First weekend in Italy...

Wow! I have no idea where to even begin...

Let's see, classes on Wednesday and Thursday..eh syllabus week, not too bad. However, Friday was an awesome day and a great way to start off the weekend. We began by running 5 laps around the gym...yes warm-up laps. CIMBA makes all students participate in what they call the "Da Vinci Challenge". Usually, it is outside and involves physical activity and a ropes course. However, since the weather is so cold we were forced to stay inside the gym. It included a number of activities first starting with a "trust fall" except this trust fall was off a 6 foot high platform and involved falling into the arms of 8 other students. That was just the first of many team building activities that honestly were enjoyable. All in all it was an awesome experience with plenty of awkward moments that only helped us to get to know other students so much better.

So after getting our workout, us girls decided to treat ourselves to the Pizzeria. The pizzas were huge but extremely thin so don't judge that we all ate the entire pizza...molto benne!

Ok so now for the fun part! We planned to catch the 8:30 am bus that takes us to the train station from campus..but of course for some reason the clocks on all of our cell phones were messed up so I think I jumped out of bed around ehh 8:19 ish. Talk about a mad dash! But luckily we made it and caught the train into the Santa Lucia train station. Arriving around 11:30am, we literally ran off the train all so excited to finally see the beautiful city of Venezia!

Words cannot even describe how gorgeous the city was even at the train station. The Grand Canal was directly in front of the train station so of course we had to take a couple of minutes to take our tourist pictures. From the directions given to us by our hostel, we were supposed to take a water bus on route 2. Do you think we got on the correct route? Of course not! Haha so after a couple attempts asking locals we found a stop close to our hostel and continued on our adventure.

While on the waterbus, I noticed that almost every person had either shopping bags or grocery bags in their hands. It then occurred to me that this was the typical means of travel for people living in Venice...how cool!
Anyways, we got off the waterbus and were forced to buy a map of Venice since I left my pocket map back in the dorm room, oops! I'd say we only got lost for about 20 minutes before finding our hostel! Fortunately, we booked a decent hostel and it definitely fine and nice enough for our needs, we were just happy to make it there in one piece!

In front of our hostel- Ca' Contarini

We dropped our bags off and met up with two other kids from our program who were waiting for us at the Basilica! Holy cow...again no words to describe the heart of Venice. Our 15 minute walk from our hostel forced us to walk past stores such as Versace, Prada, Gucci..but hey I wasn't complaining! It was simply incredible to see one of the most famous buildings in all of Europe. It was overwhelming, surreal, and just ahh breathtaking as we walked through the Piazza San Marco, through the Basilica di San Marco, and out towards the waterfront overlooking the rest of Venice.

Basilica di San Marco

Bell tower in the plaza

Just posing in front of the Basilica, no big deal

 

Waterfront view

And yes there were plenty of people feeding pigeons and I can't tell you how many times all of us ducked our heads trying to avoid getting flown into by a pigeon! And interesting fact of Venice...tons of locals walk around with their dogs. However, there dogs are very well trained and just wait outside while the owner is looking in a store and just follow them while walking, without any leash!

We walked around for awhile, oh and bought our Carnevale masks! Carnevale is a huge celebration in Venice, similar to our Mardi Gras in the States so we are definitely planning on going back for that.

Our next stop was the Rialto bridge and we decided to test our skills and take the back streets to find it. fter getting lost numerous times, we finally found the bridge and again it was unreal. I could have stood there literally all night soaking up this view of the Grand Canal. I got chill bumps! These pictures don't even do justice to this unbelievable view and atmosphere.

Walking down from the top of the bridge

View from the Rialto

Then of course comes the gondola ride! We ended up only having to pay 12 euros each for the ride and my advice to anyone planning on traveling to Europe: you HAVE to go on a gondola ride. It was so neat!

Gondola ride!

We finally made it to dinner at a restaurant called "Vino Vino" and I honestly had the best lasagna of my entire life! When my parents come over to travel, I am taking them to this place solely for that lasagna :) After dinner, we explored a little more before calling it a night.

The next morning our hostel provided breakfast and we made our way back to the Santa Lucia train station. We were all extremely tired and tried to take a small nap on the train ride home. However, we got disturbed when the shady train conductor came around to validate our tickets and ended up charging us 7 euros to the three of us that had our feet resting on another seat. Word of advice for the trains: DO NOT put your feet up on the seat unless you want to pay double the cost of the ticket!

We were all exhausted arriving back at campus but could say that our first weekend was a huge success! Sorry for the delay of posting about the weekend but I'll warn you that you might have to get used to the delayed postings. Also, sorry if this was too long..I know I tend to ramble sometimes so my apologies! That is all for now, we are planning on going to Florence this weekend so we are all very anxious for the week to be overrrr! Ciao!