Italy

First things first, if anyone has any idea how to upload photos to a blog with the iPad let me know. It must be child locked or something cause I can't figure it out.

Well I'll catch you up first. I believe the last place we left off at was Manchester. The next day we took a bus down to Liverpool which was an awesome little city. And if you didn't know it before you got there you would definitely know it when you arrived that they are the hometown of the beetles. There are so many pubs and clubs claiming to be the original one where it all started that we contemplated just club hopping for the whole night so that we would be guaranteed to hit the right one. With a little tip from Roy though, we found a place called the cavern which we discovered was the only one telling the truth. After a nice pint of fosters we called our journey a success and called it a night. The next day we had a morning to kill before catching a flight to Italy so we decided to go check out "the beatles story" which was a museum of the beatles. Being one of kalias all time favority bands it was a must. Im not sure what I expected to be honest but for the thirty or forty dollars or whatever it costed I was expecting something pretty magical. I kept thinking maybe we'd get to have a private concert with Paul McCartney or something. But after a few hours of walking through hallways of posters of the beatles and wax sculptures of them it was over and we were both a little let down. But on the bright side it was pouring rain when we got too the museum and by the time we got out it was nice again so there was one plus out of it.

We arrived in Venice a couple days ago, tuesday i think it was, at about nine thirty or so. Not the greatest time of day to experience our first language change. We got off the plane and got tickets on a bus to a town called mestre which was not the tricky part but still took some finangling. The worst part about lower class hotels and hostels in italy is that they havent fully captured the power of the internet yet and trying to find directions or even a website with bus routes is next to impossible. I knew our hotel was somewhere around that town thoug but not exactly sure where and we both didn't feel like taking some unknown bus to who knows where and be even more pooched so we began to walk. I won't bore you with every detail but the long story short, is that after about four kilometers of walking down this ling road in the dark, and passing what must have been about one prostitute every fifty meters we finally arrived at midnight and were able to call it a night.

For as awful as that night was though the city made up for it the next day. We caught the bus in in the morning, and our jaws literally dropped when we walked to the top of the first bridge and looked out onto the city. As we literally say every time we see anything amazing here, you can see all the pictures you want but nothing compares to seeing it in person. Even watching the Italian job could get me ready for how awesome this city was. There must have been a few hundred canals at least through the city and literally after we would pass over every one I would lose my mind. A close second to the city as well was the gelato. Oh my word, it was ridiculous. It's pretty unfortunate because I'm fairly certain it will be ruined for me for life. The white rock stuff which i used to think was delicious just does not compare. It's worth it though. As someone told us and the rule we now live by, is that when your in italy you must eat at least two scoops of gelato every day. And if anyones wondering we didn't get to go on one of those cool looking gondola rides through the canals because they actually cost about eighty dollars or so. Oh well, venice was still a great great time.

We are actually in Florence at the moment and are about to go check out the uffizi museum so we must go. I'm sure kalia will fill you all in before we head to Rome though as we won't have wireless for about a week I believe.

G and k

Manchester, England

We made it! We arrived on Saturday, Oct.23 at 11:06 am. The airplane said what time it was when we landed...
Once we we got to what was our home for the next two days (thank you Steve!) we fell asleep for a few hours. Neither of us really slept on the plane. After we woke up we decided to go walk around outside in search of a computer store and a drug store. We had success in the drug store search, but found out the computer store was "in town" and we'd have to take a bus to get there. We decided against this idea because we would have had no idea what bus to take to get back home, since neither of us thought to write down our address or even what street we were living on. We later found out that town was an hour long bus ride away.
That evening we researched flights to Venice, Italy. We found one leaving from Liverpool on Tuesday. So we get to spend a night in Liverpool tomorrow :) Yes dad, The Beatles! Janaya I will take lots of pictures for you.
Today, we slept in until 2:30 in the afternoon. We were stunned. 14 hours of sleep! We were convinced Grae would wake up early since he has an internal clock set to wake up at 7 every morning. I guess it's still there because that's what time it would have been at home right? We're going to be awake for a long time tonight. We're having a Lord of the Rings marathon (we watched the first one last night). Everything is too far away for us to go out and have a night life.
Next time you hear from us we'll be somewhere in Italy! Hope everyone is doing well.

- g&k

Tomorrow

Well we leave tomorrow at 4:55pm, to fly directly to Manchester!  We are both very excited, and slightly nervous for this new adventure.  We promise to try very, very hard to blog as often as we can... but be easy on us, this is our first.  See you in a few months everyone!