Oh Italy... my new favorite spot

I spend the last week of my vacation in Italy. Let's just say that it was amazing. I went from Venice to Florence then to Rome. It seemed like a lot of people where doing this same thing at the same time. It was as if we made a hostel family and all traveled together. This is probably why I had such a good time. Let me just give you some of the highlights from each city.

Venice

So unique, but a little smelly. Obviously, I had never seen a city like Venice before. It was all surrounded by water and very interesting. There were tons of little walkways to go through. I took a gondola ride with some people from my hostel. This gave us an amazing view from the water. Our guide was good too and quite cute.

I did almost fall into the canal once. I know what you're thinking...Where you drinking? And the answer is no. I was actually walking around the town with this Aussie named Zak. We were just walking all over the town and finding all the little alleys. One of the alleys led straight into the canal. It even had little stairs. I started to walk down them, and didn't think that they might have moss on them. Well they did, and I slipped. Luckily Zak was there to grab me or I would have been a goner. I was a little embarrassed. Oh well

Florence

My full day in Florence was one of my favorite from the entire trip. I woke up at a decent hour and wanted to take part in the bike tour the hostel had. Unfortunately, they were not doing it that day, so I just rented a bike and followed a route one of the hostel workers gave me. I got to see so much of the city that way. I went to the Dome (one of my favorite buildings in Florence) and even found a little market. Here I ended up buying a leather jacket... so cute!

Later in the day I met up with this guy named Andrew that was basically taking the same trip as I was just 4 hours earlier. He was staying at my hostel in Venice and went to Florence and Rome on the same days I was. We went to a contemporary art museum. It was definitely interesting. After this we decided to go back to his hostel, grab some wine and other friends and go Piazza Michelangelo (a hill in Florence) to watch the sun set and listen to the live music.

After dinner we all decided we didn't want to go back to our hostels, so we tried to find a place to get a drink. It became obvious that we were not going to find a place that we really liked and I had a great idea. There were all kinds of American students in Florence and I decided that I would go up to the next group of young women speaking English and ask them for a good place to go. They told us some things and we actually ended up tagging along with them. We went to this secret bar, where you had to have a special card to get in. It was secret because you are only allowed to serve alcohol in a bar until 2am, but this bar stayed open till 6am. You had to ring a door bell to get in too. The drinks were stupid cheap and it was really fun. Towards the end of the night we all went to a club and danced a bit.

I would say around 5 in the morning we started walking home and ran into some other people I met in Venice. They were looking for this secret bakery. I heard about this place earlier, but figured I couldn't find it. Well we were successful. So we had fresh baked croissants with cream filling. Then headed to bed. It was definitely a really fun day!

Rome

There is just entirely too much to say about this city.

The two big things I saw and loved were Vatican City and the Colosseum. I was blown away by the Vatican. I just couldn't believe some of the things they had and how beautiful everything was. I could have gone back another day there. I went into the Sistine Chapel and was presently surprised at the Roman statue display they had collected there. The Basilica was also so beautiful. They had a tomb for Peter the Apostles body. I just couldn't believe they had something like that.

The Colosseum was really impressive. I took a tour of it with some of my hostel family. The information that we learned was really great. It is just amazing that something that old still exists. I suggest you go there if you ever have the opportunity.

I was definitely sad to leave Italy and I know that I will go back there sometime in my life.