VENICE!

Saturday, September 11th

Me on my favorite little island!

This morning we got up early to head to Venice! We booked a day trip through a group called "bus to alps" which is a company that sets up trips throughout the semester for students interested in going on traveling for cheap. We are also doing trips to the South of Italy and Germany through this company. Very cool that they set all this up for such a great price! Our leaders name was Mike and he studied in Florence a few years ago. He ended up getting an internship with "bus to alps" and actually travels Europe with study abroad students for his full-time job! (Of course I got a little info on all this). We met Mike at the train station and then hopped on the bus from there. Venice is only about a 3 hour bus drive from Florence, which is surprisingly close. We arrived in Venice at around noon and hopped on our first "water bus", which took us out to the two islands associated with Venice.

The beautiful, colorful town of Burano!

We first went to Burano which is the furthest island from Venice. Let me just tell you right now that if I am ever missing, I have packed up and moved to this Island! It was tiny, maybe smaller than Hollandale (okay that may be stretching it but they're pretty comparable). Every single house on this island is a different, bright color. I really feel like they have some kind of city ordinance that says you can not have the same color of house as your neighbor. It was so perfect just walking around looking at these cute, vibrant houses with the breeze blowing in from the sea and the sun shining down. It was definitely another smiley day! :)

Pictures do this place no justice!

After they finally dragged me off the island, we headed to the second island called Morrano. Morrano is an island very famous for glass blowing. There is a huge factory and many demonstrations going on all day. They are able to make such beautiful pieces of art and it is so much fun to watch! I had no idea Venice was so famous for their glass, but I can see why it is!

After Morrano, we headed back to Venice on the water bus. We stopped at St. Marc's square where they had a huge piazza surrounded by beautiful old buildings and a huge church.

Bird lady.. Seriously?!

There were also way too many pigeons! I can honestly say I will never turn into one of those tourists that feeds the pigeons and has them land on them to take pictures. YUCK! Any who, we walked around the piazza, then headed down a sidewalk adjacent to the grand canal. We stopped to listen to a man singing on a gondola (who looked a lot like Robert on the TV show "Everybody Loves Raymond"... ) We grabbed dinner at a yummy little restaurant with some very accommodating Italian waiters. It was a fun meal to say the least. We then hopped back on the water bus to meet our bus.

Up until this point, I wasn't the biggest fan of Venice (especially after seeing the little island of Burano) just because of all the tourists and over population of birds. Seeing it at night however completely changed my view on this city. Every building along the canal was beautifully lit up, illuminating the water. There were people laughing and dancing at restaurants and others sitting on their balconies enjoying a glass of wine. The atmosphere was so magical. I was literally taking it all in with my mouth wide open. I still can not believe how incredible it was.

The Grand Canal lit up at night! So pretty!

 It was in this moment that I realized just how fortunate I am to have this experience. Seriously, who gets to just hop on a bus to visit Venice for the day? When we got back on the bus, I was both exhausted and excited from the day we had. I would definitely not mind visiting Venice again :)