Venezia

Venice, I had seen it in movies, read about it in textbooks, looked at photographs of it from friends, and have always wanted to go there. Yesterday, I finally got the chance! Kaitlin and I decided against a long weekend trip and spend less money for a day trip to Venice on the first day of Carnival. Instead of messing with the train system and paying more money, we decided to let Bus2Alps plan our transportation (and just our transportation) there and back. Arriving around 1, we had eight hours to explore whatever we wanting in the city. Our first thought was to go see an Island off of the main city islands, Burano. It is built with many different colored buildings and homes and looks absolutely brilliant in pictures. Unfortunately, we didn't go on the water bus with the rest of the Bus2Alps crew and ended up not getting to Burano-- as people, including two clowns, kept giving us wrong instructions. It was one of our first experiences of truly being lost in translation. 

Nevertheless, after about an hour of water-bussing around, we were back to San Marco and were too hungry and too wide-eyed to be bummed out from missing Burano. We made it our first goal to find food-- and fast. It was about 3:30 by then and neither of had eaten that much today. We finally found a restaurant that served pizza for a good price. I ordered a Margherita pizza and Kaitlin had one with prosciutto and potatoes on it. We soon learned that it was a chain restaurant, but it sure didn't taste like it! It was probably the best pizza I have had since I have been in Italy. But really anything would have tasted good at that moment. After lunch, dinner... linner? we set out for some exploring. We tasted hot wine from the wine fountain that the Carnival festivities had brought to Venice. It was incredibly sweet, but it kept my hands warm.. so I was happy. Then we went inside of the St. Mark's Basilica. This had to have been one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. Inside was covered in gold and the vibrant colors that popped from the exterior of the building were beautiful against the blue grey skies.

Afterwards, Kaitlin and I checked out some of the Carnival activities and marveled over all of the costumes. Later we had met a lady who actually lived in Venice and she told us that this was the smallest crowd she had seen in a long time. She had been told it was because of the weather and the economic situation in Italy. Either way, I didn't mind and it was fun seeing adults have as much fun in their costumes as kids do when trick-or-treating. We set off later to explore around the city to see what we could find. There we so many hidden alleyways and turns that you could spend days just walking around this city and still not see everything. It was all so beautiful. The greyish-blue of the water versus the light pink and yellow of the buildings made my heard turn every few seconds. 

Kaitlin and I had bought masks earlier in the day, and I told myself that as the sun went down, my mask would come out. Sure enough, it was dark outside and I made an attempt to put my mask on for the rest of the night. But a couple of minustes later, I had to take it off because my ears no longer had my hat or hair covering them and they were about to break off. But that doesn't mean the fun was over. We stopped to buy postcards for souvenirs and noticed the Ponte Rialto on one of them. Soon after we went searching-- and finally found the beautiful bridge that (sort of) gives the Ponte Vecchio a run for its money (but only a little bit....) Crossing the bridge and a hundred pictures later we stumbled upon many bakeries and small shops.

Trying the many sweet delicacies of the Carnival was also on our list. So when the bakery looked good enough (which was almost always), we took a pit stop in side to look around at the pastries. We even tried a couple too. My favorite was a type of fritelle with cream inside and filled with bits of raisins. It was so good!  After a while, both Kaitlin and I were starting to get too cold to walk any longer. Luckily we came upon a really cool bookstore that had picture books, guide books, chapter books, italian books, english books... you name it piled on top of one another on shelves and tables and gondolas even. I looked around for any familiar books to purchase, but this shop sort of turned into more of an art project (it was so beautiful and colorful) rather than a book store. However, it kept us warm and the owner was so friendly! When we were leaving he told us ciao and that he loved us both. All in all I'm so happy we decided to go inside "the most beautiful bookstore in the world" (said the sign out front.)

Finally, it was an hour before we had to get back on the water bus to meet the Bus2Alps crowd in Florence. After returning to San Marco to see the last bit of the Carnevale festivities that day, we decided it was too cold to wait outside so we found a small "snack bar" for some tea. We sat there looking at our pictures and talking about the day, thankful for the hot tea and sample of cookies the owner gave us as a surprise. It was a really busy but great day and we were glad that we got to see as much as we did in one day. I definitely hope to get back to Venice sometime in my life when the weather is warmer to see more of the gorgeous city as well as Burano. However I don't know if I'll be taking Bus2Alps there (maybe somewhere else though), as we had to wait an extra hour for the buses to arrive... of course we chose the bus with the girl who was turning 21 at midnight and decided to be as loud as possible. But hey you only turn 21 on a bus once in your lifetime and luckily they all passed out shortly afterwards. 

Great first real adventure out of Florence (besides Pisa, I guess)! I have also updated the pictures so check them out here or on the link at the top of the page! Ciao ya'll! (kidding about the y'all part)