When it rains in Paris...

...it pours.

We arrived this afternoon and unfortunately hadn't heard back from Hugo, so we booked a hostel for the night right around the corner from the train station. This is our first time doing a dorm room, but I think it will be alright! We met the girl earlier today, she is a student at the University of Houston. Her and her boyfriend are just ending their three week trip through Eueope. She's really nice and we got along quickly. After a quick bite to eat, we walked to Notre Dame! (It was about a half an hour walk from our hostel.) We walked inside and there was a service going on. There was beautiful singing ringing through the whole building. It was great to be there when a service was going on. We'll head back tomorrow or the next day and walk around some more. There was a lot to see. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the title, it is absoultely pouring down rain. I'm wearing shorts and flip flops and there are droplets of water all over the keyboard right now! Rain is just pouring off of my jacket. Oh well, we're used to it. Since its raining so much, we decided to just hunker down for the night. Matt is across the street at a grocery store picking up our usual. (Diet Coke and iced tea... mmm...) and then we'll head back to the hostel. Here are some pictures!

This one is from our hotel terrace last night in Milan. You can't really tell, but the moon was absolutely brilliant! It was shining down on us and lit up the whole street. We sat out on the terrace with our iPods until late last night, it was great!

Heres a shot from our morning in Venice yesterday before we got on the train to Milan:

And here is today on the walk to Notre Dame.I just realized that this picture is a little awkward. I think I was trying to point to both buildings behind me, but I don't think Matt knew that was what I was going for. Haha

...and heres Matt!Okay. Just kidding. I apparently dont have one of just Matt on my camera... Sorry Matt! But, here we are in front of Notre Dame. :)

Love you all, tomorrow if its nice we are going to the Eiffel Tower. If not, we'll figure something else out!

Attack of the crazy man. Welcome to Milan.

Oh Milan. Here's a good story for you all:



We arrived at the train station this afternoon, and Matt and I walked downstairs to book our tickets for Paris tomorrow. So I tell him to go jump in line, and I proceed to sit on the floor about 25 feet away from him. A man walks up to me and explains that he is homeless and needs some money. His english was really, really hard to understand, but I shook my head and said "No- I'm sorry. Can't help." you know, the usual. So, he keeps talking to me. From my view down on the floor, he looked HUGE towering over me. I'm extremely uncomfortable, and dear Matt is just watching me (probably laughing to himself). I kind of stopped making eye contact with him, hoping that he would just walk away. Two police officers walk up to the man to get him away from me at this point. The guy throws up his hands like "Hey- leave me alone! I'm not breaking the law!" The policemen pull on their black gloves and are gripping their baton things, ready for battle. (Mom, are you laughing yet!?!) Everyone in the ticket line is watching this little episode, and Matt informed me later that the two American girls in line next to him were saying "That poor girl! She's all alone!" Matt goes "Oh no, shes with me." He's so great. Always looking out for me. ;) After a few solid minutes of trying to escort the man out, a third officer walks up and they all walk him out the door. One of the officer winked at me as he walked through the door, and I lifted up my hand to thank him. Great. I officially hate Milan.



It got better though, promise! That was just a little taste of our first 30 minutes in Milan. We found a little hotel a few blocks away from the train station, grabbed some dinner and walked around the city. We get on a train at 8:10 tomorrow morning, and will arrive in Paris around 3 in the afternoon. We're still waiting to hear about our arrangements, but I have faith that it will all work out.



Thanks for following our blog, we love getting comments and hearing from you!

xoxo

Katy

Venice!

Yesterday sucked. Lets be honest. We had a stressful few moments on the train ride over here (I wanted to cry. Matt was fine though, of course) A certain someone was in an awful mood all day, and I was hungry and feeling extremely dirty and gross after using the mens bathroom on our train ride... Translation- I wasnt happy either. Then we got to our extravagant hotel. We're talking five stars, overlooking the canals of Venice. Soooo gorgeous. Welp, wouldn't that have been nice? Our actual home: A cheap little campsite. The first thing I said to Matt was that it looked like a cult site. All the cabins are built the exact same. There are rows and rows of them. Too funny. :) But we're actually really enjoying it! Theres a big swimming pool and restaurant on the campus, along with a tiny supermarket, volleyball courts etc. etc. But basically last night was spent doing this:

Today we walked around Venice for hours. We loved it! Venice is totally our type of city. There were lots of little shops and San Marco was absolutely gorgeous. Oh my word. It's hard to describe the beauty. We had lunch and dinner in the city at a couple little restaurants overlooking the canals, and we enjoyed some live music when we were by San Marco. It was a great day! Its amazing to us that this city is run primarily by use of the water. We took about a million pictures of the flowers, canals, boats and gorgeous churches and old buildings. A day well spent.

We changed our travel plans a bit. Tomorrow instead of going to Geneva, we are going to take a train to Milan. After we spend one night in Milan, we will be going up to Paris where we will (hopefully) stay with a friend of Matt's. Our Paris plans aren't working out anymore, so we are crossing our fingers and praying that this will work. Unfortunately for us, we are still poor college students, so a free place to stay would be just lovely. :)

Oh... I almost forgot. I had the most glorious cappuccino today. The glass was covered in nutella or chocolate or something. I dont know. It sounds like sugar overload, I know, but it was amazing! Then the caffé was poured inside along with five or six real hazelnuts. I had no idea what I was ordering, I just saw the word hazelnut (in Italian) and knew I wanted it. It was amazing. This is a real silly thing to post, I know, but it was heaven. Absolutely wonderful.

(Oh, and dont mind my hair. Matt thought it would be super funny to just not let me know abouot that. Gotta love backpacking and looking like a trainwreck the whole time...) ;)

Okay. We're off. Tonight we are going to hang out with our new friends from Wyoming, and then we are going to pack up and get ready to head out tomorrow. Love you all, miss you so much!

Katy & Matt

At the top! (Piazza del Michaelangelo looking over all of Florence.)

Here we are on the streets of Florence.

Well, I tried to post two more pictures. The internet keeps cutting out though. Sorry!

Florence.

Today we spent a good six hours walking around Florence. We saw two of the David statues, walked into the Uffizi gallery, saw the Santa Maria del Fiore and the Duomo and also walked to the top of Florence- the Piazza del Michaelangelo. That was my favorite stop of the day- it was so gorgeous. It looks over all of Florence. And we definitely had a perfect day to be up there. There was bright blue skies and plenty of sun for us! We are tired though. It is sooooo exhausting to walk around all day. But thats okay. We are definitely getting used to it! This felt like our crazy Rome day. We just walked around and popped into whatever we thought was worth seeing. These cathedrals are amazing. You cant focus on the extravagant marble floor designs because you have to look up and see the crazy paintings on the ceilings. But then you have to turn to your right and left to see the statues on the sides! They are gorgeous. Its crazy to think about all the hours that go into building them.
Apparently there are usually three hour lines for the Uffizi, or you have to make reservations, but we stood in a ten minute line and got right in! We have been pretty lucky, dont you think. Oh side note- I cant make an apostrophe, question mark or parenthesis on this stupid keyboard... sorry about that. Its all weird and wont let me make them. Its totally bothering me.

Its also taking forever to load the pictures. I will get on later tonight to post some shots from the day. I need to go buy more minutes for my internet use. Check back in a couple hours to see pictures!

Love you all, Katy

Sad to Leave

Hey guys! Katy here again. We arrived in Florence this afternoon and easily found a GREAT hostel. It is totally aimed towards college aged kids. There are a ton of Americans here so we're enjoying the company! Google "Plus Florence hostel" and something should come up. :) Yesterday we enjoyed the beach like we said we would. It was so nice! This morning we took the train back to Vernazza, our favorite town, and had a quick lunch before getting on our train to Florence. (We got seats this time!) Anyways, there isnt much to post because all we have done in the past 40 hours is relax, but here are some pictures anyways!

Here we are this morning in gorgeous Vernazza!


Yeah, see this view? This is from our roof top terrace at our hostel in Florence!! Gorgeous.

Tear. :( This is us our last night in Levanto.

Okay, we're going to go up to the roof again and hang out with some new friends. Love you all! Tomorrow is our day to tour Florence; we'll see the major sights and hit a flea market for some shopping. Talk to you soon!

Dear Italy: We love you.

Good morning everyone! Katy here. Matt is back at the room showering up before we head to Monterosso for our beach day. Yesterday we completed a loooooooong hike that stretched across all of the five lands of the Cinque Terre. BEAUTIFUL. Parts of it were like walking through the jungle, and other parts were through true Italian countryside: with little bridges and stone pathways high above the sea. I can't even descibe it. Amazing. The hike took most of the day, because we stopped in a couple of the towns for lunch and, you guessed it, more gelato. :) Yummm! We love the town of Vernazza, it's my favorite for sure. There is a little cove with boats docked in it, and there are tons of bright buildings and colorful umbrellas that line the streets. It's exactly what I pictured Italy to look like! (I guess you can just look at the picture and see what I'm talking about.) Parts of the hike were challenging because it was stairs straight up for MILES (okay. exaggeration.) But it sure felt like it! Otherwise, it wasn't a super difficult hike, but it was so rewarding to look at the views!

This is me in Vernazza. This was our first stop on the hike, about two hours into the hike. Here is Matt at a local wine bar. All of their products are made right in the Cinque Terre!

This is us on our hike, looking down on the town below.

We took the train back to Levanto at around 7:30 last night, showered up then bought some pizza and had dinner on the beach. We both plugged into our iPods and nearly fell asleep on the beach for a good 2.5 hours just listening to music after the sun went down. So today we are going to lay on the beach all day. Yes. All day. We have no other plans. Have a good day everyone, love you all!

Here are a couple more pictures from the day before yesterday. We went into the neighboring town of Bonassola for dinner. It was so beautiful!!

Matt and I found out pretty quickly that Katy and tequila don't mix well...

Matt and his pina colada. :) Happy camper.

We love you all!! Miss you!