Past month off a.k.a. being kicked out of my apartment . . .

Turned out really well! I traveled to Vienna and Salzburg in Austria then Dublin and Cork in Ireland as well as Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland and then the grand finale in Italy was Rome, Florence, Pisa, Verona, and Venice! It was such a blast and such a whirlwind of non-stop bustling and fun! Thankfully I have a lot of awesome friends in Europa who were willing to help me out and give me shelter at various times inbetween trips as well as store my stuff at their places.

I am now unpacking all my stuff and getting back into the routine of working . . .

Venezia

Venice was lovely and everything I had expected and more! I would really love to come back for the carnival that is held annually in February. :-D
The city to find masks!

Hahaha, so not allowed to take photos and I love the fact that I got this woman in the shot!

The famous bridge in Venice and the water highway! ;-) Sarah, me, Miriam

Tourists waving to tourists! We asked how much the gondola rides were and the lady at the trainstation kept yelling at us, 80 euro for 40 minutes! So, then whenever we needed to know the price of something one of us would yell, 80 EURO FOR 40 MINUTES!!! lol . . .

Dipping our feet in the grand canale.

Hahah, no photographs allowed . . .

Here we found a little restaurant were famous old actors enjoyed the venetian cuisine, like Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and Charlie Chaplain!

Love this art! I want to hang this in my home someday!!

Hehehe, fulfillment of many dreams!

Creepers, but amusing ones at that . . . typical italian behaviour I guess. ;-)

European sweets! and NUTELLA!!!! LOVE this stuff. I guess rather an aquired taste like Rivella and mineral water, which I am surprised to say I have grown acustomed too. ;-)

Front door!?!?

And yucky croissants! lol . . .

So ended our amazing, whirlwind taste of Italy! We jumped on the train again after a few hours in Venice to make our way back to Switzerland almost missing three connections because of the typical italiam lateness. We were even more thankful for the Swiss efficiancy and ever constant clean surrondings and sighed with relief once crossing over and passing Lugano! Was lovely all the same though! :-D

Pisa and Verona

The next day after Florence we left in the morning to have a quick two hour stop in Pisa to see the leaning tower and then onto Verona. The town where Shakespeare set the stage for Romeo and Juliet! We figured out that our 4day European train pass to Italy did not include the fast trains therefore we had to wait another hour for the late, no air conditioning SLOW train to Pisa and Verona, and while doing so we thought we would go crazy taking silly photos! Big grins!!!

Lol, we be sexay! ;-)

Yep, so then the train that we were supposed to catch in Bologna to take us to Verona, well, the station was closed. Lol, so that meant that we had to figure out without speaking Italian how to get from the Bologna station to a bus that would take us to another nearby station which would then take us to Verona! Traveling is always some sort of adventure!

While bored, fixing hair . . .

Countryside! One should always travel by train at some point in life! It is so much better than flying because one really gets a sense of what traveling from one country to another is like. One sees the countryside, hears the dilects and languages change. Absolutely a wonderful way to travel.

A bit of an inside joke . . .

Verona finally!!!! The streets were marble!!!! This is a very wealthy place apparently. Where your nice clothes out to dine here. :-)

Square in the old town

Flame thrower guy! Hehe, quite amusing!

Sarah Carter! Lol, Miriam's highschool friend from Canada was an aupair in Como, Italy for a couple of months and she mt up with us for Verona and Venice!

I was so pleased over our italy trip! I planned it all myself and it went rather well. Although traveling with Miriam was such a bonus, I really could not have done it without her and we really traveled well together. Only fought once, lol, and that was over water temp. Haha, only lasted a few minutes before we started laughing!!! ;-)

Firenze! Florence, Italy!

Florence was so beautiful! I've always wanted to travel to Flrence after reading "A Room with a View" when the heroine, Lucy Honeychurch travels to Florence with her cousin Charlotte and she gets a dose of amusing romance. Because as Miss Elenor Lavish says, something in the Italian countryside will force even the most stoic personality to romance. Although I must say the same about Ireland!!! :-) Ayways, we didn't find any Romeos on this trip and thankfully not too many creepers either.

Traveling to Italy in or after May is really not advisable. Absolutely SWELTERING heat and the air conditioning on our train and on most of the trains we rode throughout our trip failed . . . let us say we delt with body oder quite well.

hahahaha! So we were a little bored and I showed Mirm my eyebrow powers and we got distracted and missed our stop in Florence and had to stay an hour Prato until we could catch the next train to Florence.

Florence city markets

Chalk drawings!

Hehe, this guy was hilarious!

The sabine statue! Like the "sobbin' women" in the movie, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"

Michaelangelo's David! This was the original spot where the statue was placed in the Piazzo Dei Signoria, however the original can be seen in the Uffizi Gallary.

Heheh, scandelous!

"Oh, dear sweet Petunia!"

Inside the Uffizi Gallery, famous and oldest art gallery in the world, here is a forbidden quick snapshot of the portrait, Spring, featuring the three graces.

The colours in some italian paintings are so amazingly vivid!

Such a tiny little truck!!!! it looked like a spruced up motorcylce of sorts . . .

Delightful gelato!!! Absolutely amazing italian icecream! Some places it isn't so great and then in others it is truly a bit of heaven!

While there we met up with Edward and a few friends from ICF church who were traveling in Florence at the same time. :-) Edward paid for our lovely italian meal!

Edward :-)

A part of the HUGE, gorgeous cathedral