ITALY: THE FINALE

Our Italy honeymoon came to end Friday when we took a private car to the Roma airport, stood in line after line -- including two different lines for shuttle buses -- and boarded our flight back to the States. 

It was nice to be going home -- I had so missed butter, pepperoni, milk, Chinese food and my Uncle Charles, y'all -- but boy, are we missing us some mother country right about now. 

I loved all three places we visited -- Venice, Sorrento and Rome -- and can't decide which was my favorite. Nicole picks Venice. 

Venice was beautiful with its water as streets and then its actual streets with something unique around every corner. The coast and Sorrento was too pretty to describe, and I wish we would have just stayed at a beach resort three for two days. 

And Rome is filled with so much history you feel like you are a pope, gladiator and Greek god all at the same time. 

One place we went that I haven't talked about is Pompeii, where we stopped for a tour on Monday the 20th on our way to Rome. 

Pompeii was buried in ash from a volcanic eruption in 79 AD and was lost until the 1700s. The lack of oxygen under the ash kept a lot of the town intact, and now you can see how folks lived then. 

Our tour guide is the lady to the left. She was entertaining and animated. "Italians want to revolt, but we say, 'nah, today we eat. Tomorrow, revolt.' "

Rome had just elected its first female mayor. "Pretty. Very clean skin. But what about your Donald Trump. Jeeeshh."

A street view of some of Pompeii's finest shops. 

This is a resident of Pompeii covering her eyes from the incoming ash. She was pregnant and went face down in an effort to protect the baby from death. 

This is one of several beds from a whorehouse in Pompeii. The guide said we were entering the Red Light District, and there were penises sculpted into the walls pointing the way. 

Also, above each bed was a drawing for what you could do in that particular bed. Above this bed here was a drawing of doggy-style.

Pompeii, y'all. 

Some previously unmentioned things that went wrong: 

-- An Italian lady yelled at me in the Naples train station for saving a seat for Nicole. And I mean yelled. For like 90 straight seconds. 

-- My outlet plug burned in the Rome hotel socket. We could smell something burning in the room and panicked a bit before realizing it was the plug. No wonder why my phone wasn't charging. 

-- In Venice and Sorrento, you had to insert the room key into a slot to turn on the electricity. Except it took us about five days to realize that means you can't charge your camera or video recorder when you're not in the room. 

-- In Italy, they have natural mineral water and sparkling water. Twice we bought sparkling water by accident from the store. It is disgusting and undrinkable. 

-- A man who had seemingly escaped from the mental institution was wondering the main road in Sorrento and scared the crap out of Nicole when he came up directly behind us and started screaming in Italian. Not at us but just in general. He had some type of pajamas on. We ducked into the closest store until he walked far away. We saw him again a while later -- still randomly yelling at no one -- and went the other way.  

Sporting events I missed: 

-- WWE Raw at the Smoothie King Center. 

-- The NBA Finals. I tried to wake up in the middle of the night to watch Game 7, but when I awoke and turned on the TV, LeBron was giving his MVP interview. 

-- The Copa America quarters and semis. Well, I guess I didn't really miss the semis, a 4-0 loss to Argentina. Yikes. 

When we were waiting for hours in the heat for the Pope to come out for his weekly Wednesday audience, I tried to make a rhyme with as many words that rhymed with pope as I could. This is what I came up with:

The pope is dope because he brings hope and helps people cope. Like soap on rope, I'm not dirty, nope. And I'm glad we didn't elope. 

I did have a good joke about the pope, and I'm going to type it in a second. Hopefully, you're not offended. 

Francis was scheduled to come out and start any time from 9:30 to 10 a.m. At about 9, Nicole asked me what time I thought he was going to arrive. 

Me: Well, that all depends on how long his holy shit takes. 

Speaking of religion, we went to Sunday Mass in Italian at the Sorrento church. That was pretty cool. 

Also, within three minutes walking distance of our Rome hotel was St. Ignatius Church, so we stopped in there to pay respects. They had a sign-in book, and I wrote Gene Guillot, Loyola New Orleans, '06. 

Here I am with a replica statue of St. Ignatius. The original is in the Vatican Museums in a part that we didn't visit. 

On our final night in Rome, we decided to walk the mile from our hotel to Trastevere to eat at one of their fine restaurants. 

The first one we tried -- knowned for their pasta dishes -- was booked for the night, so we picked a place famous for their pizza. I hadn't had any pizza that I really liked from a restaurant all trip -- not that what we had was bad, it was just OK. 

 

The place was Ai Marmi, and it was some packed. This is a shot of our dining section, just one little part of the restaurant. I got up from our table and counted how many patrons were there. 

Now keep in mind that there also was a line waiting for a table when I did my head count. You ready for the number? 190. A hundred and freaking 90. 

We ordered a couple of suppli to start, and they were as good as the night before on our food tour. Our pizzas took more than an hour to come; we damn near fell asleep at the table. 

Nicole got margherita, and I got marinara, which doesn't have cheese, just marinara and oregano. So good. Best reataurant pizza of the honeymoon. And the bill for two suppli, two pizzas and three cokes was under 20 euro total. 

My top five meals of the honeymoon. 

5 (tie): The above pizza and sea bass fish in Venice. 

4. The lasagna (chunks of meatball and sausage) in Sorrento with fried zucchini. 

3. Steak in Rome. 

2. Lucciana's cooking class. Too bad we couldn't stay there forever. 

1. Trastevere food tour. It had seven stops, and I loved them all. 

We also had gelato nine of our 10 nights in Italy. My favorites were stracciatella on the first night in Venice, a brownie concoction in Sorrento and chocolate on the final night in Rome. 

And now to finish off our seven-entry recollection of our Italian honeymoon, some selfies from around the country. Did you know that Italy has only been a country since 1861?

St. Peter's Basillica. 

Getting ready to meet the Pope. 

Right outside our hotel in front of the Pantheon. 

Trevi Fountain. 

Pompeii. 

Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. 

Positano. 

ITALY: THE VATICAN

We spent the better part of Wednesday and Thursday at the independent city-state of Vatican City, hanging out with the pope and staring in awe of sculptures and paintings. 

When we first decided to honeymoon in Italy, Nicole said we should go to a papal audience and get our marriage blessed by Pope Francis. 

It's called Sposi Novelli, and the pope blesses new couples every Wednesday. You have to have been married within two months of the audience and come dressed in your wedding gear with a copy of your marriage license signed by your priest. 

Nicole made all the arrangements for this.  In February, she emailed the bishop's office for United States visitors to The Vatican in Rome to find out about tickets. She gave them our marriage information, and they asked what Wednesday we wanted to attend. 

We coordinated with our travel agent to be in Rome for Wednesday the 22nd. Days later in February the office responded that we were good to go and told us to pick up the tickets the Tuesday before at their Rome office. 

Nicole bought a low-maintenance white dress online so she didn't have to lug the real one all across Italy. At the office on Tuesday, a sister gave us instructions on where to go the next day and the timeline of events for the audience. 

All that effort to say that when we got to The Vatican, no one ever checked our tickets for the special seats we sat in or ever asked to see our marriage license to ensure we were newlyweds. We figure as long as you look the part, you can go shake hands with the pope every week. 

That's two pictures, one of Nicole kissing Francis' ring and the other is me shaking his hand, though you can't see my face. 

We arrived at The Vatican at 6:30 a.m. Getting in was unorganized as the one line at 6:30 gradually evolved into a cluster-mob of madness by 7:30.  

We busted our butts once the gate opened and were the third couple to arrive in the bridal seats. We were proud of our front-row status and thought that would earn us special time with the pope. We were wrong. 

That's a look at the couples sitting behind us. The ones way in the back ended up being the smart ones, not only arriving three hours after us -- so extra sleep for them -- but then getting in the actual front row when all the couples were scurried to a different section after the audience was over. The last were first, and the first were last. 

So we were in the back of the line and had to fight a little bit to get to the pope for Nicole to kiss his ring. The couples who showed up last got to chill with Francis in the first row and got a little extra pope time. Oh well, I guess. 

It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't New Orleans hot. We were out in the sun from sunrise to about 12:30 before the pope made his way to us. 

As for the audience, the scripture of Jesus healing the leper because of his faith was read in multiple languages before Francis preached in Italian. 

His message was then summed up in the other tongues. The pope said that faith alone could only get us so far; we must combine our faith with action, as the leper did. 

Here is the pope -- if you can see him -- walking up to his seat. It was an interesting event with people from all around the world represented. There were signs for the pope and chants in different languages. 

We returned to The Vatican on Thursday for a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour. 

This is Ian, our worst guide of the honeymoon. Basically useless, and it was my fourth straight day waking up way too early, so I was having trouble focusing. 

The tour took us down several corridors of sculptures and paintings before we hit the Sistine Chapel -- absolutely mesmerizing but no pictures allowed -- and St. Peter's Basillica, aka Pete's Pad. 

We could have stayed after the tour to see more of the Vatican museums -- papal tombs, a room of Raphael paintings, etc. -- but we were so exhausted that we left and found a lunch place recommended by Luca. 

I got an eggplant dish, and Nicole got what was essentially a meatball sandwich and her first iced tea of the trip. It was probably the best lunch of the honeymoon. 

And now a photo gallery of some of the beauty from The Vatican tour. 

A faraway shot of Pete's Pad. 

On the bottom row, second from the left is the villainous emperor from The Gladiator. 

Remember that wine cellar from our Roman food tour? This sculpture was found there and moved to The Vatican. It's a Greek athlete using a knife to wipe off his sweat. 

This guy here knew the Greeks' plan with the Trojan Horse, but before he could warn Troy, the gods sent a serpent to kill him and his sons. 

This depicts Jesus appearing to two disciples after his resurrection, but the disciples didn't know it was Jesus until the breaking of the bread. 

The rest are from the Basillica. 

Michaelangelo sculpture of Mary holding Jesus' body. It's enclosed in glass because someone took a hammer to it in the 1970s and put some dents in it. 

The spear used on Jesus after his death. 

The final painting of Raphael, the Transfiguration. 

Pope John XXIII of Second Vatican Council fame. That is not Nicole. 

ITALY: TRASTEVERE

With all due respect to Pope Francis, the highlight of our time in Rome was Wednesday night on our food tour in the Roman neighborhood of Trastevere. 

It had seven stops, and all of them were good. At the end of the tour, our guide, Luca, asked each person for his/her favorite stop. 

I didn't have an answer. I gave one, but I'm not sure it was right. They were all my favorite. 

Before this tour, we were more than a little disappointed with the food we had eaten in Rome. That took a 180 over our four-hour dinner. 

And Luca, 36, was easily my favorite tour guide of the entire honeymoon. We could be friends, ya know if he didn't live in Rome. He was informative and hilarious. 

"You've seen those obnoxious people driving around town on those scooters?"

Tour group: Yes!

Luca: Good. I'm one of em. 

Luca: The man who runs this next shop is very proud of his food. So let's be respectful. Ok?

Tour group: Ok. 

Luca: Yeah, tell him you hate his food. It'll be great. 

The first stop was for an appetizer. Ham, which was the only thing I didn't eat all night, and burrata cheese, which is made with leftover mozzarella curds and cream. It's like butter but way, way better. I put it all over my bread and scarfed it down. 

This was our first stop. Luca says de Enzo was featured in The New York Times, doesn't open until 7:30 and is booked a week ahead of time. 

But as part of the tour we got a little taste of their food at 6:45. Nicole bought a bottle of their own olive oil. 

Stop number 2 was at Spirito di Vino, which has a wine cellar that is intact from B.C. times. The owner's aren't allowed to touch the walls because it's historically protected. 

Here's Nicole telling her mom that she's in a really old wine cellar. The dish at this stop was Julius Caesar's favorite, lean pork mazio. It was served in soup form as we still had five stops to go. Excellent. 

We had one of the 7,000 bottles of wine on hand, and I drank my first and only glass of wine of the trip. While we were drinking, Luca, who revealed he is an aspiring actor, did a full impression of a wine connoisseur's process of tasting wine. Pretty funny. 

Our third stop was our first dessert, three types of cookies at this family-run bakery called Innocenti in the heart of Trastevere. The cookies: lemon-filled butter, brutti ma buoni (ugly but good) and dark chocolate dipped. 

All three were good. The oven they were cooked in was installed in the 1960s. This is where you say, "Damn, they don't make em like they used to."

Luca and the owner Stefania seemed to have an almost mother-son relationship. There's a large picture of Stefania's mother working in the store on the wall, and Stefania says if Luca becomes a famous actor, she'll put his picture next to it. 

Then it was onto a meat market called Antica Norcineria to taste some cheeses (gorgonzola: not so good; and pecorino Romano: pretty good) and porchetta, moist boneless pork on sandwich bread. 

This is what I answered when asked what stop was my favorite. I almost said stop the tour, let's just get the full meal version of porchetta. 

The fifth stop was for street food, and I was glad we didn't skip the rest of the tour for more porchetta. We had two samples of street food: suppli and pizza. 

Suppli is a fried rice ball with mozzarella in the middle. 

Then it was pizza marinara, just marinara, tomato and oregano. No cheese, no meat. Luca says pizza is best when kept simple. That's also my philosophy. 

There was an extra piece leftover, and Luca asked who wanted it. After a few seconds of silence, I said, "Send it over."

Luca then said it was time for dinner. Dinner? We all said to each other. There was a ham and cheese appetizer, a pork soup, a pork sandwich, a rice ball, pizza and cookies. And now it's dinner time?

We had three pasta dishes at Enoteca Ferrara: gnocchi, spinach and ricotta ravioli and tonarelli cacio e pepe. I filled up my dish with large portions of the three, and Nicole said I put too much. 

But I showed her and ate it all. My favorite was the cacio e pepe (bottom).

Finally, gelato. I got chocolate and strawberry. Nicole got mint and stracciatella. 

Luca gave us tips for how to tell good restaurants in Italy from tourists traps and good gelato places from fake gelato. 

Which was great because it was the first day of our honeymoon, so we could really put the advice to use. Oh wait, it was our second to last night of the trip. 

Bad restaurants have a person outside the joint -- a catcher -- telling you to come in and proudly display their menu and food. Good restaurants don't have any of that. 

Fake gelato is made with powder mix and rises in a big puff with flashy colors of weird flavors. Real gelato sits flat in a container and doesn't have smurf blue flavors. 

One more Luca joke. "In the United States you must be 21 to drink. In England it's 18. In Italy you must be thirsty."

Our tour sadly ended. No more food. Luca gave each person a hug, and I took a photo of some of the tour group. 

ITALY: ROMA

We were in Rome on Tuesday, and when in Rome, do as the Romans do. I'm not sure what it is Romans do these days, but if it's eat pizza, walk a lot, shop, haggle with street salesmen, take pictures and eat ice cream, then by gollie, we did just as the Romans do. 

Our hotel is down the street from the Pantheon, once a temple -- twice it burned down -- to the Roman gods and now a Catholic Church. 

The inscription says this building was built by Marcus Agrippa, which isn't true because Marcus built one of the ones that burned down and they just used the same inscription when they rebuilt. 

We took a taxi to the Colosseum to meet our tour guide, our fourth tour of the trip. This was an eight-person tour with four couples and our guide. Here she is standing near one of the other couples. 

Nicole is convinced that this dude paid for his wife. I'm not sure, but he very well may have. What a weirdo, he was, asking strange questions every five minutes. 

Some were just dumb. "Did the emperor walk up these steep steps at the Colosseum with everyone else?" 

Uh, no. This was after the guide just had explained that the emperor had his own special seat in the front row. So, no he didn't walk with the common folk up the steep steps. 

Anyway, the guide told us that the emperor thumbs up or down to determine if the gladiator lived or died was made up by Hollywood. The emperor did give thumb signals, but more likely for something simpler, like to show if he was impressed with the fighting tactics of a particular gladiator. 

I took a moment of silence for all our fallen Christian brethren who were killed in this ampitheater some 1,800 years ago. 

There was a stage the gladiators fought on, but that didn't survive. There is a modern half-stage to give visitors a sense of the fighting platform. Now viewable is this underground system of tunnels the Romans used for the gladiators to enter from their school house -- yeah, they trained at a school. 

Up next was the Roman Forum, the center of life in ancient times. We learned that each time a war was won by the Romans, an arch was built for the Romans to march through to celebrate the victory. 

That's the Constantine arch, built after Constantine won a civil war and became emperor. He legalized Christianity in 313. 

This is from the arch of Titus, showing Romans with a menorah taken after they destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem in the first century. 

The guide told us the basic story of Julius Caesar, focusing on a group of senators plotting against the Salad Man and assassinating him. Here's his tomb. He's cremated. 

My favorite story she told was of two brothers who were declared emperor together when their father died, but one killed the other and tried to erase his name from history. 

I forgot their names. Cain and Abel, maybe? No, that's a bit older. Hehe. 

A wide view of the Roman forum. 

We then took a 20-minute walk to the Pantheon, with Nicole stopping the guide at one point to ask if some columns were the back of the Pantheon. 

"No," said the guide. "We're not at the Pantheon yet."

I bought two waters from a street salesman. He started at two euro each, and I got him down to three euro for two. I gave him a 10 and waited for my seven euro in change. 

That's when he tried to scam me. He gave me seven coins and started to walk away. "Excusi," I said, speaking Italian for one word. "This is four euro. I need seven."

He had given me a one euro coin and six 50 euro cent coins. Not on my watch, buddy. 

His scam continued as he took two of the 50 euro cent coins and replaced them with ones. That only added one euro. Still short two. 

This process kept going several more times, like we were on some sort of game show until I moved my hand away and said, "I have six euro. Give me one more."

After finally getting the correct change, I realized my group and guide had walked about 200 meters down the road without me. 

Speaking of roads, they say all roads lead to Rome. But I ask you, if you're already in Rome, then where do the roads lead?

At the Pantheon, we were told that it honored the gods until 609 when it was given to the pope and converted to a church. 

It has no windows, just a hole at the top where rain is let into the building. They can't close it because the structure would then collapse. 

The rain drains in these little holes in the marble. Red marble was the most expensive building tool back in the day. 

The painter Raphael is buried in the Pantheon (shown below). His bitter, bitter rival was Michaelangelo, which is funny because the turtle versions of those two have the most special bond of the four heroes in a half shell -- Turtle Power! 

That ended our tour. The rest of the day was Nicole and I exploring Roma, getting a little lost -- we accidentally ripped up our map -- and making sweet, sweet honeymoon memories. 

We went to the Spanish Steps -- under construction -- and the Trevi Fountain, where you throw coins into the water. Here are some beautiful pics, and I'm not just talking about the fountain. 

Stacey, are you satisfied that this entry has more pictures?

We discovered I'm an expert haggler. I think. We bought a selfie stick and sunglasses from separate street vendors, who are in their own little world on the Roman streets, selling some of the most random shit I've ever seen. 

Nicole brought a $20 selfie stick that didn't work, and boy, was she bummed. She wanted me to get one off the street, so we ask a vendor how much. 

12, he says. 

No, that's too much. 

Ok, how much? 

But we walked away, knowing he would follow us. OK, eight, he says. I turn around. "I can only do three."

Eight?

Three, I said.  

OK. 

I give him three euro. He stares at his hand. 

Eight. 

We just agreed to three, I said.  

He sulked back to his stand. 

Later, Nicole broke her sunglasses, so she tries on these fake Ray-Bans and likes them enough. Vendor says 25. 

We play the same game. 

No. 

How much? 20? 

We walk. 

He chases. 15? 

We can do seven, I said. 

10?

We walk away again. 

OK, seven. 

So we paid 10 euro total for a selfie stick and sunglasses. Starting total price was 37 euro. 

I wonder if this works at home. When I get back, I'm going to the Jaguar dealership, pointing at the $37,000 model, slapping down $10,000 in cash and driving off. Should work, right?

We happened upon a church called SS. Ma Trinita. So beautiful. Here's the ceiling art. 

When we were discussing Italy with Pan and Nikki at pizza making school back in Sorrento, Pan told me to get a suit made in Rome. High quality, he said. 

I didn't do that, but I did buy a pretty sweet jacket. They tailored it. "Perfecto," said the guy at the store. You can't tell, but it's blue. 

We capped off the day with dinner and ice cream. We got beef fillet from this high-rated steak place -- Baccano -- near where we were for most of the day. 

It was really, really good. Tender, tender. Comparable to most good steak places I've eaten at, except the portion was small. But that's nitpicky. 

You can see a fry on the edge of my plate. We split the side, and it was also damn good. Had a little crunch to it and tasted sort of like a baked potato. 

For gelato I got two scoops: Snickers flavor and chocolate. Nicole got stracciatella and mint. It was our seventh ice cream stop of the honeymoon, every day except Monday. So good. 

And that's Rome. I don't know if we quite conquered it, so don't go building an arch in front of 817 for our return. 

But I think the emperor would have given us the thumbs up.