Florence and further

Alrighty I know it's been a while, and my last post was mediocre at best due to time limits, but this shall be a doozy since I have a fair amount to up date.

We went to Venice for three nights, which was a lot of fun and very romantic. The cannals were very cool, along with the layout of the city. Since you have to walk everywhere, and you never know when you will turn a corner and be looking down at water, the whole time it felt like a bit of a giant maze which I found incredibly entertaining because I'm just weird like that. The "metro" system in Venice was also very unique in that it was boats. Yes, the public transportation is water based as well, but again, very unique and very fun. The nice thing about those boats is that you could purposefully take a long route to your final destination and see a bunch of the city by water, instead of paying 100 Euros for a gondalla ride, and you pretty much got the same effect as the majority of the boat drivers would sing in their driver space. The food was very good, and I ate too much in our three days there, but we walked a lot so no big deal I guess.

In some respects I liken Florence to Amsterdam, in that while it's fun to visit, I feel that it would be even more fun to live in. There's a lot of touristy stuff you can do here, but you get the vibe that the really good stuff is for locals only. We stood in line for an hour and a half to get into the Accademia where the statue of David calls home, and it was totally worth it. While David is quite a famous statue, and I'm sure just about everyone knows what it looks like as there are pictures a plenty, when you turn the corner to see him hanging out at the end of the hall way, it does blow you back a bit. The statue is absolutely massive, and while you circle the master piece, you really can't believe that one man created this with as little technology as he had.
The food here in Florence has been absolutely fantastic, and while I am not much of a food snob, I have been enjoying way too much here. The first run I go on back home is going to be a bit of a struggle. We hiked to the top of a hill with the view of the main part of the city right below us, which was fantastic, but in a small world situation, we ran into a family that had stayed in the condo next to us the last time we were in Kaui about four years ago. I saw them, and they saw me, and there was a second of disbelief and then a "holy shit (sorry grandma)" on my part. Quite funny, and a little crazy at the same time.

We're heading off to Milan, then taking an over night train to Barcelona before we head back up to France for our last days. We are planning on seeing a Barça game tuesday night, so that should be fun, and I've contacted Arnau who worked with me in Ireland who we're going to meet up with, and hopefully he can show us some cool places.

John