Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Tuesday + {Day Twenty-Nine: Venice}

Miss your flight once and I swear to God, you'll be paranoid about missing your connections for the rest of your life. After a very restless night of sleep, I woke up at seven when my alarm went off to finish gathering our odds and ends up into our backpacks. I pried Gooligan out of bed around seven-thirty.

We left our house at eight, caught the bus to the train station, and then had a little breakfast while we waited for our train to be assigned a platform.

I fell asleep a lot on the train. It felt like every time I nodded off, someone--usually the ticket-checker--would come by and make a lot of noise and wake me up. But I caught a few zzzs by the time we made it to Venice.


Our first sight of the city was a watery one: the train goes over a bridge between the mainland and the island! After we arrived, Gooligan and I located the bag drop and checked in my backpack (all our clean clothes and toiletries, essentially). Our plan was to find a laundry where we could get our dirties washed while we explored some of the city.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the shop, it was closed. At least we think we found the shop. It's tough to tell sometimes because if a business has a metal sheet over it, and it doesn't have any signage anywhere else), you can't tell what the business is or what its hours are.

Since the laundry was closed, we had to lug our dirty clothes around all day. Not exactly great, but at least we're saving seven or so euro by not checking it, I guess.

For lunch we stopped at this amazing pasta place called Alfredo's. They're a rather unique pasta restaurant in Italy, since it was a hole-in-the-wall place where they only have about eight dishes and they serve them in Chinese take-out boxes. Each portion is a pound. The food was really great. They use all fresh ingredients and the cook inquired how we liked the food and talked to the four of us who were sitting at the minimal indoor seats. The other two were from Colorado and California. The shop also played popular American music which is a nice slice of home when you're almost a month removed from American radio.

After lunch, we sat in San Marco square for awhile. Both Gooligan and I really want to see Doge's Palace, but we decided to wait and do it another day when we're not weighed down by all our bags.

We basically spent all afternoon wandering around the city and window shopping. We took a small break at a hipster cafe with wifi. Gooligan listened to Harry Potter on the couch while I caught up on some homework and my blogging.

After the cafe, we headed to our new place, stopping to pick up a couple of slices of pizza for dinner. The buses here do not have any announcements for what stop they are stopping at, and since it was dark by the time we made our way to our new place, we got utterly lost. Gooligan asked someone for directions, and he helped us the best he could, but he only spoke Italian, so we had to figure it out. Gooligan was brave enough to ask like five different people along the way, all of whom were very nice and helpful despite only speaking Italian. During part of our journey we had to walk through this poorly lit park. Slightly terrifying! But everyone we saw seemed to be nice--couples out for jogs or old men or ladies walking their dogs.

We eventually found our new place and our hosts are very nice. The bed is comfortable and I took a nice hot shower, which was great. At the last place we stayed at, this bug got inside at night and bit Gooligan and me each about twenty times, so we're kind of itchy, but at least we're clean and ready for bed!

Tomorrow is Gooligan's big day! If you haven't yet, you should send her some huge birthday wishes. It's exciting to be in such an amazing place for a celebration, but it is bittersweet to be removed from all your friends and family.

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