Venice! DAY 1

Prepare for a long and detailed post. I couldn't help it, i went to Venice today and it was pretty exciting. My program gave us one extended weekend (3 days) to travel anywhere in Europe, so I chose to go with Ali to Venice, Italy! AND Venice happens to be celebrating world-famous Carnival while we're there! :)

Thursday 2/11
DAY 1 (of the best weekend trip of my life)
Ali and I left for Victoria Station a bit after 6 am (tube>coach>airplane) for an 11:40 flight from Stansted. We missed our first coach (we were a bit lost) but we got the next one and were fine. The airport was funny… we flew Ryaniar, which is a budget airlines (no extra frills and you’re charged for everything) and there aren’t assigned seats on the airplane so it was a bit of a mad rush to find a good seat once you got past the boarding gate. It was too cloudy to see anything out the airplane window EXCEPT for the Swiss Alps! I was so excited to see them. We landed at Treviso (ITALY!) and took a bus out to Venice, which is actually an island.

We were dropped off at Piazzle Roma (Venice’s main port) in late afternoon and from there it was an adventure. Today I discovered that I love the feeling of being totally out of place and just heading off. Seriously it was so much fun! We had the name of our hostel - Ban Thai - and the street it’s on and we just headed off into the city. We asked some policemen for directions to find northern Venice and we just kept crossing bridges and little canals and following crowds.

Venice is a MAZE with obscure (sometimes nonexistent) street signs. Pretty much we kept walking until suddenly we ended up on the rght street, which was a small miracle because we have a map haha. We found the door of our hostel address but wasn’t sure if it was it because the name had been worn off the placard haha. And no one came when we rang the bell. Luckily a few guys showed up who are staying here too so they let us in with them. We followed them down a dark hallway to a little door, and it seemed kinda sketchy… but the hostel was great! Really small and cute. Only 2 rooms, a little kitchen, and a tiny bathroom. The 3 Italian guys are in one room and Ali and I are in the other. A Thai brother and sister are the hostel owners, they were so sweet. Ali and I went out to get cash and had some trouble because we couldn’t get the cash machine (ATM) into English. I can kinda-ish read some Italian though (I can read Spanish ok) and numbers are universal so it was fine. We paid our innkeepers and went out to explore Venice! Here's our room:

Wow... so Venice is probably the most beautiful city I have ever seen in my life! I have been dreaming of visiting Venice (all of Italy!) for a long time so I am super happy and excited to be here! It’s all so gorgeous it hurts my eyes haha. All the beautiful canals and old architecture and colorful buildings and gondolas and grand Italian culture and all the delicious gelato everywhere! Perfect.

I soon discovered that it takes forever to get anywhere in Venice because you just wander a crazy maze of tiny streets and canals and your only sense of direction is the occasional sign pointing towards a major area. That’s how we navigated… the three main areas are Piazzle Roma (western Venice), the Rialto Bridge (central Venice), and San Marco Piazza (southern Venice). As soon as we figured that out we were fine. And it’s not like you can get that lost on an island… We just wandered around for awhile and eventually made it to San Marco Piazza (aka St. Mark’s Square) which is a sort of city center with famous buildings. It’s also the center of many Carnival celebrations! It was crazy – filled with people in masks and some in costume, like Halloween but much classier and mostly with adults. There was a stage in the center of the square and a sort of garden, with giant insects and a lion made out of fruit and vegetables. Lots of lights and music and we had some fun just people-watching for awhile. And of course taking lots of pictures! It’s weird because the people in full costume are just regular people, but during Carnival they dress up in court costumes and walk around and pose and hundreds of people take pictures of them like they’re celebrities. :) There were also some “normal” random costumes – like pirates, fairies, witches, animals, star wars characters, teletubbies, etc.

After awhile we realized we were starving and so we left to look for dinner. It was funny because there are nothing but Italian restaurants in Venice. We found a small restaurant and I got spaghetti, but unfortunately it wasn’t that good or flavorful. I kept thinking that my mom’s spaghetti is so much better! I’m spoiled :) The water was expensive and they left a basket of stale bread that we couldn’t touch or we’d have to pay for. Dinner ended up costing 10 pounds (like $15ish)! So it was a bummer of a meal because we’d decided to go to a restaurant just once in Venice and it wasn’t even very good! Although Ali liked her meal better. Haha oh and… at the end of dinner I knocked over my (empty) glass and it fell to the floor and shattered! I felt so bad… I can be such a klutz sometimes. I would’ve felt even worse if I had liked the food more.
After dinner we tried to make our way back home (and look for gelato!) but we were lost. And weirdly enough it was only 8 pm and (maybe just the area we were in?) everything was dark and deserted. Kinda creepy. There were some weird guys who invited us to their place for a drink. Ew. Anyway we stayed near people (and away from creepers) and eventually found civilization again. Then… we had our first gelato! which was a much better Italian food experience :) I got stracciatella gelato (chocolate chip?) and it was so delicious. All I’d ever dreamed Italian gelato could be!

After going in a few circles and taking long-cuts, we realized we were still lost. We followed signs to Piazzle Roma and then had to retrace our steps to find our hostel, which we found kind of randomly because we didn’t recognize the street or area at all haha. Lucky us! :)