Firenze

Woke up at 7, shoved ham, cheese, hard boiled eggs and croissants in my pocket and we were off. In true fashion, we got to the train just on time. It took off about 2 minutes after we sat down. It was about an hour and a half to Florence and our hostel is right by the hotel, just behind a beautiful church. We relaxed for a little then took a bus to San Marco to see the sights. I have been looking for a leather jacket for almost a year now and decided Italy was the perfect place to buy it and today Justin and I both bought beautiful leather jackets, as well as nice sunglasses. My one big disappointment was that this was my second trip to Florence and I STILL have not seen the David. The first time was because we were fined on the bus for not having a ticket and as a result we could not afford entrance in to the museum, today was because the museum isn't opened on Mondays. THWARTED AGAIN! So we did what you do and we walked. And walked. And walked. And ate food. And took photos and walked. And bought sunglasses. And walked. Came back to the hostel, napped, ate dinner, drank Sangria, and now we will fall asleep at some point. In hindsight we should not have "napped" at 6pm, but when you are tired you don't care. The wireless is working in this hostel but it is very slow, I am trying to upload photos but becoming frustrated. I put up photos from Venice, Verona is almost done uploading and hopefully I will get some from Florence up but keep checking back for the sites (which you will have to copy and paste because the hyperlink is NOT working, stupid hyperlink). I hope everyone is doing well :)

Verona

So I was really looking forward to Verona, I love Romeo and Juliet and I pictured it to be a very quaint town full of charm and romance. Wrong! I'm not saying I did not like Verona, but it was nothing like what I expected. We had a lot of fun taking photos with some "guards" outside of the arena, but we couldn't go in because they were setting up for a concert. We walked around, I bought a very un-Brett shirt and got very excited when they said that I got a 15% discount for using my Amex. We then made our way to Juliets Balcony. For starters, anyone who has seen that cheesy movie 'Letters to Juliet' will have expected a pristine, clean area where women and men are writing notes and leaving them in the wall. I'll admit, I was looking to do that. When I got there, what I saw was gum stuck all over the little arched hallway leading to the area under the famous balcony and people who wrote their names in graffiti. My brothers stayed outside and I paid my 6 euro to go in, I took some photos which you can see for yourself, and I have a picture of me on the balcony. We then continued to just meander, took photos, sat at a cafe and had a drink and watched a cool performance of drums and capeiora which I filmed a little of and am going to post when it finally finishes uploading. Then we headed back to the hotel because it was Sunday and most things were closed. We hung out with two people we met at the hostel (which looked more like a hotel) and then went to bed because we had to get up at 7 to head to Florence. Here is a link to some photos of Verona:

Venezia!

After all the waiting and planning we finally arrived. After 6 hours on the plane to Paris we arrived at CDG just in time to make our connecting flight to Venice. Upon arrival in Venice we fought the clock to find our hotel, check in, shower and make it to our 3 island tour on time. Had we been even one minute later we would have missed it. The tour was great, we went to Murano and saw several glass blowing demonstrations. Afterwards, we went in to the store which held the most intricate and beautiful objects but unfortunately we could not take photos. I did however buy two rings to replace the one that I bought there last time, which broke while I was interning at VH1. Yes, you read that correctly, I bought two rings to replace one, the math works out right if you are a girl. Afterwards we went to Burano which is an adorable little town whose houses are all different colors and they specialize in making lace objects. The third and last stop on the tour was Torcello, a picturesque island with a beautiful and very old cathedral. We only had about 30 minutes on each island and I actually almost got left behind in Torcello. When we got back to Venice we immediately found a restaurant and ate dinner because we had not eaten in over 10 hours. After a very delicious dinner we went to San Marco where I performed an impromptu ballet to some live music and then wandered our way through Venices twists and turns for about two hours until we wound up back at our hotel.I did most of this barefoot due to the fact that my right shoe was starting to give me a blister. Tomorrow VERONA! Here is a link to the photos: http://share.shutterfly.com/share/received/welcome.sfly?fid=825f76f7206763803315f89dbf2f35f7&sid=8AYtmzdy1btWSl The video is taking forever to load, it will be up tomorrow I hope