Venice, Italy

Halfway through the semester, we got a week off of school! It ends up coinciding with breaks for many of the other schools in Europe. Remember, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and have time off then. For our week-long fall break, I decided to embark on a trip down through Italy and then out to Greece. Throughout Italy, I traveled with Carolyn, Anna, Lachlan, Mike, and Keval. The plan was to spend two nights in Venice, one night in Florence, three nights in Rome, and two nights in Mykonos. We were booked solid and busy, busy busy!

We spent ~15 hours traveling by train from Metz to Venice, stopping through Munich on the way where we of course had some Bratwurst. We ended up staying in an airbnb on the mainland and not actually on the island of Venice. This meant that we had to take short train onto the island everyday, but that wasn’t a big deal considering the money we were saving. Although, maybe our airbnb was so cheap because the renter was rather strange… His name was Abu and the running joke was “Abu going to get you”. He had a tendency to hover around us whenever we were back at the airbnb and especially during breakfast. Imagine being at a restaurant where you are the only table and their is one waiter constantly waiting on you. Basically, it was just a little awkward. Thankfully, we didn’t spend too much time in the hostel.

On our first day in Italy, we spent a lot of time just walking along the sidewalks and canals. Wow! It was so easy to get lost in Venice. The island itself doesn’t allow any cars on it, so all transportation is done either through the canals or alleyways. We knew that we wanted to do a Gondola ride at some point while we were in Venice, and it ended up being one of the first things we did. On our way to San Marcos Square, we saw this hilarious gondolier named Alex taking funny pictures with Asian women tourists. We decided we had to do our gondola ride with him, and boy were we right! The entire time he was dancing, singing, posing funny for tourists and greeting the locals. He had all of us laughing so hard. The canals themselves are beautiful. The water is so blue and each house on the canal has a little garage door in the water where they park their boats.

After lots of twisty turns and getting lost, we finally made it to San Marcos Square. As would be the case for much of our trip throughout Italy, San Marcos Basilica was under renovation so we couldn’t appreciate the outside in all of its beauty. However, we did get to go inside. It was so beautiful! The ceilings and walls were all gold mosaics with depictions of people from the Bible and the floor and pillars were all marble. Then, we wandered around and saw the Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal and the Bridge of Sighs. We also ate our first of many gelatos. American ice cream just doesn’t compare to Italian gelato. Actually, in general American food just doesn’t compare to European food. My mouth is watering just thinking about it all.

On our second day in Venice, we did a three-island tour of Murano, Burano and Torcello off of Venice. A boat took us from Venice to each of these three islands where we got to get off and explore for a bit. Murano is known for its world-famous glass. On this island, we got to go to a glass-blowing factory and watch a glass blower create the most beautiful horse, and so quickly! I bought my sister and I matching glass beaded bracelets from here. Then, we went to the island of Burano, famous for its lace and brightly painted fishermen houses. No two houses next to each other were the same color! We ended the tour on the island of Torcello where it is rumored that Ernest Hemingway spent time writing. This was my least favorite island, but maybe it was because I was so tired. It was very small and creepy, seeming to have no actual occupants. There is a very old cathedral on the island that was interesting, but again slightly creepy.

I loved Venice! It is so beautiful and quaint despite the numerous tourists. We got to hang out, see many sights, do some shopping and most importantly eat delicious food! We also spent the perfect amount of time in Venice. I would have liked to relax more, but we were able to see all of the sights in the short amount of time that we had.