Since the last post Rachel and I have gone to Rome and Florence. Rome was beautiful. It’s hard to describe how history that goes back that far makes you feel. The sisteen chapel is beautiful, and the Vatican is one hell of a place. We walked forever to get to the sisteen chapel and probably walked through 20 rooms to get there. Your way there is overloaded with art. Entire rooms from floors to ceilings just covered in beautiful paintings, murals, mosaics. It really makes you wonder where the modern day equivalent of good art is. Why is all famous art like this hundreds of years old? Have we lost our love for art? Here are some thoughts that I had randomlly throughout my days in Rome.

* With the line up going for well over a kilometer. How much does that Vatican make a day in ticket sales. My guess was around a million dollars.

* I really want to see Gladiator again

* I wonder if the Vatican is the modern day ‘Den of Theives’

* If I see one more stone statue…

* I wish Italian was English

* I want to eat at an old Italian lady’s house

* I feel like a cow (this is because wherever we went, we were herded from room to room, line to line just like cattle would be)

We went from Rome to Florence, dropped off our stuff and took a little trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower. Saw it, took the picture, ate some food and left. Today we spent the day in Florence and saw the David (which I had to sneak the picture)..crazy statue, and probably my favorite museum yet, just because it was small and percise and great explanations of all the art. Rachel has been really sick the last few days, so say a prayer for her if you can. She is currently currled up at the back of the internet cafe taking a nap. Tonight we head off to Nice for a day or two on the beach.

The last two days have been pure travel. Santorini’s beach will be missed, here is a picture below. We left Santorini at 10pm on Sunday night and its now 2pm on Tuesday, we don’t arrive in Rome until 9pm tonight meaning we have been travelling for the last 48 hours. Ferry from Santorini to Athens, Metro to train station, Train from Athens to Corinth to Patras, ferry from Patras to Bari Italy (where we are now) and then train from Bari to Rome. We slept on the ferry deck twice. I tell you its been one heck of a romantic honeymoon It also means I don’t have a whole lot of pictures.

The views on the ferry have been spetacular though. We weave our way in and out of random islands to our destination. The island are usually massive clifs lined with homes. The sunsets are beautiful (I tried to capture it on camera, it was difficult) on the boat also and our last boat had a pool on deck, so that was nice. So its sort of a boring post. But I figure were half way through our trip so I may as well post now for everyday.

Rachel and I have been in Santorini, Greece for the past three days.
Santorini is beautiful. The houses are built into the thousand foot cliffs that the island is made up and it is supposed to be home to one of the most beautiful sunsets in the world. We have been relaxing a lot, reading, eating lots of gyros, swimming and enjoying the black sand beaches. We rented a moped yesturday to drive around the island and enjoy the views. We drive along the mountain tops on roads that lie on the edge of the cliffs. Its beautiful. One thing we’ve noticed about Greece is the abnormal amount of stray dogs. We probably see anywhere between 10-20 a day. They are usually half-dead in some allyway sleeping or scrounging for food. Our hotel here is right on the beach and has been nice to not have to to take an hour of city transportation to get to where we are staying. We went last night to see the all-so-famous sunset, but I think it was a downer of a night because I’ve seen much better in Sarnia, but I think most of the people there that were crammed in the peak of the island to watch the sunset were equally dissappointed. I’ve written this post three times now because this internet cafe sucks. It’s a nice break in between all of the fast paced travelling we’ve been doing. Tonight we are back on the ferry and on our way back to Italy. This time its Rome.

We arrived in Venice finally after an overnight train ride with not very good sleeping patterns and in long conversations with a ex-Fransiscan monk (by conversation I mean that Rachel listened to him talk for hours.) Venice is a beautiful city. Water is everywhere. There are no cars inside the city, the only traffic is on the outskirts of the city. So you are either on foot or in a boat. This was a cool experience because everything was slowed down a lot more that you’re used to like in downtown Toronto. Rachel and I stayed at another campground with a free shuttle into the city. We ate at a restaurant on side street somewhere that was cheap and excellent. Bought Joe and Darryl gifts (my Italian friends) and hopefully they get it in the mail in the next few weeks. Venice was a lot of walking and eating Gelato (Rachel) and Pizza (me) but being surrounded by water and boats wherever you turned was a great feeling. The old chair was sitting on the side of the road, Rachel pointed it out and she thought it made for a good picture. I thought she was right.

We jumped on a train to Milan and went straight to the airport and slept at the aiport. I found us a spot on the second floor which most people seemed to have missed so it was quiet and we had a pretty good sleep there surprisingly enough. From Milan we flew into Athens, Greece.

Athens has been really cool to be in. Last night Rachel and I walked up on top of Mars Hill (you know that place that all the ‘cool’ churches name themselves after). We didn’t even know we were on it until today but I made Rachel stay up there for two hours so we could watch the sunset and Athens slowly transition into the night. Mars Hill gives you the most gloriuous view of the city. You can see for miles and the city goes for Miles. There is no skyscrapers blocking your view so you can see up to the mountains all the way around Athens. It is absolutly beautiful. It’s hard to explain how wild it is to see. It makes you feel like your in an entire new world. Then today (Day 15) Rachel and I went up to Mars Hill again and went up further to the Acropolis and all the acient ruins that lie around it. The view from there is even more spetacular, and you have the structures that were built thousands of years ago to stand on. Sometimes I’ve been wishing I paid a little more attention in my history classes. Tonight we leave on a fairy to spend two nights on Santorini Island of Greece, to relax, sleep and swim at the beaches. It’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful islands in the world so we are hoping to rent a car or moped when we are there to be able to get aroud to the sites better.

It´s becoming sort of a whirlwind at this point. We are flying way too fast through every city, and coutry trying to experience everything at once and getting to our flight that leaves for Greece. We arrived at our campsite in Munich late Friday night to a pleasant surprise. A camp full of fun Irish, already drunk and having a lot of fun, clean showers and just a friendly staff all together and a €3 steak. We slept in a tent that slept probably around 350 people. It was huge but there was only probably 50 people there, so we went off in a corner to sleep.

The day in Munich was mostly consumed by a festival we found called Tollwood Festival which was basically Artwalk times 1000. It was huge, vendors everywhere, food everywhere. It was a blast. Then to top it off the Euopean World Cup of Track and Field was also going on right next door. Germans have such roaring loud voices. The architecture of the stadium was also pretty unique, I posted a picture of it below. We spent a little bit of time in the city center and ate raspberries and blueberries and they were good throughout the crowded center.

Salzburg is a story all on its own. The Sound of Music tour ended up sucking a lot (who would have thought) so went by ourselves to see some of the sites after. The mountains and sites here are absolutly beautiful. A lot like the Rocky Mountains. We ended up getting a hotel because it was going to be the same price as a hostel for us and it was next to the Hilton in Toronto. We had a living room, massive bathroom with a nice tub, balcony, sauna downstairs, a little kitchen and everything. We couldn´t beleive it, especially for the price we got it for. It was nice to have a good nights sleep. We also climbed up the side of this mountain (there was stairs) to get a view from where this castle was sitting. You can see the castle in the night shot below. It was so high and really gave a great view of the city and mountains. Our train got cancelled for Venice so we got stuck here for another 12 hours. So we have been wondering around and met an actor who is now a hotel inspector and hung out with him for a number of hours. While we were eating dinner with him we sat under an unbrella during the middle of a hail storm. It was hilarious watching people trying to get out of the way and listening to the loud banging of marble sized hail hitting all around us. We leave in a few hours to Venice…more to come then.

Since my last post we`ve been to Switzerland and to Austria, and now we are in Munich, Germany. We´ve been moving a bit too fast to really get a great feel let alone blog of any city but its been a lot of fun nonetheless.

Switzerland has definitly been the most beautiful so far, nature wise. The Alps are all beautiful and the houses are all throughout the hills and its just quite a scene to see all the houses. Life seems more simpler there. People are gardening everywhere and seem so laid back and relaxed. Everything is double the price there though. $11.00 for a Big Mac meal. We didn´t spend that much time in any big cities there, but we took trains to small cities, since we have a Euro Pass. I posted some pictures below of a place called Lucern and a river flows right through the city with all these beautiful bridges that go over top of it. The one picture is of Rachel because she wanted to give the swan the rest of our Swiss Cheese.

In Austria we went to Wien, or in English we call is Vienna. This has been the most spectacular city yet. Everywhere you walk there is massive (I MEAN HUGE) castles everywhere and statues. You feel like you are walking somewhere that is all 1000 years old and if you ignore the cars you really can bring yourself back. It started making me wonder why the heck no one lives in beautiful buildings like these anymore. I guess probably because if our presidents started building castles and statues of themselves then us being a democratic state and all would get upset. However, I´m glad they did then, because its absolutly glorious.