Day Sei!

Ciao!

  It rained again today, and unfortunately it didn't really let up. We tried not to let that get us down though!
  
   We then walked through Venice to Piazza San Marco, to the Basilica there. We wanted to walk around the church in the light--but it was raining, and cloudy. Oh, and it didn't open for another 20 minutes. So, we strolled around Venice for awhile, trying to find rainboots (which I did--yay!) there was 2-5 inches of water covering many streets. Luckily, Venice puts up temporary boardwalks where the flooding is really bad.

  After we found rainboots, we started walking back to Piazza San Marco. That didn't go so well. When I said Venice is  a terrible maze, I really meant it! We did eventually get back to the Piazza, but we had missed our tour of the Doge's Palace. Thankfully, the ticket lady let us go to the next tour. We toured the palace's inner chambers--the offices, the council room, and even the torture chamber. Doge's apparently had a lot of power! It was pretty interesting, except our tour guide was not very nice.

   Then we rushed back to the hotel to get our bags, jumped on a water bus and hurried to the train station. We were headed to Florence! Everyone was happy to be leaving Venice. The train ride was relaxing, especially compared to Venice. I was kind of disappointed it didn't look much like the train in a favorite book of mine. Our family enjoyed it though!

  When we arrived in Florence, it was considerably warmer (though still cold). It took a really long time to find a taxi, because most only took four people. We eventually found one though! After arriving at and checking into our apartment, we toured the streets of Florence. Apparently the Italians call it Firenze...pronounced fire-n-zay. We found a cute little restaurant to eat at, and it was delicious! Josie and Henry had calzones that were huge. Huge meaning bigger than the average plate. We all cleaned our plates though!

  We found ourselves semi lost trying to get back to the apartment--recurring theme, anyone? But once again, we miraculously arrived where we wanted to be! This was our first day sans gelato :( We still had a really lovely day, though. I think Florence is going to be a lot of fun!

Still missing everyone! Buona sera,

Olivia :)

PS pictures will be up eventually! :)