Barcelona, Venice and Florence

So...it has been an exciting few days, including some really great times and some really horrible times. Some pictures can be found here. We will add more later.

Barcelona
The train we thought we had to get to Barcelona was not actually booked, and so we ended up leaving Pamplona for a 6-hour trip to Barcelona on a commuter train. It was great to see the country-side, but I think we could have done without all the stops. Because we did not leave at the scheduled time, we had to find a place to stay in Barcelona. We planned on leaving Pamplona at night and sleeping on the train, so we did not book a hostel. Barcelona is very very busy on Friday nights, so we had to book a room at the hotel in the train station, which really was very nice and reasonably priced relatively. Saturday, we headed out into the city. We saw the Picasso Museum, which is on this really tiny road in what seemed like an alley. We also went to Montjuic, which is the Hill of the Jews. There is a castle on the mountain that Franco had until 1960. The entire thing is built on top of a Jewish cemetary, thus the name. We had to ride a skylift to get to the top of the castle.

Venice
We took the 90-minute plane to Venice and took the wrong bus getting to Fusina, so instead of getting to the campsite at 11, we arrived after midnight.
The campsite was great though. There was a pizzeria and a nightclub, and we headed to the docks and saw an amazing fireworks show in Venice across the water. (Fusina is on the mainland, while Venice is an island about a mile away.) The celebration was in honor of the 500th anniversary of the end of the black plague.
The next day we went into Venice and saw the Gran Canal and the gondolas, although we did not ride on the gondolas because they were way too expensive, and we did not have time to find people to share a ride with. We went to San Marco, which is a plaza with a huge cathedral. But the cathedral was not the best part, the pigeons were. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of pigeons in the square, and vendors were selling bird food so that people could feed them. Our camera died about 5 minutes after we hit the square, so we got as many pictures in as we could, as fast as we could, which amounted to about 6.
We tried some venetian food. Jessica had Gnocchi di patate (potato dumplings in red sauce). Thank you Lisa for the suggestion, it was amazing. Dustin had Lasagne al forno (baked lasagna). The lasagna was good, but compared to the lasagna in Noblesville it was about the same. It was awesome, but that just says a lot for Noblesville :).

Florence
We took a train to Florence and arrived late Sunday night. Our hostel is in the middle of everything, within 5 minutes walk to any major tourist site. (We could see the Duomo from our window.)
The first thing we did Monday morning was walk the 463 stairs to the top of the Duomo. The view was amazing. We could see all the churches and castles in the entire city, all from the top. The inside of the dome was inspired by Dante's Inferno, and it depicted many levels of hell and paradise.
We did not know this, but most museums are closed on Mondays, so we spent most of the day checking out the palazzos and piazzas (squares and plazas with statues and famous sites in them). We saw Palazzo Vecchio, Piazza San Marco, Piazza della Republica, Piazza della Signorra and Piazza Santa Croce. Each had their own distinct marks. Dustin enjoyed Palazzo Vecchio the most because of its amazing statues and fountains.
We went to the Leonardo Da Vinci interactive museum, which is a small museum in the middle of a shopping area. They took many of Da Vincis drawings of fantastical machines and actually built them. Machines like the first ever humanoid Robot, a wooden Tank, a Machine gun, and multiple flying machines. It was a very cool museum.
We also went to the Serial Killer Museum Monday night, and that was just plain disturbing. The museum featured people such as Gilles de Rais, Elisabeth Bathory, Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, Andrei Chikatilo, Albert Fish, Ed Gein and Charles Manson. It was just weird, that is all.
Tuesday, we thought we would head over to the Uffizi early. However, early for us was still later than for about 1000 people. We stood in line for about 3 hours to get into the museum. We were slightly disappointed because we did not have a lot of time to look through the entire thing. The Uffizi houses some artwork from some of the greats of history such as Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Rafael and many, many others.


We decided not to go to Pisa because of time and money, so we're taking the train from Florence to Rome in about an hour. We hope everyone is doing well in the USA, and we cannot wait to share more with you when we get back.

Our posts will be slightly more sporatic because Jessica's computer is broken and we cannot figure out why. However, we will do our best to keep you all up to date on our travels. Because of this we have to deal with internet shops and internet cafe's, which are a pain and do not work on the same time table as we do. This means that phone calls, if we found the time to make them, would either be very late at night (Indiana time), or very early in the morning. There isnt much chance of us hitting you guys at the "prime time".

-Jessica and Dustin