Venice

Venice is a maze of tiny walkways, arches, bridges, and canals that we've both fallen in love with. We spent all day waiking around getting lost and finding ourselves again.

Florence

Florence is a place of many stairs and few elevators - we pity the florentine handicapped. In the Ufizzi gallery we actually saw a bathroom marked as handicapped on a landing in the middle of a staircase. Our cheapest lodging yet has also been our most amazing. We may have been sleeping in tents but we had a million dollar view of all of Florence. The view didn't come without it's own price. Mt. Kilimanjaro stood between us and our sleeping quarters. The city of Florence is filled to the brim with old world charm, from the half-century old buildings, to the stone paved streets, to the mounds of renaissance art work that we recognized from our art history textbooks (but could not remember anything about). It is definitely an important stop for any art student. And now, after some train trouble, we have made it to Venice!

Rome and Arezzo

Me at the Colosseum (no idea how They get pictures of these places without streetlights, cars, other buildings, etc, what with it being smack dab in the middle of a city)

Leah and Ryan looking over the countryside surrounding Arezzo. I think if you look close you can see the villa where we are staying... it's yellow and on top of a hill.

From the Fountain of Trevi to the Pantheon to the Tiber to the Colosseum and a dozen piazzas and markets in between, then the Vatican to the Sistine Chapel to the train station (and gelato stand) and we were away! We had a whirlwind of our two big days in Rome (almost all on foot) and are now in Arezzo, land of beautiful Tuscany vistas, delicious authentic Italian food and very steep hills. Arezzo is more than 2000 years old but still full of energy. We're staying with Ryan Smith, a VCU friend of ours, at the villa where he is taking a dance intensive in a tiny performing arts school called Accademia dell'Arte. We both tried grappa for the first time (!!! thinking of you dad and Popop), Leah ate what we're pretty sure was a sandwich of raw meat, and I tried wild boar (all tasty, some more surprisingly than others).
We're on to Florence tomorrow after breakfast and an EBAS (Elemental Body Alignment Session) with the students here.