We decided to use our last day in Rome on a side trip down south. We went to Pompeii and spent a couple of hours, then we also went to the Amalfi Coast.
Pompeii was an impressive place -- it is huge. I'm not sure we saw 20% of it. Grant and Luke liked hopping on these stones, used to cross the street.
Here is Pompeii's forum, with Vesuvius in the background.
We then drove a portion of the Amalfi Coast - we found a butcher and bought some paninis, then we bought some oranges from a roadside stand. It was a really nice day - until the kids started getting carsick and the car started to get low on fuel. Thankfully, everyone held down their lunch and we didn't run out of gas.
We spent New Years Eve in Rome, after arriving back home from Pompeii & Amalfi. Nash, Grant, and I went on the street at about 10:00 looking for some gelato, which we eventually found. We then came back to the apartment, and at midnight, we went up on the roof to see the fireworks around the city. It was really loud - fireworks going on all around us.
After leaving Rome on our way back up north, we decided to stop in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. We figured we were close enough, we may as well stop in to see it.
We bought tickets to go to the top of the tower - but we had to kill a couple of hours. Solution? Gelato, of course, and then we rented this "bike" for 30 minutes. The boys had fun taking turns being the driver. Mallory just sat on the front and enjoyed the ride.
And, the boys on the top of the Leaning Tower.
We then drove toward Venice, arriving at a hotel on the mainland late that night. The next morning we parked the car and took the water bus over to the island. It was really foggy that day, and again, really cold.
By the time we got to the island of Venice, Luke was absolutely sick of the cold (we all were, actually). We had to wait in line to get into the Palazzo Ducale (the Doge's Palace), so I tried to distract him by offering him 100 Euros if he could catch a bird with his bare hands - he spent the rest of the day trying to entice one close enough to him to grab it. I still have my 100 Euros.
The Rialto bridge on the grand canal. 
The largest piece of pizza these boys have ever eaten.
We could not figure out why this guy, who was clearly a tourist, was carrying around a large, fake candy cane.
And then we had one last Italian gelato - on the Piazza San Marco. You can see the fog in the background toward the Doge's palace. It was too cold for Mallory, though. She just had a few bites, and her lips were blue. We were freezing anyway, and then to put ice cold gelato into your body was a crazy thing to do, in hindsight.We all really enjoyed the trip. We ended up putting about 4,000 km on our car in 9 days -- roughly the distance between New York and LA. It was a lot of driving, but we were able to see most of what we had wanted to see in Italy, though we all wish we could have spent more time.
