Day 17...When you are excited/bored/tired/happy/amazed/in explorer mode, create a theme song and sing it every 5 minutes! That's what I did here!

Day 17, July 1st:

Italy Day 3=VENICE!!!!!

“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie it’s amore!”  This has been our theme song for ITALY, but it became true in VENICE!  As soon as we finally set foot on the island of Venice, it was AMORE!!!!!  I have never seen something so beautiful and so unlike anything else in the world.  The roads are made of WATER!!!!!!!  I love this place!  We immediately took a waterbus for 6.5 euro to Piazza San Marco.  Once we arrived there, we began our search for the actual Piazza.  Needless to say we travel SAS style, so we put away our map and wandered…in the wrong direction!  We ended up seeing a good part of the island (including a trek about 30 minutes away from the piazza but it took us about 2 hours to get there…)!  It was not a waste because we actually did a lot of shopping, got breakfast, stopped at a grocery store, bought lunch, saw the Rialto, etc.  So since I mentioned that we stopped at a grocery store…everytime we pass a grocery store we go in and look around to see how they vary.  It sounds pretty lame, but it is really cool to see what the locals eat and how much things vary from the US.  It is a lot of fun and everyone enjoys it. 
For breakfast, I got an apple pastry for 1 euro from Mauro El Forner de Canton, a small bakery on the side of the road!  It was amazing!  I should have bought the whole store!  It was soo good, but I am a sucker for pastries…  I love any and all types of pastries!  After all of your shopping and our long journey, we worked up an appetite and ate lunch near the Rialto.  I split lasagna and spaghetti with meatballs with Danielle.  The lasagna didn’t even have a tomato sauce, but it was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo delicious!  The meatballs on the spaghetti were so different than anything I have had in the US.  The meat was ground extremely fine and the spices and breadcrumbs were hidden (but you knew they were there) because of the meat texture.  Very delicious!   The food was so good that we took pictures of it with only a few bites left of each dish…oops.  We then finished our trek over the island by actually going to the Piazza of San Marcos and the village of Academia. 

After our long walk, we had to stop for some gelato.  Why not, right?  I had strawberry, pineapple and mint this time (all for just 2 euro).  We then decided that we had walked enough for the day so we bought a ticket for the waterbus and rode it around the island for 2 hours observing all there was to see by boat.  It was actually pretty neat.  The waterbus took us out to Murano (another island off Venice where all of the Venetian glass is made).  We also saw ambulance boats, speed limit signs on all of the bridges (like we have on the streets) and Venice’s cemetery (that is an island too).  The waterbus took us back to the bus terminal, so Danielle and I went to eat dinner at a restaurant right on the canal, while Daniel took another waterbus back to the Rialto to meet the other girls for dinner.  We had lemon chicken and pasta carbonara (pasta with an egg and bacon sauce).  The pasta carbonara was a little weird. I really don’t like scrambled eggs, so I was not too fond of the scrambled egg pasta.  It was an experience and that is what SAS is all about, right?  After dinner, Danielle and I boarded a bus to head towards our hotel.  Two and a half hours later, we finally arrived at the hotel!  Now for the story…  

Once upon a time, Danielle and Kyle boarded a bus from downtown Venice to their hotel just outside the city.  Kyle and Danielle sat on the bus anxiously waiting for our stop; however, we later realized that there is more than one stop for our hotel area and this bus only stops at one of them.  Along the way, they saw their hotel pass and the bus stopped about 5 minutes down the street.  They didn’t get off the bus there because by the time they realized that they should be getting off, the bus had already pulled away heading towards the next stop 10 minutes away.  One hour after we originally boarded the bus, we are still sitting there thinking that the bus might turn around and go back towards our stop on another loop of the city; however, once we get up and ask the bus driver when to get off he informs us that we are one stop away from the end of the route and the bus is headed in to park for the night.  Danielle and Kyle then begin to freak out because they have no idea where they are and can’t even locate anything on their map because they are further out than their map shows.  The bus driver then shoo’s them off the bus and says they must go back to Venice on the next bus that comes in 20 minutes.  They step off the bus and hope that they are in good hands.  As the bus driver stated, a new bus pulled up 20 minutes later and began taking us back around the loop headed towards Venice.  Danielle and Kyle then realized that it was the same bus driver they just had and he told them to move up into the front two seats.  They were very scared as to why he made them move up one extra set of seats to the very very front.  The bus then took them back along the same route and back towards the hotel.  One hour later, the bus driver finally turned around and told them that they needed to get off at the next stop.  The bus driver stopped in the middle of the road and dropped them off directly in front of their hotel.  They gave the driver a tip for his help and crossed the road as he waved them goodbye.  The two then returned to their rooms and felt a sigh of relief.  The End! 

After our two-hour bus ride, we were very happy to be back at the hotel.  The others, which left an hour and a half after us, beat us to the hotel.  We then took our showers and hit the hay!  It was a long day!!!!  What an adventure!  Again, we got to see much more of the suburbs of Venice then anyone else on our trip…guaranteed!!!!  We were safe the entire time, but it was definitely scary having no idea where we were.  All is good now!  Good night!