unfortunatley, as we enter florence, the value of the u.s. dollar seems to be going straight down the s***ter. so all of you back home hoping for souveniers, dont hold your breath. we have been in florence for two days now, and it has been raining the whole time. the rain didnt bother us to much the first two nights because mikes mom offered to put us up in a hotel. thanks so much ms. green, it was amazing. the past two days were the only days of the whole trip ...

venice is absolutely amazing. unfortunately 15 minutes of internet access costs as much as the slice of pizza we had for dinner last night, so im not gonna be able to blog much at all. and i would rather spend the money on pizza anyway. ciao 9/2707 now that i have a little time i can elaborate more on our time in venice. first of all, neither of us realized that the train station was only about 50 yards from the grand canal. so you basically walk out of the tr...

we are now back in nice, and compared to monte carlo it is a real dump. actually, even if you dont compare it to monte carlo it still isnt anything to special. the part of town we are staying in is pretty sketchy, and it is right next to old nice which is the much classier part of town. besides being very visually appealing because of the beach and the mountain side , nice just isnt that great. the hostel we are staying at somehow got a great write-up, but it i...

the train ride from nice to monte carlo took only 20 minutes or so, but it feels like we are in a completly different world. i believe monaco is the second smallest country in the world next to vatican city, and it is pretty hard to believe it is a country. monte carlo is rediculuous though. it is perfectly placed in the mountains and right on the ocean. this place is so luxurious it almost seems like it isnt real. there is no pollution at all, everything is pe...

after a 15 day or so hiatus, we are back in france. our train ride here was by far the most scenic of any of our rides. we were riding alongside the mountains and then towards the end along the coast of the french riviera as we passed by cannes and st. raphael. nice is really broken up into two parts, old nice and new nice. new nice is not very nice, but old nice is right on the water and very upscale. we actually havent gotten to see much of this place yet becau...