When In Roma: Day 8-Venice/Venezia!!! 2/4/11

OH MY GOSH!!! We got to Venice/Venezia this afternoon and it is GORGEOUS!!! Probably the most beautiful peaceful place I have ever been!!! I can't get over how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!! It was such a cute place with bridges everywhere and canals. The main travel was by foot on land or by boat in the water! It was super weird to see police boats, ambulance boats, gondolas, and boat taxis everywhere! The water was so blue it looked fake! It was an aquamarine/teal blue and super super pretty! The buildings were super cute too and the churches were absolutely gorgeous! The first day we got there we visited an old school (Scuola di San Rocco) full of paintings and a church (Chiesa S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari) that was much more decorated compared to the Duomo in Florence. Then we went to the Academia museum. I wish we could take pictures inside these buildings so I could show you, but we can't :( Sad day. The buildings had carvings and paintings in the ceilings even! Everything had so much detail, it must've taken forever to make. It makes everything at home seem incredibly plain. Even the Basilica and Cathedral can't compare to these churches! Our hotel ….quaint. Lol that is pretty much the perfect word to describe it. It was very small, the hallways were narrow, and the room had pretty much a bed that took over most of the room, a skinny wardrobe, tiny TV, and desk. It also had a bathroom. I was surprised we even had a bathroom in our room because when we were walking through the hall there would be random bathrooms so I figured we had a community bathroom. I have pictures I will put up when I get time. The bed was two single beds pushed together and mine was super lumpy, there wasn't much room to walk, and the bedspread was floral. Haha it was awesome. Oh, the walls were super thin too so you could here everyone and everything! Even though it was tiny, I kind of liked it. It made me feel like a real Italian compared to what our hotel is like in Florence (which is super nice and spacious). I probably would've gotten claustrophobic if I stayed in the hotel longer than the weekend, but we were barely ever in our room anyways so I didn't mind. Anyways, after checking into the hotel we went at got a sandwich at the café right around the corner and we ate outside because in the sun it was t-shirt weather :) Halleluiah! You have no idea how happy I am to be here and in the sun rather than freezing at home with the rest of the world. Sorry guys, I had to say it. Anyways, back to the café. The birds here are crazy, they practically come right up and eat your food. It's kind of gross, but I didn't mind because it made me feel like Marry Poppins haha. I had a cappuccino with my sandwich and it was the perfect combination :) I'm writing this all backwards, we checked into the hotel, had lunch, then went on the tours which took up the majority of the rest of the day/night. After the tours I went and showered and went to dinner with Clara. We found a cute restaurant by the river where we shared a margarita pizza and prosciutto (ham) pizza and a half liter of the house white wine. We ended our meal with lemon cello because we were told Venice specializes in it. It was super super strong though! There was an older couple sitting next to us was from England and the man had on this awesome multi colored suede suit coat. I couldn't get over it! It was the most awesome suit coat I had ever seen. It reminded me of Jessica because I always complain to her about my sophmore year at school when I lost my pink and white checkered zip up hoodie with the white fuzzy hood and I obsessed over it forever lol and I know Jess thought it was the most obnoxious hoodie/obsession ever. :) hehe Anyways on our other side was a young couple and they were super nice. We talked to them a little bit because we wanted to know what to get and their food looked really good so we ordered the same thing the girl got, p.s. we talked to them in Italian :) woo who I'm actually learning! After dinner we went back to the hotel and I was planning on crashing right away, but Molly and I talked for awhile and watched TV. It was really interesting to see house and grey's anatomy spoken in Italian. Molly and I laughed a lot because the voices didn't match the characters and the Italian was spoken super fast so it didn't match the mouths of the people. Also it's really weird in Italy because their radio stations and MTV plays half Italian music and singing and half in English. So it's super funny when I recognize a song like Dynamite by Taio Cruz, but it's sand in Italian.