ITALY!

Hello humans,

Maggie here again, and we're both still alive. Sorry about the lack of updates, the internet was unfortunately not working at John's house until today, and we got here on Sunday.

But other than that, Italy has been AMAZING. John (our dad's friend) has been our tour guide showing us around, driving us to lots of really cool cities.

The day we got here he picked us up at the airport in Pisa in the morning and we headed straight to check out the Leaning Tower, which was gnarly. Took some pintures and then went to lunch at a place near there. I had a hot chocolate which was the best hot chocolate I've ever had, another place here was close though. After lunch we drove to a cute hilltop town called Volterra. Great views of the countryside and cute buildings and cool old churches. As we were walking around Heather makes the comment that the town feels like something out of a movie, and then we pass a bookstore with "New Moon" posters and she realizes that they shot part of that movie in Volterra. Clarence, it's the city where the Voltari live, jealous?

Next day he took us to Cinque Terre which is on the coast and very pretty. It's five towns connected by trails so you can walk to the next one or take the train. We walked the distance between the first couple towns which was no problem and were going to take the train after that but we missed the next one by a couple minutes so we decided to power on instead of waiting. This stretch was much more difficult than the ones before and super long, especially because we weren't really dressed for hiking. John nicknamed it "The Death March," haha, but we survived.
After we finally made it to the next town we had a lovely dinner and then caught the train back.

Then on Tuesday we woke up late, had amazing pizza at the place right by John's house then went and checked out Lucca. It was a super cute town. He also taught H and I how to drive stick shift that day.

Wednesday we went to Florence and checked that out. It was raining but we still walked around a bit. Heather bought a purple bag, she was stoked. We went to the Academmia Museum, which is where the Statue of David is. It's totally gnarly. You're not supposed to take pictures of it, but John blocked me from the guard and I got two pictures. He said you're a coward if you don't get a picture of it because security is not too tight. Then we went to dinner with John and his cousin who lives in Florence and a few of her friends. They were all really cool and it was a fun night.

The next day, yesterday, we checked out San Gimignano, another hilltop town. Heather and I got gelato again even though it was pretty cold. Gelato is amazing. We've had it at least four times so far. Yummmmmmmmm. Then that night we drove back to Florence to go to dinner for his cousin's birthday. It was at a Chinese restaurant.

Then today was a relax around the house and watch as many movies as possible day. Which was nice as well. Tomorrow we're going to Siena in the day and probably Florence again in the afternoon. John said there's a lot we still haven't seen there because it was rainy the first day and just dinner the second.

Well that's all for now, later.

Maggie