Venice Italy

Today we spent the day in beautiful Venice. It was the first time Jessica, Laura, and I had been. Luckily for Andrea, he’s got to visit more times this summer than in his whole life possibly. Ellaisha and Rena came to visit earlier this month, he met up with Maria Paulo, and this weekend he has Hannah with him, making a total of 4 times in one month. Quite a lot considering he hadn’t gone for the past three years. It really shows how we never act as tourists in our own country.

We got up early so that we could take the 9:20 train, and somehow managed to have five people ready on time. We were rather unlucky when there were no free seats in the air-conditioned train car for part of our trip into the city.  While travelling Andrea and I sat beside two nice Finnish women and we spoke about languages and travelling. One had even been to Vancouver!

When we arrived in Venice it was hotter than ever. We walked along the streets and canals. While stopping to take a photo Jessica’s hat fell into the canal. Luckily one of the gondola drivers fished it out for her. Venice is incredibly expensive it so many ways. A coffee can cost up to fifteen euros and a gondola ride ranges from eighty to one hundred euros for a half hour. Because of this we decided to buy some four-euro sandwiches and sit by a canal to eat for lunch instead of entering one of the restaurants.

After lunch I was in dire need of a bathroom so we went in search of a coffee shop to sit down in (with a free toilet). After fifteen minutes of walking around it seemed as though coffee shops just did not exist in Venice. Finally we found a nice café with air conditioners and a beautiful view out the window of a canal. We sat for quite a while since it was so nice to be out of the heat and sun.

We found San Marco’s Square and stood in line to enter San Marco’s Church. It was required that everyone wearing tank tops or shorts buy a shawl to cover up inside the church, so I had to purchase one. After walking out of the church I had nothing to do with the shawl so I went back to the line to offer it to someone for free. People aren’t very trusting these days as someone refused it. They’ll regret that decision in a few minutes when they realize they could have saved a euro!

We were thinking of maybe taking a ferryboat to the island of Burano so we walked along the port looking for the correct boat. Once we found it we realized it would be a fourteen-euro round trip and the boat was leaving in three minutes. We made the decision to just hang around Venice a little longer instead since we were planning on returning to Thiene in a couple hours anyways. We walked around in search of gelato for everyone. I’ve been trying to be healthy (or as healthy as one can be while travelling in Europe in the summer) so I got fruit instead.

We walked much too slowly to the train station and found that we had missed our 6:12 train by just three minutes. So we sat on the steps outside the station (overlooking the canal) to wait for the next train. Laura and I sat and chatted since everyone else had pulled out their cell phones and were staring intently at them. This is something that seems much more awkward when you have no phone yourself!

We returned to Thiene and Andrea took us to the pizza restaurant that he and his parents visit every Sunday. I had the best pizza I’ve had in a long time, and realized that cream cheese is amazing on pizza. After a long dinner we headed home.