So, for our real anniversary, we didn't just take out little trip to California. We went much farther than that. We actually went to Italy (and we threw in a little France too). While Clayton was on his mission, there was a couple that took really good care of the missionaries. They especially took care of Clayton and his companion. When Clayton came home, they moved out to Utah, pretty close to where Clayton lived. They stayed in touch and Clayton would go and visit them, and they've pretty much adopted Clayton into their family. That couple is currently serving a mission in Italy. So, with a reason to visit, a place to stay, and some tour guides, we decided there was no better time to enjoy Italy than our one year anniversary (I'm pretty sure that I'm spoiled and praying that the rest of our anniversaries will be as good).
We spent 2 whole weeks in Europe. Flew into Madrid, Spain (only as a connecting flight), spent most of the time in Northern Italy, spent 3 days in France, and flew out from London, England (again, just a lay-over). There's WAY TOO MUCH to write about, so I'll just have to give the brief run down of how it was. AMAZING. There it is... the quick run down. Teehee ;o)
Days 1&2 of our trip traveling days. The first day sure was a long day too. We had a few connecting flights and every single one of them was delayed. Luckily we had time in between our flights, so it's not like we were ever scared that we wouldn't make our connecting flight, it just made for a miserable day of flying to be told that we had to wait. Once we finally made it to Italy, there were Brother and Sister Herndon to pick us up. We drove to their house, dropped our gear, visited for a quick second, then we were off to a memeber's house to give her a blessing. Clayton and Jack gave the sister a blessing, we visited for a while, then it was off to dinner. We tried a new place that Jack and Bernie hadn't ever been to, and I chose the wrong menu item. I chose gnocchi in duck sauce. Not that terrible, but not as good as everyone else's meals. But hey, dinner could be as crappy as it wanted to be, I was in freakin' Italy!
Day 3 we went to Venice. I know that if you're in my family, you just quoted Indiana Jones in your head ("Ah, Venice"). But for real, looking at it, you can't help but say "ah." It's gorgeous. There are no cars in Venice, because it's made up of lots of small islands, there's just not room for cars. We traveled around by water bus (it's just a big boat to get lots of people from one place to another) and saw lots of churches, museums, and just a whole lot of beauty. We traveled out to
Murano, which is the glass island where they make their famous blown glass cups, vases, sculptures, etc. I picked up a vase and some
Venician beads there. We ended the Venice trip with a gorgeous
gondola ride. "Ah... Venice."
On day 4 Jack and Bernie had planned one thing, then it was too rainy, so we changed plans, but then the rain cleared and we went back to our original plans. Okay, I have to explain that Clayton and I went where ever Jack and Bernie wanted to take us. So many of these places we went, I don't
know the name of. I could find out from Jack, but not in time to put it in the blog. Alright, so we went to an old church (I know, that doesn't tell you location at all in Italy) St. Mark's? In between where we parked and the church was an open market, so we walked through that quickly, but nothing jumped out at me, so we went through it VERY quickly. The next stop was
Padova where we went through another church, a museum, and another market.
Padova was just a quick trip, because there was much more planned for that day. After
Padova we headed out to a lake. I think that we went to
Sirmione. There was a castle there! I got to be the princess! We walked around the town and around the water. It was, of course, amazing, beautiful, breath taking, you get the drift. But the day still wasn't over. We drove some where else to meet up with an old ward member of Jack and Bernie's ward who was moving. The town where we ate was phenomenal. You could overlook so much of the city because we were so high up. Plus, it was getting darker, so the city twinkled and glowed. Plus, the food at the
restaurant was fantastic as well. I like traveling with a husband, because no matter what I order, I always get to try 2 meals :o)
The 5
th day was Sunday. We got to meet all the members of Jack and Bernie's ward. Oh, and this was great, because Sunday was the day that we found out that Bernie had been telling everyone that her children were coming to visit them. I guess I've been adopted now too :o) I explained to everyone how we really knew the
Herndons, but also said I'm more than happy to be counted as family. After church we went out to a gorgeous lake not too far from the
Herndon's place. It was so peaceful there, it was a wonderful Sunday activity to walk around there.
Day 6 was a beach day! I got to swim in the Adriatic Sea!!!! Luckily it was a cloudy-
ish day and there weren't a whole lot of people out, so I didn't have to see any naked boobies on the beach. Although I did see some large men in
speedos, also what European beaches are known for, right? The water was of course freezing when you first got in, but once you dunked your head in, you were good to go. There were no waves, the water was pretty clear, and the only thing that freaked me out a little bit was that some pretty good sized crabs would hide themselves under the sand in the water and I stepped on several of them and they wiggled under my feet. After the beach we toweled off and got back into the car. We traveled to see one of the oldest churches found so far in Italy. Some of the similarities between this church and the
LDS temples was very intriguing. Not far at all from the church were some other ruins, so we checked those out and headed back home. After some good old fashioned
gelatto, of course.
The 7
th day was the beginning of our trip to Florence. It was a 3 hour drive, so it sucked up most of our morning, but after checking into our "hotel" we headed to the city, ate some delectable pastries, walked across the gold and silver bridge, and went inside the
Pitti Palace and went through the museums there. Jack took us to one plaza where they had a ton of authentic replicas of very famous statues. The great part about these statues was that they were free, and you could take pictures of them, which is not something that you can do of the originals. We walked to the
Duomo, but by time we got there it was too late and the inside was closed. As we were walking to our car we heard some opera music, so we wandered off path a little bit to find the music. We found that the music was coming out of a second story window and that it was apparently a
rehearsal or practice of some kind, because the music kept on stopping and starting over.
Day 8 started off with Jack and Bernie taking it slow while Clayton and I went to the
Academie to see the David. Jack warned us that we didn't have that much time to be in there and that that place can take forever to go through, so just watch the clock. Well, with that warning, and with the fact that Clayton and I aren't super art people, we whipped through that place pretty quickly. We saw it all (obviously David is in the museum, but that's not all there is to it). We didn't take a ton of time looking at it all, but we did see it all. After the Academia, we met up with Jack and Bernie at the
Duomo. Jack, Clayton, and I climbed up the tower and got a brilliant panorama view of the city. When we came back down, we waited in line to go inside of the
Duomo. Next, it was time to go to the market. We did not spend as much time or money in the market as we should have. For example, they have gorgeous silk ties for around $2, not Euro, dollars. I also should have splurged a little bit and gotten that gorgeous scarf I wanted, but that was more like $30. Anyway, we had to pretty much sprint out of the market, because we weren't staying in Florence all day, we had to get to Milan to pick up Jack and Bernie's new car from the mission office. There were a couple more hours in the car to get from Florence to Milan. Not that Clayton minded, every time we were in the car, he was automatically out :o) We got there, went through a bit of a
hastle to pick up the car, then we had a couple hours for site seeing. We went to the
Duomo. Holy
moley is that thing beautiful. We didn't make it in time to go inside, but I was plenty impressed with the outside. Next to the
Duomo is the oldest shopping mall. It honestly was an ancient mall, and now, the store sites are sitting on some of the world's most expensive pieces of
realstate. So the mall has places like
Gucci,
prada,
Mercedes, and... McDonald's. We saw those sites, had dinner at a Burger King, then we were off to Verona where we had our next hotel reservations.
Day 9 of the trip was an on our own day. Elder and Sister
Herndon had a zone conference in Verona, so Clayton and I were on our own to explore the city. We did a TON of walking that day. Poor Clayton did not enjoy the city as much as he should have, but he was tired. I guess he's more used to
relaxing vacations, where as this was very much a "doing" vacation. We got to see a lot though. We saw Juliet's
balcony which was a huge attraction, while Romeo's house was apparently just a door. Clayton walked under a whale rib that is strapped up in an arch way. Apparently it is supposed to fall on top of the first just person to walk under it. Well, it didn't fall while we were there. There is an arena there that is
comparable to the
Colosseum in Rome, although smaller. We went in there and looked around, they were actually setting up for a performance that would be playing that night. When we saw all there was to see in the city, we walked outside the center of the city and found some stairs that took us to the top of a mountain-
ish hill. On our way up we saw some ruins where we stopped to take some pictures. The top had a breath taking view of the whole city of Verona. When we were done looking at the view (and after Clayton had cooled off a little), we headed back down and accidentally ended up in the middle of a funeral. That was a bit awkward to try to go look into a church and then see a
hearse pull up in the parking lot. We headed back into the center of town after that because Jack and Bernie were done with their conference and it was time to drive back home. I'm pretty sure that even I fell asleep on that ride home. Like I told you, we had done a copious amount of walking, and the sun was shining down on us hard.
Day 10 was quite eventful. It started off with a trip to the Alps. We saw an old
Olympic ski jump that was used in the 40's. In the mountains, we walked around the village a little bit, but the big part of the trip was the sky bucket ride that took us to the peak of one of the mountains. That was a fun trip. We walked around the top for about 30 minutes, then hoped on the next sky bucket down, and it was off the mountain for us. It was such a quick trip because that was the day that Clayton and I were off to France! Can I tell you that I hate traveling? Traveling to France started off horribly and continued to get worse. First of all, we get to the airport and the company that we're flying with doesn't have a counter up front. On our ticket it says before we go to security we have to get our ticket stamped or else we could be denied our flight. But there's no where to get it stamped because there's no counter. That freaked me out. Eventually a worker showed up to the desk at the gate and told us we get it stamped as we get on. Then, we don't even start boarding until 40 minutes after our plane was supposed to have already left.
Urg... and I can't stand pushy people, and it seems like everyone in Europe is quite pushy, have no sense of a line, or sense of personal space. Then we get to the airport, rush off to buy a bus ticket (our airport was actually a 90 minute bus ride away from the actual city of Paris), and wait in line in the freezing cold (oh, and it's close to midnight by now, just to put this into perspective). We get on the first bus, just to be kicked off because they had let too many people on. Then we're told that the next bus isn't coming when scheduled so we need to go back into the airport. It's a tiny airport that closes after its last flight, so all the lights are off, and it's not a very welcoming or warm place. People in the airport are ticked, because some of them missed connecting flights, and there is no way I can fall asleep in there. Finally another bus comes, and the pushy pushy people again butt ahead and we don't make that bus either. The next bus isn't far behind, however, and we make it onto that one just fine. The rest of the travel gets lucky from here. At the bus stop we don't know where to go because we're not supposed to check into our hotel until 1:00 pm and it's just barely after 1:00 am. An American couple asks us if we want to share a cab with them, and it turns out they were staying pretty close to us so we said sure. We were going to see if their place had an extra room, but that place was sold out, but the guy at the counter was helpful enough to get us a map to our place. We went to our hotel and, because I spoke French, they let us check in early.
Yay! So, instead of walking the city of Paris in the rain at 1:00 am, we got to check in and sleep.
11th Day of the trip we went around Paris and looked at all those places you hear about in history books and see in movies. We hit the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Chompe d'Elysse, the Sein, the Bastille. Yeah, it was pretty great. And surreal, it was hard to believe we were actually there, even though we were in fact actually there.
Day 12 was DISNEY DAY!!!! In Paris there are 2 parks. One is like the regular Disneyland and the other is more like MGM in Florida. They were not small parks, so even though we were there all day, we definitely did not see it all. We were able to hit up most of the rides, but saw no shows, not parades, and they don't do fireworks :o( I was giddy as all get out, and I wasn't able to soak as much in as when I went to
Hong Kong, but it was fantastic. It was fun to go around and look for all the similarities and differences through out the park.
Hong Kong stuck pretty close to the original Disneyland, but Paris took lots of liberties in what it did and how it did it. It was funny how the
attractions that I thought would have the longest lines (because they do back home) like Indiana Jones and Space Mountain had hardly any line at all. I guess Europeans don't do roller coasters too well. My favorite ride of the day was "It's a Small World" and that was because theirs was SO much different than ours. Theirs had more detail in it (mostly in the European countries) and it looked really good. All in all, it was a great day. Although, I think the lack of sleep was catching up to us because Clayton and I did manage to fight in Disneyland. I'm pretty sure there's a rule against that, but we did not obey it.
I've got to speed this up a little bit because it's taking forever to get through this trip. Day 13 we went to the Louvre. It was beyond belief, full of such great work. However, Clayton and I had already checked out of our hotel so we had all of our heavy stuff with us, and the grocery store where we were going to buy snacks and lunch wasn't open when we left in the morning, so we were hungry. Oh, add all of that to the fact that we are unable to appreciate art for all that it's worth, and the sum is that we didn't enjoy the Louvre as we could have or should have. We left the Louvre early than I had originally planned and walked around the city a little bit more. I had been wanting so desperately to try a Croque Monsieur, which had been explained to me as being a glorified grilled cheese sandwich with ham. Gross, turns out that's pretty much what it is, but I did not like the cheese they used, and there was too much of it. Oh well. We took a picture on the Point Neuf Bridge that is apparently in one of the Jason Bourne movies, then hopped on a bus to take us back to the airport, to take us back to Italy.
Day 14 was our last day in Italy. It was a full day though. We finally had the chance to sleep in. We woke up after 8, and it was amazing to rest up a little more. We finished packing everything up and then went to Trieste and walked around Max-a-Million's castle. After walking around and taking pictures we drove to the other side of Trieste to some ruins and another church. Took some more pictures, and headed back toward home. On the way home we stopped at a beautiful spring. It was just a small little place, out of the way, and not crowded at all. It's not a place that everyone gets to see, so it was nice that we got to go there. We went back home, grabbed our stuff, took one more trip to the Gelatoria, and then headed to the airport. It was a very memorable, once in a life time trip, and I'm so glad that I could share it with my hunny, and our "parents" :0)
Of course the trip home didn't go smoothly, and I promise I'll try to be brief about it. Flew from Venice to London, Gatwick Airport. Struggled getting a train ticket to the bus station. Waited at the freezing bus station from around 1:00 am to 4:30 am, took the bus to the London, Heathrow Airport, got lost in the terminals, finally made it on our flight. In Chicago, our final flight to Salt Lake was canceled and we had to stay in a hotel and bum around Chicago until our 12:30 pm flight the next day. We sure were glad to be back home by time we finally made it there.
Smith family reunion at the Court House, and this year we went to celebrate Grandma Petronaci's 80th birthday (her birthday's in December, but just ignore that fact :o) It was a quick 3/4 day trip, but it was fun. Mostly the Kerby's kept to themselves, but it'd been a while since we were all together. There were lots of people there that I didn't know, and that's because they were Grandma's nieces and nephews or something like that. But, the family got to catch up with Aunt Leslie, since it's been a while, and Uncle Brent stopped by for a little bit too. 
Smith family reunion at the Court House, and this year we went to celebrate Grandma Petronaci's 80th birthday (her birthday's in December, but just ignore that fact :o) It was a quick 3/4 day trip, but it was fun. Mostly the Kerby's kept to themselves, but it'd been a while since we were all together. There were lots of people there that I didn't know, and that's because they were Grandma's nieces and nephews or something like that. But, the family got to catch up with Aunt Leslie, since it's been a while, and Uncle Brent stopped by for a little bit too. 
Junction is a tiny tiny town. Josh looked it up, and I think the population as of January was 172 people or something like that. So, there isn't a whole lot to do there except visit. Unless, of course, you come with Clayton... my sweetheart wasn't exactly the life of the party, but he did bring the party. We brought the ATV and gave all the kids rides around the streets, and let the big kids ride around with their significant others. But, I think more than the ATV, my family liked Rock Band. 
I think we played that every night we were there, and Kim, of all people, whose bed time is 8:00 pm stayed up until 1:00 am playing. Best part of it was that Dana was the most intense about it, and she owns it. Although she doesn't play it at all when she's at home. I think that's changed by now. 
Let's see. What else did we do? Oh, Aunt Leslie brought "kid friendly" fireworks (poppers and sparklers) and it wasn't just the kids that enjoyed those. We also played some not-so-volleyey volley ball. I don't understand people who are good at that sport, it hurts! We took a day trip to some Native American hieroglyphics. Oh, and we ate some s'mores and toasted marsh mellows :o) That pretty much sums up that trip.
Right after Junction though, the Kerby family/grouping/whatever (minus Clayton) went to Yellowstone. I'd been before, but I was under 2 years old, so I REALLY don't remember. Now I've got a trip I can remember (with help from this blog and some pictures ;o). I'm not super in the mood to be typing things out, however, so it's going to be a super quick review of what we did in Yellowstone. 
We camped in West Yellowstone in 3 camp sites. Mom and Dad shared a site with Joy and the girls, Kim and Ben's family got their own site, which left Dana and Josh to share a site with me. I thought I was lucky to get away from Mom and Dad's site because they both snore. Not the case, however, one night I was woken up because the guy camping behind us was snoring as loud as a bear. Or maybe he was snoring louder than a bear, because one night there really was a bear at the camp and I slept right through that!
We went to Yellowstone park 2 days in a row. The first day we went and saw the geysers. Those are pretty cool. I know everyone always thinks of "Old Faithful" when they think of geysers, and I will absolutely admit that that one's a good one. But "Grand Geyser" was amazing. It was 4 geysers that go off at the same time. They shoot super high and there's four of them. Oh, that day we saw buffalo, elk, and an eagle. After leaving the park we did some shopping in West Yellowstone. 
Once people got to the mud, it's not like any of them were in a hurry to get away from them. It's a tad bit mesmerizing. We also went to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We got some good family pictures there. I also went to take a picture with a chipmunk and Dad told me if it bit me I would have to get shot. (He meant that I would have to get shots, but what he actually said was much more entertaining.) That day we mostly drove around and admired the scenery from our car. The lake, the forests, other small geysers. Animal sightings for the day again included buffalo, eagles, and elk, but we also saw a bear! Luckily not up close, seeing as we didn't know that one of the places where we went to that day there had been a bear attack the day earlier. Then it was a late dinner in West Yellowstone and back to camp.
Once people got to the mud, it's not like any of them were in a hurry to get away from them. It's a tad bit mesmerizing. We also went to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We got some good family pictures there. I also went to take a picture with a chipmunk and Dad told me if it bit me I would have to get shot. (He meant that I would have to get shots, but what he actually said was much more entertaining.) That day we mostly drove around and admired the scenery from our car. The lake, the forests, other small geysers. Animal sightings for the day again included buffalo, eagles, and elk, but we also saw a bear! Luckily not up close, seeing as we didn't know that one of the places where we went to that day there had been a bear attack the day earlier. Then it was a late dinner in West Yellowstone and back to camp.
Oh, speaking of camp, there was fun stuff to do there too. One of the nights I went miniature golfing with the boys. There was also a swimming pool. There are pros and cons to an indoor swimming pool. Some of the pros include getting away from bugs and that you can swim even in a storm. The biggest con I can think of is that it's stuffy in there. 
When we were done with Yellowstone, it was back to Utah to stay at Grandma and Grandpa Smith's. Clayton joined us up there so he could say good bye to the family before they left, and to enjoy some great s'mores. But after s'mores, it was time to head off. We hugged Joy and the girls good bye, and same with Kim and the boys (except Aaron was being a pill and I had to pay him a quarter for a hug and kiss good bye). We took Josh and Dana with us so they could go visit Josh's grandma in the morning before Mom and Dad came to pick them up. So we had a little extra time to visit them, but not much. The next morning Dana and Josh went to Murray, and Mom and Dad stopped by to see our place, and then they were headed back to California. 
