Rachel and Katie Do Europe 2008

Our 2nd day in Venice

This morning we woke up early to get downstairs for some breakfast that was provided by the hotel. Oh my gosh were we upset. The coffee was terrible and they only have us one roll of bread each. Not even a croissant! We ended up walking over to the market and grabbing some bananas and yogurt.

After eating some food we decided to wander the streets of Venice, and more specifically we wanted to see the neighborhood away from the tourists. However, we did check out St. Marks Square and take some pictures. After seeing the few touristy sights we let ourselves get lost among the alleys, bridges and canals. We founds some gorgeous buildings, beautiful parks and great views of islands across the water. We spent two hours just walking around in the sweltering heat and then went to the market, got lunch, read our books, napped, watched gondolas from our window and then got ready for some more exploring and dinner.

As we explored we made our way through Rialto, Piazza Roma and Academia. We ended up back in our hotel room a bit early to pack and get to bed early since we were traveling to Florence EARLY in the morning.

Sorry our time in Venice wasn't too exciting, we decided to make our time there very relaxing and refreshing so that we had tons of energy to put into Florence. However, we did manage to take tons and tons of pictures. So I'll post some of those below.

Hope you enjoy them!

<3>

Cute canal in Rialto

I love cookies!

mmmmmmm....

Katie was watching the gondolas from our window and managed to get crapped on by a bird :)

going out to dinner and explore

As Katie admired our view, this was my view. Lucky me!

Our view!!! <3

The gondolas downstairs from our hotel room

Katie showing off her bird poop!

Everything in Venice has to be hand carried to its destination which is why it is so expensive

We always manage to find adorable parks

Cutest little alley way! and a little bridge!

Neighborhood

Another neighborhood

St. Marks Square

My butt is getting perky from all the stairs...hahaha

Katie + pigeons= LOVE

St. Marks Square

Our 1st day in Venice, Italy

This morning we woke up really early and walked over to the Bergamo train station to buy tickets to Venice. The train ride was about 2.5 hours long and we read the entire time. We are both so fascinated with the books we have and our being total bookworms. Once we arrived in Venice we had to take the water taxi to the other side of the islands and over to St. Mark's Square where our hotel was. Our hotel was easy to find but our arms were killing us from lugging around our bags all morning. Katie and I purposely chose the hotel that we are staying in, and even paid a bit more money, because we knew that we wanted to be on the gondola serenade route. This could not have been a better choice. We loved out hotel location and we managed to squeeze every last penny out of the cost of the room. We sat for hours just watching the gonolas go by with families and couples being serenaded. It was perfect. Although I must admit, we were a little upset with how many couples did not seem happy. I mean, hello, you are in Venice on a gondola being serenaded by an Italian man. It cannot get more romantic than that!!! We were so confused and a lot bothered by it.

So anyways, after getting settled into our hotel we walked around St. Mark Square, grabbed some pizza and chatted with an old Auzzie couple about how insanly screwed we are getting with the exchange rate, walked around Rialto, watched the gondolas from our window, ate dinner at on the Grand Canal and then rushed back to our hotel by 8:00 so that we didnt miss the nighttime gondolas. I'm telling you we were slightly obsessed.

Oh by the way, I wasn't kidding in my earlier post when I said Katie cannot walk. We were crossing this little bridge in front of our hotel when Katie went down, hard core. I mean slow motion fall right onto her hands and knees. It was the most hysterical thing ever. She was okay, don't worry. Tons of people saw her fall and an American man even asked her how her trip was. hahah her trips and falls have seriously made our trip so funny!

Well Katie and I are going to go to bed and we will write more about Venice tomorrow.

Goodnight<3

The bridge that Katie fell down

The gondolas outside our window

Our last day in Prague, Czech Republic

So for our last day in Prague we decided that we would definitely go up to the castle and check out the beautiful gardens. We had to be out of our hotel by 10:30 which left us with ample time to see all we had left and get to the airport by 5:00 to fly Bergamo, Italy. Katie and I got all dressed and ready to explore when we heard some tapping outside. We looked out our window and saw that it was raining, of course, the day that we were to be outside all day in gardens. So... we changed our cute outfits and put on our touristy/mom clothes.

Once we made it over to the left side of the river it took us about 15 minutes, in the rain, to find the castle entrance. Luckily, about 15 minutes into walking around the gardens the rain stopped and we were able to enjoy the beautiful trees, flowers and landscaping. As you will see when you scroll down to the pictures, Katers had ton of fun with her new camera in the gardens.

Once we made our way through the gardens we headed over to the main castle entrance where we arrived just in time to see the changing of the guards. We both have seen the changing of the gaurds in Washington D.C and were not too thrilled with the overly long procession, so we weren't too sure that we would want to stay and watch this one, but thought that we would give it a shot. It was actually quite cool to see and thankfully it was only about 5 minutes long in total. We got a few good shots of the guards walking together.

After watching the guards we decided to spend some money to go into some of the buildings in the castle. I had heard somewhere or from someone that the Prague Castle was cool and to go check it out. Unfortunately, Katie and I did not agree and were totally bummed that we had spent 20 Euro each, or about 35 dollars each on this place. We went inside the Old Royal Palace which had a few neat things to see such as an old throne, old church and a great view of the Charles River. We also went into a Basilica and a convent. We had the chance to go into the Cathedral but we had an unfortuate problem. For some reason that day the bees were loving me and while we were waiting in line to get into the cathedral I kept having panic attacks while bees were swarming me. I mean, there were so many bees that I even threw my sando on the ground. I wasted my lunch :( Oh yeah and Kate wants me to note that I also threw my purse and that old ladies behind us were laughing at me. After completely embarassing myself because of the swarmping bees we decided that not only was it freezing but that we werent really impressed with the castle and would rather spend the rest of our time in Mala Strana, so that is where we headed.

We wandered Mala Strana a bit, grabbed some delicious breakfast bagels from a cute little bagel shop, then meandered over the Charles Bridge one last time and went back to our hostel to get our bags. It took us a while to get to the airport and then we had to deal with the pain in the ass airlines, who have now decided that they are going to charge an absurd amount for baggage. I swear that these airlines have completely ruined my travel budget... I hate them! Anyways, Katie and I split one last Starbucks, managed to get yelled at my a cafe worker for sitting in the wrong seat and be hasseled by some kiosks that are supposed to be friendly to tourists-all before boarding our plane.

Once we landed in Bergamo we were totally excited to get picked up by the people from our B and B. They had the new Fiat that Katie is obsesses with so she was pretty stoked! Our B and B was SO ADORABLE. We were in the Venice Room which was funny cause we were headed to Venice the next morning. It was the most romatic room, too bad it sisters sharing it. hahaha!!!

All in all, Katie and I loved Prague. It was cute and quiant and adorable to just browse through. We thought that there would be more sights that we would enjoy, but we found ourselves just falling in love with all the neat parks scattered throughout the town. Katie would like to visit it again someday, I on the other hand, enjoyed but would not necessarily go out of my way to plan a trip back. However, we both agree that people should definitely go there...just make sure to brings lots of books to read in the charming little parks.

The pictures below are going to be out of order sorry and I loaded them smaller but you can double click them if you desperatly want to see them big.