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This zone covers Czech Republic, Italy and French Riviera.

We went to the capital of Czech Republic i.e. the city of Prague / Praha. I found the stuffs on sale here were very cheap. Most of the tourist spots were close together. They were Flea Market, Republiky Square, Orloj, Národni Museum, Prasná Brána (Powder Tower) and Karluv Most. I also noticed they were a lot of talented artists on the street. Some of them sold artistic crafts, while others played music instruments, singing, and drawing.

The journey continued to Italy. As usual we took a night train. This time was to Florence (Firenze). We´ve heard cases of stolen bags and important documents happened around Italy before (it could happen even in broad daylight). But we never expected it could happen to us that night since we weren´t even in Italy yet. That night it was my turn to sleep first. We noticed a suspicious guy kept passing by our coach but somehow we didn´t expect anything. After a while I was awaken by a commotion between Ana & As. It turned out that one of their bags was stolen when we were asleep. After a thorough search of both the bag and the guy (actually not thorough enough ´coz obviously we couldn´t just went into other people´s cabins), we failed to find them. After reaching Florence, we straight away lodged a police report. One funny thing happened though. The police who recorded our reports had to speak Italian first, before he himself translated them into English. Well, at least he tried to help, right?

Despite of the bad morning, we carried on with our plans. At Firenze, our main purpose was to go to this flea market, which sold many leather products (belts, wallets and handbags) at very reasonable prices. In fact we spent the whole morning there. While at Florence you can see a lot of artworks (sculptures and paintings) by Italian and foreign artists from 13th to 18th century. Examples are arts by Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo and Donatello.

Later in the afternoon we took a train to Rome and spent a night there. We had a good night sleep. The next morning we only went to the Colosseum. We had another bad experiences in Italy. We saw this guy wearing like a gladiator and he offered us to take pictures together. What we didn´t know was that he would charge us 10 000 Lire (about 3.60 pounds) for each photos although we were using our own camera!

Well, enough with that. We were rushing for the next train to Pisa that afternoon. Due to the time budget that we planned, we visited only the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The tower was smaller that I expected. At that time, nobody was allowed to get in ´coz they were doing some renovations on it. I´m sure it would be quite a climb. Frankly, the building looked like it was going to crumble anytime or something.


There was no direct train from Pisa to Venezia (Venice). We had to go to Firenze first. That night, surprisingly there were so many people boarding the same train. We had to stand along the isle among many others. I didn't sleep the whole night and sometimes I had to squat due to the sleepiness.

We arrived very early in the morning at Venezia. After the fog had settled, we noticed that the canal was just a few metres in front of the train station main entrance. The buildings are so crammed together; even having a good map might not help you if you were lost in the "maze". We took a gondola ride (don´t miss it!) and passed some historical buildings like the Casanova´s building and Acqua Alta (Piazza S. Marco). We were informed that during the months of October and November, the city was flooded up to the first floors of the buildings. We noticed they had road signs too (or it´s more apt to call them as ´water signs´).

To avoid collisions, the gondolas always move on the left side of the canal and they would say "Oi!" to signal other gondolas at corners. Before we took off that night, we savoured some of the Italian delights (pizza, spaghetti and pasta). It tasted different (good, that is) from the normal pizza and pasta that I ate before.

Nice (pronounced as niece) in French Riviera (Southern France) was indeed a nice one! You can go to spots like Palais De Justice, the Opera, The Marine Museum and Castel Plage. Monaco was only about 20-minute trip by train from Niece. The views along the journey were splendid (coastlines and hills). Nice and Monaco have one thing in common - beautiful beaches. Other places you can visit in Monaco; Palais Princier, the Casino, National Museum, Jardin Japonais and the F1 track.