Train to Venice

So because I really want to catch up I am gong to fast forward a bit.
Many hill towns, tons of gelato, millions of hills, and sooo much walking. That would pretty much sum up most of Italy. Oh! And amazing food.
Now that you know the basic stuff I can catch up to a little closer to now.
We took a train to Venice from Florence. Once we got onto the stone street we took a water bus to a station near our apartment. The guy who owns it brought us to it.
Venice is actually a really small city. We got lost a couple of times and we found our way straight back. It's really easy to get around because there are no cars and you can cross the canals by all of the bridges.
Did you know that Venice is in the shape of a fish? It's quite cool really.
I also don't get annoyed by the tourist shops because most of them are masks.
I adore Venice

Sound of Music

The hills are alive with the sond of music! Ahhhhh.... I think of that song when I see the hills of Tucany. Oh! It's so beautiful! Everywhere I go I think that it's gorgeous. I can't find a place that's not pretty. So was our villa. And our villa's dog. His name was Nabuko. He's the black dog in the picture.

Mask Shop

In Florence we found an really cool mask shop. Every mask is hand painted. So every one is different and they are gorgeous. You can see a few in the pictures above.
He makes them by putting plaster in a mold then he layers a kind of paper-mache on the plaster then pops that out. That's the mask. Then he paints them.

The Hills of Tuscany

We've been at the villa for a while and I haven't written for a while so I'm going to clump some of the time together so I can catch up.
So, Italy is amazing! The villa is in Tuscany. Tuscany is one of the provences. It has tons of hills.
I'm very glad that we came in fall. I would die with the heat in summer. Even so we eat gelato every day even if it's not hot but it's usually warm.
On top of almost every hill is a town. On the smaller hills is usually a house.
A city we went to a couple of times was Florence. A few centuries ago Florence was the capital of Italy. It also used to have a wall. A church we visited was the Basilica Di Santa Crocea. Painted on the walls there are saints and parts of the Bible. Under the church are 227 people buried. Along the walls there are tombs of some very famous people such as Michel Angelo, Gallileo, Dante the poet, and Machavilli the poletitian.
Behind the church there is a leater hop that started after World War 2. The monks of the church started it for the orphans of the war. The monks did it so the orphans would have a trade.
A lot of the buildings in Florence were damaged in the huge flood in 1966. The church included.
Another time we went to Florence we went shopping for leather. Florence has very famous leather.

Villa in Tuscany

The villa if gorgeous. I have not found one place that wasn't pretty. We hung around the first day then we went to a walled town the next day. We drove there then had lunch then found a gelato place. Gelato is extra flavourful ice-cream. We found a place that was part of the Gelato World Team. They won 2006-2007 and 2008-2009! Yummy...... As you can imagine it was fabulous. After that we went to a Medival Torture Museum. It's amazing how many things people have made to hurt each other.
The next day we stayed in the villa until supper. We had invited over the lady upstairs who lives here all the time and this cool dude who uses blowing to heal people. He is really interesting.

Leaning Tower

We walked around a bit and had lunch at a Piazza. That's pretty much a town square. We found this cute bakery and had this AMAZING bread. After lunch we went to the Tower. It's really a bell tower of the church and baptistery that are beside it. I don't really get why it's so famous because it's not that tall and it's only leaning because of a bad foundation. There are probably lots of towers that have a bad foundation right? For supper I had spaghetti and really good chicken. Anyway that day we walked around a bunch more. The next day we looked inside the two other buildings instead of the tower. They are really cool. That day we had a piece of pizza in Pisa. I'm still not impresed.

Pisa

We took a plane to Pisa on Monday. The plane took on at a really wierd time like 9:30pm so we filled up the time by walking around a mall. We had to leave on a bus from there. We walked around some shops and then had some lunch. We then went to the mall. It was a really fancy mall where there was a whole bunch of fancy clothing stores. We took a bus to the airport after that. Their airport was really bad. We had to stand in a line that was longer than the airort could hold. I felt like a sheep being herded. Then we got to the plane and we flew to the Pisian airport. That one was better. Then we took a taxi to our
B&B.

Book Report #2

Anne Frank

Anne Frank is a diary kept by a girl in World War 2. She was a Jew who moved from Germany to Holland when she was 4 because her Father got a new job. At this time the war had started and Germany began to be against Jewish religion.
So Anne, Father Otto, Mother Edith, and sister Margorot Frank went into hiding along with some friends who came into hiding as well. Their names were Auguste, Hermann, and Peter van Pels. Later another guy came into hiding too, his name was Fritz Pfeffer.
Anne is an amazing writer which is good seeing she wanted to be a journalist. They go into hiding in her Father's building. It is a section of rooms called the Annexe and they put a bookcase for a door so no one would know where they are.
They are a pretty wealthy family so their friends help them get food and other things on the black market.
Because they are in hiding they can't flush the toilet or run water at certain parts of the day in case the people in the building next to them or the workers in the lower part of the building hear them.
Anne wrote in her journal from 12 June in 1942 to 1 August in 1944 so she was in the Annexe for a while. Peter and Anne actually got to be pretty good friends.
Saddly in the end the Germans found them and she never wrote in her journal again. Her Dad kept the diary though and since she had said she would want to write a book about their experience he published her diary fo her. They never found her again.