Venice, Italy

Hey Cool People!

Here is what we did the very short time we were in Venice:

Day 50 Tuesday, July 7th - This morning Lydia and I woke up in Munich pretty early to catch the bus at 8 a.m. to Venice. If you read my last post, I snuck into the hostel that Lydia and our friends were staying at because all the hostels in the area were booked full and had slept with my friend Kate. Lydia and I hopped on the bus and made a few stops along the way before making our way to Camping Jolly Venice around 5 pm.

We were spending the night at a campground, but Lydia and I reserve a private bungalow for ourselves! It was well worth it because the bungalow had a private bathroom and AIR CONDITIONING!!!!!!! It was so hot and humid in Venice that the air conditioning was a life saver. Seriously if you stood outside for 5 mins you would be dripping in sweat it was that humid!!

Since Lydia and I only had one night in Venice,we decided to take the shuttle from the hostel and head into town to do a little exploring. We had made plans to meet some friends when we got there, but they had some issues getting to their accommodations, so Lydia and I explored the town on our own. It was pretty incredible. When we were driving into town, our bus guide told us that when we are in Venice, we will get lost and to just embrace it. Well when me and Lydia started walking, we put our map away and just got lost in the city. The city itself was beautiful. Venice in all honesty felt like a living museum; it mainly just existed for the tourists. There was no "local" culture to the city.

Lydia and I walked around found the Rialto Bridge and Saint Mark's Basilica, grabbed some Gelato. We were told to make sure we got Gelato that was listed as artigianale. Most of Venice is very touristy, so there is a lot of mass produced gelato that comes into Venice and the artigianale gelato is the real shit apparently. Well, the gelato we had was off the hook. I had three scoops, Vanilla, Cafe, and Chocolate Chip. Our Gelato by the way was pretty much our dinner, we had a snack in the morning on our way to Venice, but never really ate.

After we got our gelato, we made our way back to the public bus stop. On our walk toward the bus stop, we stopped at an open air theater performance. It looked pretty cool, but we didn't stay long because we were trying to catch the last bus that would take us toward our hostel. The bus back was an experience. We knew what stop we had to get off at and had directions back, but the bus doesn't announce what stop they are at, so Lydia and I basically had to stick our heads out the bus door at ever stop to read the bus stop sign to see if we needed to get off. Well, we were able to find our bus stop and walked about 10 minutes to our hostel, where we pretty much went right to bed. Before bed however, we were able to message our friends and make plans to meet up for a little early morning exploring.

Day 51 Wednesday, July 8th - Today was kind of hectic! Lydia and I wanted to explore Venice as much as possible, but we also had to catch a flight to Athens, Greece. Well, in the morning me and Lydia got ready and took the shuttle into town. I felt bad because our shuttle took a little longer than expected and we were late in meeting our friends.

Our main goal was to take a gondola ride while we were in Venice. Well, while walking around we found a free gondola and hopped on. It was 5 of us splitting the ride ( Lydia, Gerry, Vanessa, Taylah, and I), which made the price pretty reasonable. Our driver person was really nice; he, of course, sang a little bit and pointed out a few stops along the way. The ride was about 40 mins for 16 Euro each. I could not complain considering it was $16 to do the gondola at the Venician in Vegas and it was a shit 15 min ride!!!

Anyway, we stopped and got some more gelato before making our way back to the hostel to cool off, gather our things and head to the airport for Greece.  (I will pick this story up when I blog about Athens).

Other all Venice was beautiful, but I felt like I got to see and do everything that I wanted to in the limited time that I had there.