Last night in Italy

Hey everyone,

We just finished climbing the leaning tower of Pisa.  It was fun...a little expensive, but what else are you going to do in Pisa.  I should note that Michelle had a "blonde" quote with "this thing leans".  Yesterday, we took a day trip away from Rome to a place called Bracciano.  It is a lake about 1 hour out of Rome.  The place was great...it was nice to get away from all of the tourists (I'm now a tourist snob).  We sat at the beach all day, swam and relaxed.

The two days before our Braccione trip we went all over Rome.  We went inside the Colosseum, went up Palatine Hill (which was really cool) and we did a tour of that area.  New buildings in ancient Rome would just go on top of the old buildings.  They have done some excavation and found countles ruins under the area known as the center of Rome.

A cool trip for those who have read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown:  We did the Path of the Illuminati.  It was really cool! We saw the 4 places mentioned in the book as Markers in the Path of Illumination and then went to Castel San Angelo, which is right beside the Vatican and that we where the Illuminati Lair was supposed to be.

Other than that, we saw the Spanish steps, the balcony where Mussolini made all of his public speeches and went back to the Vatican to take some more pics ( of just outside) in case we don't get our earlier pictures back.  Michelle is hopeful though.

This is a long update because we are in Pisa and there is nothing left to do here,

Next stop is NIce,  to the beach!

Mark and Michelle