Lake Como and Florence.

More Italy.
After we left Bologna we made our way to Lake Como(don't look at a map, it doesn't make sense). I knew very little about Lake Como except that George Cloony has a place there, but Lyndsey, again, found a google image of the place while looking up Itlay and so off we went. And I'm happy we did.
Lake Como is very, very beautiful. We had the worst time getting there since we took a few wrong trains, passed stops, and turned a 3 hour trip into 7 hour trip. All I can say is that tempers were wearing thin. It's amazing, though, how a breathtaking view(and a few glasses of wine) can take the most troubled waters and make them calmly flow under the bridge. Truth be told we wern't actually staying in Lake Como but about a 30 minute bus ride outside in a place called Managgio. We stayed in a very poorly run little hostel right on the water. When we found out what bus to take from Como to Managgio we asked some guy to let us know when to get off. He did, we got off, and after walking about 10 minutes ona road without sidewalks we started to get a little worried about finding our beds. We saw some guys on the side of the road and asked them if they knew teh area. These guys weren't from Como, or spoke a word of English...they were French. I finally, after 2 years, got to test my French. I was shocked. It was terrible. It has gone way down hill since highschool, and even then, it wasn't the best. After they found out what I was asking them, they put the address into their car GPS and informed us that Hostel was 10 km away. We were frozen. There was no way we would make that walk alive, either we would die from the weight of our bags or we would be smashed by a car. So we did the responsible thing under the stress and accepted a ride from them. It was great! A free ride right up to our door. So we took their numbers, promised to call that night for drinks, and never did. Oops. I would now like to take a moment to say that we had every intention to call them, and I will blame the Ozzies that we later met over overpriced Hostel dinner and very reasonably priced red wine for keeping us entertained. Sorry French guys.
When we got to the hostel the people who worked there we really nice, even though they took you for everything and in teh end I would never go back. When we sat down for dinner we each ordered a side salad and brough us out one bowl, then when teh girls ordered a regular salad since the portions were nothing more than a leaf or two each, we got the same bowl. We paid 6 euro and then 3 euro for the same amount of salad. They did this to us later aswell when at at a 10 euro barbeque 7 of us got the exact same portion size and a table of three. It was redicilous. Later when we were playing cards over some wine they said they were tired and wanted to shut down early and "not to insist staying up past 12" and that we had to go to sleep or else we'd be locked out. It was just stupid.
Annnyway(now that Ive ranted) we met these 2 cool guys from Australia while at the place and ended up spending the rest of our days there with them. We took the little ferry around to see the sights, ate, drank and were merry. One sight that we saw in particular was called (dont judge my spelling of this place) Barbienello. Or you might know it as "that villa where Bond hung out in Casino Royale" or, for the nerds amoung you, "the place where Ani Skywalker and Nat Portman kissed in the 2nd Starwars movie". We took a tour of the villa. It was like a museum, but the view was the money. So to sum it up Lake Como = beautiful and we just hung out a lot.
Next stop on the Italian trip was Florence.
We arrived in Florence but decided to stay cheaply outside of town in a place called Tavernelle. It was around one hour on a bus but the views of the Tuscan country made the 2 hour commute per day not unwelcome. The only bummer about staying where we did was that the last bus was at 7:50 and it was a 60 Euro cab ride back, so it killed any opportunities to go out and enjoy the nightlife. The Hostel was pretty cool, looked exactly like your elementary school, and was run by this super awesome woman. She just spewed sweetness. We only stayed two nights and we arrived late. So the first night we headed down to the owners favorite little restaurant and had the best dinner ever and were surrounded by locals(always a good sign). It was the best meal we have had on the trip yet. We ate, and ate, and ate and left feeling almost high with food delight. We slept well that night in what we had originally thought was 4 bed girls dorm, but Lyndsey soon found out mid wardrobe change that it was not. Thankfully the guy was asleep and he survived unscarded.
The next day, since it was our only full day, we had a very strict schedule of the things we wanted to do and see. There was the church and David and then, at the end of the day there was the leather market. This is not at all what happened. We ran into the leather market at the beginning of the day and then was totally consumed by cheap leather and wasted most of our time bardering prices. I spent so much money on a leather jacket for myself and gifts for family that when we took a breather for a kabab, I was shaking. The girls had to talk me out of a full mental breakdown about the money I spent. I feel pretty good about it now though and am totally happy about all purchases- and hopefully family memebers will be happy with them as well. Later, we raced to the church, was robbed of our breath, and missed the museum all together. We had to catch the bus. But we did have great gelato. Seriously, there is no sorrow that gelato can't cure. What we decided when we got back to the hostel was to go to the grocery store for dinner and walk along the country. The lasagna I got from the hot food section was really good too, it's like you can't go wrong there. We met a girl with a name I'm sure on the bus and walked around with her for a bit. It was stunning. We then called it a night and packed for our journey for Naples(or Napal as I kept calling it for some bizarre reason) where we saw nothing but lots of the surrounding area. Very cool.