***Writing this post at 28 week pregnant. When we were in Florence, I was 11 weeks & nauseous. Still makes me feel kind sick looking at these pictures. Hopefully that will fade once baby boy comes!!
I was amazed at how green it was. Everything was so beautiful and looked like it was from a movie.
We ate yummy pasta outside of this restaurant where a couple was playing an electric violin and cello. Live music in Italy + good meatballs = my kinda day.
We travelled from Florence to Pisa, a super small town.
DAY 6 - Rome
We were sooo excited for this day because of the pics below. Highlight of the whole cruise was being on the temple grounds. We rode the bus from our ship to the temple and met up with the sister missionaries at one of our stops.
Walking onto the grounds felt like home. I can't explain it better than that. A feeling of home.
The hymn More Holiness Give Me has a phrase that says, "More longing for home." Every time I leave the Celestial Room in the temple I feel that longing. I'm so grateful for temples that truly give us glimpses of heaven on earth.
Then we left that "home" feeling and ventured into the city.
By the time we were to our Vatican tour, we were toured out and ready to go back on the ship... I'm a little embarrassed to say we didn't fully appreciate the art, culture, and history of this amazing place.
Back to the ship with my favorite date. <3
DAY 7 - Naples
Instead of going to Naples, we took a boat ride to the island of Capri/Anacapri. It was BEAUTIFUL there. We had signed up to do the Blue Grotto. Our tour guide was awesome. She got our group on a bus and we got to the other side of the island quick.
We hiked down from the bus to the water where we entered our row boats. It was about a 30 minute wait for us. By the time we finished, the wait had grown to 3 hours... Grateful for our experienced guide! She told us the Blue Grotto is only open about 30% of the year. It's a super small opening to a cavern.
The other 70% of the year, the water is too high/wind is too strong for boats to make it through the opening.
We boarded our canoe and when we went through the cut, we had to lay down flat on our backs.
Inside was beautiful. Because of how the sun reflects through the opening, the water looks like it's glowing! The acoustics were great and our boat guide sang Italian songs for us.