Italy: Venice and Firsts

Day one in Italy was full of many firsts. 

Our first time in Venice, Italy - the Sinking City.

Our first Italian pizza. Oh my goodness be prepared for more food talk.

 

There's a reason we try to imitate Italian food...it's amazing!

Our first (and probably last) gondola ride - thanks pops!

By far my favorite thing that we did in Venice! It was so neat to go down the small canals and through quiet residential "roads" or should I say streams? It was beautiful.

Our first gelato! From this day on it was at least one gelato stop a day!

And the best part of the day came last. When we went and met Dallison's sweet Siena! She is so precious, Livvy kept asking to hold her and I never wanted to share! She smells oh so good and has the cutest smile.

UK Road Trip: My favorites

I know my posting has been out of control. I am only posting all of our trip stuff for the sake of keeping track of what we did. In all honesty, the best cathedrals, the cutest towns, and best sites didn't make our best days. Our best days were when we all were happy and spending time together. Our best days on the trip were seeing Livvy and Jude happy and experiencing new things through Livvy's eyes. Here's a list of my favorite things on our trip:

- A full English breakfast included in our hotels. It wasn't like your normal hotel continental breakfast. Oh no, we had to be seated at our table and then go get the crazy-good breakfast. I think it tasted better because I didn't have to cook anything!

- Livvy and Jude going swimming in the hotel indoor pool.

-Eating fish n'chips at Conwy and becoming a believer. Seriously people, I might drive 4 hours to eat those puppies again!

-Seeing Lincoln at his prime in tour guiding. 

-Ordering pizza to our hotel in rainy Scotland and having Livvy eat half of it in one sitting.

-Watching "Britain's Got Talent" as a family and Lincoln and Livvy loving every minute of it.

-Finding Livvy's "sleeping" toys in every hotel cupboard and drawer.

-Seeing countless yellow fields out the window of the passenger seat. 

-Feeling oh so proud that we did it! We changed diapers in the trunk of the car, had naps on the go and survived 8 days of road tripping with an (almost) 3 year old and 9 month old! Thanks for the great trip, honey!

UK Road Trip: Shakespeare Country

We stopped in Stratford Upon Avon to see the Shakespeare sites on our way home. I definitely want to go back and spend the day here! It was such a fun town that I wish we could have spent more time in. 

Shakespeare's Grave 

Where Shakespeare was born.  

Cute town

UK Road Trip: Bodnant Garden

Pictures say it all. Wales in the spring is pretty awesome. 

UK Road Trip: Betws-y-Coed, Wales

I LOVE WALES! It was so beautiful. Right as we drove in we stopped at Swallow Falls. 

Livvy was not a fan of how loud the water was. 

All of the signs in the town were written in Welsh and English. It looks like a pretty crazy language!

The town was so pretty. Located in the middle of the beautiful rolling green hills of Wales.

We found a sweet place in the forest to walk through the woods. It was so fun to walk around and enjoy the forest.

Betws-y-Coed was so much fun. We stopped in a little store and bought Welsh cakes and waffles. Yum-o.

UK Road Trip: Worst day

 My least favorite day of the trip. We spent most of it driving. Our first stop was at a circle of Roman rocks in the middle of a tiny English town in the middle of a random field of sheep.

And it was freezing and raining. But a certain tourist would not be deterred. So out we went and thank goodness we did so I could capture my favorite picture of the trip. 

Once the amazing Roman circle of rocks were behind us we made our way to Liverpool to see where the Beatles lived and the cathedral.

We had planned on touring John Lennon's house, but as soon as we got into Liverpool we were ready to get out. We headed in stopped quickly to see the cathedral (5th biggest in the world) and left.  We toured the cathedral and both of us thought is was pretty incredible due to its size, but as we were leaving I turned to Lincoln and said that of all the cathedrals we'd been to, this one I didn't feel the same sacredness that I normally felt. It felt big, but not holy.

Liverpool was not much of an improvement. The town was run down and dirty. I read that McCartney and Lennon came from humble backgrounds, and I can definitely envision that after seeing their hometown.

While driving around their town it made me think about the Beatles. I like their songs, they were talented, but they were rock stars and lived like rock stars live. They represented an entire movement in their day and I don't think I'll ever understand what they represented because I wasn't around then. Either way, Liverpool was a quick and sad stop on our trip.