Munich, Venice, and Rome

I finally have some time to blog about the trip! It has been so busy and hectic going from one city to the next and trying to see as much as possible before leaving. Right now I amin Barcelona and we head to Paris tomorrow morning, bright and early.

I think Munich has been one of my favorites so far. We got to see a lot and it felt like we had enough time to see a good amount of the city. The first day we started off with a free walking tour. It was nice that we had already been to Berlin because our tour guide based most of the tour on comparisons with Berlin. The two cities are almost opposite. Munich is a very rich city with anolder population. They have a lot of pride in their Bavarian heritage. The tour gave us a lot of history behind what we saw- we saw the bar where the Nazi party had its first meeting and the church that Pope Benedict XVI is from.

Later that afternoon we visited the BMW site and the olympic park. We were going to go to the BMW factory, but they had already given their last tour of the day, so we just went to 'BMW World' to get a general idea of what it was like. They just had a information on all the different models of cars that they make. BMW has come out with a new GPS system, and so there was a lot of information about that as well. The olympic parkwas really good to visit. The 1972 summer olympics were held there, which is where Mark Spitz won his seven gold medals in swimming. We went in to visit the swimming pool and it was huge! There was also a memorial to honor the eleven Israelis who were held hostage and killed during the games.

The next day we visited Dachau Concentration Camp. It was such an inexplainable, sobering experience to be there, knowing that it was the place were so many people were inhumanly treated and killed. We took an audio tour of the camp, which was really helpful in gaining a better understanding of what has taken place there. Each of the buildings had an audio commentary, and there were also multiple recordings of survivors of the camp whotold their experiences. There was a huge museum that showed the history of the concentration camp- it was so much information, but it was very powerful. There were no mass executions that happened at Dachau, but thousands of people died under the harsh conditions there.

Venice was a unique experience. We arrived at the train station, then we had to takea "waterbus" to an island where our hotel was. We we got to the island we thought that we had to be lost. It was completely rural; all of it was farmland, and there was no one out to ask for directions. We tried using our cell phones to call the hotel, but none of them were working. We almost got on the waterbus to take it back to the city, but then my phone finallyworked and it turns out that we were in the right place, and the owner of the hotel came and picked us up in an old van. It seemed a little sketchy at first, but it ended up being the nicest place we stayed at. Theyoffered free bike rentals and breakfast, so we got up early the next morning and took a tour of the island. It was absolutely gorgeous. We spent the rest of the day eating gelato and pasta. We also walked to Saint Marcos square, which was also beautiful. Venice is such a relaxing, nice city, and a good break from all of the busy days we had had so far.
Rome was really nice; the weather was beautiful, and so was everything else. We found our favorite restaurant (Pastarito, where we ate three times) and our favorite gelateria. We visited all of the main attractions: Vatican city, the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, and the Pantheon. The Vatican has a huge museum full of beautiful art, including the Sistine Chapel. It took almost the whole day to go through it. We also went to the top of Saint Peter's Cathedral, and you could see the whole city from the cupola. It's so surreal visiting all of these places; I think I'll get back to the United States and almost be in shock that I've actually seen all of these places. It seems so normal to be there while I'm visiting them, but I know when I get back to theUnited States and when I'm looking through all the pictures it will seem so crazy that I've been to these places.