We made it to Rome. After some smoothies for breakfast, made by Franco, we left for the train station. Since we didn't get to the station until a few minutes before 11, we decided it would be best to just jump on the first available train to Rome. We had to get on one of the regular trains *not high speed. It was probably one of the most uncomfortable trains we have been on. But we did have practically an entire train car to ourselves in first class. We arrived i...

Today started off with a 9 o'clock wake up call followed by some much needed showers. Luckily for us the water is hot in this hostel! As we were getting ready to walk out the door Franco approached us as to why we missed breakfast (he apparently cooks for all the residence of the hostel every morning), this is something that we're not going to miss tomorrow. The first thing on our agenda for the day was to head to the Santa Maria Cathedral and climb on top of t...

We have internet! We are in Florence, Italy now, it's actually our second day here so we'll tell you about yesterday first. We arrived by train on the Eurostar Italia (E.S.I) around 1:30 pm. The train ride was relatively short, roughly 2 hours 45 minutes, and very beautiful through the mountains of central Italy. We traveled through "Wine Country." We arrived at Santa Maria Novella train station and had to find our way to the Piazza della Republica. We...

Today was a much better day in Venice than yesterday. We actually could find our way around that crazy city. We woke up sort of early and left Villa Dori on the shuttle bus to head in for our days activities. The first thing that we did when we got to the city was head to the train station to reserve our tickets for Florence tomorrow. (We may not reserve our seats anymore in Italy because it is 3 times as expensive as it was in Germany. From the reservation booth...

Finally we were able to get into the heart of Venice! The day started off with an early 8:30 wake up call, followed by a quick shower and a bolt to the shuttle bus. The bus (which is really just and 8 seater volkswagon mini-van) took us 15 minutes to the Piazzale de Roma, the car parking area...because obviously there is not any room to drive cars in the actual city of Venice - only boats. Once we got there we decided to go find the train station that we would be...