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The penultimate vacation day (Day 16) started off with hopping on some electric bikes and getting a 4 hour guided tour loop all around the highlights of Italy's capital. Our guide rode with us and he knew the ins and outs of the streets for the best views, least crowds, and was a walking encyclopedia of knowledge. The bike route gave us great views of The Colosseum and the Forums and he was quick to remind us Rome was a rich layer cake of history. Each ruler wanted to make his mark, so he'd build newer, bigger, better things right smack on top of the existing. Modern archeological finds continue to discover these layers as they peel back history. The bike loop took us to the Pantheon. This former Roman temple started construction in the year 118. At 140 foot tall, the granite dome structure has stood for almost two thousand years of wars and natural disasters with no drop in human use. The dome itself is still the world's largest unreinforced dome, and still features The

What better way to recover from a long arduous day on the feet than to agree to tackle 463 steps right up to the top of a church tower? The next morning started off meeting a tour guide digesting more information than thought possible on the Florence Duomo (Cathedral). We viewed more pure gold ceilings with historical scenes followed by the guided tour of the museum where the original solid gold doors to the Duomo were kept restored and under a vacuum. At the time, the use of gold on everything for construction wasn't enough and the way to make a city stand out from the crowd was to build bigger and bigger churches. The Florence Duomo was constructed so massive that for years there was a giant hole in the roof as no one had yet figured out how to create it's 300 foot high domed ceiling. The city held a contest to see who could come up with a solution and after a long time of searching they had a contractor. His name was Brunelleschi and for the 16 years it took to build he

The next day was started with cake and then a water taxi trip to The Doge's Palace. This building is right next to the Campanile where we were the night before but the Palace was closed at that time. The Doge is a bit like the king, and he likes things nice. The Doge's "living room" is larger than 4 basketball courts. It has a ceiling of hand carved solid gold picture frames that wrap around life size paintings of historic events and their participants. The sheer scale and grandeur of going from room to room, each as staggeringly beautiful in size and scale than the next couldn't be put into words. The exploration of the Palace led into the prison, armory and the Doge's apartments. My mind couldn't wrap around how these rooms were built at this scale so long ago and I'm even in the construction industry! Leaving the Doge's Palace it was time to depart Venice to go south to Florence. We had about an hour left in Venice but found out that our wate

Our GPS phone app joined us for the first day of exploring Venice. This is a full on requirement as we'd probably still be down some 5 foot wide avenue trying to find our way back to civilization. Our trip took us in the most convoluted way to the Rialto Bridge. This passage is historic and beautiful as it is coated with tourists for a perfect view of the canal; and the latest apparel from Nike. It was kind of sad to see something of architectural presence commercialized to blatantly. The Rialto Bridge was where our water taxi was going to take us out to the island of Burano. This is a quiet "suburb" 25 minutes boat ride outside of Venice. They have with rows of houses painted in all shades of the rainbow and the is where they produce of some of the best handmade lace in Europe. The taxi returned us to the floating city of Venice and we opted to take a full taxi ride from A to Z across the Grand Canal. This was great to really appreciate all the chaos of the day to da

Monday we had our cake for breakfast again because we could and then it was onboard a train bound for Bologna, Italy. The big luggage bags were dumped in a storage locker and our next stop was from Bologna to Modena, the home of Ferrari. At that train station a bright Ferrari red bus lined with wood floors and leather seats took us to the Enzo Ferrari museum. Ferrari has two museums. One is dedicated to the man who founded the company and the other to the company itself. Within the Enzo museum all the best cars are displayed and there's a movie that plays showing the impact the company has had on pop culture. All the celebrities drive Ferraris. Next to the Enzo building was a giant glass and brick shed decorated like an old garage. This building was dedicated to the engines that power the Ferraris, past and present. There were a few Ferrari races cars that had retired into living in the museum as well as the test mules that the factory used to develop their latest models. The

Sunday morning was some more breakfast cake, and the skies were crystal clear blue and the temperatures were perfect. The Porsche SuperCup cars were back out early Sunday morning and were bouncing off the first chicane curbs like exuberant toddlers at a playground. The Formula 1 drivers were then paraded around the track in classic and historic cars like they had just became the homecoming queen. I ventured during this break to hit up the tent for lunch. Security had changed their protocol and instead of returning to my grandstand I had to go back through the main gate to get into our stands. This was incredibly ineffective. All water bottles had to have their caps removed so they couldn't be thrown. I had just bought 4 bottles with my lunch. Two of them I pocketed, and the other two I removed the caps, put the caps into my pocket, and after a 45 minute delay finally made it back to the stands. Luckily there was no racing action that I'd missed. Our seats were in turn one an