Venice

So call us crazy people but when we went to go look at train tickets venice we found one for 18 euro and at 4:30 in the morning.  When we bought the ticket it was 11:30pm....so we didn't have much time to sleep. The real crazy one was Roxy who had an exam on Wednesday (a final none the less). She said she would be fine. We went home for showers and a quick nap....Roxy stayed up and studied.  Our alarm went off at 3am and we were off.  The first train ride was quiet and not crowded. The second contained people on their morning commute to work and school so I kept waking ip to people bustling around me.

 When we arrived in Venice I sighed and said oh yea this is my favorite city. I had been when I was in high school with my parents.  It is amazing, the smell, the colors, and the sights are just breathtaking.  The whole island is free of cars and bikes so there are just pedestrians. What a cool feeling after almost getting mowed over by bikes in Amsterdam, mopeds in Rome, and cars in Florence.

The city is awesome, we didn't even pull out a map just started walking. There are so many shops lining the streets and so many beautiful places to eat.  We were super hungry when we got to Venice by 9:30 since we had been up since 3 so we found the first cafe and gulped downs espressos and all ate two croissants.  After we had walked and stumbled into beautiful churches for about half the day we pulled out the map and made a plan. 

 We saw piazza San Marco.  I remember there bring many more pigeons but it is now against the law to feed the pigeons so I think they have found other places to go.  The church inside was beautiful and has 40,000 sq ft of mosaics on the ceiling.  These collossal churches are just mind blowing.  I think there are definitely more elaborate here than in Germany.

The streets got pretty narrow...

Petrie's sister in Venice.

Coolest bookstore any of us had ever seen.

 After that we decided to find lunch.  We were pretty tired of the cheap set menus for tourists....they  definitely they to go to save money but they weren't always stellar meals. Roxy found a small place that had a set menu but it was all in Italian.  We decided to go there. One thing I can't get over is that their first course is pasta.  It feels like a main course to me. So this menu included a drink, pasta, and a main meat dish.  The pasta dish was huge and then the meat was smaller with a small side salad.  It seems backwards. The food was great I'm glad Roxy got us away from the tourist food.  After lunch we went and saw the covered bridge Rialto. After we gawked over the view a bit we went on a personal adventure.  For Christmas my mom and dad got us a print of gorgeous artwork done by a family friend Ron Morecraft.  It was a picture down a back canal in Venice.  We knew he worked from photographs he took and then modified/painted over top of them.  So when we received it Justin went to google earth and cruised around on street view till he found the canal where Ron took the picture.  So he had the address and we went exploring.  Unfortunately the spot he found on the map wasn't right. So Roxy pulled out her trusty phone and googled a picture of the painting.  So the first guy we asked said he had no idea then a gondolier was parking his boat futher up the canal and she asked him. He said of course it's taken off this bridge and gave us directions.  We finally found it and took a gazillion pictures. It was really cool to see that place in person and have our picture taken with it.  After that we headed back to the train station and made our way back to Florence.  We were exhausted and slept most of the ride back....Roxy of course dutifully studying.  When we got back Roxy took us to the "best pizza place in town" for takeout.  It won best pizza in the world in 2012.  It was awesome. So glad we had an insider to show us all of the great places to eat.  Then we crashed!

Roxy and walle!