Munchen aka Munich and the first day of Paris.

Ah, October Fest. The first day in Munich was great. After getting dressed in our German garb we headed out for October Fest. We decided to take the subway, before going I thought that we wouldn’t see anyone dressed like us, boy I was wrong. We only had to go one stop on the metro before we got to our station and the metro was packed out with people dressed just like we were. Well we tent hopped from haus to haus, because it was so early in the day, around 12pm, we were able to sit anywhere we wanted. It only took about 15 minutes to see our first guy passed out on the sidewalk puking his guts out. I ended-up drink about 4 liters myself and was pretty hammered. I drank them all in about 2 hours and on a completely empty stomach, so yeah I was pretty gone. We got home and I slept great. The next day we went back and I only drank 1 liter and shared another with Stephanie (yes she drank some beer!!!). Now we are in Paris.
After a smooth train ride on the TGV we got into Paris around 12pm. After checking in at our hotel we hit up the little cafe right across the street from where we are staying. I ordered tartare de bouef which i thought was some kind of beef dish, we it was a beef dish.... I RAW ground beef ball with an egg yoke in the center,yum yum. I ate some of it but i couldnt finish it. it didnt taste as bad as it felt. yuke. Then we went to Notre Dame, the Arc de Triumph, and the Eiffel Tower. We went all the way to the top of the Eiffel Tower and let me tell you it was scary. Anyway, the Louvre is tomorrow; maybe Versailles and the catacombs if we have time. Then we head home on Saturday. Whoop.

Back in Germany!

OK, so since I last posted we traveled to Naples in the hopes of visting Mount Vesuvius. When we got to Naples we quickly realized that we didnt want to stay. It was by far the most run down place i've seen, it was dirtier than a co-ed after a LSU game. The hotel seemed ok except you made to pay for the internet by the minute. After dropping our bags off we tried to find a train to Mount Vesuvius. But unlike all the other train stations, the one in Naples was delaying every train coming to and from it. By that time we had already decided to hop the next train to Munich and by a sleeper-car like we did from Frankfurt to Venice. That train left at 3 o'clock so we didnt want to risk missing our train out of Naples. We decided rather to go to the National Museum a "couple" of blocks away. We walked right through Somali-Town. The museum was ok but they didnt have any bodies from Pompeii. Long story short, we got the hell out of dodge and slept almost the entire time to Munich.
We couldnt check into our hotel because we were here too early, so we went shopping. I joked before leaving that I was going to wear some leiderhosen for OctoberFest, but while we were walking around we totally saw people wearing leiderhosen and the female counterpart dirndls (DURN-DALS) AKA the St.Paulie Girl outfit. So Steph and I bought almost 400.00 Euros worth of gear. Now I have some leather capris. Pictures coming soonish.

Some Pic from Rome.

Sistine Chapel

Coliseum

Trevi Fountain

NEW NEW NEW

Roma

Sorry for no updates, but the Bed and Breakfast we are staying at has no internet. I was so desperate to listen to the AUBURN game last night that I was ran around the building we are staying in until I was able o find an unsecure wireless network. So yeah I’m leeching in Rome. Lol . Anyway, the first night we went to the Coliseum and the roman forum. They were both awesome. The Coliseum was slightly better than Jordan-Hare, jk. It was cool and strange at the same time to see where all the gladiators got ready and then where they fought and died. Not to mention the Romans also fed the Christians to lions. For being soooooo old it was well persevered. I think it was finished in like 80 A.D. CRAZY!!!!!! I mean there was still steps to the upper levels. I over heard a guy telling someone that back when it was new everything was covered in marble and porcelain. It would have been a spectacle to see. After coming home we ate and went to Trevi fountain.
Ive never heard of Trevi Fountain before this , but I’ll never forget it now. Its by far one of the coolest things Ive seen. Im going to post a picture of it because words don’t do it justice. While there we paid a guy from India to take a couple of pictures of us. Normally I would have told someone like him to F- off but he did give Stephanie some great advice about her camera and the flash; so I mean it was worth it. I finally got a good night’s sleep without Ambien, so I felt great the next day. (I cant wait to be jet lagged at work next week!!!!!)
We went to the Vatican Museum, which houses the Sistine Chapel and countless works of art, on our second day. The Vatican has been home to the Pope since like the 1300’s, I think (but I found out today that the Pope has his summer house in the Swiss Alps, lol, and that’s why he wasn’t at mass today). It took us 3 hours to see everything in the Vatican Museum; we even got to send some stuff from the Vatican Post Office. I mean you have to send something from the Vatican Post Office b/c its such a small country. After the Museum we went into St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, where the Pope does his addresses. It was neat to see all the statues of the Saints in the square. That night we went to the Spanish Steps; they are a bunch of steps that connect to big streets here in Rome. Not bad for a bunch of steps.
Today, our final day in Rome, we went to St. Peter’s Basilica. That’s where the Pope gives his sermons. We were there during Sunday mass, one of the lesser guys was leading it. Still, it was cool to be inside the church while they had mass. After walking around we went to the top of the dome, just like we did at Dumo. And just like Dumo it was scary, yet breath-taking. This time we had to climb almost 600 steps, which doesn’t seem like that much but please believe me that it was! It was like the actual “Stairway to Heaven”. Partly cause it was sooo long, partly b/c I thought I was going to die before I got to the top. Now we are waiting for the rain to stop so that we can go to the Pantheon without getting soaked. The Pantheon is an old church from what I gather. An old church far away from any subway station L. Tomorrow its off to Naples and the ruins of Pompeii. And hopefully the sexy beaches of Sorrento!!!! Wish us luck!!!!

because i cant work this that well, some pictures....

Dumo and illegal picture of David!!! Btw the real David not one of the many copies.

and.

NEW post via HOTEL REX (not Rex Manning)

Firenze aka Florence
We got into Florence rather easily so we decided to go and do some sight-seeing. We went to the “Dumo”, it’s a big church with an even bigger dome. Hence the name DUMO. After taking some pretty good pictures we had a little dinner and took our train tickets to get validated at the train station.
On a side note the tickets were supposed to be validated on the first train that we were on, but the German train conductor didn’t do anything. The Italian ticket checker gladly gave us a 50 Euro fine for not having it validated. I told him that the first guy didn’t do his job and he literally shrugged his shoulders and took my Eurorail pass; so I paid him. He even gave me a recipe, how nice.
OK, back to Florence. Our hotel is awesome btw, Hotel Rex. After getting our passes validated we decided to hop the next train to Pisa. We ran back to the hotel to get the camera and just made the next train to Pisa. After riding for about an hour we thought we should ask someone about how long it would take till we got to Pisa. We thought it would be about a 30 minute train ride, but after I found an American family from New York I learned that the ride was a solid hour and a half. BTW it was getting late in the day. FINALLY we got to Pisa, I asked someone for directions to the tower and they told me it was about a 15 minute walk; so we were off. Pisa was a surprisingly easy city to navigate, as Florence has proven to be as well. We got to the tower at about 8 o’clock just in time to buy some tickets to walk to the top. Walking inside was crazy weird, every once in a while there were signs on the wall saying what degree the tower was leaning at. They started at 1 degree and went to 4 degrees. And 4 degrees seemed like a lot the time. After Pisa we went home and went to sleep. The following day we had more places to visit.

Today we went to the cat-walk around the inside of Dumo. Our legs (and everyone else’s legs) were dead after walking up 463 or so steps. Being that high in the air didn’t scare me until I really started to think about it. Because the piece of stone you are standing on is only about 2 feet wide and about 4 or 5 hundred years old (at least). After the cat-walk we went up more stairs to the outside of the dome over looking Florence. It was one of the most beautiful/scary things I ever experienced in my life. I was glad Gusto was there with me for it. After Dumo we hit the museums.

First on our list was the museum that houses “David”. You aren’t supposed to take pictures of him, but I was able to ninja some without getting caught. David was awesome and probably like 20 feet tall. Next we went to Uffizi museum. Stephanie said that it was supposed to be the best museum in Italy. There were a lot of paintings by famous artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Botticelli. Outside of the Louvre it was the best museum I’ve been to. After the museums we did take in a little shopping in a plaza by the Leather school of Florence (which I have some good pictures from).Now its about time for dinner and then I have to pack for Rome tomorrow. Our train leaves at 11 am and gets in at about 12:20. Wish us luck.

Venice

Seeing as how this is my last day in Venice I should prob write about it. We made it to Venice with no problems. The Milan train station was like a dirty museum. Venice was a pretty cool sight, the water and the boats were just like you would imagine. There are no cars of any kind in Venice, so everything is done by boat. Fire truck, police car, trash collection all done by boats. We took a "bus boat" to a stop close by our hotel, which was cool. Before we got to our stop it started to rain (appearnently it rains everyday in Venice).I had on shorts and flip flops, which wouldnt have been to big of a deal except that it was about 60 degrees outside! We knew we had a five minute walk from our stop to our hotel. So we get out in the rain and start walking. Little known fact: the streets in Venice are poorly marked and dont follow any kind of pattern or reason! So basically we get lost in the cold, in the rain, for about an hour. We got to the correct city square but the map wasnt very good and we couldnt find the hotel. So Steph called the hotel a few times until she got someone that spoke English and could tell us where to go. I swear to God the street we couldnt find that took us to our hotel room looked like an alley. Theres no way it was more than 4 feet wide, and we had been by it the whole time. Awesome Venice, thank you. (Subsqently we have got lost about 5 more times) We had a great dinner yesterday, I had a calzone and steph had a pizza and of course it tasted like a million time better than anything Ive evere had over here. We got a gondla ride and went to San Marco's catherdral, and saw the Dooge's(pronounced DU-SCH) Palace (his was the King of Venice). Tonight we are going to eat at a place in the square by uor hotel. We leave for Florence at 10 am tomorrow. hopefully the Rex Hotel, where we are staying, will have wifi.

PS. I saw the Auburn score from last Saturday!!! WAR EAGLE!!!!!

PPS I have a photobucket account with some of the better pictures from my trip so far. I'll be updating it as much as i can. Search for surlytiger or go here http://s969.photobucket.com/albums/ae173/surlytiger/