I do not even know where to begin...

It's been 10 days since I've written, and I've been stressing about having to catch up. So much has happened, and now I'm going to try to fit it all in without spending too much time on the computer. We purchased our ferry tickets to Venice, and trying to save some money we decided that we did not need a cabin and we could be deck passengers. We ended up in a community lounge area for 30 hours sleeping on the floor. It was nice to catch up on sleep though, the first night we slept 12 hours! But, we both ended up with bruises on our hips from sleeping on the ground. Our plan was to take a train straight out of Venice to Rome and work our way up the "boot" of Italy, but since the ferry took us to the top, we decided to work our way down and take an overnight train out of Rome once we hit the bottom! We got into Venice at 9:00 am where we met Patrick, a Canadian traveling by himself, in the line for the shuttle. He had not found a place to stay there either, so we pulled out Rick Steves and found a hostel that we searched for FOREVER and finally found. After we dropped off our bags, we had the day free in Venice. We walked around, got lost several times, visited San Marco Cathedral, took pictures of the Gondalas, and had our first Italian Gelato. Mmmmmm. Everyone told me that Venice was dirty, not really worth the trip, and that you only need one day there. I liked it! I think I expected the worst, which made it all the better...and it was not as dirty as I thought it would be! But, we did only need one day, so the next day we checked out of our hostel and bought a train ticket to Cinqe Terre.

We got into Monterosso, which is one of the 5 towns in Cinque Terre, and we went to one of the T.I.'s (Tourist Information Offices) who hooked us up with a hotel. Patrick joined us for the part of our trip as well, and we ended up all sharing a room.  After we got settled, we decided to grab some pizza to-go at Ely's, if you're ever in Monterosso go to Ely's, the owner is so friendly and the pizza was great! We took our beers and pizza to the back and ate with an incredible view! Cinque Terre is famous for their 5 towns and the beautiful hike in between them all, so the next day we planned on doing the hike! We woke up...and it was raining...POURING rain. We decided to get ready for the hike, and walk around a bit, hoping it would clear up, and it did! We started the hike in the 1st town, where the hike between town #1 and #2 was called La via dell'amore. There were love locks all along the 30 minute hike, as well as graffiti and carvings of initials of couples, it was soooo cute! The hike between town #2 and town #3 was the most beautiful! The views were incredible. The next hike, between #3 and #4 was a lot more difficult. The trail was wet from all of the rain, which made it very slippery! We decided against the last hike from town #4 to town #5, which was Monterosso where we stayed, because we heard it was the most difficult and we thought the last one was difficult. Maybe next time! After our long hike we relaxed for a bit and then went out for dinner. I had the best pesto pasta of my life! The next morning we took a train out of Cinque Terre to Florence!

Florence is huge and it is a busy city, which we hadnt really seen since Athens. We didnt have hostel reservations, but we had the name of a few options. We walked (in the hot weather, with our backpacks, for a very long time...) to our first option, which was full. He called around to find an open hostel, and after almost losing hope and freaking out, we found one! It was the worst place we have stayed in thus far, but we had a bed and a place to put our stuff. We immidiately did our first, and very much needed, load of laundry and went to the internet cafe next door to find a new hostel for the remainder of our stay in Florence. We planned on meeting up with a family that we had met on the train from Cinque Terre that night, and they had invited us to join them for dinner. Sarah and I met them at one of the nicest resturant I have ever been to in my life, right on the river with a view of the Ponte Vecchio bridge. Afterwards we all went to gelato, and ended up finding a square where there was live music and a merry go round, so we hung out there for a while before returning to our Hostel. The next morning we moved to our new hostel, which is much cleaner and less scary! We shopped, went to the Uffizi Gallery, found amazing resturants and mercatos, and had a night out on the town in Florence! We heard about a resturant called Tratoria Za Za, it was pretty amazing. We went there with our roomate in the Hostel Damien, from Madrid and another girl staying here Merrit, from Sydney Australia! Yesterday we did a walkabout tour, "The Best of Tuscany". It took us to Siena where we saw yet another Cathedral, this one was one of my favorites though! Then to lunch at a Farm outside of San Gimignano, they had over 200 acres of land with olive trees, vineyards, gardens, and farm animals! The lunch was a four course meal, that was 90% produced at this farm and included wine with each course. It was THE BEST meal I have had on the trip. Afterwards we visited the town of San Gimignano and had THE world champion winning best Gelato in the world for the past two years. It was reeeeeally good. The tour then took us to Pisa, where we took about 40 pictures "holding up" the leaning tower! I am so glad we went on that tour, I know that the lunch and wine tasting are going to be a highlight of my entire trip! It was our last night in Florence, and so far it has been my favorite city in Italy. My pictures and this short explanation will not do it any justice, but you have a bit of an idea.

We are taking a train to Rome this afternoon, ciao Firenze, I'll be back someday.