Thursday, October 1, 2009

yada yada yada

Hola amigos! So as you can tell I am major behind. I briefly mentioned Venice and Florence and we are a few days into Barcelona, so I´m just going to do random highlights/moments in the past week:

--Venice was outragelously expensive. I know I say that about EVERY place we´ve been to, but we´re talking about 7 euros public transportation and 17 euros meals being the minimum you pay to sit down at a restaurant. My favorite was the tourist-erific gondala rides--they only set you 100 euros back for a quick sprint around the city!

--That being said, Venice is beautiful. There are literally no cars. NONE. Everything is by boat. It made the commute back to the hostel at night very romantic.

--I saw the coolest cathedral I´ve ever seen in my life in Venice. Not a spot was untouched. There were multiple marbes and mosaics that looked like they were made from gold. Tons of artwork, and that wasn´t just in Venic alone--all cathedrals in Italy have impressive art collections.

--Florence was the next stop. I liked it, there were some pretty awesome sights but my favorite was a short hike to a nearby hill that offered breathtaking views of the city. The cathedral in the area had monks chanting. It was pretty cool.

--We saw David in Florence. We waited in line for close to 2 hours, but admission was free so it was worth it. And I´ll probably only need to go once. Needless to say, he was very impressive.

--Arrived in Barcelona Tuesday morning via overnight train. Except for the awesome Australians we met along the way, the trip was miserable. The chairs were reclining and I was lucky to get some light sleep, but John I think slept for a total of 2 hours.

--Did a touristy hop-on hop-off bus at the recommendation of a couple we met a bit back. It was great. Barcelona is huge city with lots of hills and beaches at the opposite ends so it was worth getting to see it all in a few hours versus the days it would require to walk it.

--Went to the most bitchin´ farmers market I´ve ever been to. Ate an awesome vegetarian thing that I couldn´t even begin to tell you what was in it. Just lots of fresh veggies! We heard a woman screaming hysterically from around the corner and based on the amount of pickpocketing we´ve heard is prominent here I´m guessing it was something related to that. Regardless, tons of people ran to help her which was really assuring.

--Slept with the noisest snorer ever. I´m not kidding. By the morning I kind of hated her for keeping me up for 2 hours. We should have kept those stinking ear plugs from the train!

Got to go! Write soon!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fun!.....but I thought David was in Idaho. That's were we dropped him off:-)

Whitney said...

Haha! I thought that was funny, John gave it an eye roll! I´m sure John didn´t tell you this, but there was a ton of "Duffs Beer" tshirts in Florence. We weren´t sure if it was a local bar or a reference to the Simpson´s but obviously the Stokes family is well-represented in Italy!

Anonymous said...

Duff's Beer huh? Kind of out of place. Hey tell John we're in Sedona and we only get phone service when we're in town. And I'l try calling him then. Love ya! J