Its still crazy for me to think that I live in Europe. One day I’m sitting by “lac Leman”, also known as Lake Geneva, and the next day I am walking down the small sidewalks of Venice. We arrived Friday afternoon to a warm sun and loud Italians taking people on Gondolas or trying to coerce tourists to come in to their restaurants for a slice of pizza. We stayed in a hostel outside of Venice. I use the term Venice very loosely. What we stayed in was more like a trailer park; Camping Jolly was the name. The facilities were fair, the temperature was just below the point where I start shivering and I am not sure if Aubrey, the girl I shared my bed with, was comfortable with cuddling so I maintained a fetal position the whole night.

After a restful night’s sleep we started early and made our way to St. Marc’s Square, visited St. Marc’s Church, and took a museum tour of the “Doge” before lunch. We spent the afternoon getting lost in the streets and later took a boat ride to a glass blowing factory where we saw a man sculpt a HORSE out of GLASS one of the coolest things I saw all day).

Before we grabbed dinner, we decided to take a quick trip to the opposite side of the island to see the sunset. Unfortunately, our short trip turned into a 2 hour walk because Michelle was still on one crutch and moving fairly slow. For dinner we stopped for Pasta and white wine and topped the evening off with Gelato (did I mention that was our third serving of gelato for the trip…I rationalized it because of the extensive amount of walking and effort done on Michelle’s partJ)

One of my favorite parts of Venice was the people playing instruments in the different squares, I had no idea that the kazoo isn’t just used at birthday parties but as an actual instrument for making music! Venice is also very into masks! They have so many shops devoted to masquerade antiques and souvenirs. Some of the most elaborate ones were going for 100 or more Euros but were absolutely phenomenal.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take many pictures of the romantic city because I forgot to charge the battery on my Camera. Friends got some beautiful shots, however. Monday we started back with classes and my allergies to something in the house started again too. I have actually been sneezing and coughing since I got here which has been quite unfortunate. I went to the doctor, though, and he prescribed me an inhaler for the week so hopefully I start feeling better.