"the perfect trip"

Jason keeps saying that this is “the perfect trip” – every time something ELSE goes right, and now even the weather is cooperating!!! I had written that it was super-hot everywhere… well, it was hot that one day in Greece and when we first arrived in Florence, but the rest of the time it has been perfect weather, barely getting into the 80s! We even rented bikes for a few hours and rode around the city in the middle of the day, and it wasn’t too hot! We are definitely enjoying this “siesta” thing – get up, go do stuff all morning, eat lunch around 2:30, go back and take a nap for a while, then go back out until late! this time we went to “Il Gatto e la volpe” – the cat and the fox, again per Lynn’s recommendation, and it was yummy (except for the crostini toscani, which we didn’t know what it was when we ordered, and ended up being toast with chicken liver pate – looked and tasted like cat food)… not quite as happening as the place the night before, but a fun atmosphere and delicious bread with balsamic vinaigrette! Our last day in Florence, we made it to TWO gelatterias for some excellent ice cream (jason had the rice flavor after dinner and it was scrumptious!!!)!
p.s. we never want to sit down again, after riding bikes on the incredibly bumpy streets of Florence for 4 hours! Oh! it hurts! ;)

“Mamma mia! Che musculo!!!”

We picked Italy as our place in Europe to stay for longer in order to relax and take it all in more, with Florence as “home base” – and i’m SO glad! it has been perfect! relaxing, beautiful, great food, just lots of time to hang out and wander (and eat gelatto ;)… We went to both of the major Galleries in Florence today: the Ufizzi (where the largest collection of Italian Renaissance art in the world is housed) and the Accademia (where Michelangelo’s David is!). The quote in the title of this blog was what one of the guards at the museum said when he grabbed Jason’s arm to “wand” him after he set off the metal detector – lol! Mike and Lynn recommended a couple of places to eat while we were in Florence, so first we stopped at Acqua al 2, where there were only two seats left in the whole place when we got there! All these people after us got turned away, and by the time we walked out of the restaurant (after a DELICIOUS blueberry/balsamic steak – thanks again to Lynn’s recommendation), there were about 25-30 people outside waiting to get in! it was a very fun atmosphere, with lots of people and energy – we had a great time!

Venice doesn’t smell…

I’ve heard multiple people say that they didn’t like Venice ‘cause it was dirty and smelly – but it sure wasn’t when we were there!! it was beautiful!!!! overwhelmingly beautiful – so pretty everywhere you look that it almost gets to be too much! When we first got there, we took a 45-minute boat ride down the Grand Canal, just to get an overview of the city. The boat (and most of the city) was EXTREMELY crowded with tourists – so much so that people were getting in fights about bumping into each other! It was “Italians vs. Tourists” and it was craziness! But we got to stand by the edge of the boat almost the whole time, so we got a good view of one side of the canal. then we had a little canalside lunch of lasagna and raviolis before taking off just wandering the streets of Venice, looking for a good place to sit and draw… it is all just so elegant and classic and… beautiful!! we found a quiet spot WAY off the tourist route where we sat on the edge of a little canal with our feet dangling over while I drew and Jason napped. We saw almost no one during the hour we were there, just the occasional Italian on their cell phone crossing the bridge or small boats coming down the canal and splashing our feet – it was so restful. Then we went to try to find the Rialto Bridge, which took us like 2 1/2 hours of fast walking (and stressing at the end because it didn’t seem like we were going to make it back to our train on time, and it was the last one of the day going from Venice to Florence!). Once we got there, we enjoyed some more gelatto, then boarded a boat to take us around back to the train station – a very sweet ending to our day!

We’re in Italy!!

I’ve always wanted to go to Italy, and especially Florence (could it be because of While You Were Sleeping? possible.), and now I know why! it is AMAZING! we have loved just wandering the streets here and seeing the architecture and everything. It just has so much character. no museums or anything yet, but we got pizza and gelatto on our first day here! our hotel is nice, but not as nice as Rick Steves says… There’s a whole bunch of construction in the middle of what would have been a cute little street – now it just feels ghetto outside… but very nicely air conditioned inside (whatever happened to that rain?? now it’s super-hot everywhere!!!)! All the museums are closed tomorrow, so we’re taking off for a day trip to Venice!

THIS is a ferry???

After all our experiences with public transportation in Europe (especially Eastern Europe and Greece), we weren’t expecting much for our boat ride to Italy. We figured they’d have deck chairs and maybe somewhere to crash below deck (for a 21-hour ferry ride, they’d better!!). but, wow! this is a CRUISE ship (with a few bonuses, like cars, RVs, and semi’s stored below deck)!!! a little less organized than one coming from the states might be, but it has been AMAZING! they had no cabins left by the time we were trying to book our tickets once we got to the port 2 hours before departure, so we took beds in the men’s/women’s dorm rooms (the first time we haven’t been able to sleep together this trip! unexpectedly – we thought we were going to be doing the dorm thing at L’Abri, but when we arrived, they had a whole house just for us!!), and got started enjoying our cruise! The sea, of course is BEAUTIFUL, and all the Greek islands we passed on the way… there’s a pool, nice restaurants, a casino (we didn’t make it that far ;) – Jason keeps saying “so, we’re taking this back to Greece?” just ‘cause it’s SO relaxing! 3 more hours, and we’ll be arriving in ITALY, though!!!

Greece trip redeemed!

So, it was all worth it in the end… We got to Athens at 4am, after maybe 2 or 3 hours of sleep in 5-10 minute segments here and there. A very nice taxi driver (who charged us 10 Euro = ~$15 to take us like 6 blocks) picked us up and took us to a hotel of his recommendation (we were sure he was getting kickbacks, but at that point, we really didn’t care – we just needed SOMEWHERE to sleep and shower!), which was very nice and fairly reasonable. We slept in till 8:30ish, took much-needed showers, and took a taxi over to Jason’s uncle Alex’s sister’s house in another part of Athens. We hung out with Alex and Didi the rest of the day, and they took us to the Acropolis, the Parliament building with funny soldiers, to get yummy gyros and baklava, hung out with Alex’s family back at the house for a while, and had dinner down by the sea! it was such a good day, and so fun to be with people we knew and spoke the same language! Alex and Didi were great tour guides, and it was crazy ‘cause they were just there for a few days after an Israel trip, and our planned trip to Athens perfectly coincided date-wise with theirs! Alex’s mom made us a bunch of sandwiches and stuff to take on our journey to Italy the next day, and sent lots of hugs and kisses back to the States (mainly to Jason’s parents)! we were so glad we ended up going to Athens, even just for that day; instead of finding a quicker way to the coast and Italy, like we had considered!

We were supposed to be in Athens by now…

Yeah, so the whole travel-through-eastern-Europe-to-get-to-Greece-for-a-couple-days-before-italy thing has been kind of a bust so far… Our PLAN was to take 2 night trains and one day train in between and get to Athens this morning, so we’d have at least 2 days to see it before taking the ferry across to Italy. However, the train was full (this has been the case pretty much EVERY time we’ve booked a train ticket, because they’re pretty last-minute… which has not been by our choice, but because you can’t book a ticket out of a given country until you’re actually at THAT country’s train station, apparently). So we had to do 2 day trains and a night train in between – 36 hours to arrive in Athens at 7pm today. However, it is now 9pm and we are still in Thessaloniki, which is a 5 ½-7hr train ride (depending on the speediness of your train) away from Athens. Ever since we’ve been in “eastern europe”, our trains have seemed to run a little late, but we had like 2 hour stopovers between each one, so we thought “no problem – we’ll totally make it!”… BUT, the night train that was supposed to run from 10:20pm from Beograd, Serbia to 1:08pm in Thessaloniki, Greece, ACTUALLY arrived at 5pm in Thessaloniki! so we had missed “our” train by a couple of hours. so we went to see if we could get on the next train (or ANY train tonight) to Athens… BUT, “there are no trains to Athens tonight – they are on strike”!! the next available train is tomorrow at noon, and we’d arrive at 6pm, and then have to get on the 7:30am train out of there to get to the coast to catch the ferry in time, so we’d basically just be spending the night!!! geez. So, now we are on a BUS out of Thessaloniki, which runs overnight with no reclining seats and arrives at 3am in Athens! we’ll have a whole day to “see the sights” and Jason’s family while we’re there! I just hope we sleep on the way and have somewhere to sleep when we get there (we planned to book a hotel online during the 3 hours we had from the time we bought our bus tickets and the time it left, but we wandered around Thessaloniki unsuccessfully, and have no reservations anywhere for when we arrive!!! it’s an adventure, right??? :)