Today was Clay, Suzanne, Mar, Amy, and Patrice's last day with the tour as they chose not to continue to Athens. Suzanne and Clay had a few extra days here in Rome to themselves but everyone else would be flying home tomorrow morning. Today was a full on day of sightseeing. It was yet another early wake up as we were to be met at the Vatican for our tour of the Vatican Museum. We caught the public bus to the stop for Vatican City and rushed to get in line. It was still quite early but the line was already really long. Our guide was an older woman who kept saying "Mama Mia" with every sentence. At first it was kind of humorous but eventually got quite irritating. Once inside, we had to go ... read more

I awoke this morning with Patrice already gone. I didn't think she'd really wake up early just to go to a museum. Back on the coach to be dropped off in the middle of Florence for our day of sight-seeing. Our first thing of the day was to watch a demonstration on Florentine leather. It was actually pretty interesting as we were shown how to differentiate between real and fake leather. Again, as in the previous demonstrations in Venice, we were lead into the show room where they sold a variety of leather products. I actually contemplated purchasing something here but after looking at a few of the prices, I decided to check out some other places before making my decision. After the demonstration, we had an hour before our guided walking tour. We decided ... read more

This morning I woke up with a bunch of red bumps on my legs and feet. The first thing I thought of was bedbugs!!! It wouldn't have surprised me if it was indeed bedbugs as this hotel on the outskirts of Venice was by far the worst hotel of the trip. After a very sub-par breakfast, which was very typical of our Italian breakfasts, we all headed back on the coach for our full day in Venice. Since Venice was an island, we had to catch a water taxi which took about 15-20 minutes. It was a very quiet ride as it was still a bit early in the morning but yet people were still filled with the quiet anticipation of seeing Venice. Once the first views of the Camponile Bell Tower came into view, ... read more

After a big night of drinking and partying, we woke up this morning to get some physical activity in, as if we haven't been doing enough walking. Most people decided to just sleep in as they were too hung over to go mountain biking. I didn't think that the course would be overly strenuous, boy was I wrong. About 12 of us went over to the bike shop where we were met by about 30 others from another tour. We all got fitted for our bikes and off we went. We all rode single file along some very easy trails and along the sides of the road. The ride was very scenic with the green mountains being topped off by the clouds and fog. We passed some kind of sheep show which might be kind ... read more

Today was another early morning as we have 3 countries today. We left Lucerne and made our way on the coach over to Mt. Stanserhorn. Arriving in the small town of Stans, we all got our funicular ticket that would take us all the way to the top of the mountain with views of the surrounding Alps. The entire group took this optional and we all boarded this little train that would take us to the furnicular. It was a very relaxing ride with cool crisp air mixed with the sounds of cowbells ringing in the distance. We then all got into a very tight squeezing funicular for the rest of the ride. Everytime the funicular dipped, I got a little uneazyness in stomach and some people let out a few gasps. For those in the ... read more