Eating ice cream when it rains and spending nights on German trains...

I had a really special birthday last week. When I left France, I took a train to Florence, where I spent a day and a half wearing holes in my soles trying to see all I could of the city. One of the highlights was the Giardino Boboli at the Palazzo Pitti, called "the most beautiful backyard in the world."

Just a small corner of the immense Boboli Garden

The palazzo was once the home of the Medici Family, whose wealth and love of art was largely responsible for the Renessaince. Many of art history's greatest masterworks were commissioned by this family: Brunelleschi's dome, the Sistene Chapel, numerous works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Da Vinci, Fra Angelico, Masaccio... Galileo himself tutored generations of Medici children, and named the moons of Jupiter after four of them! The family produced queens, rulers, popes, and it even had a black sheep, Savonarola, who was the driving force behind the "Bonfire of the Vanities," an event that destroyed many of the great masterpieces his own relatives had commissioned. He was hanged the following year.

But I digress. (I love art history!) I also had dinner with some old friends in a tavern that was once the workshop of Bronzino, an artist that I've always admired. And the food was great!

From Florence I moved on to Venice and met my friend Lori and her roommate Susan. I had a wonderful time with them, roaming the streets of Venice and cruising the Grand Canal. We also visited Murano, a small island famous for making blown glass.

Lori and I by the canal

It rained every day while we were in Venice, and it was chilly, but that didn't stop us from eating lots of Gelato - Italian Ice Cream! My brother and I had a theory when we were kids - ice cream actually warms you up when it's cold out, because it makes your insides match your outsides, so you don't feel so cold! (When you grow up in Minnesota, you have to come up with stuff like that, or you'd never get any ice cream at all!)

When Lori and Susan left I took a night train to Germany to catch my flight back to Mombasa. I love European trains, but I do not love German night trains. I was placed in a compartment with five other people and bunks stacked three-high on either side of a narrow aisle. Across from me was a German lady who was apparently terrified she'd miss her stop, because every hour or so all night long she sat up and cried out, "DUSSELDORF?!?!" Directly above me was a 300-lb. Slovakian man who made the bed creak in a most frightening manner, and across from him was his wife, who refused to sleep with the light off in case she woke up and had to use the toilet. Above those two was a German couple. The man snored continuously, and the woman yelled at him continuously to stop. So, I spent most of the night with my head under a scratchy blanket trying to block out the light and noise, praying that my life would be spared and calculating if it would be better to lay on my back, front, or side in case the bed above me should come crashing down. I'm still not sure about that...

Back in Germany, where I celebrated with my aunt Deb and uncle Steve