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Today was our last day in Venice! After checking out at eleven, we headed to the train station to drop off our bags, since our train out of Venice didn't leave until eight.
With nine hours to fill, we wandered around a lot. Venice is beautiful and I could stay there for weeks without getting bored of the scenery or the weather, which luckily was fairly nice if overcast/foggy for a lot of our trip. But by this point in our trip Gooligan and I were frankly done with museum-going and cathedral-visiting and when both of those items are off the table, sometimes cities seem a lot emptier. Or it just feels like you go from one place to another eating.
I guess that's one thing we learned while on our trip; friends and family, even a job (although hopefully one you actually like), and hobbies really enrich your life. Sometimes I daydream about going home and just being with everyone. I know, I know. Other people daydream about being in Venice, but let me tell you: I really love Seattle and all my people (and my dog) there.
We ate lunch at this disappointing restaurant, then sat at the hipster café from a few days ago for hours. I wasn't just wasting time, though! I was hard at work on my homework. I have a story due soon for workshop that I had to finish, plus I had to play catch-up on this blog.
After the café, we walked around a lot and then headed to Alfredo's for one last pound-of-pasta-in-a-box meal. Gooligan and I couldn't decide what flavors to get, so we each got our own. Alfredo recognized us and joked with us, which was really nice after a month of new faces.
As we headed back to the train station, it began to rain. Just a little at first and then, suddenly, the sky split open and it started to pour. We were soaked immediately. Luckily we were so close to the station that a mad dash later and we were safe!
After collecting our bags, we sat under a covered part of the train station and listened to the rain. The rainstorm quickly progressed to a full-blown thunderstorm, complete with lightning! In a way, it felt like Venice was ushering these Seattleites home.
The train arrived at eight and we boarded it. There were six of us in each compartment. After we made our bunks (with provided blankets and pillows!) we settled in for the long night. It wasn't the best sleep ever, but at least both Gooligan and I are short enough that we could stretch our legs out the full length, which was a plus.
The people in our compartment were really nice. There was an older couple from Argentina with whom Gooligan practiced her Spanish. There was also a guy around our age who was studying abroad in Spanish who was from Paris. We talked about our travels and studies. It was a great experience to have such a multilingual conversation, since the couple only spoke a little English, so there was a lot of helping each other trying to explain certain concepts.
A very nice end to Venice!
On Saturdays, Venice's famous Rialto fish market is open, so naturally Gooligan and I decided to go check it out. On the way there, however, Gooligan spotted a beautiful mask shop. We popped it--just for a minute--and the owner of the shop came over to talk to us. She asked us where we were from and showed us several of the masks. She was so nice, she even let us try the masks on and took our picture!
There were so many amazing masks. Gooligan fell in love with two of them and had to pick. The owner offered us a substantial discount, which was very generous, since the masks were definitely worth more than she was charging.
We had considered going on a gondola ride on our last day in Venice, but we had been wavering about it all trip for two reasons. First, gondolas are fairly pricey (eighty euros for forty minutes), which works out to around a hundred dollars. And second, we felt a little uncomfortable, since it's such a romantic activity and we didn't feel entirely comfortable holding hands or otherwise being visible in Venice.
So we decided to skip the gondola ride and invest in a more permanent memory. I'm so glad we did, too, because the mask Gooligan ended up picking is beautiful.
Anyway, we eventually made it to the market, which was fabulous. The fishy smells and people selling their vegetables and fresh catches reminded me so much of Pike Place Market. I felt right at home.
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| Fish! |
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| Vegetables! |
There was a restaurant near the market selling fried fish, which would have been delicious, I'm sure, but we ended up going to a small popular local restaurant that sold cicchetti and spritz.
I had been wanting to try the spritz--a local venetian drink. I had
mistakenly assumed it would be sweet, since it's orange-colored, but in
reality it's actually quite bitter. Spritz is made-up of wine, soda
water, and a small of some kind of bitter liquor (such as Aperol). The
more you know!
After lunch, we walked around and looked for souvenirs for Gooligan's family. Then we stopped at a café for some cappuccinos, hung out for a bit, and headed home!
Today we took a day trip to the island of Murano which is known for its beautiful glass. We took a vaporetto to the island and walked around. It was a beautiful sunny day. It is coming to the end of the very nice weather here, so we definitely lucked out.
Gooligan told me a few days ago that I had to get a souvenir. I hadn't been planning on it, but I'm glad she insisted and also that we waited until Murano to buy one.
I got this beautiful blue glass dish with a tree on it. Buying art or knickknacks can be difficult when we're in transition because I have no idea what my future home will look like but that's just part of this stage of life.
Gooligan got her niece and another girl she knows these adorable glass heart necklaces. Then we stopped for lunch at another amazing seafood restaurant.
After lunch we got back on the vaporetto intending to go to another island but we accidentally got off on Venice. We wandered through the streets a little in search of gelato but what we found was even better!
Acqua Alta is this amazing bookstore where the books are stored in a gondola and bathtubs! The owner was so nice and told us to go in the back of the store and see the staircase made out books and also the "fire exit" which was just a door that opened onto the canal. Haha!
We picked out all these postcards from a box out front and then took them over to a small cafe where we drank some cappuccinos and tried some cicheti (tapas or appetizer like snacks) while we worked on filling out our postcards and uploading our photos.
The cafe filled up pretty (an early batch of happy hour seekers) and then emptied almost as quickly. After we were finished with our postcards, we walked over to Alfredo's (the pound of pasta in a box restaurant) to pick up dinner.
Then we took a vaporetto back to the bus terminal, caught our bus home, didn't get lost this time, and ate our delicious pasta on the patio extension from our hosts' kitchen. Then we got in bed and watched some television and fell asleep.
Right before we went to bed, though, our host informed us that on Friday the buses are going on a strike so if we wanted to go to Venice we had to catch the limited commuter transportation (which runs until eight a.m. and then again in the late afternoon/evening). We'd already planned to take the day easy, though, and explore our local area--Mestre--so this actually justified our decision.
Today is Gooligan's birthday! After letting her sleep in a whole ten minutes, I woke her up! We had breakfast (cereal and toast provided to us by our lovely hosts.
After breakfast I gave Gooligan her gift! It was a disposable camera! 27 pictures. We've taken a lot of pictures of our trip with my phone and our camera, of course, but there's something special about film. Having to line up the perfect shot and come to terms with the inevitable imperfections. When we get back I'm going to develop them for Gooligan and frame some. So we have an extra special reminder of today/Venice.
After breakfast and gift giving we had to spend some time doing laundry. Unromantic but necessary.
Then we walked to the bus through these beautiful crunchy yellow leaves. It really feels like fall here.
Once on the island we took a vaporetto (a waterbus) around the island to the restaurant we'd picked out for lunch.
Probably the fanciest place we've eaten this trip (but not unreasonably fancy), the food was completely worth it. Gooligan got the spaghetti and clams and I got the seafood spaghetti. Both dishes were perfection. They also served their Coke lemon slices, an odd European touch I've grown to love. We've been drinking a lot of Coke here (unlike at home) but it tastes so much better made with real sugar.
After lunch we wandered the streets and Gooligan happened to spot a mask shop she liked. We went in and the woman was so nice and let Gooligan try everything on. She picked out a gorgeous mask, her main birthday present!
Then we went to Doge's Palace, where the rulers of Venice operated while in power. It was gorgeous. We rented an audioguide and shared it as we wandered in awe from room to room.
After the palace we walked around until we were exhausted and then found this little restaurant on the canal where we had sparkling peach wine and tiramisu to celebrate Gooligan's birthday! Because no birthday is complete without cake and a rendition of Happy Birthday by yours truly!
Once dessert was over we headed home on the bus and after a brief detour of getting lost we made it home! For dinner, with the assistance of our host, we ordered some Chinese food that arrived on a Vespa!
After we ate we curled up in bed to watch Sleepy Hollow and I promptly fell asleep. All in all I think Gooligan had a pretty good day!
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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