Venezia

Finally, I have time to update! Hooray! We just got to Munich about an hour ago (quite early in the morning - we had a night train, I slept on the floor...I feel so clean...not). But now, we're sitting in our hostel doing laundry! Oh how excited I am that laundry is being done!! (No sarcasm there). Even though it was two weeks ago, I'll tell you about Venice

Getting to Venice from Interlaken took a while. It was a day of train rides. I slept a lot on the train and only had some peanuts to eat, so I was definitely ready for real food. As soon as you step out of the Venice train station the Grand Canal is RIGHT there. It was a cool sight to see! It made us really feel like we were in Italy! There was water everywhere and it was such a nice day outside. But of course, our first task was to find our hostel, because these backpacks aren't getting any lighter! It was a bit difficult to find a hostel in Venice because Venice itself is an island and so most of the less expensive hostels were on the mainland. So we had to get a bus ticket and find the correct bus and then the correct stop, relying solely on our directions from Hostelworld.com and the zero Italian we knew. Well, if you haven't guessed by now, we got a bit lost. We were on the right bus but the stops didn't announce where they were, so we didn't know where to get off, and we were being whimps and were too intimidated by the new language and culture to ask someone right away. Well, we rode the bus all the way to the end, and then asked, and rode it back the other direction and the driver showed us where to get off (wish we would have done in the first time, but oh well). We walked in the wrong direction at first, and so we had to back track a little bit. At this point, gelato was definitely in order. We stopped and got our first Italian gelato! Delicious! After we get our gelato, we make the trek to our hostel. We seem to be walking through a sketchy bit of town, and through some underpass with graffiti everywhere, but nonetheless, we make it safely to Camp Jolly. We checked in and had our own little cabin thing, so that was nice.

Unfortunately, we got there so late in the day that the shuttle was only making one more trip and we wouldn't have time to go explore Venice for the evening and get our real Italia meal :( We could have taken the bus again, but we didn't want to walk through the sketchy area again. So we were stuck. We spent the rest of the evening just hanging out. Took some much needed showers, ate some pizza, and did some laundry.

The next day we finally got to go see Venice. Well, after some delay. We had to wait an hour and a half to catch the shuttle because it was booked until noon. Then we had to immediately go to the train station to book our train ticket the next morning to Athens and store our bags. And of course there were lines. So we didn't actually get to explore until like 1:30 or so. Blah. But of course, first stop - gelato. Just a forewarning, we got a lot of gelato while in Italy, so this may get redundant.

We didn't really have much of a plan for Venice, just walk around, and take it all in since we only had one whole day there. I thought it was really pretty. The walkways are really tall so it's sometimes hard for the sun to get through, so it makes it seem a little dodgy at times, but it was fine. We walked to Piazza San Marco; it took a while because Venice is hard to navigate! But we made it eventually. The Piazza as cool - big, pretty palace thing, and a bell tower. We didn't feel like going into anythig because there were lines, so we took some pictures and walked toward the water (which was like at the edge of the Piazza). We just walked along the water and looked at the little vendor stands and people watched. There were so many people - and pigeons! It was fun to just mosey around though. We sat for a bit and then went to go get some food.

After finding some calzones from a little store, we walked a bit more. We felt a little bad because we didn't actually DO anything in Venice besides walk around and see a couple of things from the outside, but we were happy with what we did. And it turns out, that's what most people suggest to do - just walk around and take it all in. A day was definitely all we needed.

WARNING: Mom, if you don't want to know, don't read any further. :)

We had a 6:30am train ride to Ancona the next day so that we could make our Ferry to Greece by 1, so we could NOT miss our train. We were afraid of another Madrid-Barcelona incident and so we decided to camp out at the train station. We weren't sure how early the buses started running, and the shuttle from our hostel didn't start until like 9. Our hostel was so far out, we would have had to get up at like 4am to make it in time, and we were just really afraid we would over sleep. So we canceled our hostel and decided to be brave. I had read in a couple of my Europe books, that if you ever find yourself without a place to stay, the train station is usually a good place to go - and sure enough it was. We went to a cafe/bar until 2am, and then made our way back to the station. There were a bunch of people doing the same thing. We thought we were going to be able to hang out inside the station, but it closed until like 4am. So we sat outside, next to some other English speaking kids our age until they opened up the doors. I was grateful for our safety, but boy was it a miserable night. I was a little too scared to sleep, and so I maybe got 30 minutes, and it was FREEZING! I was not dressed for it. Nonetheless, we made it through the night with no problems, eventually defrosted and successfully got on our train to Ancona!

Venice = success; next post - Greece!