Florence, Venice and Eastern Europe

Sorry I havn't written a blog in so long but life has been strange and hectic! So after Rome we took a train to Florence, birthplace of the Rennaissance. Our hotel was very cute. There were only 7 rooms and each one was dedicated to a famous painter. We were in the Giotto room. The staff was very very nice and a nice breakfast was included in the price. Too bad we only had two nights there. On Valentines Day we sought out a quaint and romantic place to have dinner. Had veal and lamb and fresh cheese and wine. It was great until two young idiot American teenagers were sat next to us! There were tons of young American's around Florence. We found out it was because of a couple of American schools nearby. Anyway, for the most part Florence was a welcome respite to the seediness and filthyness of Rome.
Our next destination was Venice. We didn't have a great initiation into Venice. The weather was foul, soooo foggy, cold and drizzly. We got the station and catch a train to another station then we had to find a waterbus to take to our hotel. The waterbus was €5 each for 1 ride!!! And it was so crowded that we couldn't get on the first one and to wait for the next one. We began to get grumpier and grumpier. With our bags and the weather and the expensive transportation and rude people. We finally got to our stop and the directions we had gotten off the hotel website were a little wrong. When we found our hotel the room was small, stunk of mildew and had mold growing on the walls. The next day the weather was a bit better and we found the nicest, cutest place for breakfast right across from where we were staying. We started to take photos around Venice and had to admit it was very pretty and every view was just like a painting. Little bridges and boats and peeling paint. We went into San Marco Cathedral and were hearded in and out without time to stop and take in the massive amount of mosaic and floor decorations in about 5 minutes. No joke! We also toured the Doge's palace and paid for a guided tour. (it was amazingly cheap compared with everything else in Venice). The tour was fantastic and we learned a lot of Venice's history and famous government system of the past. The day we left was the first day of the Carnivale festival so the streets were packed and lots of people were wearing costumes and masks. Pretty cool but we were glad to depart in the afternoon and get on a train to Prague.
Our train was soooo nice compared to the other night trains we had taken. We were alone in the compartment and had free water and nicer mattresses and linen. We though we had died and gone to heaven. We settled in for a 14 hour train trip direct from Venice to Prague. Everything fell apart about 7:30 the next morning when the train woman came in and told us that the train was very very late and would not now be going to Prague! We also were not to get the breakfast we were promised. To make a long story short, we were dumped out at a small station in the middle of Austria called Linz. (Have to admit the views of the mountians and snow covered villages from the train were breathtaking!) We had no Euros left since we were going to Prage where the don't use them. We didn't even have enough money to use the toilet! We had to get out more money and pay for tickets on the next train to Prague. We were tired, pissed off, starving and had to wait 3 hours til our train left. The train rides (2 trains) to Prague was long crowded slow and Damien said it felt like something out of a movie. By the time we got to Prague needless to say it was getting late, very cold, we were tired of lugging our big bags around and we just wanted to find our hotel. We had the hardest time!! Everything was a challenge, getting money, getting change for a big bill, going to the toilet, and most of all figuring out how to get to the other side of the station to get to our hostel. The station was filling up with nighttime ner do wells and suspicious looking characters. After more than an hour we got on a tram (without tickets) and found our hostel which was clean and quiet but had crappy beds.
I don't have much time left here to write about Prague but we were mainly consumed with trying to figure out what to do next since we no longer wished to remain in Prague in teach English.
So, I am here in London again at a strange little hostel in a room with 1 guy who might be from Spain and 3 young Swedish girls who have been living here for a while and the room shows it! We leave very early tomorrow morning for Indy!