Venice, Italy with Sara

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  Venice, Veneto, Italy
Friday, October 3, 2008

On Friday Sara and I went to a day trip to Venice.  It was a very long day because Venice is 3 hours there and 3 hours back but it was more than worth it! We took a train from Florence at 6:30 in the morning.  We transfered trains in Bologna and arrived in Venice around 11 am (our connecting train was late).  When we got to Venice we walked from the train station to San Marcos Square.  It was a quite a long way but it was fun to see the cute town on our way to the center of town.  We were never really sure if we were going the right way but we followed the random signs and asked a few people to point us in the direction.  Venice is adorable because everywhere you turn there are little canals and bridges, and the water is a pretty shade of teal :-) 

We finally arrived in San Marcos square after walking for about an hour and were amazed by the square.  It was exactly how I had remembered it.  The square is one of the biggest ones of I have seen and has a building that makes a "u" form making abou three fourths of the square.  The other fourth is the extravagant St. Mark's Basilica.  It is a huge Basilica that is covered in gold and ornate design.  We walked around in the square and we took the cliche picture with all of the pigeons.  We did not feed them because we were too scared but we watched as other people did.  I thought it was funny that Venice is one of my favorite cities even though it is covered in Pigeons, that's right Dad haha I like a city with Pigeons!  We then found some pizzas to grab for lunch.  We got them from a little shop on a side street because we were told that they could charge you large amounts for sitting fees in Venice and we were anxious to go touring anyway. 

After looking around the square we went and took a boat taxi to the Island of Murano.  The boat busses are great because they are basically public transportation on the water.  We bought a ticket for 14 euro that accounted for a twelve hour pass to take as many boats as we wanted.  It was fun to ride along the water in the boat.  And then something really funny/potentially terrible happened.  After about 45 minutes we got to the Island of Murano but were not sure which stop to get off at.  I got off the boat and left my purse to save my seat to check.  I realized it was the right stop and motioned for sara to get off.  She was about to get off and they closed the gate on the boat and took off for the next stop.  We were shocked and all we could do was laugh (although we should have yelled to each other what to do).  I did not have a phone or any money so I was a little worried.  I decided to follow the rule that when you are lost that you should stay put and hope that Sara did not do the same.  I panicked a little for about 20 minutes and decided that we may have to resort to just meeting at the train station at 6:30 that night.  Fortunately Sara's stop was on the same Island and she was able to walk to where I was.  We were both very relieved to see each other! It is something that fortunately we could laugh about but that definitely could have gone much worse!

Once we found each other we walked around the Island of Murano.  We chose that Island to visit because it is wear they do the glass blowing that Venice is known for "Venitian Glass" and I remembered how amazed I was when I had seen it in Venice before.  So the first thing we did was find a show room.  They charged us five euro to watch because they said it was a show but it was definitely just three men working and one of them would sing to the radio every once in a while.  But it was really cool to watch them make the glass.  They would put sand on a medal pole and stick it in this bright orange furnace.  Then they would cool the pole off and form the bubble of glass.  It was cool to watch them shape the glass and we watched for a little while.  Afterwards we spent the rest of our time we had allotted for the Island searching for Jewlery.  We each found glass necklaces that we liked for under 20 euro and were very happy.  We also bought some beautiful gifts there too.  We then took the bus back to the main area of Venice.

Back in Venice we went into Sain Mark's Basilica.  The Basilica is as beautiful and ornate on the inside as it was on the outside.  It is a huge church and has really pretty floor tiling too.  I was so grateful to get to see such a beautiful church.  Afterwards we spent the rest of the time people watching in the square and walking along the water.  We got gelato too, of course.  It is fun because I remeber that the first time I went to Italy I had my first cone of Gelato in Venice.  I think that I even got Gelato from the same place that I got it the time before so that was cool.  We also took a picture with a gaundalier who was wearing one of the cute hats and he told us that "he loved us."  We decided to take the water bus back to the train station instead of walking like we did on the way in.  It was fun to see the stops along the way back and nice not to have to walk.  Then we grabbed some dinner and got on our three hour train back to Florence.  We sat next to a really nice Canadian couple and talked them a lot of the way back about our travels, so that helped pass the time.  We were so happy that we spontaneously did this trip to Venice.  Venice is such a beautiful place and we had such a fun day exploring.  Plus we got some pretty jewlery :-)

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