Venice, Italy

Day 6:
So the night before in Florence kind of put a damper on Venice. It was just bad circumstances all around. I didn't feel so hot from the night before (my bad), it was the hottest place traveled thus far, and it felt like the most crowded. I learned in Florence that Gelato is the best cure when not feeling well! Priority in Venice - find nearest Gelato place as quick as possible! Turns out..no matter how gross I felt, the beauty of Venice is too powerful for a bad experience.

To get the heart of Venice, we needed to take a short boat ride. It was pretty amazing to ride along the water surrounding such a unique city. It's sad to hear that Venice will not last forever since the water is rising. They give it another 200 years. We reach land and walk over to St. Mark's Square. Although it was hot, it was crowded with tourists, and it had a little construction going on...St. Mark's was by far the most extravagant piece of architecture I saw on the entire trip. The detail and coloring was brilliant! And there were pigeons everywhere!

Venice had some fantastic little shops. The Venician glass was everywhere and made the city sparkle. I hit up an internet cafe with Bethany and Ally and it was pretty hot in there but it felt good to sit down. For a few hours we just wondered around the square going in and out of the shops.

Later on we met with the group for a "romantic" gondola ride. (Left: Jenna poppin' some bubbly). It was cool to check "take a gondola ride in Italy" off my list of things to do around the world; however it was a lot different than I hoped. It's not really like the movies where you go to some random gondola guy and he sings to you. Instead, you go to a doc-like place and get on one and the guy doesn't sing to you...he talks to his friends. I guess you can't blame Venice for turning the gondola rides into a tourist attraction, but unless you got the extra cash lying around, a romantic gondola ride from some random backstreet might be a little too expensive for my taste. But it is still a clique-must to experience.

Although hot and crowded, Venice turned out to be rather beautiful and of course it was the most unique city we visited. Looking back, I really wish I would have taken a picture with the pigeons! There wasn't much going on near our hotel that night, so we got a night to go to bed early and rest. Well...some of the people went to bed early, others (like myself) stayed up and enjoyed a crazy game of Hot Seat!