Ciao!

Last Wednesday, we visited Venice, which is an absolutely beautiful city. I learned how to ride the vaparetto (the water bus) and it was fun to experience a city entirely devoid of cars. The only forms of transportation are walking and boats.

The first day (Wednesday) we explored Venice and watched a glass-blowing demonstration where a maestro glass-blower made a pitcher and a glass horse for us. This is the Murano glass that Venice is famous for and it takes years and years of practice and experience for a person to become a maestro.

Here is a picture of me in Venice!


Here are a couple pictures of the glass horse which the maestro made for us in under 5 minutes, which was amazing to watch!


Then we visited the Doge's Palace and went on a special tour of the secret rooms above the palace, where the documents of state were stored and we visited the torture room--where prisoners arms were tied behind their backs and then they hauled off the ground by their wrists. They even hired other people to scream (in addition to the person being tortured) to scare the other prisoners (who couldn't see what was happening from their cells) into confessing everything. I even got to visit the actual cell where Casanova was imprisoned!

Here is a picture of part of the famous ceiling inside the Doge's Palace.


After Venice, we spent a day back in Florence and then on Saturday it was off to a small hill town named Chiusi where we visited an Etruscan Museum. After that, we took off for Montepulciano--a wine town in Tuscany. There was some beautiful countryside views despite the fact that it was cold and rainy. For any Twilight fans, Montepulciano is the town where the end of New Moon was filmed. It is the square Bella runs across to stop Edward from committing suicide.

Here is the square from Twilight (apparently minus a fountain and much smaller than it appeared in the movie).



And here is a picture of the countryside, taken shortly before it began to hail on us!



Sunday we went on a tour of the wineries in Tuscany and did some wine tasting and some cheese tasting. We visited a cheese farm and were able to eat fresh ricotta cheese made right in front of us.

Here is a picture of me holding a goat at the cheese farm.


And here is some more gorgeous countrysides in Tuscany.



By the way, the third picture is of the region where scenes from Gladiator were shot!

And finally, today I visited Milan. We took a bullet train and traveled at about 180 mph. We saw all kinds of interesting stores from Dolce & Gabbana to Gucci, to high-end furniture stores where a single chair could cost over 6,000 euros. And, of course, Milan's famous Duomo.

Here is a picture of the Duomo in Milan.


And Milan's castle.



Arrivederci!