Last night when we got back to the room we met our suite mates for the night. They were 4 Australians (2 guys and 2 girls) who were traveling for 10 months straight. Apparently that's pretty common practice in Australia after you graduate college. Anyway, we immediately hit it off and enjoyed a few drinks together and talked for a couple hours about the differences of Australia and America...it was really cool.
Then today we got up kind of late and got a quick lunch, but my stomach was hurting so we went back to the hostel for a few hours to take some stomach meds and hopefully start feeling better. I did around 5...so that's when we started touring Florence. It actually worked out really well because the city is fairly small (compared to London and Rome) so we were able to walk to everything we wanted to see, eat dinner, and make it back to the hostel by 10. I guess we're also able to do that because we don't actually go in to any of the places we're at for the most part. It's not that we don't want to, but when you only have a day to tour an entire city you have to move pretty quickly if you want to see everything.
My favorite part of it was as the sun was setting we went up to "Piazzale Michelangelo," which is on a big hill that overlooks the city. The view was awesome, and it was nice to just relax and take in the entire city while the sun was setting. I'll try to post the pictures on here, but sometimes it's hard to get them on here. Either way I should get some of them up on Facebook, so check there tonight or tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning we catch a train at 10:30 for Venice. We arrive at 12:30 and have exactly 11 hours to see everything we can in Venice, because the plan from there is to catch a night train down to the Amalfi coast that leaves tomorrow night at 11:30.
Interesting points from today:
-Footlocker is another company (like Pringles) who seems to be more popular over here then they are in the US. On our 5 hour journey today we saw 3 different Footlocker stores.
-Everybody loves McDonalds. In every city we've been to there have been McDonald's everywhere and lines bursting out of every one of their doors.
-German Shepherds are the dog of choice over here. I'm not sure if it's for personal protection or what, but it seems like about 50% of the dogs we see are big ol German Shepherds.
-Sodas are expensive over here. I haven't seen a sprite yet for under 2.50 Euro's...and when I order a sprite when we're out eating they're usually 3 Euro's a piece and they bring it to you in a can. Haven't seen fountain drinks here yet, which is kind of weird to me.
-The pizza is good here, but the biggest improvement in food is their ice cream or "gelato" as they call it. Megan and I have had it a couple times, and it is wayyyyyy better then anything in America. I got peach flavored tonight, and it tasted like I was eating a peach. Megan had some berry blend, and there were little bits of actual berries in the ice cream. It was awesome.
-We've seen like 2 SUV's the whole time we've been here. The most popular form of transportation is mopeds. It's actually pretty funny to see all the different types of people driving them (ladies in dresses and heels, 2 guys practically sitting in each others laps to fit on it together, people holding dogs, etc.). If they aren't driving a moped then they definitely have a little tiny car that gets really good gas mileage.
Well, that's about all I have for ya. Hope everybody's enjoying it, and once again, I'm not going to take the time to proof-read it...so I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors.
Ciao,
Mark
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