Home sweet home! It feels weird to refer to Venice as "home". At least it's home for 5 more days.

EXPERIENCE: Last Thursday we took an 11:00 pm over night train for our "big" trip to Rome and Florence! In Italy, you have to reserve seats on long train rides...unfortunately, we reserved them for the wrong night train. After a minor stress out, we were able to find some seats and luckily did not get kicked out. Friday morning at 6 am we got into Rome and crashed for 5 hours in the hotel. When we finally woke up, we found a great tour bus for 18 euro for two days. The bus drove us all around Rome and took us to the biggest sights. We stopped at the Colosseum and walked around. After sight seeing for a while, we payed 20 euro to go on a Pub Crawl. Basically a Pub Crawl is a good way to meet other American Students. It was really fun, and had open bar for the first hour. After the open bar we "crawled" to different bars, free shot at each one. Free T-shirts too!

The next day we got on the tour bus again and ended up at the Vatican. AGAIN we found a sick deal: 5 euro for a tour. Our tour guide was really awesome, and pointed out all the coolest stuff there. He also suggested a GREAT restaurant, hands down BEST food of the trip for the best price. 16 euro for mushroom risotto (THE BEST), some kind of blue cheese meat (interesting), really awesome tiramisu, and endless red wine.

On Sunday we woke up early and took a train to Florence. I felt like this portion of the trip was less successful. The same tour group was more expensive, so we didnt have a great way to get around and hit the best sites. We did see the David for 10 euro, which was a rip off because we saw him AGAIN for free outside in a square. Sure the one in the museum was the original, but as an art history major I saw literally no difference. Mostly we spent the day at the market shopping for souvenirs. My friend Christian bought a great leather jacket!

Today we spent most of the day at the train station in Florence. Our train was delayed but we had fun playing cards. On the train ride home we hit one more "bump". There was an oldish woman (probably around 65) who REFUSED to move out of our RESERVED seat. It was a bit of a struggle to fight with a stubborn Italian speaking woman. Two train conductors got involved and eventually made her leave. My friend that speaks Spanish understood that she said in Italian "I don't care if the president comes, I will not leave this seat." Another Italian woman next to us said "Italy is a beautiful country filled with not very beautiful people". Interesting that an Italian would say something like that about her own people. I always thought Italians were very proud (kind of like Americans).

Thought: Even though I felt relieved to be back in my Venice apartment, I think it will feel even better to be home in 5 days :)!!!