Throughout 2009 we provided you with countless must-see spots across the world.  When planning your Italy vacation we hope that these Rome must-see sights will make your Rome vacation more memorable.

Full-Day Excursion to Pompeii

A scenic drive along the Highway of the Sun takes you past the famous Abbey of Montecassino and Naples for a guided visit of Pompeii, both destroyed and preserved by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Roman Highlights

A guided walking tour takes you to some of the most famous monuments. Admire the Spanish Steps, Via Condotti, Piazza Navona, Parliament, and Pantheon.

Gelateria de Palme

All roads don’t lead to this tiny gelateria down a hidden alley. But after a taste of its addictive chocolate-chipped straciatella ice cream, a nightly pilgrimage to this off-the-beaten-track gem may be in order.

Monte Testaccio

When terracotta oil and wine shipping containers were no longer needed, the ancient Romans piled them up here. Now this grassy knoll built on the broken pottery is a hip enclave of artists, wine cellars and chic restaurants. Come experience how one man’s trash can truly be another’s treasure.

Bulgari

Andy Warhol called this posh boutique the “most important museum of modern art in Europe.” Since 1884, when Sotirio Bulgari arrived in Rome from Epirus, Greece, his store’s Renaissance-inspired jewelry has marked the pinnacle of Italian design.

Villa Ada

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Everybody and their dog (literally) frequent this sprawling 450-acre city park. Lush vegetation and rolling fields make this park a popular summer spot for outdoor concerts.

A favorite post from our 2009 Paris, France vacation series.

There may be only a few foundation stones left today, but the Place de la Bastille is still one of the most evocative sites in Paris, luring millions of visitors who want to see the fabled spot for themselves. Every year on Bastille Day (July 14), the French celebrate the attack on the medieval fortress in the Marais district as the start of the Revolution in 1789, which despite its violent excess is still remembered as a moment of glory.

At the time, the Bastille was the most notorious of royal prisons, where the king could send subjects for years without appeal. It had gained a grim reputation in the Middle Ages as a place of torture and misery, but by the 1700s a sentence there was barely an unpleasant experience – at least if you had some cash in the family. Aristocrats were allowed to bring a small personal serving staff and decorate their prison cells as they wished, with their own feather beds, wall paintings and personal libraries. They could even order delicacies from the best Parisian kitchens. The food delivery records of the Marquis de Sade, who was here for five years, reveal his specific taste for fresh roast chicken, local pate, oysters, seasonal vegetables, fine wine and cognac.

Despite this luxury, in the popular mind the Bastille remained a symbol of the injustices of the Old Regime. When the Parisian mob chose to attack the hated fortress in 1789, there was nothing heroic in the act. The governor of the prison was guaranteed safe passage along with his men, but they were instantly set upon by the crowd and massacred – a drunken chef cut off the governor’s head with his pen-knife and it was paraded around Paris on a pike.

The rioters were then surprised to find only seven inmates in the entire prison, none of whom were very worthy of liberation: two lunatics, four forgers and a young gent charged with incest. Still, it remained a symbolic moment of victory. During the Revolution, tour guides led visitors around the Bastille, showing off fake manacles with exaggerated tales of the prison’s horrors, until it was finally dismantled.

Mount Rushmore is one of America’s most iconic vacation destinations.  In April 2009 our travel series took on a National Park vacation.  Here is a reader favorite from our US vacation posts:

The four presidential faces, carved 60-feet high in the granite of Mount Rushmore, comprise one of America’s most revered images.  But many visitors cannot help thinking of Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest, where he and Eva Marie Saint clamber across the monolith pursued by Communist spies.  The shot was actually filmed in a Hollywood studio, but it convinced millions of people that they too could climb the patriotic monument.

This is not the case: Access to Mount Rushmore has been blocked by a high-security fence ever since the artist Gutzon Borglum died in 1941 and work on the giant sculpture ceased.  But according to his original plan, Borglum had intended that the public be able to reach his giant faces via a splendid stone staircase.  In the late 1930s, he even began work on a splendid vault buried within the rock for tourists to visit – called the Hall of Records, it was planned as a repository for the original Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.  Worried that future generations might find Mount Rushmore as enigmatic, Borglum also wanted a museum to store information on the four presidents – Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt – and an explanation of “how the memorial was built and frankly, why.”

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In 2009 we featured a series a honeymoon vacations. Hawaii always tops the list of perfect honeymoon destinations. Plan the perfect Hawaii Honeymoon and vacation in Oahu & Maui!

Paradise awaits on your Hawaii Honeymoon!

Take romantic strolls along the pristine white-sand beaches and watch beautiful sunsets in Oahu.  Relax together by tranquil pools while enjoying the tropical sea-breeze in Maui.  Take part in fun activities such as snorkeling, hiking, and whale watching, eat sumptuous cuisine at a festive luau or enjoy a scenic drive along the Hawaiian coastline. Experience the tropical honeymoon you’ve always dreamed about in Hawaii!

Experience a South America vacation escape by bringing home a bottle of Chilean wine. Here’s a post from 2009 that provided the history of Chile’s beautiful vineyards.

International wine-lovers should raise a glass to Chile’s freakish geography: Thanks to the country’s isolation at the southwestern fringe of South America, its vineyards played an unexpected part in saving the wine industries of Europe.  Production first began with the Spanish conquistadors, who planted the first vines from the pips of raisins they had carried in their pockets from Spain.  The fertile valleys around Santiago proved ideal for agriculture, and soon immigrants from Germany and Switzerland, who felt at home in the gentle alpine climate, were bottling excellent vintages for local consumption.  Then, in the 1880s, a visionary landowner named Don Silvester Ochagavía decided to improve the standard by traveling to Bordeaux in France and bringing back vine cuttings for Sauvignon Cabernet and Sauvignon Blanc.  It was a fortuitous move.

Not long afterwards, the vineyards of Europe were struck by a plague of the insidious phylloxera insect, which chews away at the roots of the parent stock.  The invasion wiped out production in much of France, Italy and Germany.  But Chilean vineyards were protected by nature: the central valleys of this spaghetti-like strip of land, 2,700 miles long but never more than 110 miles wide, are shielded from vermin and disease by the Pacific Ocean on the west, the towering Andes on the east, the world’s driest desert, the Atacama, in the north and the wilds of Patagonia to the south.

Soon it was the European producers who imported the untouched vines back from Chile, grafting them back onto their own stock and slowly recovering their footing.  It was a close call for wine lovers, who might have lost some of their most beloved varietals.  Today, Chile boasts many of the world’s oldest continually growing vines, some over a century old, which are now being hand-crafted into succulent wines that rival anything from France or Italy.

A memorable Italy vacation post from 2009!

If you were visiting Rome 2,000 years ago, you would have been awakened at dawn by the melodious bass of a copper gong resounding through the streets, announcing the opening of the thermae, or heated public baths.

To ancient Romans, their routine visits to the more than 1,000 bath houses in the Italian city were one of life’s ultimate pleasures. As one nobleman recorded on his tomb, “Wine, sex and the baths may destroy our bodies, but they make life worth living.” These thermae were far more than simple washhouses.

They were the Western world’s first full-service spas, combining the facilities of gymnasiums, massage parlors, restaurants and community centers. In their beloved halls, citizens of all classes would loll by the pools with their friends, play ball games, drink wine, flirt and even enjoy elegant candle-lit dinners. Like modern gyms today, Rome’s baths were unofficially graded: Some were chic, others déclassé. Some were expensive, others cost only a copper. Some, like the Baths of Caracalla and the Baths of Diocletian that can still be viewed in Rome today, were palatial structures, as large as cathedrals, decorated with multi-colored mosaics of Neptune and his dolphins.

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A reader favorite from 2009 that is sure to get you excited to travel to Germany!

Oktoberfest in Munich is the mother of all drinking festivals. It might just also be the origin of a slew of clichés about Germans and their culture.

Take lederhosen. It just wouldn’t be Oktoberfest if there were no men in short leather overalls celebrating under the massive blue and white Oktoberfest tents. Lederhosen are a traditional costume tied to the German-speaking Alpine regions since the middle ages. Outside of Bavaria, the occasional lederhosen-wearing gentleman may appear in public, but it’s rare and the men are probably over 60.

Oompah music played by a band of tubas and trumpets while beer drinkers link arms and sway to the oom-pah beat is another must-have at Oktoberfest. Does that mean Germans from Berlin to the Black Forest break out the tuba at the first opportunity? Hardly. Schlager is the music of choice when Germans gather to celebrate. These syrupy pop hits from the 1950s to today are branded into the minds of most Germans, who sing along once the beer is flowing.

Speaking of beer, the beer stein is a favorite souvenir from Germany – the stein with its hinged lid was a 15th century Bavarian attempt to keep the flies away during plague times. But today, if Germans aren’t drinking their beer out of the bottle, they drink it out of a glass – so finding a classic stein outside of a souvenir shop or selected areas of Bavaria is hard. At Oktoberfest, beer is served in a Maß, a liter of lager in one fat glass mug. (Beware: Some bartenders at the festival short change you on beer, filling half the glass with foam.)

As one decade closes and a new one begins, we would like to take the time to say thank you for traveling with us through our vacation themed posts.  We are grateful to be able to share our stories and experiences with fellow travel enthusiasts.

Over the next month, join us as we take a look back at 2009’s most memorable posts, including some reader favorites.  We will travel to Germany, vacation in France, honeymoon in Hawaii and hit the must-see sights of Rome.

Pack your bags & let’s start traveling because 2010 is the time to make vacationing a priority again!