Padua, Venice & Milan

And I'm back!
This is the last part of my Italian trip.
First up is Padua or Padova.
We only spend half a day there as we where travelling through to get to Venice.
Padua was very cold but very beautiful. In some ways it looked a bit like venice with some canals running through the city. We didn't see much as we where only there a short time. We visited the church, the town square and the university. After visiting the church which had a lovely patio, my friends and I had a little photo session. After that we got back on the bus and continued our trip to Venice.

  

Venice:

When we got to our hotel it was dark,raining and freezing. So we quickly got inside and went to dinner, which for once was not terrible as it had a salad bar. After that I went to bed early aa my throat was on fire. So hoping I would get better I went to bed early. The next morning I still felt bad, but not wanting to miss Venice I went along anyway not knowing it was going to rain all day and I would be walking around with a fever.Venice, even tough it was raining and cold, was beautiful! I had seen a lot of pictures as anybody would but to just be there was unbelievable. It is truly a beautiful city. We had to be carefull as the city was flooding because of all the rain. I took quite a few pictures but not as many as I would like. I didn't take my camera with me as it was raining and honestly I felt very bad. We also had the bad luck that the most famous bridge was being renovated. I had more bad luck as we happened to have the best lunch of the entire holiday that day, just the day I could barely swallow a thing. But oh well, there are worst things in the world.

After lunch we walked around Venice some more visiting a classical music exhibition. In the evening we took a boat back to our hotel, where we had dinner and quickly shoved all my things in my suitcase as the next day we would be leaving for Milan from where we were going to fly back home.

Milan:

Now this is going to be short as I only went to the cathedral and the famous gallery before going to lunch and leaving for the airport. It was once again raining, like what is up with this country and rain? why does it have to rain the week we are there like seriously? So i took some pictures and sought shelter from the rain inside the gallery with some friends where we waited for the teachers to take us to the restaurant and then we went of to the airport, where we checked in and waited, and waited, and waited. (our flight got delayed.) When we got to Madrid we had to run and catch our next flight to Malaga which luckily hadn't left yet.

We got back home late at night and as I was still ill I went straight to bed.

Sorry for the picture overload.

So that's it for now. Hope you have an amazing day/ night!

Simonexx

Sienna, Pisa & Florence

Hello everybody,
As I stated in my previous post, I'm going to continue talking about my trip to Italy.

After 3 days in Rome we left on a long and boring bus trip to Florence with two stops, one in Sienna and the other in the worl famous Pisa.
I thought the journey was going to be extremely boring and long but it was surprisngly short. And the suroundingd where beautiful.

There not much I can say about Sienna as we only stopped there for 2 hours. But, as many other Italian cities it has an amazing cathedral build in a similar style as the one in Florence.

After a quick stop in Sienna which included a big slice of pizza and a forest fruit sorbet ice cream, it was time to grt back on the bus and continue our route to Pisa. Once we arrived there we had lunch next to the famous tower. As we went with a big group we where nearly always forced to stay together but after lunch we were told we had a couple off hours of free time untill our bus left to Florence. Obviously I decided to take a lot of pictures but I also used this time to buy souvenirs for my family and friends as there where many stalls with cheap and good souvenirs (Think magnets and keychains for 1€.) I personally found it hillarious to see all those people trying to take a good shot of them holding up the tower and failing miserably. I didn't take any pictures like that but I made a lot for friends.

You are able to climb the tower but it is quite expensive (18€), we did however visit the cathedral (shown above) which was generally the same as all the others but beautifull in it's own way.

After a long and tiring afternoon in Pisa it was time to get back on our bus and continue our journey to Florence. We got to the hotel at around 8 pm and went to our rooms to freshen up, after having dinner, ( that hadn't improved much from Rome) I went to bed early as I was tired from the long day and  had a headache (Cursing my body a lot for that). And besides we had a long day in Florence awaiting us. We only had one day there and there is a lot to see trust me.

Florence.

We started the day with breakfast(about the only actaul nice meal we got). To then leave towards the Florence city centre. Now I am a big fan of anything history related, so was naturally very excited about Florence, one of the righest european family (The Medici's) had lived there for centuries and there presence was still very visible. First we got a guided tour through the city, not my favourite thing as all was very rushed, but still nice. After lunch we visited the two mayor museums: the gallery of fine arts and the uffici( the Medici's old offices turned art museum.) which held some of the most famous work such as David by Michelangelo or the birth of Venus by Boticelli and some early works from Leonardo Da Vinci. Not only was the art beautiful, the building was a monument of it's own. As some of my friends study history of art, they could tell me all of the interesting and most characteristic things about everything we saw, and with that I mean everything! It was very interesting and entertaining.

                                               David just before defeating Goliath the giant.

                                                        The birth of Venus

The only bad luck we had was the weather, it was cold and it rained all day. But that didn't stop us. after visiting the museum we visted the last bridge from the middle ages still in tact as the germans had destroyed all the other ones in WWII. We also walked along the bridge that only has jewelry shops and saw the old secret passage ways the Medici's used. I'm going to stop talking about Florence now as I could probably fill 4 post with all the interesting facts.

You can't really apreciate Florence's real beauty as it was a forcast and grey day but still.

I will upload the last 3 cities I visited soon, though it might take a while as I severely bruised my hand playing hockey (just my luck) and now have only one hand to type which makes the entire process very slow and tiring. So please bare with me untill my hand is cured.

 Have an amazing day wherever you are!

xxSimonexx