Venice-Long awaited day 1

First of all, I'm terribly sorry that I didn't post last night. I was actually trying to do homework (aren't you proud?) and by the time I looked at the clock it was well past my bed time, and any sentence that I would have typed would have looked something like: thewuick brown foasx juqqpmed over the lazy doggs.e

See? Aren't you glad that I didn't publish anything to the internet? It's just better that way.

Anyway, I will now attempt to adequately fill you in on what I did this weekend! (Drum roll please) I went to Venice!  Woohoo! Ok, the end.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'll give you all the dirty details, don't you worry.

So on Friday morning Molly, Erica, and I got up at a reasonable hour so that we could drop by Giovanni's and fuel up for a busy day. Then we caught the train to the airport where, you guessed it, we got on a plane.  To be more specific, we used one of those nifty electronic ticket machines and it just scanned your passport and printed off your ticket and BAM, you could get on the plane. (You know, after you go through security and such. Let's be real.)

After 15 minutes on the runway and a 45 minute flight, we landed in the city of gondolas, masks, and glass. (I typed 'class' there for a minute, and I think that's reasonable too.) The first thing we thought was, ah, well crap, it's raining. But then, like a bolt of lightening, we opened our eyes and noticed all of the stunning colors that the rain was literally bringing out of the woodwork and paving stones. It was basically the most beautiful city I have yet to see anywhere. We're talking the kinds of colors where you look down and want to literally video tape the street. Not the people walking on the street, the actual stones you are walking on. It's that pretty. Then you add on the canals, the boats, the seafood, the masks, the glass, and the lack of car traffic (where would they drive? Nowhere. The streets are too narrow and have too many right angle turns, and almost always end at water or stairs to a bridge.  Those are all bad things for motor vehicles.) make it absolutely stunning.

We dropped off our stuff at the hostel, got that biz-nas taken care of, and began our explorative adventures. We walked around for a while, staring with mouths wide open at all of the mask shops. Insisted on going in several (ok, these things are amazing. All of the walls are covered in masks just made for people like me who insist on pretending to be other people, or like Erica who live the Phantom of the Opera on a regular basis.) We found some lunch where Molly had the extreme pleasure of having "scallops" otherwise translated as chicken, and Erica tried some octopus. Who said we weren't adventurous?  Eventually, we decided that we would walk over across town to find what is probably Venice's (that sounds funny) most well known crown jewel: St. Mark's Basilica.

So we grab our nifty map and start walking. Now here's something that you may have guessed, Venice is actually constructed somewhat like a maze. All of the streets pretty much lead back to some sort of canal, but the trouble is that they do not all lead to a part of the canal (which ever it may be) where a bridge is. Therefore the next hour or so was dedicated to winding around streets that you could reach your arms out and touch both sides getting back to bridge-less parts of the canal, and turning around and going back the way we came. After many detours and scenic routes, we finally arrived at the San Rialto bridge and finally felt like we had made it to somewhere significant! Not that wandering around Venice wasn't significant, because we learned a lot about the city.

So we amused ourselves taking pictures of St. Mark's in the dark and mimicking sculptures as well as very large modeling adds. We had finally reached a point where everything was beautiful and we were just so happy to be in Venice. Thus, we took pictures only between the group hugs, and eventually we decided that we should wander toward some food.

In this process of searching for something we discovered that there were some gondolas lined up along the quieter canals.  This is what we call dream fodder. So on a whim, and fully intending to actually get in a gondola at some point this weekend, we went up to ask how much a ride for the three of us cost. With the initial bid of 100 euros, we walked away to consult each other. 3. 2. 1. Second gondola-eer (that's just what I'm going to call them) followed us with an improved number of 90 euros for the three of us. 40 minutes? 90 euros? SOLD. We jumped in the boat and we were off seeing the city of Venice by night, in a gondola.  Bucket list: Check.

After 40 minutes of awesomeness, we got Marco (the gondola-eer) to take a picture of us, and we actually went to find food. Hey guys, remember that time we rode a gondola in Venice? Oh yeah, those were the good old days.

So we had dinner and reflected on how freaking amazing our lives are, and that we were in Venice, and that we're awesome, and that we had another two days to explore this magical city.

Tay tuned for day two!