried about flight costs but I figured we could just make it happen somehow. I ended up getting our tickets to Rome with my Delta Amex points! I used Royal’s Air2Sea program for our return on Lufthansa for $440 each! I couldn’t believe it. I was nervous to use the program but figured with that price it was worth a shot. We flew out 9/16/18 from Denver to Detroit to FCO. We made a short video and posted it to Instagram letting our friends and family know that we were taking them along on our trip and we’d let them know where when we landed. Our layover in Detroit was the perfect amount of time: only 2 hours...long enough to grab a snack and find our gate which happened to be only 4 gates down

We spent the next couple of days with quality family time with my grandma, aunt, uncle, cousins, and my aunt & uncle from Oklahoma who actually happened to be in town at the same time.  My cousin had her first baby in January 2017 so this was also an opportunity to meet her and get lots of baby snuggles. My cousin's fiance's dad owns a boat and we took it out for a leisurely couple hours on the water. The last night we spent walking down to the water to take in the sunset. It was incredible. We headed back to Orlando and stayed at a hole in the wall hotel by the airport for the final night because we had a very early flight the next morning...all i can say is you get what you pay for when it comes to hotels in Orlando...next time I'm in Orlando I will definitely not be looking at hotels in that low price range.

I'm going to give this blogging thing a go again. I find that it's a good creative outlet for me and a place for me to memorialize my travels and experiences. My last post was April 2017 and since then I've been on a few more trips: Vegas June 2017 Caribbean September 2017 Florida and Caribbean January 2018 Up Next: Greek Isles September 2018 **** September 2019 (shhh it's a surprise for someone's 40th Birthday) I will try to finish up my posts from April 2017 before I move on to the next trips, but honestly I'm so excited to put into words all of the planning that I've done for our greek isles trip in a few months.  94 days to go to be exact! Let's see...I ended with Day 2 of our trip in Orlando. Day 3 we spent at Animal Kingdom & Hollywood Studios which were amazing. The safari ride and Lion King show at Animal Kingdom were all of our favorites.  At Hollywood Studios Jess of course loved Tower of Terror which Hayley took her on. We