Day 52 Venice

Ahh... Venezia! At last!

I can not tell you all just how excited I was to FINALLY be going to Venice! To me, this is one of the most unique places in the entire world! And what makes it more stunning is the fact that it will not be around forever. I feel so lucky to be able to travel and see this beautiful place while it is still in existence. Since all the fast trains were sold out for the morning, our slow train departed at 4:30 a.m. and arrived in Venice at 9:30 a.m. Although I was running on 5 hours of sleep, the excitement kept me going. Venice! When we first stepped off the platform, I was greeted by my first sight of a venetian canal! For the last 20 years of my life, I have only ever been told of this city, and now here I am, seeing it with my own eyes. First, we walked across the bridge and decided to try and find Piazza San Marco. Ana bought a map and we slowly made our way through the streets of Venice. I think we might have taken the longest route possible to get there, but on our way, we stopped to window shop and look around. It was amazing. The city is so clean and well-kept, you feel like you are on a movie set just walking around. When we finally made it to the Piazza, I was stunned by how big it was. I have heard and seen the Piazza in movies before but seeing it firsthand was amazing. At that point in the day, we were fairly hungry so we stopped into a ristorante on a street off of the Piazza. The one down side to Venice is how costly everything is... My small pasta dish cost about 10 euro, and that was one of the cheaper places we could find. But at this point, I am kinda used to having to spend a lot of food... Italy can be very pricey if you don't know where to go. During lunch we noticed that all the other tables around us had a basket of bread on the table; not abnormal, just a little appetizer before your main course. But we never received a basket! This is not the first time this has happened to us either. Almost every time we have gone out to eat, they don't bring us bread. So Bree asked our waiter if we could have some and he said, "It comes with your meal." Well, call me crazy but our food came and left and I never once saw any of that promised bread sitting on the table... Maybe it's because we are American students? Who know... but I just thought that it was strange considering that we can obviously see other people munching on their bread. Anyway, just a random occurrence that keeps happening here. After lunch, we walked over to the Basilica and went inside. Of course, it was beautiful. It makes me sad to think that in as little as 20 years the whole place could be destroyed though. Even now, during heavy rainfall, the Piazza becomes flooded since it is already below sea level. It would be a shame to lose such a historical place. After the Piazza, we went across the Grand Canal to see another church on a different part of the city. But before we found the bridge, we came across an impromptu circle of cellists playing in a tiny little piazza. I couldn't believe my luck! There were about 12 cellos playing. It was a very special moment for me because it was just a coincidence for me to run into it. They only played one song and then packed up and left. I have it recorded for those of you interested :) I was so happy to run into that, it made my day.
It was quite strange to see absolutely no cars, buses, or even bikes in an entire city. We were thinking about getting a gondola ride, but it cost 80 euro for each! Maybe if we had 6 people, but the price was a little steep. We had about and hour and a half left before our train so we decided to start making our way back to the train station and window shop on the way. I bought a panino, nutella, and pretzels for the ride back and since we got the fast train, it was only an hour and a half ride instead of 4. I was very excited but pretty tired at this point. On Sunday, we were planning to go to Perugia for the chocolate festival and were taking an early train again. It feels like I live about half of my life on trains these days! But this trip was by far one of the coolest so far, and Venice did not disappoint :)