We arrived at Marco Polo airport around 9am. We took a bus from the airport to some area around Venice. Then we took a boat shuttle to our stop by our hostel. Venice was BEAUTIFUL! It was also freeeeeezing compared to Rome. Our hostel was more of a bed and breakfast and it was so cute. It was on the first floor of the building and the man in charge of it was so sweet. He let us shower even though our room wasn't ready. We left our bags there and went outside to experience Venice.
I still can't believe I was actually in Venice. I've literally wanted to go there for my entire life, simply because of the canals and gondolas. We walked toward St. Mark's Square, which is kind of the center of town. Our bed and breakfast was very conveniently located, we had to cross three or four bridges to get to the square. We were walking along the water and we noticed that the water was splashing up over the sidewalk. We joked about how we heard that Venice was sinking. Then we saw St. Mark's Square and stopped joking.
At first we were confused, why were people walking on those concrete picnic tables? Then we saw the water. The majority of St. Mark's Square was 3-5 inches underwater. I'm not kidding. It was so weird. There were tons of people following each other along these concrete picnic table things so that they didn't have to walk in the water. Then there were the people wearing rain boots who were trooping through the water. I still can't get over it.
The areas that weren't submerged in water had street vendors selling random Venice memorabilia. We walked around and got to areas that weren't submerged, took lots of canal pictures and walked in and out of stores. Also we saw someone from Entertainment Tonight filming and doing a recap of the movie The Tourist that was filmed in Venice with Angelia Jolie and Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp is following me!
We continued shopping after that and I'm not sure what the obsession was, but every store we went in had really fancy masks. They had regular fancy masks and then masks that had animal faces on them. They also had tons of leather items and I ended up buying a genuine Italian leather purse for 15 euro later in the day.
We got some pizza for lunch, which definitely not as good as Rome pizza (this was New York style). Sammie and I got gelato, mine was tiramissu. We wandered over to the Rialto Bridge and stood there in awe for literally ten minutes, just staring at the water.
We walked back to our hostel to take a nap because we were all really tired. We got back to the bed and breakfast and napped for about an hour and a half and woke up at 4:30 to go back outside. We walked outside and decided to get a gondola ride. We talked the gondola man into giving it to us for cheaper, and Erin asked him to put his gondola-man hat on. The gondola ride was so fun! It was perfect because it was dusk, not freezing, and something I always wanted to do. We went through the canals and saw the Rialto, the Bridge of Sighs, and a bunch of museums.
After our gondola ride, we went to get dinner. We stopped at this little Italian place that we passed before and the host was in love with Erin. When we went back this time the guy kissed Erin on the lips because he was so happy to see us. I felt pretty bad for her, it was very strange. Italian men are so forward. I had spaghetti bolognese for dinner. It was was the perfect setting because we sat right next to the water by the Rialto, with a little fire heater right next us. So Italian.
After dinner we walked around a little bit more, stopped in a bar and got Italian coffee, and went back to the bed and breakfast to watch Italian tv and sleep. Our beds were so comfortable and the room was so cute. We woke up around 9:30 and ate the breakfast that our b&b guy set up for us, then took the water bus to the bus stop. We took the bus back to the airport and basically sprinted to the gate because we were late. We just made it.
We took a bus back to Victoria station, which took 3 hours, and then took the tube back to school. Friday night I went to Laura's play, Arsenic and Old Lace, in Whitechapel. I'll have to write about that later because it was hilarious. All day Saturday and Sunday I relaxed and watched lots of tv. This week I just did homework and went to class. Today (Wednesday) I volunteered for a really long time, but it was so fun because I got to design/decorate the art board and make graffiti letters. After that Sammie and I went to the Museum of London for a class and to the Senate House Library to return books, and then I came back to school. I wrote an essay today and now I'm going to go to bed because I'm going to MADRID THIS WEEKEND!
M
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