euro trip: cruise : italian ports

sunday, june 3rd / florence, italy

we set our wake up call for 7am. we woke up at 10:30am. once realizing we had most definitely missed our tour, we fell back asleep and woke up at 1:30pm. clearly, we were exhausted. we were super bummed that our wake up call never came, but i think it was a bit of a blessing because we were EXHAUSTED. our tour was to the leaning tower of pisa, and as my dad so kindly put it to make us feel better, "it's still leaning." court & i grabbed lunch and then headed to the pool. i finally started reading the last book in the dragon trilogy and couldn't put it down. after a few hours in the sun, we showered and got ready for dinner. and somehow after all that sleeping, we still passed out early to rest up for rome!

monday, june 4th / rome, italy

wowzas. we packed a lot of stuff into our 1 day in rome. it was amazing. we started off the day at trevi fountain and threw a coin in & made a wish. next we visited the ruins of ancient rome. it was SO interesting to see and they're still finding more! the ruins tour ended at the coliseum - it was HUGE and spectacular. i couldn't believe we were actually there! after that, we headed to a restaurant for lunch where i proceeded to drink a ton of wine. after lunch we headed to the vatican city and i spent the next hour in complete awe. i mean, talk about beautiful. st. peter's was everything you could imagine and more. it was so amazing and the amount of history in that church is unreal. we headed back to the ship & i finally finished reading hornet's nest on the way back. what an amazing trilogy! after dinner, we hung out at the piano bar all night. it was my last night on the ship and we had a great time!

{trevi fountain}

{ruins}

{coliseum}

{coliseum}

{coliseum}

{st. peter's}

{vatican city}

{vaitcan city}

tuesday, june 5th / naples, italy / travel day

because of vacation days / work schedule, i wasn't able to stay the whole cruise. i got off after 5 nights, and my family stayed on for another 6 nights for the whole 11 day cruise. we got approval for me to leave the ship in naples. i didn't see much of naples besides the airport. my dad rode with me to make sure i got there safely which i really appreciated. my itinerary was napels to  paris to atlanta to charlotte. it was a LONG day and by the time i got back to charlotte, it was 11pm charlotte time meaning that i had been up for 24 hours. when i landed in atlanta, i cried a few tears because i was just so glad to be home! momma, katie and lola picked me up in charlotte and i was so glad to see my loved ones.

what a fantastic, once in a lifetime vacation. i am beyond blessed and beyond thankful!