Friday October 28 – Flight to Italy/ Venice

                When I woke up at 4:30 to get on the flight I was very stiff and slightly hurting from sleeping on the bench. Then three girls from Cordoba that I had met last weekend in Granada because of the friends from Cordoba that I met in Portugal recognized me and found out that we were all going to Venice on the same flight and they were going to stay there for three or four days, I forget the exact number. When we got to the line to hand RyanAir my ticket and get on the plane, they made me see if my regulation size carry-on bag fit their standards, the handle stuck out of their box that they used for measurement, less than a half inch. They said that I had to pay 40 Euros because it was too big and I had to check it. Obviously I was very angry and did my best to get them to let me pass with it, but RyanAir is the world’s cheapest and worst airplane company so they did not budge, I paid the 40 Euros and angrily boarded the plane.

                I did not sleep much on the plane because I was angry about having to pay 40 Euros and the seats do not recline and they try to sell you a product on the intercom almost every five minutes, but when we got to Venice and saw the bridges and canals I no longer cared.  It is so pretty and I thought that it would be really smelly but it hardly smells at all. Adam and I were still with the Cordoba girls and they helped us find our hostel, which took awhile but was right next to the train station so it was very convenient. We then tried to find the girls’ hostel and we took a water taxi to where we thought it was but they called the hostel and it was not where they thought it was. We were right next to some sightseeing areas so we decided to see what we could and then find their hostel. We were right next to San Marco’s Basilica and the line was on a platform because the city I sinking little by little each year so there was a lot of water below the line. Then we walked around San Marco’s Plaza talking in a British accent, there was a campanile (bell tower) that we could go up but cost 10 Euros or so just to go up and then down. As we were deciding in our British accents a lady came up and asked about the line and price, she also asked if we were British, she was not but we told her we were just talking this way for fun. We then walked around some more and there were a lot of pidgeons that were very tame, some people got five or six of them on them with some bread, I got one on my shoulder because I pretended to have bread and I did not get pooped on. Next we went to Palazzo Ducale which had many things to do, in fact, there was so much that we ended up staying for two and a half hours not going at a slow pace. That place is sort of like a maze, once you get in you have to finish to get out, but it had a lot of cool things. We found a water bus to take this time since it would be a lot cheaper but it still cost 6.50 Euros. One of the girls had a friend that studied in Venice before and she said to just buy one and not validate it because they do not check it. I feel guilty about doing that but we did not have the money to spend that much each time and it was hard to get around Venice.

                We finally found the girls’ hostel which was owned by five or six guys in there 20’s. This was a slightly odd place because I had seen it on hostelworld.com and it was very cheap for girls to rent but they also had mixed rooms that you could rent for a LOT of money, I think these guys were just trying to have girls stay at their hostel. The girls’ hostel made dinner for five Euros so Adam and I paid and ate there with the girls; we met some more girls who were staying there two from France and two from Chicago. After we walked around and got gelato and found one of the only three bridges that cross the Grand Canal and we just looked from the top of it. The view was very pretty, especially at night; we also discovered that everything in Italy closes with the setting of the sun which is really early. It was so weird going from Spain were everyone and everything is late to very early in Italy. We got back to our hostel at about 12:30 because we had to get up to catch a train to Milan in the morning.