On Thursday, Liz, Aaron, Thomas and I took the night train to Venice aka Train Miserable. We thought it wouldn't be too bad. Although all the sleepers were taken, we thought we would get one of the nice trains that have seats in a set of four and then we could stretch out. So, we had a few drinks on the roof of the Karvendal and then went into town for dinner. That is the exact opposite of what happened. We had this old train that had little compartments of six seats and it was PACKED. There were people standing in the between cars, sleeping in the halls, and you basically couldn't move. In our little compartment, we had this euro-trash guy with one earring and a sequin shirt (which Liz spied in his bag). He blew up his little neck pillow, stretched out, and wouldn't let us put the window down because "it hurt his shoulder." It was stifling hot in this little car. It finally got to the point that when we he went to put the window up again I told him that it was really hot, there were 5 other people in the car, and that was going to be it because it wasn't going back up. At this point, I was ready for a showdown. He told me we could trade seats, which was definitely o.k. with me (he'd already made me move out of his seat once anyways). This guy put his feet on Liz's seat and when Thomas woke up, he had his head basically in his lap...ridic. I will NEVER take a night train again if I don't have a sleeper car. When we got to Venice, I'd had a total of an hour of sleep all night and was feeling really sick. My motion sickness patch doesn't kick in with 400 people on a small train I've decided. So I really can't tell you much about Venice. I slept at the train station and in a park with the group when they were done looking through a museum. You guys will have to ask Liz what she thinks about it..but my guess is, it's dirty. I did eat a peach by the water, so I know what that looks like.
On to Florence. We stayed in Venice only till 2:30. We were originally staying only till 1:30, but Logan (another guy in our program) was supposed to meet us there and he didn't wake up for his train, so he was willy-nilly traveling around Europe. That would have stressed us out because it is hard to meet up with people who don't have phones. The train to Florence was a couple of hours and we were kicked off once. We didn't realize you had to reserve seats (because a lot of trains you don't) and we were one stop away when the guy kicked us off in Bologna, which we hate. They decided it was the Detroit of Europe. We did, however, meet a cool family on the train from Canada who told us to eat at Quattro Leoni, which was amazing! The mom was really pretty and Thomas asked her where they were from. When she said "Vancouver Island," with a totally straight face, Thomas asked, "Oh, Cougar Island, where is that?" ...Freudian slip? We all thought it was hilarious and couldn't help laughing. When we arrived in Florence we checked into our hostel, Archi Rossi. We really liked the hostel. Liz, Thomas and I had a triple that didn't have air (like the other boys) but it was nice not to stay in a room with randoms. The hostel itself was artsy and had writing all over the walls. We were playing on signing it "family band-sweet little lies," but forgot. Liz, Thomas, Dex and I have been singing all over Europe (usually Little Lies by Fleetwood Mac), so we've decided to be a traveling family band. We're open to new suggestions for songs. We are usually shh'd on buses, in lines, etc. While I'm on that subject, we've also decided that Americans are just SO much louder than Europeans. Like the first night in Florence, we were so tired that we just went out to dinner and then came back to go to bed so we could tour around the city the next day. There were a group of Europeans on the rooftop terrace playing the guitar and singing songs. Liz and I could have been louder than them just by ourselves and with an ipod speaker. They sang quietly and if anyone was too loud, they would quiet each other. We've never tried that at a party. Also, our next night, we went out to dinner with Dex, Brandon, Aaron, Logan (who finally made it!), and Thomas and we were the loudest people in the restaurant. We had a few liters of wine and it became hard to hear when one person started talking over another person. We were given the MEANEST looks. Europeans talk one at a time and when one person is talking, they all listen to that one person. So then we tried to all be quiet for 10 minutes to see what the real noise level of the restaurant was, but it only lasted for like 10 seconds before Liz started to feel awkward and talk again. Anyways, back tracking, we checked out the Uffizi and the Duomo (but didn't make it inside because the line was too long). Liz got up at 6 am to get in line for tickets at the Uffizi...such a great tourister. We also walked through the street vendors and the boys bought leather gifts for themselves, girlfriends, moms, etc. That night is when we went to Quattro Leoni for dinner. I had the best pasta dish; it was in a white sauce and had something sweet in the middle. We also had an appetizer of little chicken and onion fried things. The food was great in Italy. We all really loved the gelato. After dinner, we went to two Irish pubs and then to a club called Twice. We saw a band playing outside so we danced to it a little and then tried to all fit into a photo machine, but that obviously didn't work. It was our second time going to clubs in Europe and it was about the same-hot, sweaty, tons of people in a small space. We stayed there till like 2 am and then headed back to the hostel. When we got back, the door was locked and we had to bang on it to get in. When we checked in, we made sure there wasn't a curfew (because some do have curfews) and he assured us there wasn't, but had the guy not been cleaning the downstairs, I think we may have had to sleep on the streets. We've had a constant debate going on whether there was a bidet in the bathroom or whether it was a urinal. We finally decided it was not a bidet. However, it is a great feet washing tool because the streets of Italy are SO dirty. Don't worry, it was clean when we used it to wash our feet.
Today, we got up at 7 am to make the train at 9 am. It was relatively uneventful, except that you are supposed to write in the day that you are traveling and then they will stamp it. The ticket checker was a jerk and because we didn't write in the day, he took our passes until we payed him 50 euros (but originally he wanted 50 each!) It is in writing that you have to put down the day, but we decided as Americans, it is only necessary that you first try to scam the system to see if you can get away with it as punishment for not having a more official system. I mean really, having us pencil in the date!? There should be a stamper for that or something. We made it back around 4 and took naps. We then got up to go have dinner in the bottom of our hotel. We saw all of the boys that had stayed in town for the weekend. We thought Ryan was going to give us a hug, but nope...he iced us coming in the door, so in the name of the game, we drank them. But don't worry, Wilson got him back when he creeped through the window with an ice. We are planning big things for Ryan this week. More on the lantern hike later & more pictures when I'm not so exhausted.
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