Venice

They say that Venice is one of the most Romantic cities in the world. Seeing as how we traveled there as a group of 3 males, I didn't find it all that romantic. The sights of the city, though, were amazing. We rode the Vaporetto (water bus) throughout Venice. Cars and motorcycles aren't allowed in Venice, so all the taxis and buses are all waterborne. We also went to an island right off of the main area of Venice called Murano. Murano is famous for it's glass artwork. We went to a glass making factory and saw a Master glass worker make a horse from a glob of molten glass in less than a minute. It was quite impressive. If it hadn't been for our hotel, I would have said that my experience with Venice was wonderful. Before we went to sleep we knew there were mosquitoes in the room, one would expect this being so close to the water. It wasn't until we woke up the next morning that we realized that there were also bed bugs. I, myself, was bitten about 15 times just on my face. All night long, I woke up swatting at what I thought were mosquitoes on my face. The bed bugs and mosquitoes made for a much worse experience than the mouse that was in our room at Amsterdam.

-Ed

Venice was a beautiful city. We started the day by checking in at our hotel, which was hidden away from the main streets of Venice in an alley way very close to the hotel. It appeared quite clean, we learned later that the place was anything but that.

Per the recommendation of the hotel front desk we headed to a restaurant that was a little further down the alley towards the main street. It was a very reasonable deal something like 12 euros for a 4 course meal. It was way too much food and we were forced to leave a lot of leftovers.

After this we took the Vaporetto to San Marco's Square/Bassilica via the Vaporetto. It was a 20 minute trip. Having traveled to Rome's Pantheon, Florence's Duermo, Paris' Pantheon, and the Cathedral of Notre Dame just days before, San Marco's Square and Bassilica seemed unimpressive.

Having nothing really on our schedule for the day we decided to take the Vaporetto to a neighboring island called Murano. Murano is where the world famous Venetian glass comes is made. The Vaporetto ride was very long. In fact all 3 of us fell asleep... luckily we woke up about 5 minutes before our stop or we would of missed it. We got off the boat and head to a glass making demonstration. It was amazing how quickly the glass maker was able to make a horse figuerine. Following this 10 minute demonstration we headed to the gift shop where Rui and Ed purchased items. Then we walked around the island of Murano looking into the various glass shops where I purchased a glass dog.

Next we decided we wanted to head to the grand canal, but not wanting to take another 1.5 hour long Vaporetto ride we decided to get off at the first Vaporetto stop on the main island and walk across the island. After a 10 minute ride we got off on the main island. I was tasked with navigating us to the Grand Canal.... this is not an easy task in Venice, many of the streets are not labeled, or end in dead ends into a canal. I pretended i knew where I was going and just started heading south. We made it to our destination... also having accidentally toured the entire city of Venice along the way. We started to get exhausted at this time and headed back to the hotel. That night Rui and I were tasked with buying bottled water. We searched the area around our hotel for a supermarket which is much cheaper than a bakery to buy water from. We searched for a half an hour and could not find a super market finally we bought water at a bakery. Later that night we went searching for dinner and ended up purchasing sandwiches from a small shop. These sandwiches were terrible.

The next day morning we boarded a train and began a day long journey to Spain.

Transportation was very expensive. 15 euros for a day pass on the vaporetto. Vaporettos are very slow. Around the main island its much quicker to walk then to take the Vaporetto. Food was cheap compared to paris, but expensive relative to the rest of Italy.

-Poon