31 March 2010: Florence

dThis morning, we took the train from Venice to Florence. When we arrived at 11:30, Caldonia, Mia and I took responsibility of guiding our group in this city. However, our group got confused and we went in a couple of wrong directions. We got a bit lost but we finally arrived at our hotel. It's a nice hotel and we went out to eat lunch after getting settled. We walked through town and saw the Mercato Nuovo. It's a marketplace for clothes. It used to be for food but they changed it to clothes (Correction: they had a separate market for food and designated the new market for clothes. The one for food is now defunct). We planned to go to a bridge named Ponte Vecchio but it was cold and windy so we agreed to go there tomorrow or Thursday. Instead, we went to the Uffizi Gallery. It's full of cool art. We got back to the hotel and we're chilling now, that!

30 March 2010: Venice-Murano

When we woke up at the hotel, we walked and ate breakfast then went on a boat. It had many stops at different places and we finally got off at Murano. It's famous for hand-blown glass factories. We saw thousands of beautifully made glass. We went in a store that showed us for free how they make glass. We thought it was interesting. After that, we walked around the island then took the boat back to Venice. We went straight to Doge's Palace. It was pretty, nice, not too bad. We saw a lot of statues, and some were fascinating, some were ok-ok. We all had different opinions about the place. Then we went down to the prison which was very interesting. It's very different than prisons today. The bars were thick and the accessways were very short. The cells were smaller and it was cold. We had to imagine prisoners living there and being cold. After that, we saw St. Mark's cathedral. It was really big and nice. Honestly, I think Venice is a nice place to see. The houses are so beautiful and everything. The only thing that drove me crazy was the maze of streets. It was so confusing but after a while, we worked out a route that we used so we wouldn't get lost. If we tried another one, we would have surely gotten lost!

29 March 2010: Verona-Venice

When we woke up, we (our room) realized we were late and we had to hurry and pack and get to the train to get to Verona. We saw the Roman Arena. It was big and made of pink marble. Then, we saw Juliet's house. That house is bogus but it was cool anyway. We also saw a whale bone hanging from an arch and if the bone falls, it will tell whether you're a liar or not (it will only fall if you are not a liar). We are all liars, obviously. Then we went on the train to Venice. We took one look at the city and thought, "Oh wow, it's a maze here!" But luckily Rosina is very good with maps, thank God. Then we visited St. Mark's square. We looked around for a little bit then went back to the hotel. The next day on March 30th... (Note- dates are wrong in the vlog- see next blog).