Recycling and Water Consumption Infographics

I am in the middle of my Day 6: Florence post, but I was doing some environmental research today and discovered these two amazing infographics that I wanted to share! I found many of the facts on these infographics completely startling, and even things like the time I spend in the shower or the amount of paper we use in the US made me feel guilty. Anyway, take a look and feel free to leave your thoughts below in the comments!

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get these images any larger than this, so you can click here for the water rich vs. water poor infographic and here for the Recycling: the good, the better, and the best infographic. Sorry about the inconvenience!

Day 5: Venice and Florence

Hello! This brings us to the middle of the 10 day adventure, and now that I am writing everything after the fact, I am just amazed by how much we did and saw every single day!  First, here are some leftover pictures from day 4!

We were able to see the church where the famous composer Vivaldi worked!

Cafe Florian is a famous (and apparently ridiculously expensive) cafe in Venice, so we took a picture outside of it and kept moving!

This is a picture of the entry of the Museo Correo, which was full of cool sculptures, old books, and a lot of other awesome stuff! And, we were able to get in free with our ticket stubs from the Doge's Palace!

I already know this post is going to be full of pictures, so click "read more" to see the rest!

Day 4: Venice!

Sorry about the delay... I went camping the past two days!

Day 4 of our 10 day adventure was full of wonderful things in Venezia, or "Venice" in Italian. It is crazy to me that every language gives cities and countries different names of cities, countries, etc. It gets kind of confusing, and I think it would be better if the host country/city used their own language to identify it at a worldwide level.

In the morning, we woke up early to walk to the main square, San Marco square to beat the crowds for the Basilica! These are pictures from our work to the square.

The ambulances! Fortunately, we did not need to use them!

There was already a line for the Basilica when we arrived, but we were lucky enough to wait in the shade and take in the beautiful scenery of the Doge's Palace!

These masks are very common in Venice, and there was a booth in San Marco square.

I think this might be out of order, but thought it was a very triumphant statue!

You can see the line, but more importantly the Campanile, which is the epic tower we went to the top of after visiting St. Mark's Basilica! It was gorgeous, but we couldn't take pictures inside. Therefore, I have included an online image of the outside and inside!

Now we are at the top of the Camponile tower! I love all of the red roofs of the cities!

After the Camponile, we toured the Doge's Palace! It was so beautiful and vast! This is a picture from one of the famous bridges of the Palace.

This is of one of the prisons in the basement/dungeons in the palace... kind of cool and also eerie. I wonder who spent time down here?

I don't know why these pictures are out of order, but they are some of the smaller details from the vast San Marco Square early in the morning.

From the door of the Basilica...

Outside the palace courtyard... not quite sure what it says but it is definitely unique!

The "golden ceiling" in part of the palace

A view of the palace courtyard

So, pictures weren't allowed in many of the rooms in the palace, and I followed the rules in every single room, except for this one, because it was soooo great! I loved how the walls were covered with maps and there were these giant globes in the center. I just took one and had to share it! Perhaps this is what my apartment or house will look like in the future! :)

Pictures were prohibited once again, so this is from the internet, but it is the largest, free-standing (as in no columns or pillars) room in Europe (this is only half of it)!  The walls and ceiling were so pretty, I almost felt like I was in something as famous as the Sistine Chapel! (we can talk about that in Rome)

We visited a museum full of old artillery.

Another part of the dungeon/prisons.

Here is a view of the famous bridge we were inside earlier!

After all of this sightseeing, it was time for a snack! We walked past a delightful bakery and all got a cannollo ("cannoli"). It was incredibly yummy!

As we were walking, we saw this delightful sight! No, it was not posed.

Elle drew an adorable picture of us on the paper placemat at the place we ate dinner!

More out of order pictures from the Camponile tower!

Next, we happened upon this adorable bookshop! This is what the "docks" or places to park your boat would look like. Perhaps you can see the black sign that says "fire exit" and shows a picture of someone swimming?

Just thought it was cool to have a popular American author with an Italian title.

The inside of bookstore!

And there was a cute cat outside of the bookstore!

Nom nom nom mail!

I haven't really mentioned it, but today we managed to eat gelato not 1, not 2, but 3 times! I think it was the best choice ever. I mean, how could a day of eating gelato 3 times possibly go wrong?  Especially when you go to the Boutique del Gelato, and order the chocolate mousse flavor. It was so DELICIOUS!!!

There is more to post from this wonderful day, but I am a little sleepy and this post is already plenty long! To be continued... :)

Day 3:Venice

After the Barcelona post being ridiculously long, I have learned my lesson and will break each city in the 5 city tour into 2 separate posts! When I was just going through my photos of Venice, there were 84 that I want to share! So, yay for multiple posts!

As we were leaving Barcelona, I knew it was going to be difficult for Venice to top the fun things we saw and the experiences we had.  Still, I was so excited to be going to a 3rd country, Italy! For my whole life, I have always put Italy on the top of my lists of countries I would like to visit, and that goal was about to come true!  We touched down in Venice after a short flight, and then we were on our way.

Immediately, reality set in, as we realized that we had no idea how to actually get to our hostel, and that we didn't speak Italian. Somehow we managed to get tickets for a waterbus that took us to  the appropriate island/stop, and then we ventured over lots of bridges and lots of twists and turns. I think it was the crabbiest I was the whole trip, since it was very very hot, especially in jeans and a long sleeve top, and I was getting so tired bringing the suitcase up and down the stairs on every single bridge without having any idea of where we were. However, somehow we made it and were surprised that our "hostel" was actually more of a little apartment, so that was nice. The downside was that there was no internet, but we somehow made do and had an amazing trip with our limited knowledge, map provided by the hostel, and a few documents I had saved on the desktop of my computer!

Our first stop upon arriving in Venice was eating pizza!! We went to a place that was recommended by the person who ran the hostel and it was so great! We had basically not really eaten all day with the exception of something small at breakfast, so it was basically glorious when these giant pizzas were delivered to our table! I ordered a pizza with spinach and parmesan, and it was out of this world! I love how Italian pizza has such a thin crust (think almost like a tortilla!), and it just tasted so fresh!

All of the travel guides I had saved on my desktop advised us to "get lost", so that is exactly what we did! We definitely saw some cool things!

While this post is nowhere near as long as Barcelona's, click "read more" to see the rest!