Italy: Rome Day 4 -- Borghese Gallery + Villa Borghese Gardens

We had an easy day planned for our last day in Rome, including a little "sleeping in." And given the schedule we'd been running for our first several days there, the kids actually complied. We took our time getting ready (Cam insisted that the two of us don coordinating patterned jumpsuits), hit up a different cafe in the arcade across from our hotel for our morning cappuccino and cornetti, and then headed over to Borghese Gallery. I had made advance reservations for the 11:00 a.m. entrance -- admission to the gallery is timed and you should absolutely purchase tickets ahead of time online because they sell out far in advance. We picked up our tickets and rented two of the audio tours, thinking that the kids wouldn't be interested. So of course that meant they took the audio gadgets for themselves, but I didn't mind sharing and was just happy that they were listening intently.

Italy: Rome Day 3 -- The Vatican

Given my screw up the day prior with our Vatican guide, I made sure everyone was up and at 'em early Wednesday morning. This meant not only that we were actually on time for our guide (I hate, hate being late), but we were able to partake in a traditional Roman cafe "breakfast." We'd read up and knew that Romans take a quick cappuccino and cornetto standing at the cafe bar. The kids insisted we do the same lest we appear to be American tourists (because I'm sure that wasn't otherwise obvious). We had to grab the cappuccino for take away, but I was so, so happy on the taxi ride down to the Vatican. And then it started to rain. And then it started to pour. And it appeared we would be on time to meet our guide outside the Vatican museum, where we planned to spend a half-hour talking about things outside before our early entry access. Oy.

Italy: Rome Days 1 + 2 -- Ancient and Baroque Rome

We are still shaking off the jet lag of our recent return from Italy; but, even given the 3 (and 4.15 and 5) am wakings since we landed stateside, one thing is clear: this family has been bitten by the travel bug. We've taken plenty of family trips, internationally even, but never just the four of us. In fact, as we sat waiting for our plane to take off, it dawned on Joel and I that we had never all been together (by ourselves) for a period as long as 10 days. Fingers crossed, we tried to convince the kids to go to sleep (bwhahaha).