Italy

I arrived in Rome on July 12th after completing my bike ride from Valencia to Heidelberg. The bus is not the best way to travel around, but it was cheap. I didn't get much sleep in the upright seat, but I met a couple nice people. Sandra is from Calgary, but married a German man. She is living in Munich, but ended up on the same bus on a so lo tour to Rome. We decided to search out a hostel together when we arrived. Went for a bit of a walk together, and then I went out to meet Josh at the airport.

Whirlwind Speed

The three of us put the trip into whirlwind speed for the next three days. The noise, smell, heat, and speed of the city was quite a contrast to the last couple weeks of biking in rural France. Tons of tourists in this town. Everyone seems to speak Eng lish, which can be nice for all us Americans. I tried to use some mixture of Spanish now and then, but generally we had no trouble running around the city. And we ran a lot. Our hostel was right next to the Vatican, and everything else was in walking d istance. We took two three-hour walking tours offered by EnjoyRome.it Pretty cool organization. It is tough to put all of the monuments and ruins into perspective without a good explanation for everything.

Florence

Caught a cheap quick train up to Firenze on Wednesday. Didn't have too much trouble finding a decent hotel for less than US$20 each. Every day in Italy we have been told that there are no beds for the coming night due to other reservations. However, ev everything always seems to work out. We took an Enjoy Florence tour here. I am not really fond of tour groups, but these are nice. It lasts three hours, which doesn't include any obligatory shopping or nonsense. After getting a good explanation for al l the major points, we were then free to walk back to everything for those all-important photos. There has also been time to ponder. This town is quieter and a little cooler as well. Nice place to hang out night or day. I sat down in a plaza one day and started drawing a picture of this artist who was painting. I realized that I haven't hd time to draw much this trip. I haven gotten any farther on those novels either. We soon moved on to Venice.

Venice

Arrived in Venice about noon on 17 July. We did not have any reservations, but I didn't want to wait in the line at the tourist office for the hotel finding service. We just set out walking around the city. We passed on a couple places that were only slightly cheap, but then we didn't find anything for a while. We nearly walked around the whole town, following the Grand Canal, before we finally found the Domus Civica. A cool dorm with single rooms at great rates. We set out to look for a some food and a place to do some people watching.

Like Florence, Venice has its famous bridge where all the tourists seem to congregate. Among all of these people, I ran into a friend from my badminton club in Japan. It was pretty crazy. We walked over to the San Marco together, where Josh and I were turned away for wearing shorts. Tired of the tourist scene, we walked toward the residential part of town. Bought some groceries and made ourselves some dinner out on the waterfront. We had the most fun in Venice just wondering around the backstreets and enjoying the atmosphere. We got lost a few times, once just before the 11pm curfew, but all-in-all, it was fun.After Josh left, I took a cheap water taxi ride instead of a gondola ride. It really is a water city. Although a little expensive, Venice did not disappoint me.

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