November 2001 - Dean and I started our Italy trip in Rome and spent three days there. Some of the many things in Rome that we saw include the Pantheon, Piazza del Campidoglio, Piazza Navona, Trevi Fountain, and Piazza di Spagna. We even had dinner in Trastevere one evening. We stayed in a hostel in the northern section of town near a football stadium. There was a game there one night while we were there and it was wild to see the number of people heading that way and to hear the amount of noise generated by the fans from the stadium. Dean wanted to attend but thought better of it after approaching the stadium and hearing the crowd.

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November 2001 - The Vatican City was an amazing thing to see. I highly recommend going up in the dome and into the sublevel of the basilica. Its hard to grasp the incredible size of everything there without seeing them in person. Saint Peters Basilica should be given a half day of attention at least. There is much to see there and it is an awsome sight. Much more than worth the price of admission. (since it was free)

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November 2001 - We had the good fortune of getting some good advice about this part of the trip. The advice was get to the museum early and pass everything and head directly to the Sistine Chapel. We did this and ended up being able to enjoy the Sistine Chapel with the company of no more than 5 people. Once we got our fill of that we went back to the beginning and went through the entire museum. We are not art people so we glazed over things pretty quickly, but if art is your thing then the museum is definitely an all day thing.

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November 2001 - We made a side trip down to Naples for one evening so that we could check out Pompeii and Herculaneum. We heard the Herculano was less crowded so we went there first. When we left there we went to Pompeii but they were just closing so we only got to see it from the outside. Naples was a very dirty and busy city. It had a bunch of market style pedlers on the streets selling everything from socks to electronics.

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November 2001 - We ventured up to Florence for a couple of days to see if the quality of living really did improve as you go north in Italy. The answer is that it does. Florence is a very clean, and offers many great sites to see. The more memeorable things that we saw were the large Duomo, the merchant covered bridge and of course, Micheangelo's David. They had a bunch of street vendors here which is where Dean ended up buying a really nice leather jacket because it got quite cold while we were there.

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November 2001 - We stopped by Pisa on the way back from Florence. The train stop is on the opposite end of the town from church and the belltower, so it felt like quite a hike carrying such heavy packs, but in retrospect it really wasn't that far. Although visitors were not allowed to go up into the tower we did see several people walking around on the top level. They were in the process of refurbishing the area around the base of it as well.

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