Milano, Venezia, Firenze, and in between

Our last day in Barcelona, mom and I split up to view the city our own ways and ended up seeing all of the same things. After traveling by myself for so long and then suddenly having a partner, I needed a day of viewing by myself. We saw the dribbly cathedral, the squiggly house, and the Arc de Triomf (those suckers are everywhere). There is no denying, Barcelona is wicked cool.

Then we hopped on the night train (not as bad as the ones to Spain and Portugal, but not as nice as from Cannes to Paris, I miss French trains) and shared a cabin with who Canadian girls. There are more Canadians over here than there are Europeans.

We arrived in Milano and walked to the city center, through all the high end fashion shops, and ate an incredible margherita (cheese) pizza in front of the gorgeous catherdral (the fourth biggest in the world). Then we caught the metro back to the train station and caught the train to Venezia.

Venezia was fantastic. The small ally-sized streets, the romantic canals, it was unbelieveable. We bought a day pass on the bus (which is a boat, there are no cars in Venezia), and saw the islands of Lido, Burano (where they specialize in point-lace), Mezzorbo (which has nothing really, but a nice park and cemetary), Murano (the glass-blowing island), and another which I don't remember but was full of parked cars. But no one was driving. Very funny. On Steve's advice, we went to the Museum de'll Academia (that's not the correct name, but it is close) and it was interesting. The use of gold in the paint is incredible and even though I am not much for religious art (I find it too condemning, I prefer Italian lover's art), I found one piece that made the trip well worth it. Not that I didn't enjoy everything else, but it was a banner of God's wrath after the Jews proved impatient and untrusting. It had snakes attacking everyone and people were marble with death, a babe scking at his cold mother's teet. Very powerful.

Then we came to Firenze, where the markets are the best I have seen so far. Massive and cheap. And the architecture is amazing. We went to Pisa, which was very cute and surprisingly cheap food and clothes. Took pictures at the tower. Today we are going to see some of Michealangelo's sculptures then head to Rome!!!