European update 7/13

I'm currently at an internet cafe in Venice, but this will probably be the last email before Thursday, since internet is sketchy.

First, our last day in Rome. We were all tired, but it was quite nice. We visited the Castel San Angelo, and then vegged out at the apartment to rest our feet, which were still not recovered from the previous days of walking. A couple more notes about Rome in general: it's very odd to hear American music on the radio stations here. So far, we've recognized Coldplay, P!nk, Dido, Avril Lavigne, and lots and lots of Michael Jackson. Also, Rome will be remembered by me as the place I learned to appreciate mushrooms. I've never really liked either their flavor or texture, but I had linguine with mushrooms here and they were absolutely delicious. Flavorful, and the texture didn't bother me; I'm not sure if it was the type (small, buttony, but not like American button mushrooms) or the cooking method, but I loved them. Now I want to try more mushrooms back home.

The train ride up to Venice wasn't anything special. Venice, on the other hand...wow. This is one of the most perfect places on Earth, I'm certain. You just want to walk around forever just looking at things. Beautiful! The atmosphere is not as hectic as in Rome, since all the non-foot traffic is on the water. We don't really have any sightseeing to do today, but we're all fine with that, since it's amazing just to walk around and wander for hours. Knowing what I do now, I'd love to come back to Rome and Venice for a couple days of relaxation.

Our hotel here is nice, and we'll go in a gondola tonight before leaving really early tomorrow for Switzerland. I'll probably email next from Paris.

Love,
Merry K

_________________________________

Hello everyone,

We were able to find an internet cafe in Venice. Yippee! Yesterday we traveled on the train for the first time and it went pretty smoothly. A few glitches here and there because we have never experienced it before. 1. Our train number on the first train was correct, but the location was not. That is because the train makes multiple stops and it only lists the last stop. We were getting off on the first one so it did not list our city.

We arrived in Florence and found the museum where the statue of David is very easily. Once we arrived we saw the huge line coming from the building. Thank goodness my dad thought ahead and bought reservations because we got to skip the entire line and go right on in. The statue was amazing and way bigger than I thought it was. I was at least 8 times as tall as me. Wow! I even got to see about 4 cellos, 4 violins, 4 violas, and 2 double bass string instruments from the 1600's. How cool is that?!

We had fun walking through the market area and buying a few things. I bought a nice wallet and a bracelet and then we had lunch. The food here is amazing! Everything that we try is delicious. :)

We hopped back on another train up to Venice. One odd thing about the train is that when you go through the tunnels (and there are quite a few) the air pressure changes. Ugh, it was awful on my ears and everyone else's from what I heard. In about three hours we arrived in Venice. It took us a while to figure some things out at the station, but soon we were off to our hotel.

In order to get to our hotel we had to take a water taxi. It is a big boat that about 100+ people can get on and off of around Venice. There are absolutely no cars here. Just boats and streets for people to walk on. This is definitely my favorite place thus far. I love the buildings, the environment, people, water, everything.

Last night Doodle tried an interesting dish of food that was quite good. Spaghetti with Cuttlefish sauce. The sauce was black and looked odd, but it tasted really good. :)

Today we have been walking around down by the water (which is the Mediterranean Sea, how cool is that?!) shopping and just enjoying the walk. We just went to see the Rialto bridge and will probably go see Dodge's Palace and some other Basilica that is really cool looking.

Tomorrow we are off to Switzerland and we have no idea whether we will have internet there or not. We hope we will. Us girls feel lost without it! Haha.

We found out that we can burn a CD of our pictures, so we are doing that and sending it back to our families back home. Be looking for that little package. :)

Lots of love,

Ladybug

________________________

Hey Y'all

Well now we're in Venice and we will be leaving tomorrow. We lucked out on the fact that we managed to find an internet cafe. It's pretty cool here with water ways and old buildings around every corner.

Masquerade masks are everywhere we go; they are in shop, around shops, and not even in shops. The walk ways are small and it's fun just to walk around and just hope you can find you way back. And it smells like home. We'll see if we have internet later.

Doodle