ITALY!!

Hi All!
Andrea and I are backpacking through Italy roght now. On the itinerary as of now is Rome, which we just left, now we are in Siena. Tomorrw we are going to Cinque Terre for two nights, then Lake Como for two nights. After that is Venice, then Florence. We are trying to figure out the cheapest way to get to Greece since it is very erxpensive, which of course we did not expect. Hope all is well. I will write more as things progress, just wanted to give you all an idea as to where we were.

MORE PICS...

The End and Beginning

So the tour is over and I am soooo sad, yet happy because Andrea is here now and we leave for our part of the journey tomorrow. Last I left you I was in Nice, France. Wow, that seems like forever ago. Let me start off by saying that Eastern Europe is far too underrated. I had an AMAZING time there! The last night in Nice we drove up to monaco and went to the casino. Vegas it was not. It was kind of boring. There was no music and the casino we went to was pretty low key, no clubs, no free drinks. I did splurge and get two Jack and cokes at $25 a pop. Of wait, maybe that's where all my money went. But honestly when will I ever have the opportunity to do that again. We did get a chance to stop along the way and take some pictures over looking the med. sea.

Florence

After Nice we went to Florence, Italy. What I remember most about Florence was the crowdedness of it. It was like Disneyland on a Saturday in the middle of summer. I felt like we were cattle being moved around from one sight to another. It was a really cool city, but the group I was with didn't feel like waiting in line for 4 hours to see the statue of the David so we took some pics of an "exact replica" in the middle of the city and went to find a park to lay in. We tried to enter a private park because you guessed it- there was a line to get into the botanical gardesn (apparently the only patch of grass in all of Florence), but there was a guy at the entrance that could tell I was american and asked where I was from and I said Texas he goes "Ahh, Chuck Norris!" I guess that's better than what I usually get which is "Ahh, Bush." Then witha disapproving head shake.

Rome

Rome was full of history. After going there and taking like 4 different tours I have become increasingly interested in the history of the Roman Empire. For example, apparently in the Colusseum, there was like a program everyday of the battles that would take place. Different random animals in the morning (polar bear vs lion), people vs animals for the matinee and then the big show of gladiator vs gladiator. Then there is something where the king put either a thumbs up or down which would determine if the gladiator would live or die and if he was to die then he had to lay in the middle of the colusseum and SMILE right before he was to bge stabbed to death with a trident sword. I mean you can't make this stuff up. Well, I guess you could but it apparently happened. I won't get into the other stuff, but lets just say those Romans were f-ing crazy!

Venice

Venice was cool, but Andrea and I are going back there in a few days so I will write more about it then. We did have a nice little toga party though at the campsite we stayed in. I will try to add some pics of that.

Now it starts to get a little blurry. No, not from drinking, but the first part of the trip seemed to last longer because we still hadn't really gotten the hang of things yet and didn't know each other too well, but the second part flew by.

Pag Island, Croatia

GO TO CROATIA!!!! It's a beautiful place. The water looks like the caribbean and it's SUPER cheap. If you are planning on buying a place overseas, buy a place on Pag or Rab Island. We were there for three days which was a nice change. The first day we took a boat to Rab Island. I don't remember too much about the walking tour we took becasue we were all just so excited to be at the beach. Some of the guys and I gathered money from everyone (100 kuna each, which I think equals about $10, and went to the market to get beer for everyone. We ended up with about 5 cases of beer and money left over. There was a pier we all jumped off of and swam around in the freezing cold water. It was so much fun. The next day we rented bikes and rode to another beach on Pag Island and laid out all day. I got a sunburn so I was HAPPY!!!!

Lubuljana, Slovenia

We only spent one night here, which definitely was not enough. It was such a cool little city, the capital I think. There was a university there and tons of restaurants that all had outside seating next to the river the flowed through town. We had a "traditional" Slovenian dinner there. I went for the pork, but one of the guys ventured out and had the stallion steak. That's right you read that correctly - stallion steak. I tried snails in Paris, but there is no way in hell you could get me to eat black beauty. No way, not going to happen. Matt said it was good but the texture was a little off. No thank you.

Prague, Czech Republic

The one thing I remember well about Prague was the amazing Italian restaurant we stumbled upon on our last night there. I know Italian food, go figure, but it was phenomenal! There is a clock there that has the astrological signs on it and apparently does this really cool little show. I guess we missed it, but the story behind the clock seems far more interesting. So apperntly this artist guy was commissioned to make this clock and the people liked it so much that they didn't want the guy to leave and go do make something just as cool somewhere else so they blinded him so he couldn't make anything. Nuts, huh?

Mathausen, Germany

This was just a stop on our way to Berlin. It was a "work camp" used during WWII by the Germans. It was called a work camp because they didn't actaully have the gas chambers there but they literally worked people to death. It housed I think mostly political prisoners but also Jews and apparently handicapped people, which I didn't know about. It was hard to visit, but I'm glad I did. I learned more about the Holocaust in the few days I spent in Germany than I did in high school and college.

Berlin, Germany

Hands down one of my favorite cities. It's full of young people and not at all what I expected. They are all very aware of what happened and don't try to hide anything. They want to educate everyone on what happened so it doesn't happen again. We took a walking tour and were in this weird grass parking lot for about 20 minutes with the guide going on and on about Hitler and this bunker he stayed in before he killed himslef towards the end of the war then he says that we are standing right where the bunker was underground. There wasn't a sign, a marker or anything. There also isn't a grave for Hilter becuase they didn't want the weirdos out using it as a shrine or something. Also the Berlin Wall was not at all what i expected. I guess i thought iot was this heavy duty wall, but it wasn't. It was just "heaps" as my new Aussie friends like to say, of these very thin concrete slabs. I also became very interested in the whole situation that lead to the Berlin wall being built and why it stood for as long as I did. I will definitely be buying lots of history books when i get home!

Amsterdam

Wow! I don't even know what to say except Vegas has NOTHING on Amsterdam. everything that people love about Vegas is actually legal and fully embraced in Amsterdam. I won;t get into the specifics, I'll just say that a great time was had, I would love to go back to explore the city more, but my goodness that place is NUTS!