Feb. 17
Venice is by far the most beautiful city I have ever been to. My favorite city yet! It didn’t hurt that we had a beautiful weekend too…
We got into Venice on Friday evening. Our hostel (Hotel Villa Serena) was not on the island, so after dropping off our stuff, we took the bus then the water taxi to meet up with some other people from our group at the San Marco square. There was a huge stage set up in the square with a lot of different performances- juggling, singing, and dancing were what we got to see. Venice is somewhat lacking in night-life, so after these performances ended around ten, we decided to make our way back to our hostel. On the way, however, we came across a bar that looked pretty lively. Marlee, Kelly, Jill, Whit and I sat down at a table just to take it all in. We got some free popcorn (always a plus!), a few drinks, got the DJ to play Marlee’s favorite song (to which she naturally danced on the table), and we called it a night.
Kelly, Marlee, me, Whit, Jill
Feb. 18
Once again, we met everyone at the San Marco square to start our day. From there we let Marlee lead us (always a questionable decision) to a spot that her travel book recommended for lunch. The tiny sandwich shop had an interesting, if not very disturbing, display of naked women all over its walls. I must admit though, the sandwiches were pretty good. After exploring the island of Venice, purchasing the traditional Carnevale masks, and sitting by the water drinking a couple glasses of wine, we boated to an island called Marano- famous for glass-blowing. The boat ride was about 30 minutes and the weather was absolutely amazing. Although it was just a water taxi, I think I will call it a cruise. Yes, I went on a cruise in Venice. Once at the island, we watched some glass-blowing, explored all the little shops full of glass figurines and anything glass you could think of, then made our way back to Venice. From beautiful weather to sitting by the water and drinking wine to exploring these cute little towns and shops, I’d say this was in the top 10 best days of my life. Some may say that this is an exaggeration, but those people have never been to Venice.
On the cruise with my new mask!
Glass blowing
That night, we went out to dinner at a little restaurant with great food. From there, we went back to “our” square, played a few games of musical bottles (musical chairs with wine bottles) with some fellow young adults enjoying Carnevale, then continued on back to the water to explore a little more. Since there is not much of a night-life in Venice, we called it a pretty early night again and made our way back to our hostel.
Feb. 19
Around 6 a.m., Whitney jumps out of bed and runs to the door, convinced that part of our group that is staying on the island is yelling our names outside our hostel. I am not sure if she was dreaming or if she really heard voices, but nonetheless our friends had not gotten the name of our hostel, traveled the twenty minutes from their hostel to ours, figured out which room was ours, and stood outside shouting our names. Our adrenaline quickly subsided and we were back asleep.
Some dinner leftovers made their way back to our hostel Saturday night. On Sunday, we woke up (after Whitney’s incident) to a few hundred ants surrounding our bag of food. Kelly is very afraid of ants, so her screams and panic made Sunday morning pretty entertaining. Showered, fed, out of our hostel and ant-free, we made our way to the train and back home to the Montarina.
Our group in front of the docs
