Christmas Break Excursion to Italy

The following posts will concern my Christmas break trip to Italy with my friend Patrick Yoho. Unlike our bike trip around France in October, we had very little of our trip scripted before we left. The only thing that we really knew was the order of the cities we wanted to visit and so this resulted in last minute train and hostel bookings, including a night in Pisa where we basically showed up to a hostel with our fingers crossed that there would be room (luckily it was Pisa so the answer to our question was "yes"). We suffered no negative effects from this freestyle approach and making plans as we went was quite liberating...at least until we got to Rome. Here we tried to buy a ticket home to France from Venice only to find out that all trains to France were booked through the 4th of January. In a panic we researched every other mode of transportation, air travel, bus travel, even the cost of renting a car (an astonishing 1000 euros for a simple 3 hour drive...since we were crossing borders). The only way we found to get back was by taking a train to Geneva, Switzerland and another from there back into France, a trip that cost us easily 50 euros more than if we had caught our desired train from Venice. Another problem that plagued us for the first few days was the fact that in northern Italy (Milan and Torino) weather problems had interrupted the telephone/internet connection between the ATM's and headquarters of our bank. Because of this we had no way to get cash for the first two days of the trip which led to a variety of misadventures and two starving travelers.
Ok so that is some background and general information for you. I have divided the trip up into seperate entries according to the cities we visited rather than by creating one giant entry for the whole trip as I did for the France tour. I hope this makes it easier to read. Also I am going to be writing less and posting more pictures. This will please both your eyes and help me get these posts up quicker :). Ok well here it goes, I hope you enjoy hearing about it all. Comment and tell me what you think!