Day 1 - Koln and Dusseldorf

Day 1 in Germany:

(My selfie stick came in handy!)

We headed to Cologne (Koln) Cathedral.  Quite a different change from the Roman architecture we just saw.  I had been here before when I was in 6th grade and only remembered that it was under construction/restoration then as it still was now many years later.  Apparently it's ever going due to pollution, weather and normal deterioration. 

 Some of the beautiful stain glass windows from inside.

 This stain glass was damaged in WWII  and left this space empty.  The window was finally replaced in  2007 and many people asked us if we saw the "pixel" window.

 Because we didn't climb enough stairs at St. Peter's Basilica, we had to climb to the top of the cathedral also.  All 509 steps that were narrow and spiraled most of the way up.  

About mid-way up, looking down on the Rhine.

Mom and I climbed together and about halfway up are the massive church bells.  Mom was done at this point and decided to wait there on the benches for the rest of us.

View from the top! 

After the cathedral we walked a little ways to a bridge that is covered in "love locks".  

We thought it was fun to walk and look at the different locks and the engravings or scratchings on some of them.  The one with OAK we said stood for Olivia, Abby, and Kaitlyn.

We don't need a lock!

From the bridge looking back on the cathedral.

Wearing Grandpa's hat and looking cute.

After Cologne, we drove back to Dusseldorf to pick up my aunt and head to downtown Dusseldorf.

The rest of the day was spent walking around city, seeing some of old downtown, some of the 8 bridges, the shopping malls, and some of the neat little sites there.  It was fun to just walk with the girls and share stories.  Todd told lots of stories from when he was a little kid and the girls had to listen because what else could they do while we were walking!  We must have walked miles and miles and no one complained.

Trying to reenact the statue of boys cartwheeling.  

You can find statues of cartwheelers throughout the city.

 This man is pooping out gold.  The girls thought it was hilarious.

 Can you tell what's wrong with the steeple?  It's crooked!  There was a fire at the church and when they rebuilt it, the wood wasn't seasoned causing the twist.  The steeple was damaged in WWII but was rebuilt and they kept the twist.

 While my brother was a foreign exchange student living with my aunt and uncle, he took a picture of himself with these statues.  It was only fitting we did the same.

 Listening to stories and history from Ursula and Gigi

Our by the Ko - ritzy shopping area

 Story time!

A great day but boy were we exhausted  with all that walking!

Deutschland!

We left Italy and flew over the Alps for Germany - the real reason for our trip.  Italy was a great detour but we were excited to see Grandma and Grandpa.

Look - the Porter!

We were so excited to see Grandma and Grandpa Porter!  They picked us up from the airport - we were finally able to give them hugs after about 18 months apart.

So my dad has had a few minor accidents in Germany while being there and to welcome us there, as he was pulling into a parking spot to pay the meter, he lightly bumped another car parked - no damage to either car.  He hunted down an officer and gave him the information that was needed and received his ticket.  Good times!

 Our first stop was at my aunt's house.  There we also met up with Laurie and Cade who flew over earlier that day.  It was fun to catch up with my aunt and to see my mom and her sister chat - they are so much alike!

Rome Day 4 - Why it's the Pope!

The night before our Vatican tour, we get an email saying that our tour will not be able to get us into St. Peter's Basilica because it will be closed - short notice.  However our tour guide would show us around more of the Vatican museums.   After reading the email, Todd asks the question, "who has the power to close the church unexpectedly?"  We don't think too much of it until the next day on our tour through the Vatican.

At the Vatican, we had a private tour that got us in early and went straight to the Sistine Chapel.  There were a handful of other people there.   I couldn't take a forbidden photo since our guide was right next to us the whole time but it was such an amazing room to be in!  It was nice to get some of the story behind all the paintings in there.  I had always wanted to see it and it did not disappoint!  

We spent the next couple hours walking through the museum and getting a lot of history about the pope's and artifacts there.  If you are going to visit, it's worth the extra money for a guide to get the most out of everything.  

One of the many hallways that we walked through.

Plus having a guide will have you cross the ropes and touch things - she said it was okay!  

IMG_8658 from sassy momma on Vimeo.

The museums were interesting but what we really came to see was the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica.  After our tour was almost up, our guide was trying to get us to the front of the church so we could at least see it.  Every entrance was blocked off and we couldn't get in.  We finally found a place and say police barricades coming down the middle of the street and making a circle.  Apparently the Pope was speaking and that is why the church was closed.  So the Pope is the one with the power to close the church with little notice :)  Our guide left of there and we decided to wait things out in case the Pope himself was going to come down through the barricade.  And he came!

IMG_8671 from sassy momma on Vimeo.

Waiting in the cold for the pope - girls wondering if it was going to be worth it- it was.

We thought seeing the Pope in Rome was pretty cool!  We didn't stick around since the service that was going on was in Italian.  We decided to grab some lunch and then try to get into the church later.  There were still major crowds so we headed across the square to the Castel Sant'Angelo and hung out by the river.

After some more waiting and people watching, we headed back to St. Peter's to try our hand at getting in the church.

The crowd had died down but the line to get into the church was massive - another bonus to getting a guide, you bypass lines!   This was the first line we really had to wait in and it took us a little over an hour to get in.  

We toured the inside of St. Peter's - we were told earlier that one Pope built it using people wealth as their "forgiveness" for their sins.

It was massive inside!!!  The statues of past Pope's we giant!

The giant alter

The Pieta - now behind glass

The dome

I wanted to climb to the top of the dome and so that was going to be the last thing we did.  You can talk an elevator up and skip a few hundred stairs - Todd opted to do that with Kaitlyn and Olivia.  Abby and I were going to take all the stairs - all 531 of them.  I said to Todd, "wait for us at the top of the elevator and we'll climb together."  He said to me, "We'll meet you at the top."  There wasn't any more clarifying so we ended up getting separated. 

Abby and I climbed the stairs and waited for about 30 minutes in the cold wind watching people get off the elevator.  We ask the guard running the elevator if he saw a man with two girls.  His english wasn't very good because he didn't understand what I was asking and said no.  Todd and the girls, went right up and continued all the way up to the top of the dome without waiting.  Miscommunication!  Abby and I hung around a little longer then climbed to the top.  We waited way too long because by the time we got to the top - the other 3 were mad and cold at us!  Oops!

Unfortunately we didn't stay at the top with all 5 of us very long.  Todd and the younger girls went back down while Abby and I took a turn around the dome.  (Olivia was very unhappy)

The view from the top

Looking down across Rome.

Waiting for Todd, Kaitlyn and Olivia

Waiting for Mom and Abby

We laughed about the mix up later and learned that instead of rushing we need to make sure both groups know where to meet.  

So instead of spending the morning at the Vatican, we ended up spending the whole day there.  It was a fun trip and on our way back we even squeezed in a quick tour of the Capuchian Crypt - tiny chapels under a church that used the bones of 3,700 skeletons to create the rooms,  tossed our coins into Trevi fountain,

did a little souvenir shopping, had more gelato, and packed up for our flight in the morning.  Arrivederci Italy!