Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh..

Or not since my sinus infection has turned into a head cold. Bleagh. Ah well, I have plenty of kleenex and orange juice, and no where I HAVE to be until class on Wedensday. I did walk over to school since I promised updates today, see how much I care about you guys? Anyway here is a recap and pictures, I'll start with my London/Paris pics since I already did a recap for that.(I'm having some technical difficulties getting some of my Paris pics up, but I'll work on it, and try to get them up tomorrow, and put up what I already have today)

And now for a recap of Italy.
We flew in on Thursday night, and got there around 1 AM their time. Then we took a bus to the city center, since we were going to head down to Venice since we had to fly back out of Rome. So we got to the train station only to find out, that A) Apparently there are no buses to Venice from Rome, and B) the trains weren't going to start running till 5, so we got to spend a lovely 4 hours in the Rome train station. There were some amusing things, the cops there have Sedgeways, and they had races on them in the hallway, and they had this really cool water store, that sold all these different types of bottled water, some in really cool bottles. Finally the trains were running again and we took off to Venice. We were both kind of sleepy, and it was siesta anyways, so we went to check into our B and B. We took a little nap, and then went for a walk around, and got some groceries. I love that grocery store, I got gelato, pasta, a bag of cookies for later, some biscotti, a bottle of rose frizzante, and a few other things all for under 7 euro. We had dinner and then went to bed, since we wanted to get up early the next day, and it was to foggy to do any more sightseeing. The next day we went on a water taxi to San Marco cathedral, and just walked around. Which is probably the main reason I love Venice, you don't feel like you have to run around and look at monuments and museums, not that I don't enjoy that, but after two weeks straight of it, it can get a bit tiring. Mostly it's a big shopping town, there were tons of street vendors and stores, and lots of places with really good food. So that was a fun day. I was going to use mainly Nicole's pictures, but there was a camera accident, so a lot of our Venice pictures got deleted. We stayed at the same hotel, and went back to the train station the next day to go back to Rome. Rome was cool as well. We went and saw the colloseum, and walked around the area where the national gallery was, and had dinner and gelato the first night. We went to Saint Peter's Basilica the next day, as the Sistine chapel was closed. Apparently it closes at noon. The Basilica was closed as the Pope was having some sort of meeting in there, but that was okay, we went and ate and when we came back he was leaving, so we got some cool pictures, and the swiss guards were out as well, but my pictures of that aren't as good as Nicole's so I'll post her's later. We got to go in the Basilicca after that. It was really pretty, but a horrible place to take pictures in. The lighting was really difficult. Our hotel that day was by the Trevi fountain, so we got a lot of good pictures of that, and we did end up going to the Sistine chapel since it opens early, and we had a little time before our flight the next day. So that was really cool, you aren't supposed to take pictures in the actual chapel part, like the Mona Lisa, I guess it takes to much time, and it was REALLY crowded in there. Sooo... Ask me about that one when I get home, as I am not sure how strongly they want that one enforced. Anyway, Rome was good, lots of pizza, gelato, historical monuments, and art. After that we went home, I went to bed as we didn't get in till 10 and I had class the next day. Which I went to, and then Thursday was Thanksgiving, so thank you guys for calling. I had class, but only one that day. And I was going to do this on Friday, but sinus infection + jet lag prevailed and mainly I stayed in bed and slept over the weekend, with a brief stop for groceries. I'm going to get some pics of downtown Cork all decked out for Christmas if it stops raining, and here are some of my Italy pictures(not all, and not sorted very well, as I have a bit of time constraint here today, but I still have that time in a couple weeks where I've got basically a free week, so I'll try to get everything sorted out and pretty before I get home).