Venezia

Oh Venezia, sei veramente bellisima. Era un bel giorno.

Glass blowing, canals, flags, seagulls, sculptures, ferry rides, gondolas, getting lost.

This was only a fraction of the pictures that I took. Venice is one of the most intriguing places I have been in Italy. It was worth the twelve hours of traveling in one day. Mamma mia, I was not a happy camper by the end of the trip. I had a hard time sleeping the night before, then got up at 5 am, then walked all day and didn't eat enough food or drink enough water. Around 7:30 pm, I gratefully sunk into my seat on the train to Florence, utterly exhausted. I just wanted to zone out and read The Help (highly recommended). Alas, no such luck. The second I began to settle down, I got half my seat taken by a mom and her two kids (apparently it's OK here to lift up the arm divider and take half of someone else's fairly expensive seat). This was just not OK with me. So, the next stop we pretended to get off and then switched seats. Naturally, they were right across from a group of Nigerians speaking very loudly, to each other and on the phone, and eating some incredibly pungent food. A few stops later, a girl gets on and sits down next to us and begins to paint and file her nails. Around this time, the baby that I was originally sitting next to started screaming and a beer spills on the neighbors table. Noxious fumes of nail polish, beer, body odor and meat and rice wafted into my senses. I wanted to vomit, and the night had only just begun. After two hours, we arrive in Firenze. Layne realizes there's a train that may be going to Siena, but it was leaving in maybe two minutes. We run across five binari and barely make it onto the last cart of the train. Then, before the train makes its first stop, we run through every single cart to go ask the conductor in the front if this train goes to Siena. Turns out it doesn't. Go figure. So, we get off and find the train that goes back to Florence. Then, we wait. And wait. And finally, embark on our next two hour journey to Empoli. Here, we wait for a bus that brings us to the Siena train station. After another two hours on the bus, we arrive in Siena, deflated, haggard and grumpy. We trudge up the endless flights of escalators. Then walk through the annoyingly busy streets (it was almost 2 am by this point) and at last, stagger into our apartment.

Phew.

It was quite the journey home.