firenze

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it's almost 4 days later, and we've done so much. i think we last left off in oktoberfest in germany. we caught a night train out that night. it was crazy. it slept 6, 3 up on one wall and 3 up on the opposite wall. our roomates were a south african IT lawyer who chucked it all to travel, he was fun talking to, and our other roomate was a very drunk, smelly japanese tourists who continued oktoberfest on his top bunk. we were lucky that the two middle bunks were left empty.

because we never expected to leave italy, we were still underdressed and freezing. it was raining when we hit milan at 5am, but cleared up when we hit la spezia. now, i don't know if any of you plan on hitting the cinque terre, but go to the bathroom before you get into la spezia. the bathroom consisted of foot grips and a hole in the ground. you can imagine the smell.

but disgusting "bathrooms" aside, la cinque terre was beautiful. we stayed in monterosso, which ended up being our favorite out of the 5 towns. we liked the quiet, beautiful hills so much that we extended our stay another night right away. we slept really well that night due to the lack of sleep in the "party car" the night before. we woke up the next day and took a hiking trail up the side of the mountain and down around the rolling road to the other side of the town. we hiked for a good 2-3 hours and were exhausted when we hit the otherside. we bought a train pass after lunch and leisurely explored the other 4 towns along the hills. we ended the evening back at our home base island and got up early the next day to hit florence.

we had to switch trains up in pisa, so eventhough we hadn't planned on going there to see the tower, we went anyway. there wasn't anything else to do so we hopped a bus there, took pictures "holding up" the tower, got back on the bus, and then on the train to florence. when we arrived in florence, it was hell. we couldn't find our bus to our hostel, and no one seemed to know where it was either, so we ended up walking around with the midgets on our backs for about 30 minutes until we finally stumbled upon our sign, encased in construction tape. no wonder we couldn't find it!! we never could figure out what stop ours was, so we ended up getting off too early and at that point, we'd had 40 extra pounds on our back and i just wanted it off, so i found a taxi and said how much to go to our hostel? we agreed on a price that wasn't bad at all, and got fred and jerome away from us. our hostel was actually a formal convent, and was really cute and very clean. we got there first and got choices of beds! luckily there wasn't a bunk bed in site. 😊

our roomates ended up being 2 canadians. janet was our age and she was traveling with her mother. they were alot of fun to be with. we ended up going out to dinner together and splitting a big bottle of wine and then hunting down gelato (florence is supposed to be famous for it). we ended up spending a good hour on ponte vecchio, which is this cool bridge just for foot traffic. they had these two guys playing accousitc guitars, and the breeze was nice, and calming. soon afterwards, we headed home and crashed.

so that brings us to today. we got up early, and went in search of il duomo. we found the CORRECT bus stop this time and took a bus to the station which was a hop away from the dome. when we finally saw it, we gaped! it was absolutely HUGE. it was one of the coolest things i've seen on this trip so far. we climbed to the top of the dome.... 463 steps up!! but the view was spectacular. after climbing down we went to visit academia, where david lives, but the line was out of this world, so we went to find the reproduction. it was really cool (and free). so now we're here. we're booking a hostel in rome since we will be there within the next 5-6 hours. the hostel we hope to get has a view of the coluseum from the roof at night, which is actually where they serve family style dinners every night! i hope we have cool roomies!

well, that's the short of it for now. i'm actually quite exhausted adn looking forward to the nap on the train (although not dragging the midgets to and from the station). next time i write i will be in rome. hope all of you are doing well!

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Comments

[Nancy orloski]

Florence

[Nancy Olroski]

Florence
Becky, it brings back such great memories to hear about the things you are doing there. Enjoy!

[Mia]

hi Becky , it is good to read about your European adventures , I visited all the places that you are writing about. Looks like you are having a lot of fun. enjoy it!! mia