Italy. Venice and Bologna.

Hey there everyone who isn't in Italy right now, be jealous- very jealous. I write to you with love from Florence, or to be more truthful, a little place called Tavarnelle in the country. I tell you to be jealous because I just had the most yummy dinner ever. In Italy. In Tuscany. But now that I have gloated, I will fill you in (fill you in honestly. Dad...prepare yourself) on our stay in Italy.

Dad stop reading here...
Our Italian leg of the trip started in Venice. In Venice we...dad, really, skip to the next Italian town blog entry part now...
couchsurfed. It was great. We stayed with this really nice guy, who had a really nice flat, and it was really nice not paying anything for accom. He was out at school a lot so we never actually went out with him to see anything but we did all stay up late chatting and all that jazz. He would always leave early in the morning and we would get up late and shower, eat, etc. The first morning we awoke, feeling fresh and wonderful to be in an actual house again, I got ready to take a shower. I got in, got the water to the perfect temperature, did my thing, and stepped out- into 2 inches of water that was now flooding the bathroom floor. Thank gosh the guy was away, because the next 20 or so minutes were dedicated to us frantically mopping up the water with our towels and ringing them out in the sink/tub. It was probably the best way to start our couchsurfing experience. We cleaned it all up and Marco still has no clue. Venice was, of course, beautiful. We went into the mayors palace and a church, went on a romantic ride down the canal(but the dude refused to sing us traditional italian songs and instead just told us about some buildings), Ky and I window shopped while Lynds actually shopped, and just strolled and were model tourists. The second day it rained, so we looked around and then called it a very early night as to not be locked out of the flat while Marco was away teaching math. We had our first Italian pizza there- very yummy, and our first taste of real Italian icecream, or gelato. It was very good, but so was the stuff in Vienna. Other than that, I dont think we did much else in Venise- except take in the sights and eat a lot of carbs.

Dad start reading here...
Our next stop was an important one to me as it was where the family was from, Bologna. I wish I had taken a final look at some old family photos before coming on the trip so I could go match them to the actual sights in the city. We only stayed there two nights. When we got off the train we were very confused with our "take a right, then take a left" directions to the bus stop to get to our hostel. How we've made it from Dublin to, now, Naples I have no idea(actually all this credit goes to Kylene, the map holder). Now that we have become excellent Askers of Directions we asked a woman who turned out to be an American and was heading to the same hostel. Her name was Joanne and instead of going out boozing later that night, after we were all unpacked, we all headed back into town for a nice dinner. Bologna was a beautiful place. It had lots of expensive shopping and all the sidewalks were covered with beautiful arches and we even found a Piazza Marco Biagi! I took the obvious photo opportunity with fake smiles and in between the click of the camera, yelled and got yelled at by Lyndsey. It's okay though, we hugged it out like 5 minutes later.
Now that im on the topic of yelling I would just love to point out that there has actually been none. Haha kind of makes me a liar but we almost never argue. Embarking on this trip I kind of thought that we would be at eachothers throats but I have yet to wish any harm on anyone. I haven't gotten sick of eithers compagny and am almost never annoyed, and if I am it only lasts at most half an hour and were all back to normal again- on my half at least. It's brilliant. I am just loving most minutes of everything!
Okay, back to Bologna. After dinner we went back and got a good little sleep. The next day I was out to fullfill my mission of taking as many photos as I could of anything that might be recognizable to my great aunt Yolanda. We saw the main square where there was a statue with women all bent over sqeezing their boobs and having water squirt of of their nipples in multiple streams heading in multiple directions. Being 19, we took pictures. We also went in the big church there and walked up one of the two historical towers that had the most amazing view of the city. It was beautiful, but do you expect anything less from Italy? After we waundered the city we went home and ordered some of the worst pizza of my life, like worse than 711 Pizza Hut pizza, hurried in the bathroom doing the usual teeth brushing as the WC creeped the hell out of me, went to sleep, and got up the nex day to begin the journey to Lake Como to visit, after being exhausted with invitation after invitation from George Clooney to visit him there. But more on Como and Clooney another day! Allllll my love <3

(Aren't we just getting lamer and lamer? If all my posts from now on are "we walked and saw some sights" I'll start making stories up. You'11 know they are though becasue I probably wont be able to fight the urge of involving unicorns and lake monsters.)