Venezia

Ciao! I'm writing from an internet shop in firenzè right now with a really weird keyboard its got all these extra symbols (òà ùç°§ç), but I need to catch you all up on venezia. We took a night train to milano and then another short train to venezia, which turned out to be a great deal (only 17.50 euros). On the train to Venezia, we ended up sharing a train compartment with Nadia, an elderly italian woman who spoke zero englishapparentlyperently loves to talk though and she seemed unfazed with how little italiano I knew. We talked for about 2 hours mostly about good places to go in italia. 20 minutes of that was spent trying to tell Italian italian decks of cards have 54 cards with I guess an extra face card (I'm still looking for closure on the conversation). It was really funny though, just imagineItalian italian woman trying to act out a box of cards and then trying to act out whatever the face card is (joker maybe?). When we got to venezia our first choice hostel was booked. The other hostel that was our second option turned out to not even be on the same island, so we hiked around the city's canals hoping to find another closer hostel (using a list of hostels that some other backpackers handed down to us).





We hiked all over nVenicen vensucceededsucceded in determining only that venezia has the most confusing way of addressing buildings, there are no street names only numbers with a region of the city. Anywho, we ended up staying at the Hostel International hostel on the island of Guidecca (our second choice). It worked out great because once we got a 24 hour water bus pass we ended up using it a lot, not just to get to our hostel. We walked around venezia for a bit (this time without our giant backpacks), and had a lot of fun in San Marco square with some pigeons.





It started to rain though so we ended up eating a quick dinner and heading back to the hostel early. When we got to the ostello we played some rummy and then joined some other backpackers for a game of Oh Hell. We played with Jean and Becca from Boston, John and Ryan from somewhere else, and Michelle from Canada. After I won that game we made some plans for the next day and hit the hey. The next morning we met with Jean and Becca for breakfast and then headed off to see the Jewish Getto (apparently it was the first Ghetto, at least I think I read that somewhere). On the way to the water bus we met a fellow backpacker Dan who decided to come with us.



We saw the getto, which was pretty interesting, and then went to the island of Lido which had some beaches. We hung out at the beach for a while then had some pizza and wine then back to the beach. We stayed for another hour or so playing rummy (I lost this time, I think Dan won). At the beach we saw some goofy guys juggling various juggling pins and playing other carny games. They weren't collecting any money though, but there's more to their story as you'll find out later. On the way back to the water bus to go to the main island we met some girl who went to Purdue, and then later while waiting for the water bus Dan disappeared never to see us again (or so we thought (we randomly saw him in florenthat'sut thats later, this is venezia). We went back to the ostello, showered and then met the girls again for dinner. Me and Greg both got lasagne al forno and we shared a pizza margherita. The lasagne was good but it didn't have any meat, which was different. The pizza was really good also, and it didn't have as much cheese on iAmerica america. While we were eating some italian kids were playing soccer in the square using an alley entrance as the soccer goal.



We were looking around the square while eating our food and we noticed that some clowns were performing in the middle of the piazza, then we noticed that they were the guys that we saw at the beach. It was amazing. For one short moment at the beach we got a peak at the private life of carny folk, and then saw them practicing there craft in the piazza!



After dinner we got some gelato and Greg got some more food (portions are pretty small over here). We parted with the girls who went home early, and we walked down to the venezia giardini (gardens), and then after a tense moment looking for a water bus that went to our island that late at night, got back to our hostel before curfew (24.00). The next morning we left for firenze, but we'll save that for later. Ciao!