Giro d'Italia con i miei

As per the terms of the I-live-in-Italy-and-travel-for-six-months-sponsored-by-my-parents agreement, I showed my parents around Italy in April. These are some of the pictures I took.

Milano. Every Italian will tell you that Milan is just an ugly city, but I was surprised to find that some of it is very beautiful. It doesn't have all the old world charm of other cities (in large part because it was bombed to pieces in WWII), but it still has some nice sights as well as a beautiful train station and a pretty good (for Italy at least) metro system.

Milano Centrale.

La Galleria. A nice place to oogle the window displays at Prada or buy an 8 euro espresso.

The Duomo.
Inside the Duomo.

The roof of the Duomo.

Venezia

Our gondolier was named Roberto (I think), and, like most gondoliers, followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and great grandfather with his career choice.
The Grand Canal. Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp were filming The Tourist while we were in Venice, but unfortunately, we never got to see them. We heard that the camera crews were often around the Grand Canal, but we didn't even get to see them.
Piazza di San Marco.


One of the days, my dad and I got up at the crack of dawn (not exagerating) to catch the sunrise and an (almost) empty St. Mark's Square.
Il Campinile.

The classic shot. It had to be done.

Pisa. Eh. Not my favorite Italian city. You get there. There's the tower. Take a picture with your hand up. You leave. Basta.

Ok, so I took one extra picture.

Lucca. Lucca is a city close to Pisa in Tuscany, and it's a lot more charming. We did the very popular bike ride around the ramparts which was really fun.

Pompei

Napoli. It's funny to me that it seems Italians are a lot more afraid of Naples than Americans. It's known to be a pretty chaotic city, but it seems that everyone disappears when it rains, including all the notorious pick-pockets, so we didn't see any of that.

La Pizzeria Trainon. Pizza was born in Napoli, and while the exact pizzeria where it was invented was closed on Sunday, we still had delicious pizza at this place.
After seeing me take lots of pictures of their kitchen, one of the waiters took my camera and had me pose with the chef. This is what makes Southern Italy so great.

Capri. Angela told me that she thinks that everything Capri has, each of the Aeolian island has...except there are seven, and there are fewer tourists. Even after being to Vulcano (one of the Aeolian islands), I still enjoyed Capri.

Our crazy boat driver navigated us through this. Pazzo.

Ercolano. I was really surprised by Herculaneum. It's overshadowed by Pompei, but I really preferred Herculaneum. It's preserved better, and there is a lot more ancient art.

Roma. It was really cool to see Rome after having lived in Italy for three months. What really surprised me though was just how big everything is. It's amazing too just how old many of the sights are, but I just was not prepared for all the giant structures...the Coliseum, the Pantheon, St. Peters. It may be a bit chaotic, but I really like Rome.

The Spanish Steps.
Piazza del Popolo.

The Pantheon.
The Coliseum.


The Victor Emmanuel Monument.

The Vatican

We came on Wednesday and caught the end of the Pope's address to the public. It was a historic speech because he addressed the sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church, but disappointingly, all I could understand was when someone started listing the many schools in attendance that day.
Swiss guard.
A few hours later, after everyone had cleared out of the square.
The Vatican Gardens.
Inside the never-ending Vatican Museum.
That's where I live in Bologna! Formerly called Bononia.
St. Peter's Church. Like everything else we saw in Rome, it was amazing just how massive this place was.

The Vespa Brigade.
The Roman Forum. My parents' trip happened to fall during Culture Week in Italy. This was great for us because we got free entrance to all government sights, and we got to see a performance at the Roman Forum. Et tu, Brute?

I was really glad to get the chance to tour Italy - even for the cities I had already seen. It's funny - my roommates (who are Italian)tell me that I've seen more of Italy than they have. I guess that's just how it goes though. I've probably traveled a lot more in Italy than I ever have in California, but I hope to fix that when I get back.