Jun 27, 2005 - Certaldo again

After a great weekend in Germany, I'm back living at my uncle's place until I have to leave again on Wednesday. On that day, the title of this website will actually make sense because Matt and Jon will be travelling together instead of all this boring Matt only stuff.

Jun 25, 2005 - Florence, Italy

Hello from Florence! I arrived in Florence and after a big hassle in finding my hostel, I finally was able to enjoy the city. It is big and there was this festival in town this weekend, so it was very noisy. The weather here (in Italy) has been quite hot, I beleive in the high 90s. So some of the days are pretty unbearable. But I saw The David, by Michelangelo. It is very impressive. Very Big and the details are amazing. You can not take pictures so unfortunately I am unable to show you it. But I highly recommend seeing it if you ever make...

Jun 19, 2005 - Ciao Florence!

I'm still traveling about with George and Haley. We almost picked up a kid from Florida, but he oozed Republican, and we had to let him go. We arrived in Florence on a Sunday afternoon with no hostel reservations. As we navigated our way to a street known to have hostels, we were approached by Mario, who said he had a room for us for €20 each. We were hesitant, but followed him. Everything was closed on Sunday and it made the streets seem a bit eerie. There was know sign for the hostel on the outside of the building, and the front door was...

Jun 19, 2005 - Certaldo

Here I am in Certaldo, just outside of San Gimignano. My aunt and uncle live here, operating a four star hotel a few km away. The past few days have been fun. I tried roasted rabbit for dinner and it was very tasty. I also had my first gelatto and it was heavenly. This weekend San Gimignano is having a medieval festival, with people in costumes and music and weapons demonstrations. I'm on the lookout for an esquilax (Simpsons reference). I'll have more pictures up soon, I appreciate all the guestbook messages I'm getting.

Jun 17, 2005 - Drive to Roma

Hit the road again about 8.30 am Friday 17 th. The highlight of the drive down to Rome on the toll road was our lunch stop at the mega sized Autogrill. The AutoGrill building bridged the autostrada, allowing motorists going in both directions to converge at the body refueling station. Encountered the odd system of purchasing food in eateries,wherre you pay the cashier for what you want. Then you take your ticket to the person behind the food counter and they give you what you ordered. Makes it really hard to point and smile nicely when they...

Jun 17, 2005 - Florence

After London, I jetted over to Florence to see my sister who is doing a summer abroad program. Pretty much right after I got off the plane, we went to a bar that had a 60s rock cover band and ginormous beers. The next day we went to see the David. He was magnificent, great butt. That afternoon, me and Lil (one of Kellys roommates) walked around and saw the Boboli Gardens while the other girls had class. For dinner, we went to Acqua al 2, a restaurant with 2 locations: Florence and San Diego. We hit up another bar that night. This place...

Jun 15, 2005 - Florence - Day 66

Arrived yesterday into town - a very wet day for the first few hours and then had to trudge from one hostel to the next to try and get a bed for 2 nights before Caroline and Kay arrive and we go to a luxury no star hotel. It did clear though for a few hours then I headed back to the hostel around 4pm as the dark clouds were coming in nad had a good thunder and lightening storm for awhile with torrential rain. Cleared beautifully though and had a great walk for a couple of hours along the river and around a bit. A german girl and I sent to a...

Jun 14, 2005 - Florence

After a drive that took us up into the hills above Florence, looking for a campsite that couldn't be found, we finally settled into a very quiet little place about 20 km outside of the city. Snakes do exist in Italy and Squat saw a big one about 20 meters from the tent! (Sanch was scared and hid in the tent). Anyhoooo, headed into Florence for one of the bigger site sees of the tour, many queues, many churches and many pieces of famous art. Both of us we very impressed with 'David', he's a big lad! Had a good look around and both flopped...

Jun 7, 2005 - San Gimignano

From Florence, we decided to go to San Gimignano for a couple of days - a little mediaeval town that Anna had read about somewhere. It was picture-perfect; the old fortressed village with its stone towers standing on a hill surrounded by miles of green vineyards and olive groves, fulfilling my second clichéd image of Italy. The bus from the train station (for which we had waited over an hour) dropped us off right outised the town walls where we waited almost another two hours for the bus to our cabin. I guess there is a trade-off between...

Jun 3, 2005 - Milao / Maranello / Firenze

Neste dia acordamos super cedo e seguimos viagem para Maranello. Visitamos o Museu da Ferrari. A cidade é super pequena e tudo gira em torno da Ferrari. Visitamos o Museu, tiramos varias fotos e seguimos em direçao a Firenze. Estavamos super empolgados, pois haviamos recebido boas recomendaçoes desta cidade. Pegamos a estrada com o possante do BA e chegamos à terra da ARTE e da CULTURA. A primera impressao é que a cidade cheira mal e nao ée muito bonita, mas depois tudo muda. Chegamos às 15:30 hs no hotel, fizemos o check in, guardamos...

Jun 3, 2005 - Florence

I had arranged to meet my best friend Anna (who I've only seen twice in the past 6 years) at Termini station, and we got straight on the train to Florence. I was pretty nervous about our accommodation there because the only thing I could find that was within my pathetic price range was a two person tent in a campsite. (Accommodation in Europe is damn near impossible to find in summer, as I have since discovered after many frustrating hours on the internet). However when we arrived at the camping grounds, which were right next to the...

Jun 1, 2005 - Florence, it seems like I've been here before

The train ride was no problem this time as I had already done it once before and I even managed to get dropped off at the correct station. Tomorrow I am planning on heading to Galleria dell'Accademia were Michelangelo's "David" is housed as are four of his unfinished works "slaves". I am getting so much culture on this trip and so quickly that I hope it all absorbs, we were trying to rmember just last night what we managed to see in Rome and forgot a few so I had to write them down. I'll add more to this page as I see the city. Oh...