Alzey

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!
Hello Everyone!!!
I have so much to report but I don't have much time to so I'm just going to give you all a quick update of where we've been so far (Jack and I).

We started our trip in Pisa, Italy. I wanted to go see the leaning tower but we arrived in the late afternoon and didn't think we would be able to make it there and back to the train station to catch the train to Florence at a decent hour to get to Florence and find a hostel. So we just went start to Florence from the train Station.

In Firenta (Florence) we saw a lot of great things, can't really remember all the names of it, it's in my journal. I'll fill you in when I have more time. But we really really wanted to see Michelangelo's David. After walking around the vicinity of where it was to be, they moved it to an academia building, for about an hour we finally found the location which was just a regular looking building, nothing spectacular on the outside but it was closed on Monday's, so we didn't get to see it. But then we headed to Roma (Rome). We saw the Pantheon, Colosseum, St. Peter's Basillica, where the Pope comes out and speaks, we saw the spanish steps, and we went to the Vatican Muesum to see the Sistine Chapel. We arrived at around 2, we went to St. Peter's first and then we were going to go next door to the musuem to see the Sistina, but the Museum closed at 12:30, (while we were in the Basillica). Talk about bad timing!!! We didn't even think about them closing early, to keep the light off of the precious paintings inside. After our bad timings in Rome we proceded to Zürich via a night train from Rome. We left Rome around 9 pm and arrived in Zürich around 9am. We ventured around Zürich for a day, beautiful and then the next day we headed to Lucerne (Luzern). That is a GORGEOUS little mountain town, not that little but it was great. We then went to back to Zürich to gather our stuff and headed to Münich. We didn't do a lot in Münich because on our way to it's famous Castle we got side tracked by all the little christmas markets and never made it. We were catching a late afternoon train to Mainz, to see the German family for the Holidays. I feel like I'm leaving out so so much, but I can't think of it all off the top of my head. I remember on one of our trips we barely missed the train. We were the cliche backpackers running towards a leaving train. The train was seriously pulling away while we were arriving at it's platform. So we waited for about an hour or so for the next one. I do have to say that the trains in Europe are great. I wish we had more!!

We have the Eurail passes but in Italy we had to pay extra for the high-speed trains, but not as much as if we didn't have the pass. But the only inconvientant thing about these passes on the trains is that. on all the trains, excluding Italy because we had to pay extra and get reserved seats, we don't get reserved seats and on the trains in Germany and in Switzerland we had to move seats numerous times because other people had the seats reserved. From Münich to Mainz, via Frankfürt (which was ended in Berlin) we sat in the dinning car for half the trip because it was a packed train and we didn't have a reserved seat. Quite humorous now that I look back, but not when it was happening.

That's all for now, I need to get going. Talk to you soon!!
Happy Holidays!

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