Part III

Anyways- the next morning we got on a train to Venice (since there are no cars allowed in Venice). When we got off the train we were checking times for the trains back and then ran into a couple girls from our school! It is a small world after all. Haha

Venice was beautiful! People had said Venice was stinky and rundown. Well, it is a rundown city but luckily it was too cold for it to be smelly. :) People had also told us that it was easy to get lost in Venice and they were not kidding! There are many streets that all look alike and they are very short. It was almost like finding your way through a maze. It was fun to just get lost though since we did not have a destination set. We had some amazing pizza for a very reasonable price! It was lovely. We would have gone on a ride in a Gandola except it was 80 Euros (120 Dollars)! As you can imagine that was a little out of our budget. Haha but I took many pictures of them. :P

Also- I got pooped on by a pigeon! The Italians (and my mom’s Venezuelan friend) believe that a bird pooping on you is good luck. Lucky me I guess.

That evening we had dinner with Sarah and Will (Yummy Pasta) and then we bundled up and went out for Gelato ( I got Strawberry) and a walk around creepy Aviano. Did I mention that Ice cream in Italy is significantly cheaper than in Sevilla? Probably because Sevilla continues to be in the 80’s even though it is November.

The next morning we headed towards Florence. It was a fairly long drive and once again- it was raining and cold. We attempted to find things to do in Florence but Lola failed us. She kept trying to send us the wrong way down a one-way and then losing us and redirecting us. We found a museum we saw advertised only to find out it was closed on Wednesdays. Then we went on a search for the David Statue. Too bad there were like 8 different ones according to Lola. We found a fake David on the top of a hill, took some sweet pictures of Florence and the fake and then attempted to find an Internet café to get our next hosts address. We asked some locals and then walked around rainy Florence for quite some time in vain. Since everyone nowadays has laptops and can get WIFI small Internet shops are running out of business, which unfortunately for us meant we were SOL! We finally gave up, found a payphone and gave our hosts a call. We then headed towards their home (which was also in a small town) and Lola once again took us to the wrong address. This time it was a small gravel parking lot in the middle on nowhere. We quickly realized this was not Kathy and Rich’s home. We eventually found their home and once inside, safe from the rain we put dry socks on. I love dry socks! :)

Kathy and Rich were amazing hosts! They were both Americans, former military, she works as a teacher at the base and he works with computers. They have lived all over the world (in Japan for over 10years!). They made a nice American meal for us. I had Clam Chowder for the first time (it was delicious!), indulged in some home made corn bread, ate some salad (she grew all the veggies in her own garden) and even got a coke with my meal! Oh- we also got Cappuccino flavored Gelato for Dessert! It was pretty solid. They also had another couch surfer staying with them that night. Her name was Kathleen, also an American, she had just gotten done studying in England for a year and a half and she was now exploring Italy and Budapest for over a month. Lucky duck.

Also- Kathy and Rich’s home was a 300 year old farmhouse. So we can now say that we have spent a night in a real Tuscan home… for free… Woot woot! :)