Italy

What a country. Each place we visited was a completely different city. To me, that made this country the most interesting. We first went to Venice. Yes, it is exactly the way it seems in brochures. As we walked throughout the city, we got "lost". Apparently you are supposed to get lost. The alleys are very narrow and there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to how the streets were formed. Signs can be hard to follow and it is very easy to reach a dead end. However, it was really cool. The weather was nice and cool, yet we had all sunny days when we were there. The one thing that I would change about my experience is to be lost in their labyrinth. In my opinion, if you are always trying to figure out where you are going and focus on trying to get to your end destination, it takes away from the city and its "meandering".
One place that I would recommend that no one stay is at the Venice Museum Hostel. The people who ran the place were young and seemed very inexperience. They were also very unorganized. What we asked for was not what we got and the private bathroom was no private. In fact, everyone in the hostel was welcomed to use this particular one. So all night, people were in and out of our bedroom. It was not so nice. The only good thing about this place were the people we met and the convenience of the place.
It was a little sad to leave Venice, but I will be back with the love of my life. :)
Florence was really nice too, but in a different way. We stayed at an awesome hostel called Plus Florence Hostel. I swore it was a hotel. My favorite part of the whole trip was the wine tour we took. We traveled through Tuscany to this farm. We had the most wonderful view, food, and wine. Bought two bottles to share with Justin's family in Maine. We visited Siena. Very cool town and the history of their districts was very interesting. Part of the James Bond movie was filmed there. We then went to San Gimignano. It was very neat. It is like a castle built on top of a hill. We only spent about an hour there, but it was nice. The last part of the tour was to go to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Also very neat, but really the only thing to see in that city. All in all, it was the best part of the trip for me. If you are interested we took the tour, The Best of Tuscany Tour. It wasn't so bad of a price either for all the things we got to do. :)
We also went to see The David. Everywhere you go in Italy there seems to be something done my Micheangelo.
Our last stop was Rome. Wow, what a city. There is so much history that it can be very overwhelming to try and take it all in. We decided to pay to take a "hop-on, hop-off" bus around the city. It was a great idea. We were able to get from one place to another easily and quick, except for the part of waiting for the bus. :) And we were able to soak in a little of hot sun and sweat from the top. :)
We overall had a wonderful time. The only that would have been better if more of our friends were able to make it.

Greece

See a couple of my friends was fabulous! We had a great time on our small vacation. I say small in comparison to how large Europe is. :) We stayed in Athens for five days. It was hot, hot, hot. We went to a couple of beaches and once again I got my weird tan lines. I just don't know how I do it, but it happens every year. Geesh. We saw Acropolis and other ruins that we quite surprising to see. We would walk down the street, and boom... there was another one. We also took a small train, like the ones at parks and it took us around the center to see other things. There was one night when we were waiting for a long time and thought that it would never come. We didn't want to walk back to the hotel because we didn't know how far it would be. The train finally came after we decided to hunt it down. The next day we went walking around to go shopping. We didn't walk too far and then realized that the place we ended up was the exact place where we waiting for the train. I guess we weren't too far out like we had thought. :D We did a lot of walking and had great gyros. :)

London

I made a trip to London again to see Justin before doing his research. What wonderful weather we had. All sun, except for the day we went to the archives. We made some small trips while in London to see more. We went to Nottingham for the weekend to visit a friend that Justin had made through couch surfing. It was a great town. A lot of shopping and cool places to see including Robin Hood's oak tree, and the Mansion of the Sheriff of Nottingham. Shanele even took us to a nearby university to take a short ride on a rowing boat. Good idea Shanele! We left Nottingham and never ventured into the heart of London. Surprisingly we stayed on the outside and walked through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Very lovely place. We saw there a conflict between two groups of people about trash and how one group didn't pick up after themselves. Needless to say, there was a small quarrel but it ended with no casulties. :)
We did a little bit of shopping and enjoyed spending time with one another.
We visited Kew Gardens near the library. It was a very nice and sunny day. Quite a large park and we will have to go again to see the stuff we didn't get to see the first time.

Liepaja

My short weekend trip to Liepaja was a lot of fun. What an interesting city. It is located on the coast of the Baltic sea and is about a three hour trip from Riga. The city used to be the main military base for the Russians during occupation. Andris told a lot of stories to us about his childhood and the area that was the base at that time. It was pretty interesting. We went around the city on Friday. Unfortunately it was raining so we decided to go bowling. That was a lot of fun. Of course, I was the ultimate champion. :) We hung out for the remainder of the evening where Andris and Alona stayed. It was quite nice and very cool because it had a communal room which was very old and rustic. Jeff and I later went back to our hotel room to get some rest and see the rest of the city.
We first went to the beach. It was amazing. The sand was so soft, the weather was perfect, and there was amber on the shore line everywhere. Jeff and I were so excited that we searched and collected on the shore for quite some time. I now have my own personal collection. Hopefully they don't take it away at the airport. The rest of the day was spent doing odds and ends. We went to visit the prison that was actually featured on a US show. It supposedly is haunted. We didn't go it, but it was small and not so creepy on the outside. We then went around the military base where many buildings were abandoned and old. That was a bit scary. We also had the privilege to meet Andris' mom. She was very sweet. She fed us a great lunch. The building in which they lived in was very different. The only running water they had was their sink and it only produced cold water. This is why Andris loves washing dishes now because the water is warm. :) They only had a communal bathroom which they shared with the rest of the building. It was located down the spiral staircase in the hall. When they were growing up, if they wanted to bathe they had to go down to the building and pay money in order to do it, so they only did this once a week. Man, I couldn't imagine living life like that knowing how life could be lived.
All in all it was a very cool trip. Liepaja is probably the best city to visit other than Riga because of all of its history.