It's been an exceptionally long time since my last blog so this will be an exceptionally long one. Fortunately I've been keeping track of my activities on my laptop.

My first full day in Firenze (Thursday) was fairly hectic. I got up early and wandered off to the little art gallery where David is kept. There was zero queue so I got in straight away. Despite not being an art person, David actually is very impressive. He's 5m tall which seems a lot larger when you are standing next to him and I was somewhat fascinated by a vein in his hand which must have been ridiculously hard to carve into stone. Anyway, there wasn't much else in that particular gallery so I left and went to the Archaeology Museum very nearby. It was pretty cool but mostly full of Egyptian stuff, which is just another example of Europeans stealing stuff. I've not been to Egypt but the amount of Egyptian stuff I've seen in Europe leads me to believe that there can't be much left in Egypt. I then started to walk towards the Duomo but got distracted by a tiny Leonardo di Vinci museum along the way. It was two rooms full of replicas of Leonardo's inventions and you get to play with them. It was fun. I did finally make it to the Duomo, where there was a big protest about something. The protesters also had people in costume with flags that they threw around. It was cool to watch. The Duomo was mildly interesting, with a painted dome, but the most exciting part was an archaeological site under the Duomo. It was mostly grave sites. I found my way back to the train station and hoped on a train to Pisa. One the way to the Piazza del Duomo, a real life monk walked past me which was thoroughly exciting. The Piazza was pretty cool with the Duomo and Battiserio and a large leaning structure. I climbed to the top of the tower which had an awesome view of the Tuscan landscape. The climb was pretty amusing since the lean meant one side was easier to climb up than the other when spiralling upwards. They were lots of American tourists complaining about the number of stairs (!). In the piazza, there were lots of tourists taking the stupid tourist photo where they pretend to hold up the tower. Annoying. I managed to self portrait myself with the tower which I was pleased with. I'm getting pretty good at self portaiting using the timer on my camera. I didn't really use it in the first half of my trip but then realised that I had no pictures of myself and I'm not game to let a stranger touch my camera, even though people often offer.

Friday was pouring with rain but I wanted to go to the Uffizi Gallery on a weekday to try and avoid as much crowd as possible so I braved the rain and walked to the other side of town to the Gallery. There was quite a queue but it moved surprisingly quickly so I only had to wait 15 minutes or so to get in. The Gallery was good, except that I'm also starting to feel art-ed out as well as church-ed out, and I saw all the major things like The Birth of Venus and Spring. Getting out of the Uffizi was far more difficult than getting in. The exit signs point in random directions and when you finally get back to the ground floor you have to through no less than 6 shops to get outside. I found one book that I liked (but didn't buy) - Babar's Yoga for Elephants. I don't know what that has to do with the Uffizi Gallery but I liked it. I went for a stroll to see the Ponte Vecchio (while still pouring with rain) and had vague thoughts about visiting the costume gallery on the other side of the river but by this time I was fairly cold, wet and miserable so headed back to the hostel.

I had a bit of a slow start to Saturday but then managed to get to the train station and head to Siena for the day. I caught the bus up to Piazza del Campo, the main square in Siena, because it was uphill and pouring down rain (are you seeing a weather pattern here?). I had a look around the piazza and had lunch (pizza) there before having a look at the Duomo, Battiseria and Crypto. The Crypto was kind of disappointing since it didn't actually contain anything bone related. It was just a few rooms with paintings on the walls. I walked back to the train station and headed back to Firenze. A girl from the hostel and I had decided to go see a physical comedy show at one of the theatres. The show was pretty funny and between the two of us, we managed to get the gist of the Italian. We also met the guy after the show.

On Sunday I caught the bus and train out to San Gimignano, a small, stone-walled town on top of a hill out in the Tuscan country side (thanks for the tip Becca). I loved it there - didn't do very much just wandered around (in the rain) and had a look at things. I also spent an hour or so in Poggibonsi on the way where several of the non-English speaking locals decided to have long conversations with me and were undeterred by my broken Italian. At any rate, my Italian was better than their English and I don't get to say that very often.

Monday I got up early-ish to catch the train to Napoli as I wanted to get there in the early afternoon so that I could go to the Archaeological Museum as well. It was quite a hike to my hostel, finishing with a three story flight of stairs which is much more difficult when carrying about 30kg worth of crap like I am. I ditched my stuff and went off to find pizza (not hard in Napoli) which was fantastic and then headed to the museum. The Archaeological Museum was easily my favourite museum of the trip, full of ancient Roman statues of people that I know things about like Augustus, Titus, Athena, Neptune and Dionysus, so I found the whole thing very exciting and spent several hours there. When I left the museum, it was pouring with rain again and I had left my umbrella at the hostel. I have become very glad that I leave Europe soon because the weather is starting to drive me crazy. I had been rained on more in the last week than in the last two years in Melbourne.

Yesterday I went out to Pompei which was, again, thoroughly exciting and spent about four hours wandering around the site, which is much bigger than you would expect. Highlights include the amphitheatre, the large theatre and the brothel. A random Italian guy who worked there (also didn't speak English) decided that he liked me and my small amount of Italian and let me into a few locked doors to see some of the Pompei corpses. It was pretty amazing. I also got invited to dinner by a random old guy selling souvenirs. I declined. On the way back to Napoli, I stopped at Ercolano, which has another archaeological site, which is smaller and better preserved than Pompei. Still, Pompei was definitely the highlight. When I had my daily gelato yesterday evening, I managed to chip a tooth on it (!!). I picked a random flavour with an Italian name that I couldn't translate (which means that it wasn't something easy like strawberry or lemon). Turns out that it had very large, cold, hard hazelnuts hidden in it and I chipped my tooth chomping into one unexpectedly. Don't worry Mum, it's a tiny chip and I doubt you'll even notice it

On Wednesday I went down to the Castel Dell'Ovo on the edge of the ocean. It wasn't anything spectacular but it was nice to have a walk along the water's edge. The water is very clear and green. I then wasted a very nice weather day (which happens rarely in Europe!) by snoozing away on the train to Rome. Had a quiet evening in Rome, got some dinner and went to bed. I only had one dorm mate that night and he between when i went to bed on Wednesday night and when I got up on Thursday morning, he turned the light on 8 times. Then he was bewildered when I yelled at him. Then he checked out on Thursday morning.

Thursday was a spectacularly good day. I got up early-ish (and by that, I mean 9am) and went to the Colosseum which was spectacular, especially since the weather was gorgeous that day. I spent about 2 hours just wandering around the inside and trying to get a self portrait of myself. That took up a surprising amount of time as I had to find a spot that had the right amount of sunlight and was at the right height to get my head in the picture. Not such an easy task at the colosseum. I also went to palatine hill and the roman forum and spent another 2 hours wandering around there. Highlights included Augustus' house and the world's first ever zoo. I then went back to the hostel and hung out in the bar for the evening where I met Sam (from Adelaide) who became a regular feature of my Roman adventure. He also became a very bad influence as I drank more alcohol spending 3 days with him than I did on the entire rest of the trip. Sam and I also met Brody (from Brisbane) in the lift who turned out to be my new dorm mate (not the variety that turns lights on a lot) and also a regular feature of my Roman adventure.

On Friday, Sam, Brody and I went to the vatican, starting with the vatican museum and the sistine chapel. As i've mentioned previously, I'm feeling somewhat church-ed, museum-ed and art-ed out from Europe so I had pretty much planned to spend maybe half an hour in the art-y stuff and then hit the sistine chapel for 15 minutes and that would be it. The vatican, however, had other ideas. The museum is a one-way circuit and once you are in, you HAVE to go through every single room in the whole place. So that took about 2 hours of which I enjoyed the Egyptian room and the animal room and everything else was pretty much just 'ok, where's the bloody sistine chapel already?' and then 'where's the bloody exit?' Lucky I had the boys to keep me company or I may have gone insane. Then we got gelati while it poured with rain and tried to fit all 3 of us under 2 umbrellas. We went off to St Peter's Basillica whilst it was still raining and waited in the queue, which was rather large, and laughed at all the signs that indicated appropriate dress for the vatican. The inside of the Basillica was pretty cool but the highlights were the tombs and the dome. The tombs have all the popes dating back to St Peter, all the way up to Johnny P 2. The dome was a 500+ step climb up to the top of the Basillica and the view at the top was pretty spectacular apart from the pouring rain and serious wind. I have an hilarious photo of me at the top covered in rain, being blown away. We then retired back to the hostel for dry clothes and dinner before heading out on a pub crawl.

On Saturday, after a slow start due to said pub crawl, I attempted to go off to the catacombs which were a fair way out of the historical centre. After a train and a bus there was still another bus and a walk to go so I abandoned that in favour of sitting in a nice park that I found and eating lunch. On the way back to the hostel, I randomly bumped into Sam and Brody at the train station so we all went off to the Colosseum again and just sat and stared at it for about an hour, whilst being harrassed by hawkers. That was pretty funny as one of the hawkers got so frustrated with the boys being difficult that he gave up trying to sell us stuff. That was pretty much it for Saturday and we went back to the hostel, had dinner and hung around the bar for the evening.

Sunday was another slow start to the day and then I went off exploring by myself to catch up on the Roman landmarks that I hadn't seen yet. I went to the pantheon (it's big), the trevi fountain (also big and ridiculously full of people), the spanish steps (they don't do much) and Augustus' musoleum (which had construction all around it and i couldn't get anywhere near it). Then I met up with Shannon (from uni at home) who was in town for a short holiday with his friend Andy. We wandered around for a while before I retired back to the hostel for packing and showering. We all (me, Shannon, Andy, Sam, Brody, loads of other people from the hostel) met up at the bar in the evening for another pub crawl. When we arrived at the pub crawl meeting place, there were no tour guides but there were lots of other people expecting a pub crawl. So we decided to make our own crawl and off we went around Rome.

Monday morning I slept in (woke up at 930, was supposed to be at the airport at 1030, oops) but miraculously still made it to the airport on time. Standing at the check-in desk, the lady says 'Where's your visa for Vietnam?' Uh-oh. In all the hoopla of changing my tickets, we forgot to get me a visa for Vietnam. This was all a bit diastrous but I got on the plane to Hong Kong anyway and that's where I am now. Tuesday was pretty much a total write off. Some random on the street handed me a pamphlet for a travel place that organises Vietnam visas - very handy - so I went and did that and then pretty much slept for the rest of the day.

Haven't done much today. Wandered around the shops for a while. Catching up on emailing. Etc. Finally going to Vietnam tomorrow providing there are no more diasters.

Ok. End of very long blog.

Love, hugs, etc.