Yes, I am still in Italy, Florence in fact. However, there is free internet access at the hotel and time to kill until dinner so I thought I'd write about my first Italian stop this trip: Venice.
I'll start off by telling you about my last day at Harlaxton. (I know, it's crazy it went by that fast, right?!) We all had to sit our last exam, British Studies, that morning. Then people started leaving. Alayna headed off for Heathrow and a flight home the next day at 4:30. The Italy 1 trip left at 2 am on Thursday, taking with it Lyndsey, Gretchen, Sarah, and Jordan, my Eau Claire friends. Loads of people left in between. We were the last 30 students in the manor when we left at 2:30 am. It was crazy how fast everyone left and you could feel the emotion in the buildings. Everyone made some really good friends from other schools this semester and it's hard leaving them and not knowing when you'll ever get to see them again. So I slept for about an hour in the Pearson Room before the early breakfast (my last cereal and toast in the manor!) and checking out. Then it was just waiting until it was time to load the coach and be off to Gatwick. We were all so tired! We got a 3 hour nap on the coach, then Ian woke us up and made us get off and check our bags and go through security. We got there and still had time to kill, so off to Cafe Nero Rachel, Christine, Mike, and I went for some caffine and food! Then it was back to the waiting area until they showed which gate our flight was going to be at. (I hate how they don't just tell you on your ticket!) We finally got it and went off to the terminal, got on the plane, and left England a little after 7 am. It was a 2.5 hour or so flight and we landed in Venice around 11 am (they're one hour ahead). Then we had to go through customs (my stamp bearly showed up!) and get our luggage. And we were out to find our coach in the parking lot, after which it was a 20 minute ride to the bus station area in Venice. Once there we had to get off the coach and walk to our hotel, which involved a bridge with lots of steps! (There are no vehicles in Venice other than boats. It's a walking city.) That walk took us about 15 minutes and then we were standing in the little street/alley that our hotel is in, waiting for Ian to figure out our rooms and it turns out that they wouldn't be ready till 2! There was a place to store our luggage though, so that was good. Turned out to be Rachel's room, as we later found out! Whew! Apparating would've been so much easier than all of that! We would've gotten a full night's sleep and wouldn't still be trying to make up for it now.
Christine, Mike, Rachel, and I proceeded to get lunch of pizza, followed by gelato (chocolate for me). Then we hit the town. After gettting a little lost, our first stop was the Rialto Bridge and Market. It was really cool! There were all these stands selling everything from novelty souviners (I got my keychain) to Murano glass. And the bridge has shop buildings on it, so unless you go to the outside, you don't even really realize you're on a bridge. We walked this way on the way back as well, and (other than my Italy keychain) I picked up this cute glass owl and a present for Allison (I sold her original present of a Claddagh ring when she bought one in Boston over her Spring Break. Oh well!). After Rialto Bridge, we went to Plaza San Marco, which was awesome. The Basilica San Marco is there, which is absolutely gorgeous. It built out of pink and green and grey/white stone and has these awesome horses sitting on top and is awesomely decorated and everything. And that's just the outside! There's also this really old clock in the Plaza that has the hour in Roman Numerals. And there are lions everywhere in Venice (it's their symbol). There's also Doge's Palace, which we proceeded to go into. We went at a great time because there actually wasn't any line and it wasn't really crowded! The Doge was the president-type figure of the Venice city-state, so we got to see his appartaments and the council chambers, which were all really elaborate and had amazing paintings all over the walls and ceilings. It was a bit overwhelming, how skilled and beautiful it all was. And there was this map room, with paintings of maps covering the walls (of the entire world!) and two ginormous globes in the middle of the room. It was awesome. We sat in there looking at them for some time. We also got to go into the prisons, which were dark and a bit dank. Basically how you would expect a medieval prison to feel like. It was still really cool though, because I didn't really get that feel whenever I visited castles in the Uk as much. The last thing we did in Doge's Palace was walk across the Bridge of Sighs. It's a really famous bridge and it's called the Bridge of Sighs because it was the bridge that prisoners would walk across on their way to being executed and you get a great view of Venice from the windows and it's said that they would all sigh at their last site of the city. After we finished getting our money's worth walking through the Doge's Palace, we retraced our steps back to the hotel. Once we checked in, we all headed to our rooms for a 2 hour nap. We needed it in order to be able to go out to dinner that night! We met down in the lobby after our nap (minus Rachel, who was still asleep and didn't hear Mike knocking at her door) and we headed out and down the road to find a restaurant. We found this really nice one where we got to sit outside. We ordered the house wine (red), which was really good and they gave us bread and olive oil and parmesan cheese to eat while we waited for our food. I had a 4-cheese gnocchi, which was absolutely amazing. I loved it! So good! After taking our time over dinner and wine (which was hard because we were so hungry!) we went and got gelato (Kit-Kat) and walked around the Grand Canal a bit. Then it was back to the hotel for an earlier bed.
The next day, Christine, Mike, and I headed back to Plaza San Marco because we wanted to go inside the Basilica San Marco, since it was so gorgeous from the outside. We got there before it opened, but there was still a huge line. Luckily, there was a guide asking if people wanted an English tour, so we took advantage of that and hopped to the front of the line! The tour was totally worth it too. She not only told us about the Basilica, but also about Venice itself. For example, Venice is a group of islands (which we already knew), over 100 of them (I didn't know that!), connected by over 400 bridges (wow!). The islands are protected by a lagoon, which is why they don't have any walls, they don't need them because the lagoon does the protecting for them! The ground wasn't solid enough to build on, so they shored it up with wood, which has petrified over time, becoming stronger. That doesn't mean that buildings don't still sink every now and again (which accounts for the undulating floors in some buildings), but they fix that with concrete injections now. The Basilica is the resting place for St. Mark, the writer of one of the gospels. At least according to Venicians. If you ask anyone from Alexandria they'll say he's located there. But Venician merchants smuggled his body into Venice and buried him where the main alter in the church now is. That's why the basilica is named after him! Inside the Basilica the upper walls/ceilings are absolutely covered in mosaics! (easier to keep good in a humid climate and Venice just happens to have plenty of what you need to make glass: sand!) The background is gold, so there is a ton of gold mosaic tiles that glitter in the light! The mosaics tell stories from the bible and were created either 800 years ago or 400 years ago, depending on which one you're looking at. It was totally worth going in there and looking at everything. It was just as beautiful inside as it was outside! We left the Basilica and walked around the Doge's Palace to take a picture of the Bridge of Sighs, since we didn't do that yesterday. It was funny because I think they're doing something to the outside of the palace and so to hide the scaffolding they let Toyota put up a massive ad! Which is why there's all this blue in my pictures where stone should be! We also got to see loads of gondolas while we were there (but we didn't feel like paying 80 euro between the three of us to go on one). We left Plaza San Marco on a mission, to find the Indiana Jones Church for Mike. Apparently the outside of it was used in the third movie as the outside of a library or something (Mike or whoever can correct me if I'm wrong, I'm going off what I remember them telling me). I had gotten a cold the night before and my throat was hurting, so I decided to use that as a legitimate excuse to get me a gelato on the way (an excuse I'm still able to use!) (and it was chocolate again). After much map-pulling out we found the church! Once Mike realized we were there he got so excited! It was cute. I imagine it was how I look with Harry Potter stuff. After he took his pictures, we headed back towards our hotel, stopping for some pizza on the way. We dropped some stuff off at the hotel and then headed back out. Our first stop was the gelato place on the corner (strawberry this time!). Then we bought our tickets for the water bus out to Murano, the Island of Glass. (aka, where they make all their glass because way back when the buildings were all made out of wood, the Venicians were afraid of fire from glass-making and made all the glass-makers move out to the island of Murano so the city would be safer.) The boat ride was really cool. We got to see Venice from a different point of view on the canals and then looking at it from the island was really cool as well. The island itself is pretty neat. We got to watch them make cups, which is always fun to do. And there were loads of glass shops there! We went into a ton! I bought a really cute giraffe in one of them. After taking our time looking at all the glass on Murano, we took another water bus back to our hotel and proceeded to take another short nap (in our defence, we were still catching up from our night of no sleep and both Mike and I have colds). We met up in the lobby again around 7 and headed out to dinner, this time at a lovely restaurant right on the Grand Canal. We sat outside again and watched the boats and gondolas go by, watching out for some of the guys (they weren't on any of the gondolas that passed). I had an amazing 4-cheese pizza. AFter dinner we got some wine and drank it on the terrace at the hotel. Then we proceeded to go out for gelato again (this time I got Nutella, which was really good!). We walked along the canal again and then went back to hour hotel. Before we got there though, Mike wanted another gelato and the same server helped him and she laughed out loud when she saw him back again within half an hour! Once we got back to the hotel, we had to pack because we were leaving Venice for Florence the next day. Venice is honestly one of the best cities I have been to this semester and I wish we had another day there!
So my gelato count for Venice was: 5. I feel like I should keep track, so you'll know how much I had over the entire trip! I probably won't get to write about Florence until I get back to the States because I believe that we have to pay for internet in Rome. If I prove incorrect though, you may just see a post within the next few days!
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