The Boy is chiming in again today with some extra photos and thoughts as we finish up the first half of Europe…

Quick points:

• Italy
  • Nights in Rome were awesome. Roaming about on windy cobblestone streets, small cafes and shops and places to eat everywhere, fun squares, delicious food, cheap yet delicious wine…I like Rome.
  • Aperitif at 5 or 6pm with some wine, wander, dinner at 9 with more wine. Seriously. Rome knows what’s up.
  • Rome is also sweet because of all of old ancient stuff. It really is amazing to know everything is ~2,000 years old and carved by hand.
  • The Colosseum is honestly more badass than pictures show.
  • The Pantheon is a legitimate ancient building. Still in use.
  • Everywhere you go, guys with selfie sticks and laser lights and noise making things are trying to sell their wares. But they never, not once, try to sell a selfie stick to a person who is actively taking a selfie. They walk right by.
  • The Pope was cool. I’m glad we got “good seats”.
  • Pompeii was epic. They dug up this city from under the volcanic ash covered dirt, and there are whole buildings and streets. It’s an entire CITY. It’s crazy. And the streets have curbs. And are paved. And were used for 600 years like that before being covered. 600 years. Almost 3x older than the USA, in use as a city. And then buried for 2,000 years. Crazy.
  • One thing though – all of their buildings seemed to be made of stones of very distinctly volcanic origin. I don’t know how no one – no citizens of the city, no visitors, no one – for 600 years, no one ever realized that all the building material was volcanic rock. No one looked up at the volcano shaped lonely mountain and thought “hey, maybe this is a volcano”.  But nope. Neither thought entered their heads. They didn’t know it was a volcano until it exploded.
• Monaco was neat. Tiny city country full of rich people with more money than sense. One night was enough. I gambled, won money, cashed out.
• Paris
  • Not gonna lie. After 2 weeks of amazing weather, the rain in Paris was a bummer. But it was probably good we had a lot of time there. We needed some R&R and to be off our feet some, and the rain was the perfect excuse.
  • Having entire wings of the Louvre be empty for over an hour was so cool.
  • I kind of think my wife is going to kill me after all the stairs. Yay tall things.
  • I will say that the soccer match we went to was super fun. Crazy. But fun.
  • The rain closed the third floor of the Eiffel Tower the night we had tickets – our final night in Paris was 20 mph winds and rainy. Super bummer, but kind of summed up our time in Paris. Oh well.
• London
  • Hearing your native language being spoken is an amazing feeling after almost 3 weeks of having no idea what anyone is chatting about.
  • Reading your native language on signs is awesome.
  • They don’t let you take pictures in Westminster Abbey or the Crown Jewels. One dude tried and the guard had him erase the photos in front of her. I turned on my GoPro, strapped it to my backpack, and voila.
  • Inhaling alcohol vapor was a very unique experience, probably not to be allowed in the USA.
  • Having a night out with someone we knew was also a good call. Mixed things up a bit.
  • We saw The Lion King on the West End. Gotta add some live culture to this trip, it can’t all be old stuff.