day 5-8: everywhere! (aka rome, venice, florence)

It has been a ridiculous few days. We walked all over Rome, to the point that I had to buy tennis shoes in Rome before my feet fell off (my mother very properly asked me why I didn't take tennis shoes with me, to which I replied that I had sports sandals that I thought would be fine, but perhaps in typical fashion my subconscious just wanted the chance to do some shoe shopping on my trip). We saw the Colisseum, as I believe I mentioned before, and then on Wednesday we went to the Vatican, saw the Sistine Chapel and St. Peters Basilica, and did a great free tour of St. Peters that served as a v. effective advertisement for a later paid walking tour of Rome. So we did the walking tour from 6:30 to 9:30, saw the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, the Forum, a whole bunch of other stuff, and generally had a very good, very fast tour of Rome. We got on a train at 10:50 for an overnight trip to Venice, where we arrived at like 6am in a considerable amount of pain. We walked around Venice in the rain, saw St. Marks, split ways because my feet hurt, and so Claudia saw some other stuff while I drank a v. expensive latte in St. Marks Square and talked to my parents. My v. expensive latte got rained into, and so I moved under the covered walkway until Claude returned. We walked around some more, took a water bus back to the train station, and left for Florence that night.

Due to poor planning, we are staying in three different hotels during our three nights in Florence--many things are booked up because it's apparently a major holiday weekend in Italy and France. To mitigate this, we spent yesterday morning bouncing between the train station and the internet cafe, figuring out the rest of our trip so that we have guaranteed rooms and don't end up in a similar situation again. We discovered that we could not get rooms in Nice or Monaco, much to our dismay--I was looking forward to using the warm Mediterranean air to cure my violent cough. Instead, we're taking a train tomorrow morning to Monaco, spending the afternoon and evening there, and then overnighting to Bordeaux, where we will spend two days in the wine country. Then we're going overnight to Paris, where we will spend another two days before I go back to London. So, I'll have a bit of time in London to shop, relax, and do other fun things.

I really shouldn't be sitting in an internet cafe, but I needed to make a hotel reservation for London, and I wanted a break from the oppressive heat and the constant walking in circles. I may have railed against having drivers in India--and while I will continue to maintain that having my own car is the best, I have come to realize that having any car at all is a blessing that can't be denied. Due to some questionable decisions on our part, the only place where we will have spent two nights in a row on the entire trip is in the first hostel that we stayed at in Rome, which means that I have spent most of my vacation dragging my backpack across train stations and hostels/hotels all across Europe. However, we have seen some truly breathtaking things--we crossed the Ponte Vecchio last night (the only bridge in Florence that Hitler didn't blow up) and walked up a steep hill, where we got an amazing view of the Duomo at sunset. I also had a steak last night, which was amazing--it was the first steak I'd had in almost four months, and it made my stomach hurt, but it was so freaking tasty that the pain was acceptable.

Okay, enough sitting at the computer--it's time to go see something, and then meet Claudia for an afternoon of museum hopping. We're going to miss the Uffizi Gallery because the line to get in is about five hours and they are no longer taking advanced bookings, but there are many other exciting things to see in Florence. Take care, everyone! I'll write again someday, perhaps.