Day 10: Florence to Rome

Since we only had one night in Florence, we packed up and headed to the train station less than 24 hours after our arrival. We took our (slightly delayed) train into Rome and were very pleased to discover that our hotel was a block away from the Rome train station. Our room wasn't ready yet, so we left our bags at the hotel and went to explore the city. We quickly learned that the Roman Metro was not our favorite way to travel. It was confusing to navigate, it was very crowded, and it was not the cleanest of underground railways. We braved the Metro anyway and made our way over to the Colosseum area.

We were pretty hungry after our morning of travel, so we did our best to find a restaurant away from the overpriced and touristy area around the Colosseum. We found a little side street with a tasty pasta restaurant and made sure to refill our water bottles before heading back out. Rome was in the middle of a heat wave, and walking down the street was exhausting. We kept our visit to the Colosseum and Forum brief, since the weather was so difficult to maneuver in.

The Beehive in Rome was the most fun and interesting hotel we stayed in on our trip. Hippies should feel right at home there. It's filled with bright colors, cheery paintings, natural soaps, and reusable towels. They try to preserve water and their cafe is entirely vegetarian and organic. The cafe menu has no set prices or portion sizes, you pay what you feel is fair. One of the most memorable aspects of the hotel was the resident cat, Ingmar. He has lived in the hotel for many years and is quite old. We often found him sitting on couches or curled up on bathroom rugs when we walked around the hotel.

After a settling in at our hippie hotel, we once again braved the Roman Metro for a trip to the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. We ate dinner at a restaurant with 100 different pasta dishes and had tiramisu for dessert, which was very satisfying and delicious.

Day 9: Venice to Florence

We woke up a few times in the middle of the night to stalk and kill the mosquitoes buzzing around our room. By morning, my bite count was 11, and Marc finally had 2. We had a little bit of trouble checking out of our hotel and were worried about the time, but we made it to the train with extra time to spare. Travel by train was so much easier than our plane flights. We didn't need to find transportation to the airport, go through security, or arrive several hours early. The train also had comfortable seats and outlets. It was a pleasant journey.

Upon arrival in Florence, we grabbed maps at the tourist station and tried to familiarize ourselves with the layout of the city and the path from the train station to our hotel. The entire city of Florence is very small, it never took us more than 10 minutes to walk anywhere. After a sweaty, suitcase-lugging trek to our hotel, we were greeted by working air conditioning and a private bathroom. It felt very luxurious.

We settled in, then went out to lunch. We found an adorable little restaurant down the block from our hotel and had our first Italian pizza and gnocchi. After lunch, we visited Santa Croce and the famous Florence leather market. One of the shops was giving a workshop to a group of American students instructing them on how to distinguish genuine leather from fake. A couple of blocks away from the leather market was Vivoli, arguably the best gelateria in the world. We had a mix of chocolate mousse and chocolate hazelnut, probably the most delicious and smoothest gelato we tasted while in Italy. We topped off our tour of Florence sights with visits to the Palazzo Vecchio, the Piazza della Signoria, Uffizi, and the Ponte Vecchio.

We had dinner reservations that evening at La Gisotra, a dimly lit romantic restaurant with strings of lights and many candles. The waitress brought us free flutes of champagne as soon as we sat down, and we also received a huge free appetizer sampler. The boar pasta and pear ravioli we ordered were wonderful. We ended our evening with a short stroll past the Baptistry, Campanille, Duomo, Piazza della Repubblica, and San Lorenzo.

Day 8: Venice

I woke up with a sore throat that morning, so after a breakfast that consisted mostly of tea with honey, I tried to speak as little as possible. Ariana woke up with 6 mosquito bites (because she didn't want to be left out of the fun of physical ailments). Clearly her blood is much sweeter than mine, because I was completely untouched.

Wandering around, we found a pharmacy, and we were greeted by a pharmacist who spoke English with only a slight accent. I figured that means he's fluent, so I started telling him what I wanted to buy - cough drops and vitamin C. This was too fast for the poor guy - he had me slow down and Ariana translated a couple words into Spanish (which is very close to Italian) to make sure he understood.

We spent most of the day walking the city - we walked through the Rialto shopping district and bridge over to Piazza San Marco. It was packed! Lines to get in everywhere were very long, and the restaurants were the most expensive in this already pricy city.

We saw the other main bridge over the Grand Canal - the Ponte dell' Academia - located near the university. Then we tried to go back to our hotel for a nap (since it was so hot!) but we ended up getting lost over on the far western side of Venice and had to stop into a cafe for directions. Another wander around our neighborhood and a pasta dinner closed our last night in Venice.

Day 7: Venice

Our first morning in Venice, we slept in a little later than we meant to. We woke up right as the free breakfast was closing. We quickly ran to the breakfast room across the hall and knocked on the closed door, hoping it wasn't too late. Luckily, the nice Italian woman let us in and made us delicious hot chocolate. She also gave us some bread and jams, which were delicious.

That morning we bought our train tickets for our future travels through Italy. They were expensive, but surprisingly easy to buy. It was nice that our hotel was right next to the train station, it made leaving Venice much less stressful than it otherwise could have been. After we got our train tickets out of the way, we set out to figure out how the rest of Venice's transportation worked. We bought vaporetto (water bus) tickets and headed over to the glass-making island of Murano.

Murano is famous for its gorgeous glasswork. Around the year 1300, all the glassmakers in Venice were exiled to Murano because their glass-blowing created a huge fire hazard on the mainland. Today, Murano is filled with little shops with lovely glass art. Upon arrival, we enjoyed a pasta lunch and quickly discovered that few places on the island accepted credit cards. Luckily, I exchanged my travelers cheques for cash before leaving Sevilla, so we were able to buy lunch and various gifts at Murano.

We accidentally hopped onto the wrong bus to get off Murano, but we still ended up near our hotel. We just ended up making many more stops and staying on the bus longer than we otherwise would have. Marc decided that waterbus was not the most fun or comfortable method of transportation.

That night for dinner, we had more delicious Italian food, and we also drank the most expensive Fantas we'd ever had (at 4 euros per glass). After dinner, we found a new favorite grocery store and bought a couple of delicious dessert items. We then wandered over in the direction of the Rialto Bridge. Venice was nice enough to provide us with many signs to follow, directing us pretty clearly. I took pictures of gondolas, and in turn, the passengers in the gondolas took pictures of me.

At the end of an alley, we made a turn and SURPRISE! We stumbled upon the Rialto Bridge. The bridge is huge, and during the day its filled with little touristy shops. At night, it's just filled with tourists taking pictures of the beautiful view. We included ourselves in the group and tried to capture some of the memorable sights of Venice.