June 14

We made it to Venice early in the morning, and hopped in line to get a reservation for our train ride back. We must have waited about 10 minutes, but were turned away at the window because we did not know the train times or anything. We thought they would have helped us like they did back in Salzburg. The ticket people back in Salzburg use their computers to look up trains and where they go and at what times. I tried to refuse to leave the window without getting help, but he refused to help. We had no choice, we had to try to decipher the Italian listing of departures and arrivals. It took us a while, but we figured something out. We stood in line again, I wanted to “cut” because we had already waited out time, but were rudely pushed away. The next teller was more helpful, and actually worked with us, gave us a smile. It was refreshing.

It was raining steadily as we stepped out the door of the train station. I had seen countless people buying ponchos and umbrellas. It didn’t seem like there were many people prepared for the weather. I bought a poncho myself that covered me and my backpack. I did get a few small parts of my jeans wet, but everything else stayed completely dry. The poncho even trapped some of the heat in as well, another bonus. It was worth the 5 euros (about 8 US dollars). We made our way to our hostel, about ½ an hour from the main island of Venice by public transportation: boats! Then about ¼ mile walk from the dock into the island we were on.

We checked in, took a long nap, and prepared ourselves to go back out. We walked around the main part of the city, took lots of pictures, and bought a few souveniers. We stopped at a restaurant in the early evening. We hadn’t had much to eat in a while. We ordered two pizzas, the first was four cheese. It had green stuff on it, I couldn’t tell whether it was pesto or moldy cheese. Probably the latter. The pizza tasted strong, whatever it was, and had a bit of a citrus taste in the back.

The second pizza was pepperoni, and tasted a bit more “normal” as the girls put it. As it started getting darker and we were getting more exhausted we headed back to our hostel. We bought some gelato near our dock, a beer, and a small bottle of wine to celebrate Gaelyn’s birthday. We stayed up playing Uno, talking and laughing. We were exhausted by the time we climbed into our beds, but we still stayed up talking. I finally fell asleep to the other girls still talking.