Italy

Hey everyone! I'm currently in Florence, Italy. If you're an art or architecture buff, then Florence is your haven. The buildings here are really quite spectacular. They really know what they're doing when it comes to design over here. I've been scoping out all the museums lately. Yesterday, I went to The Uffizi. They really have an amazing collection of paintings from the Italian Renaissance. One of the more popular paintings, Boccocelli's 'The Birth of Venus', really takes your breath away. It has to be atleast 12 feet wide and is really detailed. The Uffizi is also home to early Rembrandts, Da Vincis, and other works.

Another museum that I went to today is Academia. Not a huge selection. But it is home to Michealangelo's 'David'. I have to say, that one of the most amazing sculptures ever made. It stands atleast 20 feet tall (without the pedestal) and is increadibly detailed. I reccomend it to anyone who has any appreation for art to see it.

Tomarrow, I'm off to Rome.

Until next time.

-Ashley

So I went to Pompei a few days ago, and my clothes got really dirty. My hostel has a washing machiene so I handed over my dirty clothes over to one of the people that works there and she washed them. I was not aware that they don't have a drier there. So I hanged my wet clothes out on the balcony. That was yesterday morning. With the 2 solid days of rain, needless to say, my clothes were still wet. My other clothes are dirty simply because I haven't had a chance to wash them since leaving Canada. So I'm sitting at a laundry mat in Naples only wearing the Canadian Olympic team t-shirt my mother gave me before I left and a towel.

This reminds me of the time when Christella and I had to dry all of our clothes at the Laundry Lounge after we waited in line all night for a Hanson concert outside the Docs. It rained and hailed all night and we only had the clothes on our backs. So we took of as much as we could without getting arrested and stuck 'um in. Is there anything those guys won't make me resort to?

Other than that, I'm doing just dandy. I wish it would stop raining though. Then I might actually be able to enjoy my time here. I spent the last two nights watching movies back at the hostel. The hostel that I'm staying at rocks. The people that run it are all really nice and helpful. I'm considered the 'good Cananadian' there. The guy that runs it asked a girl from B.C. about the 2010 winter games and the Vancouver mayor. She had no idea what he was talking about. So he called her a 'bad Canadian'. He thinks that I'm a good Canadian because I knew about the 2010 games and Vancouver's quadripalegic (I don't know how to spell it)mayor.

Until next time.

-Ashley

Hey everyone, I'm in Italy. It was chaos getting here. I had to take two trains to get to Patra, to get the Ferry. Then I had a 16 hour ferry ride(I had my own cabin, so it wasn't so bad). Then I had to take 3 trains to get from Bari to Naples. When I got off the ferry in Bari, it was hailing really bad. But when I arrived in Naples, it wasn't so bad. I hated my hostel in Naples, so I changed it to another one. Its called 'Hostel of the Sun'. Its pretty nice.

I went to Pompei today. It is the ruins of the anciet city after a volcanic eruption some 2000 years ago.

I'm pretty exausted. I went there with two Austrailian guys and two American guys. The Americans were sooooo annoying. They kept telling me to visit upstate New York. No thanks. Tomarrow, I'll probably go to one of the Catacombs that they have here.

Ciao!

-Ashley