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Thursday, May 11, 2006

a quick sum up

So, I'm really bad at recounting trips on here.. it's just not easy. I will try to sum it up, though. We headed to Florence from Rome. We stayed one night there, then went to visit our friends in Castiglion for a night and then we headed back to Florence. We had a great time seeing all our friends in Castiglion. It's kind of weird to have a semester away from everyone. They had just finished up their final project that day, so they were ready to relax and have some fun. We spent most of the afternoon chatting and hanging out in a quiet, grassy area - and drinking some wine too. We then had dinner with them at their study center. After that everyone basically hung out in the dining area until we headed out to a bar/pizza place for the rest of the night. It was a really good time and I'm glad I got to see where they all spent their semester. Now, they're completely done with their semester and either going back home or traveling around. It sounds a little bit crazy to me, since I still have a little ways to go before I'm finished with the semester, but it's creeping up quickly.

The next day we headed back to Florence and spent more time there. It's a fabulous city and I would have loved to stay there longer. We also took another trip from Florence to Pisa. We went to the Boboli Gardens in Florence for the first part of the day, then went to Pisa. The gardens were huge and very beautiful. We spent a lot of time in there checking out the beautiful views it offered. We knew basically all we wanted to see in Pisa was the leaning tower, so we went for the afternoon/evening. It was fun being there and making our corny pictures - as well as making fun of other people taking corny pictures. It was a nice, relaxing part of the trip.

We went back to Florence for the night and left for Venice the next morning. We spent two nights in Venice. The atmosphere in Venice is a lot different than the other cities we went to. There aren't too many big sights to see and the big ones are all pretty much in the same area. They had a lot of unique shops and we had fun looking at those. They have tons and tons of stores full of really unique and extravagant masks. Some of them were pretty incredible. There were also so many stores selling glass.. the famous ventian glass. So, these stores were pretty entertaining and it's easy to spend a lot of time browsing. Some of the glass was incredible and I wish I could have bought some to take home, but getting that stuff around would be impossible.
Venice is also really expensive. Our hotel/hostel was actually outside of the islands of venice. It was a quick train ride into town, so it wasn't a big deal. We looked at the menus of some of the restaurants and some were so expensive I couldn't believe it!

By the end of Venice we were pretty "touristed" out and tired. We went to one of the islands that basically just has a church on it and when we got there the church was closed for an hour, so we just sat down by the water for an hour, soaking up the sun. It felt awesome and was very relaxing.
After Venice we headed back to Rome for one more night because we had to fly out the next day. We had a nice, big Italian meal since it was our last one!

So that sums it up rather quickly. There are so many little stories to tell that I can't even begin!

The few days I have been back in Prague I have been trying to buckle down and get a lot of work done. Some deadlines are coming up, so it's keeping me busy. This weekend some of the students studying in Italy (they were in the town we didn't get to visit) are coming to Prague. They're the first of a few groups that will be coming through here as they travel around Europe before they go back to the states!

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