Pigeon Palooza

Woke up bright and early this morning for Venice! On the car ride there I found digestives at the rest stop (one of my favorite European foods!)

When we got to Venice I had to pay 1.50 euro to pee! It was insane! We took a boat ride from the bus to the island of Murano where we watched glass being blown. It was very cool, and all of the workers are SUPER skilled! Then we got a chance to buy real Murano glass, so I got earrings :) After we hopped back on the boat to Venice!

First impressions: There are SOOOO many people! Like huge amounts of tourists! Also, for as many people as there are, there are that many pigeons. They are everyone and people feed them and they fly really low so you are constantly ducking. It's absolutely crazy. We immediately grabbed a bite to eat and then just wandered around Venice. We visited St. Marks Basilica which was really beautiful and covered in gold on the inside. It looked different than a lot of European cathedrals, but really nice. Next we walked around through little stores and such and stumbled upon a music museum and some more churches that we breezed through.

Eventually our tummies got the best of us and we got gelato! I had coconut, strawberry, and mint chocolate chip. All of course, were delicious. We walked back and sat in a park for awhile before meeting the rest of the group to go on a gondola ride. While the ride was fun, we got screwed because of canal traffic so we only got a 25 minute ride and the majority of it was around Venice instead of through the canals. Ripping off the tourists...

We had more free time after that so we just walked and shopped some more. Saw some of the famous bridges and met up with some of the other people. Eventually we headed back to the hotel (not located in Venice) for what we thought would be a pizza party. Turns out, we had to go to the pizza place and pay ourselves (all of us tired, hungry, and grumpy because it was 10) but the food turned out delicious! And Saverio kept buying us wine and these lemonade shot things. Now I am full, but completely exhausted, and we leave for Florence in the morning! Ciao!