Reading along and caught up! Rome is a place I've always wanted to go, so it's fun to follow along with a Disney eye. So far it looks like a great trip!
Welcome along, Ben! Happy to have you!
That food tour sounded awesome! It's like F&W, but wandering one HUGE Italy pavilion. I hear you on wishing you could have grabbed a hunk of bread. My father owns an Italian bakery (mostly just bread and rolls) and I'm kind of a bread snob. Just by looking at the bread in the baskets, I could imagine the smell you must have experienced and the restraint it must have taken not to try to sneak a loaf out under your shirt
The food tour was really great, especially for DH and I because we are both a little picky so this definitely helped us try some things we might have been afraid to try on our own, especially if we were paying for each individual thing.
Oh my gosh, I wanted to run out with a whole basket of that bread! It was a great experience to get to see the ovens and all of the ingredients that go into making all those loaves of bread.
As a side note, I thought it was funny that the bread was un-bagged, in laundry bins, on the floor. My father remembers delivering bread with his father back in the '50s and they would just put the loaves in wooden crates and drive around leaving them at people's houses between the storm door and the front door. It was fine back then, but today everything is glove handled and double-wrapped. Don't forget your hand-sanitizer!
All of this is so true! That certainly wouldn't pass food service standards in the US!
You are making a great case for
ABD, but sadly for Joyce my wallet isn't easily pried open. I look forward to hearing/seeing more, and remember, this TR isn't just for you, it's ammunition for Joyce
You sound a lot like my DH, and this trip totally changed his mind. ABD is definitely expensive, don't get me wrong. But our thinking was that a trip to Europe is expensive anyway, so why not save more and pay a premium for the great Disney service while we were there? I think you will find over the course of this TR, there will be a lot of ways that ABD was totally worth every penny compared to how it would have gone on our own! I have a feeling Joyce will have LOTS of ammunition once it's over!!
I felt that way about a lot of Rome! Approaching the Colosseum, I was surprised that is was just at the side of this major road that curves past it. People were walking & driving past it like it was nothing. "Oh, yes, that's the Colosseum. Ho hum!" I can't imagine it being something you just pass every day to get to work!
Sayhello
Absolutely! I'm sure when it's your normal, it doesn't have as much impact on you, but I just can't even imagine being surrounded by so much history every single day! We have lots of history in the US, but it sure doesn't compare to the ancient history mixed in with the modern world that you find there. The water from the aqueducts just blows my mind!
We are doing an ABD to Rome next year. I loved your description for the tour
"Dark Rome that did tours based on the novel Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (this wouldnt be the first time his name came up on this trip!). Although it was only offered certain days of the week, we were lucky that it was available on Tuesday mornings. Perfect timing for us to enjoy it!"
I tried to look up that one on line and could not see this particular tour. Do you still have the link or how you were able to do the tour. Did you set it up before hand?
Thanks,
You're going to love your trip! We did set it up beforehand online
here. It wasn't terribly expensive, and it was a great experience that, as Dan Brown fans, we very much enjoyed.
.......and riding on the same road(s) that the Romans built.......and water still flows on some of the aquaducts .....amazing........we can't even build things to last twenty years in this country.
So true! We just tear it down and rebuild it or completely change it into something else when we get tired of it.
Wow, wow, wow!!!! That tour looks awesome. I loved those books and the movies weren't too bad. But regardless of that, it would be amazing just to see that architecture and sit and think about all the history and meaning behind all of it. Just amazing!
I think it was a great idea to get there early enough and have an opportunity to take that tour before the ABD portion gets fully underway!
It was a great, and honest portrayal of the places and landmarks used in the books. We absolutely loved it! And as a history nerd, I appreciated getting the true background on a lot of things that may have been tweaked a bit by Dan Brown to make a good story.
We like to fill our time, so it was a perfect way to see lots of the city and to spend the day before easing into the ABD portion!
Looks like a fun tour! We went on a Da Vinci Code tour last fall in Paris in and out of the Louvre. It was a great way of mixing pop culture in with the real history and keeping it fun. It was also a lot of fun to see what could never have happened in the book - like not being able to dump the cardinal's body into the fountain due to the railing.
Wow, I wish we would have had enough time in Paris for something like that! Guess that's just a reason to plan another trip there.
I had always wondered when reading the book how much was true and how much was made up, so this tour definitely answered a lot of those questions!
I am blown away by the fantastic pictures that you have posted. We didn't do either of those tours and now I wish that we had. Oh well, Kevin will have to organize another Italy trip and all 30 of us will have to sign up. I can't imagine doing another ABD trip with anyone else but our group. Maybe the next trip should be the Dan Brown tour: Rome, Paris, Washington, D.C. And Florence
Thanks so much, Chris! I would totally be up for another round of Viva with all of y'all if Kevin ever puts it together! I told Dustin at the farewell dinner that I was even more emotional about leaving because I knew that specific trip with that specific group of people and those two guides couldn't be replicated. We can visit Italy again and even do Viva again, but it won't be the same! I'm also totally on board for that Dan Brown tour if anyone sets it up!
