Our romantic getaway

On May 30th we celebrated 30 years of marriage. We planned a trip to Italy for the occasion. It truly was a trip of a lifetime. We had never done anything like this before and felt a bit guilty spending all that money on ourselves! Even besides the airplane tickets and hotels, everything was so expensive but we decided that 30 years was worth every penny so we tried to forget and enjoy! Darrell and I are not very good tourists. I guess we've seen so many ancient ruins and sites over the past 30 years, that we weren't really that enthralled with the Roman ruins. We also don't have an artistic bone in our bodies so looking at hundreds of paintings did not thrill us either. We did pay money to see the Vatican/Sistine Chapel and the Colosseum but other than that we decided not to waste our money on museums, especially after we paid 10 Euro each to visit a museum we had been told was the most famous in the world. They told us it would take 3-4 hours to see it all. We were done in less than 30 minutes:)
The thing we enjoyed most was sitting at sidewalk cafes watching the crowds go by, walking all over the cities of Rome & Florence on cobblestone streets and looking in small shops, eating yummy pizza and lots of Gelato (wonderful Italian ice cream). We also enjoyed sitting in the beautiful hotel lounges, reading and relaxing. A few things that stood out about Italy were the huge number of motorbikes everywhere, people walking their dogs of every size and breed, huge ancient churches on every corner. In fact everything was just huge and old! The train ride from Rome to Florence went through beautiful countryside. It was simply a little bit of paradise and we enjoyed every minute. Thinking back on where life's path has taken us, we certainly do have much to celebrate as we remember God's amazing grace and goodness in our lives! Here's to another 30 years.