Ciao Bella!

Trip Start Aug 30, 2009

Trip End Dec 20, 2009

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Where I stayed

L' Imbarcadero Venice
(aka. L'Imbarcadero)

(Venice hotels)

Flag of Italy Venice, Veneto, Italy
Tuesday, October 13, 2009

We arrived in Venice sometime around 5pmon Saturday after flying in from Rome. The flight itself was uneventful though getting to our hostel was interesting because once we got off the bus at the beginning of Venice we had to navigate our way through the city's narrow streets and attempt to find out way. Venice is full of small streets that lack names and seem to go the most roundabout ways to get to places so we were pretty lost before we finally found our hostel after about an hour. The evening was spent exploring the city streets and trying to find a place that had good food, was near the canal and was not terribly expensive....nothing like that existed so we settled for an expensive meal of pizza which turned out to be worth all the money we spent. We stayed out until about 2am exploring and arrived back at our hostel, weary and ready for sleep.
Yesterday we woke up fairly late (about 930am or so) and after eating a free breakfast at the hostel (such a perk!) we headed out for the day

View of the Gran Canal from our Hostel

. Our plan was to make our way over to a house owned by Wake Forest where 16 Wake Forest students are studying for the semester, including one of my good friends Satie and two of my sorority sisters. The house ended up being on the complete opposite side of Venice and because the streets are so confusing and hard to follow, it took us over two hours to make it to the house, but eventually we found it. The Wake Forest house is the old U.S. Embassy in Venice so it is huge and absolutely gorgeous, it looks out onto the Gran Canal and is very close to San Marco Plaza (the big plaza in the city). The house also happens to share a roof with the Gugenheim Museum so we were able to peek in there and poke around for a little while after we saw the house. Satie's parents, who were visiting for the week offered to take all of us out to lunch and so it was nice to have a meal paid for and not have to worry about every dollar I spent. After a long lunch we headed over to San Marco Plaza and did a lot of walking around and souveneir shopping. We headed back to the hostel in the early evening (it only took about 45 minutes on the way back since we somewhat had our bearings of where we were headed) and grabbed a nice meal at a place nearby.I ended up falling alseep a little after 10pm and ended up sleeping until morning, so needless to say I was very rested for Monday.
Monday was spent mostly wandering around the city and peaking into the various churchs we saw along our walk

The group (minus me, I was takin the picture!)

. Because we are all students were were able to get into the San Marco Basillica for free and so we spent about an hour looking around the huge basillica and admiring its beauty. It seems that the more and more churchs I see the more and more impressed I am with them, they all make any church in the states seem like nothing in comparison. Unfortunately our day was cut short because it began to rain and thus Eric and I decided to head to the airport early to get some studying in before our plane took off. Chris,Katherine, Lorin and Jess decided to stay back at the hostel and study there and planned to meet Eric and I at the airport in a few hours. Eric and I arrived at the airport about 5pm and had 4 and 1/2 hours to kill before our plane took off. After studying for a long time, it finally became 9pm and Katherine, Chris, Lorin and Jess were no where in site. Luckily our plane was delayed 20 minutes and in that time our four friends arrived at the gate huffing and puffing. It turns out that the four of them took a bus to the wrong airport and thus had to race in a taxi over to our correct airport in order to make the flight. Luckily they got there with about 5 minutes to spare and we got on the flight to head back to Rome. Unforunately because our flight to Rome was delayed, once we landed in Rome we had to literally sprint across the airport to catch a train back to the center of Rome.We made the train with only a minute to spare and arrived safely back at the train station in Rome..only to find out that the station closes at 1am and we were not allowed to wait there until 430am when our bus to the other Rome airport (which is where our flight to Madrid was from) would depart. Therefore we had to think on our feet, catch two separate cabs and head to the other Rome airport around 130am. We arrived safely and I spent the rest of the night attempting to sleep on the floor while the others stayed up to study. Our flight to Madrid left at 630am and landed us safely in Madrid around 9am which left me just enough time to get home, drop off my belongings and head to my 11am class. I have two midterms to study for (one tomorrow and one Thursday) but I got some studying done in the airport so hopefully I'm in good shape. Its hard to believe I will be back at the airport in 2 1/2 days to head to London for this coming weekend. I'll write again soon!