Italia

I enjoy the following things: the ocean, the mountains, good wine, homemade pasta, beautiful buildings, windy streets and famous art.

So, I went to Italy.

Last week was my program's fall break, so we had an entire week off. A friend from Carleton was in Prague, so he came to Budapest and we flew to Milan. From Milan, we took the train to Genoa, where we spent our first two nights and one day.

Genoa was incredible. It's an old port city built into a huge hill.
The first thing I noticed?

Yup, them's palm trees.
The second thing I noticed: San Francisco may have lots of switchbacks, but its got nothing on Genoa. The view from most streets looks something like this:

The view from our hostel looked something like this:

We spent most of our time in Genoa just walking around and exploring, although we did make a tourist stop at the Aquarium. It was huge. They had lots of weird-looking fish and some dolphins.
Genoa, overall, was really great. At first I thought it was the kind of place where I would like to grow up - there was a bunch going on, but it wasn't so large that you felt overwhelmed at all. Then I realized that my growing up was done. I'd like to retire there. Ocean, mountains, palm trees, and I saw enough old Italian ladies on the bus that I know I wouldn't be lonely. I would be worried about hiking up that hill though.

Our next stop was Florence. However, before we could get to the train station we had to march in a protest for who knows what, see Genoa's version of the Arc de Triomphe, which is backed by a garden picturing the Nina, the Pinto and the Santa Maria. Columbus was born in Genoa. We didn't find his house. Its hard to take pictures of gardens on hills, but here's my best shot.

Then, we went from Florida

to Colorado

in three and a half hours on a train.
Italy is, apparently, a country with wide-ranging climate.
We arrived in Florence late in the afternoon, to a lot of drizzle and no clue where our bus to the campground was. We eventually made it. Please, look at the view.


Yes, that's the Duomo. Like, for real.

I'm going to take a break from blogging right now, but I was informed that my aunt was anxiously awaiting an update, so Kristin, here you go. Florence and Siena to be continued.