Italians.

Tonight I experienced my first home-cooked true Italian meal and let me tell you it got better with every bite. We left Nice this morning after breakfast at our hostel and headed for Trento, Italy, a city of 105,000 a short distance north from Venice. We are staying with Federica, another exchange student friend of Tims, which is a real blessing and also very fun as we get to meet and talk with the family. Tonight was quite entertaining as neither of her parents speak a word of English, but we had a good time sharing stories through translation and sign language.

We had a 10 hour train ride that was somewhat long and boring, but we made it across nearly the entire northern part of Italy. Funny thing - I ran into 2 people (who were traveling separetely from each other) from Minnesota, which gave me a good laugh. Small world, I guess.

We will be staying here in Trento for the next few days and are going to take short trips to Venice and the surrounding Italian Alps, which are beautiful. I am looking forward to tomorrow and a short hiking trip up the mountain and maybe a sled ride. The weather has been nice and supposedly will be sunny and beautiful tomorrow.

Anyway, I am going to go sleep and hopefully be rested enough to catch a sunrise coming over the Alps? I think that would start off the day right...