Day 8-9: Venice!

We finally arrived to BEEEYOOOTIFUL Venice. By the way, we are getting from place to place via train. With things being relatively close, this is doable. They are typically a few hours away from each other and it's kinda cool to ride the train. I just read book after book and I'm lovin it. Anyway. We get to Venice and it's a big flurry of people running place to place. This is the first place where we really felt like a tourist only because there were SO many people running around and running into me and not knowing where they were going. And they looked American for the most part. But, the point is that we get there and its depressing because ITS RAINING. So much rain it's hard to understand. I was wearing shorts, flip flops, and a t-shirt and was soaking wet in 30 seconds walking out to the vaporetti (the boat that gets you place to place). We bought a 48 hour pass that gave us as many rides as we wanted. It was steep, but definitely the best way to get around for us. We just scan our little card and didn't have to worry about paying $7 PER RIDE PER PERSON. Crazy rates.

So, we ride the vaporetti which is extremely crowded almost everytime we get on it and its hard to take pictures. We walk around these small crazy streets and Steven is able to flawlessly navigate them by some great miracle. We find our place/host and its down a very sketchy narrow street. We walk up the steps and our airbnb room is actually very nice! Again, no air conditioning because we didn't think through that. But it was fine because we had a fan and it was probably the best night of sleep we got in a whole week. Once the rain let up a bit, we went out to explore and here is what we found. St Marks Square...

Where all the gondola's dock up

Reading our Rick Steve's guide

SOOO  much rain

Riding the vaporetti and doing our audio tour of the town with water streets

So gorgeous

 This was the tower we went up. I think one of the two things we actually paid to do in Venice. There was a super long line to go up and tensions were high. Some old man, we are talking 70 years old, walked to the front of the line hoping to get in before everyone else (yes...he was cutting). But a man, 40 years his younger, started screaming and telling everyone in line that the 70 year old man was trying to skip the line. I wanted to cry because what does it matter? He is OLD. hahaha. I love old people more than life.

St Mark's Basilica was under extreme construction :( so this was the best picture we got of it. Normally it's so gorgeous and we could tell that even though it was covered. 

 All smiles at the square

This was about as close as we were willing to get to the pigeons. Talk about nightmares. 

The view from the top of the tower!

 My heart <3

On the second day we headed to Murano which is where they do all the glass blowing demonstrations. We got a sneak peak of some in the back alleys, but weren't willing to pay 50 euros to do it full on. We got to walk around the shops and look at how pretty the streets were. 

But I broke my sandal about 30 minutes being there and we were pretty limited cause of how hard it was to walk. Hahahaha. So we stopped into a grocery store there and picked up our go-to lunch. A baguette, meat, and some fruit. We sat on the sidewalk and took some pictures and enjoyed our time.

I mean look at how colorful!

When we got back we decided to do some laundry. But the place didn't have a dryer so we had to hang it in our room. It was a failure because there were so many stinkin mosquito's when we opened the window. 

So the cool thing about Airbnb, is that you meet people from other countries if you share a place. And we got to meet some beautiful Australians. They told us all about their fortunate lives ($20 minimum wage or something ridiculous like that) which is how they get to travel. We met them towards the end of their trip which was like 3 months. Crazy. Anyway, we went out to dinner with them and got the cheapest but most delicious pizza. On our way back we split up and walked the night streets which were gorgeous. Buuut this picture below shows the barrier we had getting home. The entire Marks square was flooded! It was nuts. Everyone was walking in knee deep water. We decided to take a different route. Sorry for the blurry pictures.

 Accademia we paid $20 per person for. It was not worth it unfortunately.

One of our meals. The noodles were disgusting. But we saved a buttload of money.

Me taking pics of my domestic husband. He's whipped.

Im sure I missed some stories here or there. But this place was great. MY FAVORITE Italy place ever. The whole place is just amazing. The streets are tiny and there are so many cool shops. People didn't really try to hassle us to get us into their shops which was a nice change of pace. I heart Venice! Oh--and no we didn't do a gondola ride. Not worth the price for us personally. I know many people love it and enjoy it. But what are we? Rich?!

Next stop:  Florence & Siena