Italy - Rome

Our Honeymoon in Italy

March 5th, 2010 - Rome Day 1

The 8 hours of flight time seemed to be very long, I tried to sleep so time goes by faster but my excitement kept me waking up once every hour or so. Every time I woke up, I checked the LCD monitor in front of my seat to see how many miles more to ROME! After half a year of planning for our wedding and honeymoon, we finally arrived in Rome! This was our first trip to Europe so I was very excited but yet nervous that this was also our first time in a foreign country where English is not the primary language. I did all my homework so at least I felt comfortable on how and where to go! I booked the Sheraton Roma Hotel & Conference Center and the hotel offers airport shuttle for 5 euros each way per person so it was convenient. We followed the direction from the hotel's website and found the shuttle/bus stop! While waiting for the next shuttle bus to arrive, I kept thinking "am I dreaming, am I really in Italy?" I couldn't believe that we made it to Rome!


Within 30 minutes of wait, the hotel shuttle came. I gave the bus driver my name and he checked off the list and we boarded a comfortable mini-bus. During the short ride (less than 30 minutes), I was looking out the window and had my first view of Rome. I saw many buildings but not like the skyscraper at home, the surrounding still has it ancient-feel and not modern which I like. We arrived at the hotel and checked-in without any wait. The front desk lady was very helpful, she gave us a map, and told us about the hotel shuttle bus to the city center for 3 euros per person (return trip is free). The hotel was clean and our room was spacious. 

After we settled down, we took the hotel shuttle bus to the city center. On the ride to the city center, we keep looking out the window trying to find what is what haha. The first sight we arrived was Palatine Hill ruins. Standing in front of the ruins that has been around for two thousand years was incredible!! I was overjoyed that we are in Rome, this is Rome!

The weather was cold but manageable compared to New England's winter! We walked down the road and then it started to rain! We walked back to our shuttle stop and waited for the next shuttle to go back to the hotel since it was raining! I was people watching while waiting for the shuttle and this horse carriage passed by which I felt pretty special:

Our first day in Rome didn't went far but fully rested for our full adventure tomorrow! We had dinner in our hotel which was buffet-like and it was pretty good!

March 6th, 2010 - Rome Day 2 - Vatican City

Today was a gorgeous day for sightseeing..the weather was just perfect!  We woke up nice and early and all prepared for a whole day of Rome!  First, we took the bus #31 directly from our hotel to Vatican City! We boarded the bus and I had my eyes on the route map and counting the number of bus stops left. So good so far until as I was counting 4 more stops left, I lost count!!! Why? I was completely confused by the bus stop names! We passed by at least 3 stop names that were exactly the same thing! We had no clue which is which since we don't know any Italian and then the bus stopped at a stop that named like Vatican.  We were about to get off the bus and then the lady behind us asked if we are heading to Vatican City. She told us it's the next stop not this stop! Super nice of her!! We got off the next stop and there were signs everywhere to point us to Vatican City!

We walked for about 5 minutes and we arrived near a city wall like structure.  We saw a line of people waiting in line to enter an entrance and I went up to the line and found out this is the entrance line to Musei Vaticani (Vatican Museums)! We quickly joined the line and we were early so the line wasn't bad!  We got in, bought our tickets, and went through security and off we go navigate one of the most famous museum in the world. 

First, we saw the Ceiling of the Gallery of Maps! First time seeing something this grand in my life, I was amazed by the artworks on the ceiling! My head was up and looking at the ceiling for at least a few minutes!

The museum was huge! We walked by hallway after hallway and I kept looking up at the arts on the ceilings! 

We spent almost 2 hours in the museum! At last we reached the famous Sistine Chapel! In the Sistine Chapel, no photography is allowed so I can't show you how incredible it was. Sistine Chapel was truly Michelangelo's masterpiece. We sat on the bench and spending our time to appreciate Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.  The artwork was magnificent, I was speechless when looking at it. I couldn't even tell if the columns are real or they're part of the painting! Hard to imagine how could someone painted a ceiling like that!

After Sistine Chapel, we walked down this stunning staircase to exit the Vatican Museum and out to St. Peter's Square. Before we headed out, we got to the cafeteria area to grab some paninis to eat and rest a bit. The food here was expensive but already expected since we are inside the Vatican Museum!

After we walked out of the museum, we headed to St. Peter's Square and St. Peter's Basilica was right in front of my eyes! The structure was just stunning, first time in my life seeing such beautiful architecture! The view of St. Peter's Basilica was very beautiful with the blue sky! 

We were just amazed by all the structures in the square that we didn't immediately get in line before the line gets really long. We stopped and think for a second if it's worth the wait to get in and since we were here, maybe once-in-a-lifetime, we had to go in!  We joined the line and it was moving along, at least there were so much to see to keep us entertained. 

Be here early! Look at all the tour buses parked already!

The impressive sculptures:

Almost through the line!

We got in finally after half an hour of waiting in line which is not bad at all!  It was definitely worth our wait, the interior was impressively decorated with arts from famous artists like Michelangelo and Bernini!

Afterwards, we joined the line to go up to the Dome because I read that the view of Saint Peter's Square from the top of the Dome is the best! We have two options to go up: elevator to the bottom of the Dome and then walk up or walk the whole way up! Walking the whole way up, 320 steps, was the least expensive and we thought it was a good challenge for us! It was easy at first then gets harder and harder that I had to stop and rest a few seconds haha! We finally made it to the base of the Dome and here's the view of the Basilica, very different than looking from bottom up:

We had to get going since the space here was little and people had to get through! The outside view of Rome was very nice from here:

We were still not reach the top yet! We went back into another entrance to the stairs up to the Dome, the stairway here gets narrower and narrower till this point:

We finally made it to the top! So proud of ourselves completing the 320 steps! The view from top of the Dome was simply the best view of St. Peter's Square! This was what I saw in postcards and here I am seeing it myself!

I think that's the Vatican Museum:

Another view of Rome!

I love the pale-blue color of the domes!

The "little" sculptures we saw on top of the basilica from the square but those sculptures are actually huge!

We even saw a huge crowd coming, thank god we came early!

The walk down the 320 steps was fast and easy! We got down and took some more pictures of this incredible basilica!

Got a picture with the Swiss guard on the back :)

Then, we left Vatican City and walked toward Castel Sant'Angelo. Hard to believe that I just walked from one country to another LOL! The walk toward Castel Sant'Angelo was very nice, passed some beautiful bridges especially Pont Sant'Angelo! 

Here is Castel Sant'Angelo:

We entered Castel Sant'Angelo and somehow it was free today! I have no clue what holiday was it! Once again, we climbed some stairs up to the top. After completing the 320 steps up to the Dome, this few flight of stairs was nothing haha! The view of Pont Sant'Angelo from up here:

We just relax and enjoyed our view of Rome - such a beautiful ancient city!

Picture of us on the Pont Sant'Angelo with Castel Sant'Angelo on the back:

View of Vatican City from Pont Sant'Angelo:

We walked across the bridge and saw a gelato shop so we went in and tried out Italy's famous gelato! I had a hard time picking out which favors I want since there were too many to choose from unbelievable! There were all sorts of chocolate favors, fruit favors, mix, etc OMG so hard to pick!

Lastly, I made up my mind on Tiramisu since I love Tiramisu! After we bought a cup of gelato, we walked across the street and sat down in front of this church and enjoyed our first gelato.  Absolutely delicious, it was so creamy, rich, and smooth, it was 10X better than the ice cream at home! We both loved it!

After we finished the yummy gelato, we walked along the river bank, it was just so romantic to walk around in this beautiful city! We walked pass by the Palace of Justice, another beautiful architecture:

We continued our walk at our own pace and ended up in Piazza Navona! The square was very beautiful with fountains, music, and street performers. In this square, I felt the livelihood of tourists and locals!

Another beautiful baroque style church - Sant'Agnese in Agone:

Next, we ended up at the Area Sacra dell'Argentina, it was some ruins from the Roman empire. The truly unique thing about Rome is that as you are seeing a beautiful building in the city then you realized that there's an ancient ruin right next to it! Unlike many developed/developing countries where many old structures are destroyed to make room for new buildings in the city center, Rome kept and protected all those ruins. I was very amazed that in the middle of all the modern buildings, there was this thousands of years old ruins!

We continued following our map to get back to where the hotel shuttle bus stop and stopped by two more stunning buildings.  First, the Victor Emmanuel Monument, this great marble white building!

And then Capitoline Hill:

I just love Rome! It has both the ancient ruins and great architectures!

At this point, we were getting hungry so we decided to have dinner in one of the restaurants nearby. We walked toward the street where mostly restaurants are located and then passed by another ancient ruin! 

We picked this restaurant with a special menu for 15 euros included drinks and walked in. The waiter speak efficient English and have an English menu! I picked a mushroom with meat pizza and ended up it was a medium-sized whole pizza! WOW...I thought I was getting slices! The pizza was so good, it was so fresh, the crust was very crunchy and not hard at all! This was the best pizza I had in my life so far! I was so thrill to have "real" pizza!!!!

Beautiful lamps in the restaurant:

Dinner was very good and very reasonable priced too! After dinner, we walked toward the hotel shuttle bus stop and came across a fountain. I have heard that fountain water in Rome is very drinkable so have to try it! Yup, they were right, the water tasted very clean and with a little bit of sweet taste to it, very refreshing, absolutely safe to drink, no odor, and no chlorine!

We took the shuttle bus back to the hotel, it was a long day, but well worth it! First full day in Rome, we already felt in love with it!

Santorini Day 4

We spared a day in Santorini so today we headed back to Oia! We walked to Fira bus station where there were buses going to various points in the island. We bought the bus tickets to Oia around 2 euros each and waited for our bus. The buses were more like tour buses which were comfortable!

The bus ride from Fira to Oia was less than half an hour, I heard it was longer during tourist season due to traffic and there was only one road to Oia! On the way to Oia, we passed by other villages:

When we arrived in Oia, we know exactly where we wanted to go since we were here for our wedding photo shoot! Today was much better weather! The sky was clear and blue! Oia is very picturesque, no matter where you go, you can not get a bad photo! Words could not describe how beautiful the scene was and pictures could not fully captured the actual feeling to be there!

We would definitely come back to Santorini again in the future - perhaps our 10th anniversary!

Santorini Day 3

We spent our first day as husband and wife in one of the most beautiful places on earth - Santorini! The weather was good today so we went to explore the island as much as we could since this was our last day in Santorini!  First, we walked to Fira and headed toward the road down to the pier. The view was truly stunning!

The way down was very easy but watch out for donkeys! 

Imagine having lunch in this restaurant, over-looking the sea (too bad it was not opened when we were there).

We took the cable cars up (it would be a lot of work to walk all the way up!).

The view going up was amazing - looking over the white houses on the cliff!

We passed by the restaurant where we had our dinner the first night (my favorite seafood spaghetti) so I took a picture of the restaurant:

We spent our whole day wandering around this beautiful island! When we got back to our hotel for a break, our hotel notified us that there will be a strike in Athens tomorrow so our flight will be cancelled! Our hotel was very helpful to provide us with phone numbers to call the airline to reschedule our flight...we'll be flying out the following day instead! Don't know rather this was a good or bad news for us....at least we get to stay in Santorini for one extra day! There was nothing we could do about the strike so we didn't even worry about it and just enjoy our time in Santorini!

For dinner, we went to this restaurant on the road from Firostefani to Fira. We ordered the local dish called  tomato keftedes as appetizer. It was pretty good!

We also had grilled calamari which was excellent!

After dinner, we went back to our hotel and sat by the pool to enjoy the wonderful night view of Santorini.  The houses lighted up on the cliff was magnificent!

Our Santorini Wedding

Today was one of the most important days of my life - our wedding! I first saw Santorini in a drama and fell in love with it right away! If I can choose one place to have my dream wedding, it is definitely Santorini.  I have dreamed about having my wedding in Santorini and today it came true!

The night before was raining so I was very nervous that the weather will ruined my dream wedding! Luckily, when I woke up in the morning, the rain stopped but it was cloudy. We woke up early in the morning and had our breakfast. My make-up artist arrived at 10:30 am and did my hair and make-up. We got dressed and our wedding planner came to meet us at 12:30 pm. Nikos took some photos of us around our hotel before we headed to Saint Irni.

I chose Saint Irni because I love the its structure and location, it was facing the sea. We got to Saint Irni and our ceremony started. There was one camera man and two photographers (one is Nikos) recorded our whole ceremony. Saint Irni was very romantic, surrounded it was all white just like in dream land! I couldn't believe that were are getting married in Santorini, everything I have dreamed all came true! Even though it was just two of us, I felt this was the best moment in my life that I will never forget.

After our ceremony, we had our photo shoot in Saint Irni and then headed to the famous Oia for the picturesque blue-domed church. Nikos knew the best locations for photos, locations that I never seen online.  When we reached Oia, we couldn't believe our eyes - it was like heaven! Everywhere was whitewashed houses and blue-domed churches. The white and blue made us felt like we are dreaming.

We spent at least 2 hours in Oia, every single corner was just too beautiful!

After the photo shoot, Nikos drove us back to our hotel and our hotel gave us a bottle of champagne and congratulated us :) Today was the most memorable day in my life and my dream came true!

Santorini, Greece

We flew from Athens to Santorini; total flight time was only 50 minutes but got us to a totally different world! We landed on a very small airport and as we walked out the gates, we were greeted by Manos, who transferred us to the hotel. We picked Mill Houses which was located in Firostefani, very close to the main center, Fira because not much hotels are open in that early in the year (most hotels open in around May, beginning of the tourist season) and also we got a good deal - 80 euros for a studio per night including breakfast and airport transfer. The ride was comfortable, we were in a van with one other couples, and the ride was less than 20 minutes. We stopped at the parking lot across from the road and had to walk down to get to the hotel. As I walked down the stairs, I saw the view, it was breathtaking....I am really in Santorini! Am I dreaming?

It was a foggy day when we landed so the pictures didn't came out as pretty. Manos showed us our "studio" which was a traditional cave room; our room was spacious and very cute:

We went out to explore Santorini right away! We walked up the stairs to get back to the parking lot where the main road was to get to Fira. I lost count of the number of steps, it was good exercise, after all this is one of the uniqueness of Santorini! The walk to Fira was around 10 minutes and it was relatively quiet in the island since it was not the tourist season. We walked by many cute little white-washed cubic homes and blue-domed churches.

 We found a cute gyros restaurant in Fira (Obelix, their website: http://obelix.gr/wordpress/) and had our lunch there. The gyros was the best we ever had and it was very inexpensive around 2 euros!

After lunch, we went back to our hotel to meet with our wedding planner - Nikos. Nikos and his assistant came to our room and walked us through all the details of our wedding tomorrow :) Afterwards, we unpacked and walked back out to Fira for dinner. We had our dinner at Pelican Restaurant, which looked like a terrace, the food here was amazing!  I had the best seafood spaghetti I ever have in my life!

After dinner, we walked back to our hotel and tried to sleep early but was nervous about my big day tomorrow :)

Cruise to Grand Cayman and Cozumel

It was winter 2009, cold and snowing in Boston so..... I went on my first cruise to the Caribbeans! I h
ave heard about cruising from island to island in the Caribbeans but this time I have to experience it myself! Taking a cruise on January is very inexpensive since it was after the holidays and it was priceless to get away from the cold Boston!

I flew from Boston to Tampa and from Tampa took a cruise to Grand Cayman and Cozumel. I rather flew there in less than 3 hours and then took t

he cruise and will reach the Caribbeans in a day instead of taking a cruise directly from Boston which would have take at least 3 days!

My first impression of the ship was bigger than I have imagined! When I first stepped in the

ship-Carnival Inspiration-it was very steady, I couldn't believe I was in a ship. I followed the

crew to go up the deck to see the

ship taking off the port. Good-bye Tam

pa, see you in 5 days :)

My first night in the ship was filled with excitement, I went around to explore different areas of the ship--it was big. The entertainments are very good as well. I received a schedule of events everyday so I can decide where I want to go, it has plenty of activities to keep me busy the whole day.

My most favorite place in the ship was the lobby area; I get to see many happy old couples.

I thought they were very sweet cruising together and enjoying life together at that age.

The food was decent considering the price I paid for the cruise! There was one buffet restaurant where we had our breakfast and quick snacks everyday. My most favorite thing to do is put ice cream on top of fruits, it was very refreshing especially after one whole day of activities! There were two dining restaurants and one sushi area that opened during certain time of the day. We had assigned seating in one of the dining restaurant, the waiter there remembered all our names! The service was really incredible!

After one and a half day in the ship, we finally arrived at Grand Cayman, The Cayman Islands!

Grand Cayman is known for its Seven Mile Beach, but unfortunately I went on the cruise with my mom and aunt so we didn't make it to the beach! Instead, we stayed near the port area to

shop around. The shopping area near the port has many shops but mostly were expensive jewelry shops. We spent few hours walking and shopping around the area. We went back to the ship afterwards to relax, swim, and eat. Speaking of swim, it was cool the first few days and then as we reached the western Caribbeans, it got warm enough to swim in the ship's pool.

It took another day to get to Cozumel so another full day in the ship. By this time, I got pretty bored already since I have navigated all the areas in the ship and the show was at night. I am not a gamble person so there weren't much in the day to do but to eat eat and eat! However, it was the formal night where everyone dressed up. As we lined up to enter the dining room, I saw an old grandma helping her husband fixing his tie...aww that was very very sweet! The old couples looked absolutely adorable together!

Next day, we arrived at Cozumel, Mexico! The port area was well maintained! It was colorful with souvenir shops! I preferred Cozumel over Grand Cayman because of the craft shops in Cozumel, not just jewelry store that outrageously marked up! Cozumel was relaxing, we shop around and went back to the ship for lunch and then came back out. The port area was very close to the ship so we could easily make the trip back to Cozumel. We had a fun time shopping around and the weather was warm! I finally felt that I am in the Caribbeans, the blue turquoise water and the white powdery sand!

The last day was horrible, the sea was rough so ended up I had a horrible sleep and felt seasick! I spent most of my time up at the deck to have fresh air so I wouldn't feel as bad. It would be a good cruise if not the last day! If you ask me if I would go back on another cruise again...I might...but much prefer to fly down to the Caribbeans and spent all the time in there, even if just one island!