Florence

Florence was not as confusing to navigate as Venice was, but when we arrived it was so damn hot (over 100 degrees) we took a taxi to the apartment. Which of course, was on the top floor with no elevator. Abby and I are seriously going to be so strong after this trip. On another note, our apartment was right across from the Pallaza Pitti, so that was really cool.

We really only had one day in Florence because we were planning on renting a car the second day and traveling around a bit.

At this point though we realized that everything, absolutely everything, we had wanted to do in Florence, i.e. see the David in the Galleria d'Academia, go to the Uffizi, and so on required prior reservations - which we did not have.

So, at a bit of a loss, I suggested we find the Duomo. I am not exactly direction savvy and I can hardly follow a map but for some reason I instinctually knew the lay out of this city - much to Abby and her dad's surprise. I managed to get us to the Duomo without ever reading a map. I have to say I'm quite impressed with myself on this fact. But really, I think my sense of direction in Florence is due to the numerous art history classes that gave me a good glimpse of the architectural layout of the city.

Venice

First and foremost, I'm home. I've been home for about three weeks now. I'm still going to update the blog though!

That said, I suppose I should start this post with an obituary.

Whilst on the ferry taxi to our apartment, tragedy caught up with our group. Abby is currently coming to terms with it. In the Grand Canal our ferry hit some wake from other boats. Abby lost her balance and her backpack knocked into the rail on the ferry. In the mesh compartment of her backpack was her trusty Nalgene. A Nalgene that had been all over the world with her and was covered with (to quote) "once in a lifetime stickers." Well, it hit in such a way that out popped the Nalgene. It took a swan dive of sorts into the canal and slowly floated away as Abby watched in horror.

Milano Take 2

While we were waiting for Abby’s dad and brother to fly in we went into the Duomo. It took over 500 years to build and has over 5000 sculptures in and on it. It is astounding. Inside we saw bodies of cardinals older than our country. Kind of cool, but they were also really gross.

Lagi Como (day 2)

We felt that the day before we had explored a lot of Como, it is a very small town after all. On that thread, we decided to get a ferry day pass and essentially town hop across the lake (side note, although we were on the same lake as Bellagio, we skipped it because it was a three hour ferry ride away).

We hopped around to four other towns. They all looked very similar to each other, and still had a very Sausalito like feel to them.

Lagi Como (day 1)

We took a short train from Milan to Lake Como and were met at the train station by Enza, the women whose Bed and Breakfast we were staying at, and her daughter Stefania. We had been a little concerned about how we were going to find them once we got to the station since we didn’t know what Enza looked like, but they were holding a sign with our names on it. It was really cute.

Enza turned out to be the nicest woman ever. Over the course of the two nights we were there she adopted us as her American daughters and insisted that she was our Italian mother.

Milano (the first time)

 We arrived in ITALY!!!!! We’re spending one night in Milan before we head up to one of the lakes in the morning.

Prague to Munich

We took the fanciest bus from Prague into Munich on our way to Milan. It had cushy leather seats, seat belts, TV’s in the back of each seat, and a stewardess. It was nicer than some of the trains we had been on.