Travel update

Rome was amazing, but we had a very busy day there! Still, we managed to get everything done, and we are very proud of ourselves for doing so :)
We started off by taking the metro from our hostel to the Colosseum. We took some good pictures outside, and then headed over to Palatine Hill and the Forum, where we bought a combination ticket for seeing those two and the inside of the Colosseum. Luckily, because we started our day off early, there wasn't even a line to get in. So we roamed around Palatine Hill and the Forum for a little while, and then made our way over to the Colosseum. Since we bought our tickets at the Forum, we actually got to just walk right in and skip the 2 hour waiting line for tickets to get in- score!! After that, we walked over to the Pantheon, saw the Trevi Fountain (and of course tossed a coin in over our shoulder), and then stopped from some delicious gelato. From there, we walked over to the Vatican, and toured the Vatican Museum, St. Peter's Basilica, and the Sistine Chapel. That was definitely my favorite part of the day- I could have sat in the Sistine Chapel marveling at Michelangelo's paintings covering the interior all day long. And that was our day in Rome!
We caught a night train to Florence, and arrived there around 10pm. We walked to our hostel from the train station, and it was such a great way to get introduced to the city- there was hardly anyone out, so it was very quiet, and all the buildings were lit up beautifully! The next morning, we woke up and mainly just wandered around the city, looking at the Duomo, stopping and getting some tasty pasta and Italian red wine (only 1 euro for a giant glass!), and then we checked out the Academia and Uffizi galleries. Luckily, we thought ahead and reserved tickets to get in earlier that day for the two galleries, which did cost us a little extra, but we managed to secure a spot to get in on a very busy weekend. So we were really happy that we got to see two of the biggest sights in Florence! We saw Michelangelo's "David" at the Academia, and Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" at the Uffizi, along with TONS of amazing Renaissance art.
Our next day in Florence, we chose to take a day trip to Cinque Terre, which is a location on the coast of Italy made up of 5 very small towns that are all connected by hiking trails. It was a gorgeous day, and I'm so happy that we decided to take that trip because it ended up being my favorite place we visited while in Italy. Unfortunately, what should have taken us two hours at the most to get there, took us 5 hours because of a train strike with the national railway system. We didn't know about the strike until we had already arrived in Cinque Terre, which caused us some issues with transportations around the villages. We ended up having to spend a lot of money on taking ferries around some of the towns instead of using the free train system, which had been temporarily shut-down because of the strike. But, we didn't let it ruin our day. We hiked one of the toughest trails between the last two villages, got some great pictures of the views from the trail, and then ended it all by jumping into the Mediterranean in all of our clothes at a rock quarry at the end of the trail. What a great day!
We arrived to Venice on Monday evening, and basically just spent our time in the city getting lost- that really is the whole experience of Venice. It was really refreshing and eye-opening to be in a fairly popular city that has absolutely no car traffic. I knew that it was a canal city, but I never realized that that meant the all of their traffic was on boat! It was really cool to see that there were mail boats, "metro" boats, and even garbage boats. Venice was great, and the hostel we stayed in was really nice. They cooked 3-course dinners for us for only 5 euros, and then took everyone out for a few beers afterwards. We met some really great people and got to swap a lot of travel stories, so it was a lot of fun!
And now Nicole and I are in Split, Croatia! We have instantly fallen in love with this place. We came in on an overnight ferry and got here at 8am this morning. It's the off season for tourism here right now, so it's pretty empty all around the city. And our hostel is very empty, but it's so small so it worked our perfectly! There is only one other girl staying here right now, and we are going to go out to dinner with her tonight, so I'm really looking forward to that. It's so nice to be here for so many reasons- (a) we are on the Adriatic Sea and are seeing some of the beautiful coastline I have ever seen, (b) we just get to relax and lounge on the beach all day, everyday that we are here, and (c) we are no longer on the euro!! It's so great to be back on an exchange rate that doesn't completely drain our bank accounts, and we can actually afford things :)

We head out from Split on Sunday afternoon, and then go to Zagreb for one night, then Vienna for a night, and then back to Prague on Tuesday for one more day. I'm so sad that this trip is coming to an end, I really can't believe that I'm finally going to be coming home in less than a week! As sad as I am to be leaving Europe, I am getting so antsy to see everyone. I fly out next Wednesday!