Milan

Friday night before Christmas the girls were off to a bday sleep over and we took Aaron to a Christmas Eve eve party where he was able to play with boys his age.  He was in heaven and had a blast.  The next morning we headed over to McKeehan's to pick up the girls and have an early Christmas Eve lunch with them.  We then headed home to start our Christmas celebration and dinner.  We also needed to get packed since we were heading to Rom on Monday.

To break up the train ride to Rome, we spent one night in Milan.  We are quickly learning that we will need two rooms when traveling in Europe to accommodate our family of 5.  In Milan we couldn't get connecting rooms so mom and dad had to split up to keep an eye on the kids.  We arrived around lunch time and after getting checked in we heading to the Duomo, the fourth largest church in the world.  It was massive and the kids loved taking the lift to the roof.  It wasn't until after looking at the pictures, that each spire has a small statue on the top.  The views were amazing!

Randy and kids in front of Duomo.

Covered shopping area next to Duomo.

Inside Duomo looking towards front of church.

View from the roof looking down at crowd and spires on top.

Randy and girls on the roof taking in the view.

Several spires with statues on top, absolutely amazing and took 424 years to build.

Randy and kids in front of castle in Milan.

Milan was a quick pit stop and the next morning it was back to the train station for our final destination.  In reflecting back at Milan Randy and I realized we had McDonalds twice in the short 24 hours.  It was a little cheaper than Switzerland, but a definite thumbs up from the kids.  You can only eat pizza so many times I guess and we were once again faced with not knowing Italian.  I will expand more on the language later : )

Aaron also ended up getting sick late on Christmas Eve so we were traveling with a sick and not so happy boy.  This meant there was far more carrying than I would have liked : (  He was a trooper and started to turn the corner when we arrived in Rome.  My little boy that never naps, fell asleep while we were on the tour of Vatican City and slept 2 hours on the train ride home.  I will post Rome soon, we are off to the airport today to pick up Aunt Bette.