italian for beginners

ciao everyone! we have arrived in italy, well actually we arrived in italy on wednesday morning after taking our first night train. this was quite the interesting experience. we shared a teeny compartment with four other people (six bunks). needless to say we didnt really sleep. the train was stopping and starting all night. but we woke up in a dreamworld......venice. venice is nothing like the pictures you see, its better. we spent two nights there and most of the time we wandered around just trying to soak in all the beauty. there are no cars there obviously (or bikes) so you just wander up and down narrow cobbled streets that make no sense. around every corner there was a bridge over a waterway with boats or gondolas going by. the town in known for the venetian glass so we were awed by eye candy everywhere we looked. one thing we really liked was that there were practically no commercial or department stores. most were just small shops and boutiques, many of which had the artist making their product in the back (shoe makers, glass blowers, mask painters, jewelry makers). if it sounds too good to be true, we were thinking the same thing. the one disappointing thing was we realized it is overrun by tourists all the time and the locals seem fed up. in other words, they werent very nice to us. we found one nice guy in a little snack bar who gave us free gelato and wine and let steph serve gelato to a tourist. it went something like this.....steph goes behind the counter, gives the old man a huge scoop of ice cream and says "that will be one million dollars". he still only gave her two euros and she gave him one back. it was the funniest thing ever and my personal favorite memory of venice. we had some great pasta and gelato there too! so now we are in florence (the capital of tuscany) where its warmer in more ways than one, the weather and the people. its a big city that has kept its rustic small town charm. theres so many street vendors selling mostly leather goods. we keep drooling over the italian leather boots!! a couple highlights of our sightseeing here was an amazing collection of sculptures all in this one giant square outside a museum. weve decided we like sculptures more than paintings. also there is a footbridge here that looks like a row of mini houses all along it that are actually shops. the bed and breakfast we are staying at (bed and breakfasts are sometimes cheaper than hotels in europe) is a cute place called the christina house. its run by a family and the wife is called christina of course. we get breakfast wheeled into our room on a little table with everything already on it....so nice! by the way, italy=mosquitos if you were wondering. poor steph has about four bites already and weve gone through half of our bug spray. looks like we underestimated the bugs here. today we took a little trip down to siena and spent a couple hours walking around this old town with a wall around it. we sat at a cafe in the huge piazza and ate pizza and an amazing bean stew (garlic and sage) while watching all the tourists. then we found our newest addiction and its name is panforte. (chocolate flavored to be exact). all we knew was that siena is known for this treat so we tried some. then we spent the next hour looking for more to take with us so we could eat it on the train. its a little like fruit cake but so much better. we have been wearing our flip flops today to give our poor feet a break and gotten so many strange looks youd think we were breaking the law (who knows, we might be). but we have stopped caring what people think. tomorrow we travel further south past rome to stay at the farm we booked before we left. we love getting your comments on here so keep posting!! (its ok to post more than once too if you want to because we sometimes get homesick and miss you so we just check for new comments without posting a new blog). love, rach (and steph)