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Published: April 19th 2009
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Venice.
I don't even know where to start for I can't decide if Venice is the most beautiful place I've visited so far or if it's the worst place on earth.
It all started Thursday afternoon when we checked the weather for Cinque Terre and saw the weather was going to be rain. Cinque Terre is not a place I wanted to visit in the rain so very spontaneously we decided instead we'd all go to Venice. All of us meaning Alyssa, Brittni, Kelley, Pearl and myself.
So Friday early morning we headed to the train station and bought our tickets to Venice. The train ride was a good 2.5 hours, maybe 3 and we arrived in Venice mid afternoon. When getting to the station we found a little information service that could hook us up with a cheap hotel. There was 5 of us at the station at the time however Greg was on his way to meet us in Venice so we were worried that a 6 person room/hotel bill would be big. We all agreed we'd cram into a two bedroom hotel room and split the bill. We ended up grabbing a hotel right by the train station
called Villa Rosa for 85 Euros a night, free breakfast and two beds. Kelley and I did the checking in at the hotel then snuck everyone upstairs into the room. The people working the front desk didn't seem to really notice or care that 6 of us were going up into a room meant for two. When getting into the room we were all a bit shocked for it was literally a BEDroom, as in there was just a bed and no actual room to walk. We had a little balcony but dropped our stuff off and headed out to walk around.
We ended up grabbing dinner at a little restaurant not far from where we were staying. Besides the terrible service and the fact that you had to pay in exact change, my spaghetti was pretty good. We all left there after a couple hours and meandered back to the hotel, stopping to have a drink on the canal. When finally getting back to the hotel everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong.
There was a night shift guy working the front desk and he noticed that there was more then two people going up to
our room... He stopped us in the lobby and told Pearl and I that for every extra head in the room we had to pay 40 Euros, along with a 16 Euro cancellation fee since I told him we would be leaving the next day instead of Sunday because of the pricing. All hell broke loose and we were ready to just book it out of the hotel but they had copies of our passports and we all didn't want to be deported because of not paying a hotel bill. Finally after an hour or so of yelling/arguing/spitting in the lobby we had two hotel rooms for 6 people and a smaller but still big hotel bill. Earlier in the day when at the train station I had to put down a deposit of 50 Euros for the room reservations and somehow the money disappeared so that was also something that we had to deal with, but eventually figured out.
Went to bed late that night. Got up early Saturday morning for the free breakfast and stuffed ourselves full of everything we possibly could that they served us. We walked all the way to San Marco which was incredible
and fed the pigeons. We took a lunch break and sun bathed on the water for an hour, then walked back to see the famous Realto bridge and took a Gondola ride. All of it was breath taking for the weather in Venice was hot and and sunny. I picked up some trinkets including a Venetian mask, some postcards for Katharine and a charm. We finally were ready to head home after a long day of walking and picture taking so we headed to the train station.
We bought a train ticket home for 6:36 but... missed the train. Of course we missed it because every possible bad thing was happening. Brittni had lost her camera earlier in the day but found it. Kelley's credit cards weren't working, my camera died... anyways, we missed our train (we were running after it banging on the sides of it but it didn't stop...) and had to catch another train going to Bologna, switch trains in Bologna and get back to Firenze S.M.N. When getting on the train for Bologna we realized there was no seating. Literally, no seating. To describe where we ended up sitting you'll need to have been on
a train before, but we sat in the area where two train cars connect. People would come into where we had parked it and would smoke for smoking is allowed on trains. The train ride was a little over an hour and a majority of the time we had to stand for people would walk through there and we'd have to get up to let them through.
We got off at Bologna and our train connecting to Firenze S.M.N. station was not there. In fact it didn't really even exist so we walked home. A good couple of miles later I lugged my stuff upstairs and crawled into my bed. I have never been so miserable and happy in my life.
I have a ton of pictures however their not uploading correctly so you may have to check back at this every so often to see new pics. As of this upcoming Thursday I will have been here for a month. Pretty crazy to think about but it shows how fast time flies. Love and miss you and immensley, will blog again soon.
Ciao for now.
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