Venice and "Home"

Hi all,

One more installment left!! I know I'm pretty detailed with my life, so to any of you who are complaining about my long winded posts (Beth) oh well. :P  But Venice was actually a pretty uneventful day as was coming home to Granada, so you're all lucky.  I also realized that my picture taking significantly dwindled once I got out of Rome.  There just wasn't as much historical crazy stuff for me to take pictures of so I calmed down a bit. haha Plus in Florence I could take pictures in the museums. 

Just hanging out in Venice...ya know...

So Venice....we woke up at around 10 the next day after our crazy night feeling well rested.  Although Abby's foot was still killing her.  We took our time getting ready and finally headed off to the island of Venice by I think about 11:30.  It was interesting getting in there because we had to take a city bus into Venice and the desk clerk who told us what buses to take failed to tell us to buy tickets at the desk (stupid Italians).  So we got on the bus and were once again told that we don't pay there. haha.  So we were like ummm whatever, we'll pay afterwords, but when the bus arrived in Venice we were shoved off the bus.  So another free bus ride? Okay, we'll take it, hahaha.  So finally arrived on the islands of Venice and walked over the cool bridge thingy that took you onto the water filled islands.  We quickly went over to the tourists booth (which I'm ashamed to say I used, but that for the first time through our entire trip) and bought tickets for a full day of unlimited passes on the boat ferry thing and a map since the hotels was really crappy.  Abby's foot was killing and since this was our only day in Venice she came and hobbled around Venice with us.  But the ferry transportation was very easy. 

Venice is also shaped like a fish!!  When we went to look at their ferry routes we realized that it looked like a fish!  I don't have a picture of our map, but I seriously needed to show you guys that.  We had a blast all day that it is shaped like a fish.  So we looked at our map and headed for San Marco, because that's the most popular island/section of venice and has the most stuff to do.  We took the ferry and got to see some beautiful views on the ferry ride.  We realized how good of an idea if was to get the day pass on that ride.  Seeing as one ride is 6 euro it's worth it, and you get to see Venice in a whole new way.  You can see a lot of it just being on a boat. 

So seriously, people say that Venice is just full of canals, and instead of streets they're canals.  It's true!! No one has cars, I don't know where they're put them anyways.  So we arrived in San Marco and walked down to San Marco square, which you can't really miss anyways.  There's actually a huge gorgeous church in San Marco which we stood in line to get into.  Unfortunately it was closed, we think because it was Holy Friday.  But it was absolutely gorgeous and I was very disappointed that I couldn't see more.  The front was even more impressing.  We were only able to enter the vestibule.  :(  So we just walked around the Piazza and got some gelato, surprise, surprise!  We actually went to sit down in the middle of the plaza like everyone else when we were told we can't just sit there :(  So we ended up just standing around the plaza and chatting and bought our small souvenirs for the day. 

Then we decided to follow the crowd and walk
down a little street that everyone else was headed for and found this!  Yup!! Gondolas!! There was a whole section full of them all just waiting for vulnerable tourists like us to hop in.  Before heading over to Venice we looked up about getting Gondola rides and found high prices.  A gondola ride costs about 80 euro for a 40 min ride, and if you want singing or anything else than you have to pay even more.  We decided that we'd consider it if we found people that wanted to share a boat with us.  But then we got there and were so broke that we decided it really wasn't worth it to sit in a boat awkwardly for 40 min with someone who most likely wasn't going to speak with us.  So we settled for watching all the other people get in the boats, awwing at the boyfriends who forked over the 80 euro for him and his gf and laughing at the people that sprung for the singer and accordion.  As we were standing there one of the guys pulled his gondola around to turn around and he looked at us and went "wow, hello!" haha It was really comical.  We also found out some gondoliers wear different colors, but we don't know why.  There were a few wearing all black, some wearing red and white strips, and then the usual black and white strips.  We almost regretted not going on a ride because we had so many questions all of a sudden.  But the guy that brought his little boy was so cute!  Some of the gondolas were tricked out too!! They had all sorts of fancy chairs and statue thingys on them. 

After watching the gondoliers for a while we meandered around the shops and just followed the crowds.  We found another good pizza place for cheap and grabbed some lunch.  So we spent our lunch on a small little bridge watching the people in the gondolas go by.  We even got to catch some people that had the singers.  I also thought it was funny because the gondolas are all pretty close to each other.  So I decided that I wanted to be the person behind the people with the singer.  I can enjoy the music and not pay for it!! haha, those people got gypped! :P  Then we just walked around the little alleys and got ourselves good and lost in their small streets without signs or any real direction.  But it was fine, our handy dandy map helped us find the next ferry port.  We walked around San Marco for almost 2 hours though.  We spent probably 3 hours on that island.

My sentiments exactly...

By that time Abby's food was hurting so we hopped on the ferry and rode it around for probably an hour while trying to decide where we wanted to go next.  We were going to try for another island but we actually got off in the wrong place.  We got off at a creepy industrial stop and quickly caught the next ferry out.  This picture pretty much explains how we felt most of the week. haha.  We just wandered around looking confused at our maps, yup, we were typical tourists....  So we ended up going to a port that had more than one connection so we could get to another pretty island.  This island had cars!! We were shocked and just talking about how they don't have cars there.  It was odd actually.  But we quickly realized that we didn't have any more time to go to our last island and we headed to a different part of San Marco to catch dinner at a place in my handy dandy book!  We got to the place a bit early so we found a nice plaza down the street and sat by the nasty canal river.  The water is actually kind of gross, but it was relaxing nonetheless.  We grabbed our last Italian dinner and headed back to catch the last bus back to mainland Venice.  We still didn't understand how the stupid buses worked so we just hopped on and hoped to figure it out.  We met a group of American guys that were backpacking across Europe for 2 1/2 months.  They were just traveling via Eurorail with the Europass and telling us about their adventures.  We were all sharing stories and laughing at our mistakes and ridiculous things that happened when we realized that we were at our stop.  Abby looked out and was like "is this us?" and we realized almost too late!  The bus doors closed which resulted in us pushing all the buttons shoting "wait!" and "espera!" to get him to open the doors again.  Needless to say it was an excellent exit...haha Oh well.  We really did meet some incredible people on this trip. 

Afterwords we just went back to our hotel and settled our bill with the receptionist.  When we told her everything we went through she seemed very shaken and was nice enough to give us a small discount at our request and free internet.  It wasn't much of a discount but we appreciated it nonetheless.  Then we went back to our room and packed to get ready for our day full of traveling on Saturday.  Saturday morning we woke up nice and early and finally figured out the bus system!! We had free breakfast and we saw a sign that said you buy bus tickets at the desk.  So we bought one ticket and when we got on the bus to the train station they wouldn't even work/they didn't matter! How stupid.  Also, getting on the bus is stupid.  You literally have to flag the bus down.  We realized that when one the bus numbers we needed literally just zoomed past the bus stop...we were so confused!  So we flagged down the one we needed and hopped on.  After 20 min and a rousing game of what does the stupid buzzer mean!?  we arrived at the station.  Literally, people were pressing the stupid bell and we didn't know what it meant because the same thing didn't always happen!  We decided they just do it to screw with tourists like ourselves (apparently Italians just like to do that).  But our train left on time and after one train ride, a plane and 5 buses we finally arrived safely in Granada at around 11 P.M that night.  I was exhausted, unpacked, ate dinner and passed out ready to face Easter. 

That's all!! That's my whole trip to Italy.  Hope you enjoyed reading about it.  Pictures are on FB

Until next post! Love you all!

We were once again really confused about