Internet Again!

No, nothing bad happened to me, we just haven't been near the internet in a while. Here's the update:
Tuesday: We woke up early and went to the Vatican museum. In my opinion, the only thing remotely exciting about the museum was the Sistene Chapel, which I took some great illegal photos of.

Then we went and saw the Circus Maximus where Ashley, Amy, and Bonnie pretended to do Chariot races and I took some great video clips.

Then we went to this old church where there is a carved stone face. You stick your hand in its mouth and it will cut your hand off if you're a liar. I still have my hands, so I guess I passed.

Then we went and washed a few essentials at a laundrymat. Afterwards we ate at a restaraunt near the Vatican. They charged us way too much - random sitting fees, etc. just because we were tourists. It was annoying, but what were we going to do, fight with them in Italian?
Wednesday: We took a train to Bologna. We met a boy on the train named Brandon, he was from Canada. We ended up randomly running into him a lot over the next few days. We bought the largest map known to man of Bologna and made our way to our hotel. It was really nice.

We went to a restaraunt that our guide book recommended. It had the best Italian food we have ever eaten. To be honest, I'm not sure what I ate. On the menu it said ˝Tortelloni ricotta con burro saliva˝. Yes, I may have eaten burro saliva. It tasted like butter - maybe I like burro saliva. We ate some gelato, Ashley was proposed to by an Italian man who wanted to move to America. We went to a park where a homeless man stood and laughed at us. We decided maybe that was a sign we should leave the park.

We went back to the hotel and rested, then went out on the town. We ate french fries at McDonalds.

Then we went to a contemporary ballet performance/political protest. Who knows why they were happening at the same place, but there you have it.
Thursday: We took a train to Venice. We took a waterbus through the grand canal - I think Las Vegas did an excellent job of making Venice look real and a little bit nicer than it really is.

We ate lunch on some random island that the waterbus stopped at. Then we got back on the waterbus and ran into our Canadian friend Brandon. He went with us to the island of Murano where we shopped for blown glass jewelry that Murano/Venice is famous for. We took the waterbus back and went to St. Mark's square. The pigeons there are scarily tame and we were pretty freaked out.

Then Brandon told us about this great serve yourself restaraunt where we ate dinner. We got some gelato and went to the train station for our night train to Vienna. Upon our arrival we found out that the Italian train conductors were unhappy with their working conditions and had decided to strike. This meant that we had to stay in the most expensive, touristy city in Italy until we could get another train out of the country. Luckily we met someone who told us about a campground they were staying at just outside the city. He showed us where to take the bus and helped us get checked in there. We stayed in a cute little cabin at the campground. It really was more like a little village than a campground. It had some tents, but mostly cabins and trailers, plus a grocery store, a bar and a restaraunt.
Friday: We woke up and took the bus back into Venice. We caught our train to Vienna which took all day. Sadly, we needed to keep moving along, so all we got to see of Vienna was the train station. We immediately took a train to Sopron, Hungary. When we arrived in Sopron, Amy's brother and his companion came and took us to the branch house. They were having a Mexican themed branch party. We had a great time visiting with the missionaries, especially the senior couple who was there. They gave us some great advice about where we should go in our future travels. Then the senior sister rode the bus with us to the place where we are staying. It is the house of one of the members. She rents part of it out to the missionaries and part of it out to tourists. Her son just graduated from high school and spoke really good english. They keep telling us not to pay them, but we're going to try to anyway. We just met up Amy's brother and his companions and took them to lunch. We told them to order us some good Hungarian food. We had fried cheese with french fries, fruit soup, and crepes (mine had nutella in it). It was great.

We were glad to be with the missionaries, because there's no way we would have been able to order it on our own. In Germany and Italy we were able to make do with what little language we knew. Hungarian is a crazy language. We're pretty much mute here. We just hold up fingers and point to what we want. It's hilarious. Amy's brother taught us to say a few things, but our pronunciation is horrible.
Tomorrow we're off to Budapest, then Prague, then Berlin. We're having a great time. I can't wait to show you all pictures when I get home!