City hopping

So much has happened since leaving Ireland, I will just write briefly about our last couple weeks there. The second farm we stayed at was lovely, a historic Irish estate built in the late 1700s. We lived with an Irish family who had bought the estate, worked on restoring it and now opened it to the public come and visit. It was a totally different experience living with the family as opposed to just one American as on our first farm, and I loved the taste we got of that life.
Before leaving Ireland to fly to Paris, we stayed with Julia's mom's friend on her sheep farm in the Wicklow mountains, possibly the second most beautiful part of Ireland. June and her sister Tessa, lived together and ran the farm but were between the ages of 54 and 60-something. I was so impressed with how much they still did around the farm even though sometimes it felt like I was doing farm work alongside my grandmother and she was putting me to shame, flipping sheep on their back to treat them and riding an ATV to herd them. It was so enjoyable to stay with them and try our hand at herding and de-worming sheep. Super exciting, I know. And way easier and less gross than it sounds.
Last week we said goodbye after a month in Ireland and flew to Paris for 4 days there. We saw the sights, were duly impressed with the Eiffel tower, and wonderfully not overwhelmed by the Louvre. In a funny way, it kinda became our go- to spot as the only place with free internet we could find was in the Starbucks below the museum. Best email-checking experience ever. After that, we took a night train to Nice on the Mediterranean sea. That was rough, but we can sleep sometime when we're not in France, right? Nice was beautiful, the people a bit stuck- up but just the temperature we had longed for all those rainy days in the UK. We took a day trip to Grasse, 20 miles north of Nice, the perfume capital of the world, and an under appreciated amazing little town. We bought perfume and our last nutella crepe and prepared for the 10 hour/4 local Italian trains trip to Venice the next day.
I now cringe when I hear the phrase "local Italian train" as it conjures up memories of standing in a cramped walk-way of a train car with not enough room for 2 people to pass without becoming well acquainted with each other. Being dropped at little more than abandoned stations IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE Italy and with 6 min to figure out our connecting train. For 3 trains we didn't have time to make reservations so if we found an empty seat eventually an angry old woman would be yelling at us in Italian about how we took took her reserved seat. Then it was back to the walk way.
Within 20 min of arriving in Venice we were being screamed at by the 16 year old working the safety gate of the water bus and I was becoming incredibly disenchanted with Italy. For the rest of our time there and here in Rome, I have felt like a bad schoolchild, prepared to be yelled at by anyone, at any moment for some egregious error I am unknowingly committing. Maybe it is just cultural, Italians are loud, animated and expressive in every conversation they have. And I've watched way too much TV about the mafia.
Venice was totally worth it though, as romantic and cliche as you can imagine. Julia and I forgot our map the first day and wandered the streets instead, just seeing what there was to be seen. Sometimes a sidewalk ended in a canal or you had to go the most round-about way to avoid the water, it was beautiful and unlike any other city. Our hostel was on an island across the Grand Canal from the main part of Venice which meant a boat crossing had to be made twice a day, there and back. A single pass ticket costs close to $10, an absurdity, really, which means we were looking at paying $60 just to get back and forth for our time there. Fortunately, we found a website saying that they had been kindly allowed one stop without having to pay, a kind of unspoken rule. The first day we stupidly asked the man running the water bus about this. He looked annoyed, like he wished we had never asked and said we must pay full price. He went looking for change for our bills and by the time he returned, we were across the canal and he didn't have enough change so he let us go for free. Sweet, $10 saved! Taking this into account along with the fact that our first ticket had never been checked, we had never seen anyone else checking tickets and the fact that some random girl on our island told us it was perfectly acceptable to not have a ticket for just one stop, we decided to take our chances with our one stop rides and stop asking for tickets. Moral of the story, don't by a ticket for $10 for one stop on a water bus in Venice. And I typed that whole story put because I was so exceedingly happy that we had accidentally figured this out that it was my third favorite part of Venice.
We've been eating delicious gelato every day, but you know..when in Rome. No, actually, that was a completely useless piece of information, I just really wanted to use that phrase, and we are indeed now in Rome.