Ciao Italia!

My adventures in Italy began with a full day of travel with Lindsay, in which we took every form of transportation: metro to train station, train to Paris, taxi to bus stop, shuttle bus to airpot, plane to Trevisio, bus to Venice, boat to Hostel (photo on the right), literally every form of transportation. We arrived in Venice around 10:30 or so at night, extremely tired and extremely hungry. We didn't stay on the main island, but at a small one about a two minute boat ride from St. Mark's square. Needless to stay there wasn't anything open. There was one small restaurant open at that hour on our island so we checked it out. Turns out the kitchen was closed, but the waiter insisted we stay and the chef would make something for us quickly. The restaurant was so cute, very modern, small, and definitely family run. We started with two glasses of delicious red wine, after we got Orecchiette ("ear" shaped pasta) with fresh tomato sauce and freshly graded mozzarella cheese. They topped it off with homemade tiramisu, which had been the special dessert. Lindsay (photo on the left) and I laughed the whole time about how surreal it was, but how the best meal we will had was at 11:00 at night in our sweatsuits/traveling clothes. For the rest of our stay in Venice, the resturant was never open - seriously. The lights were never on again, the tables were never outside again - making us think we just dreamt the whole thing.

Sunday was our first full day in Venice. We started off heading towards St. Mark's Basilica, of course it was mass, so we wondered across the canal to grab lunch and kill some time. We walked around a small market, and had lunch in the sun (we totally lucked out on the weather the whole time). We ate fresh fruit on the canal, and headed back to the square. We were able to cut the line and were let in the side door, the church was beautiful inside, and extremely ornate (photo on the right). We had downloaded tours of the basilica for free off iTunes with Rick Steves, so we each had our iPods and were able to take a free tour! (photo on the left) Gelato and people watching were in order afterwords. We walked all around the island, hoping to get lost and find a quiet area, but no luck that day, tourists were everywhere. Around 6:30, we had found a really cute small church, and given it was Palm Sunday, Lindsay took me to my first Catholic mass. The church was beautiful, the mass was very cool (and in Italian) and it was nice to be away from crowds for a couple hours. We grabbed dinner afterwords, and headed back to the hostel - not much was open on Sunday and we hadn't been home for almost 13 hours!

Monday in Venice was incredible. We met a girl who is studying in Rennes, but lives in Venice who recommended we leave the main island and look for Campo Santa Margherita. It was where the university is, and she said it was cheaper and less crowded. She was so right. We got off the water taxi, and just started walking, we had found the real Venice. We walked passed bakeries, and lace stores, it was very residential, and we never heard English. We crossed a bridge into the campo, and it was so nice. It was like a huge square, where all the restaurants had tables outside, and it was close to 75 degrees. With Lindsay's Lonely Planet "Europe on a Shoestring" (aka our venetian-bible) we had the most amazing pizza and gelato for less then 5 euros! There were some tourists but mostly just students. We stayed in the camp all day, looking around shops, people watching and sitting in the sun. We headed back to the hostel for a quick nap/shower, and had a quick cocktail hour, prosecco by the canal, then went back to the campo for a delicious dinner.
Gondolas
View of St. Mark's from our hostel
Cool view of a canal and a typical bridge Me and Linds on the docks