Entry 7

Salut! It is Tuesday morning and I am waiting for my classes to start at 12:30... so I figured I would keep this updated. This weekend we rented a car and headed to Venice. Matt picked us up from school at 3:30pm on Friday and we started the seven hour drive to Venice. We were in a a blue standard minivan. It was hilarious driving there... especially once we got into Italy because at all the tolls we didn't know whether to speak English or French...none of us speak any Italian. We ate on the road and got into Venice around 11pm. We parked the car and went to search for which night water bus would take us to our hostel. We get to the water bus stop and it says the last one was 15 minutes ago. So now we are all thinking we are stuck. I don't know how we got so lucky, but an old American women who lives in Venice was looking at the time too. She showed us a different one we could take and proceeded to be our guide and tell us everything we should do and see in Venice. What are the odds? We walked up to our hostel... it looked like a scene out of the movie "Just Married". We were down this scary dark ally and walked up to a huge brick place with no visible windows and a huge wood door. I'm now thinking I'm going to be the story on the news where a bunch of kids disappear in Venice or something. haha. It actually ended up being fine inside and we even got a complimentary croissant and coffee the next morning. Saturday was beautiful. It was about 70 degrees and perfect clear skies. We walked around all morning being really touristy and shopping a lot. For lunch we ate outside at this place that faced the Adriatic sea. It was incredible. At 2:30 we took a four hour bus ride to the three islands of Venice. The first one, Murano, specializes in glass blowing and we saw them making Venetian glass which was really awesome. The next island had a really old cathedral on it and a lot of stores that specialized in lace. Finally, we went to Burano which is an old fishing village. This was my favorite island because all of the buildings are painted bright blue, red, green, yellow, etc. It was such a cute place and all the shops were very nice. The boat tour was great because we got to be on the water and see a little bit what the Adriatic sea was all about. That night we came home, freshened up, and then went to an authentic Italian dinner. It was delicious. We had good wine, pasta, and sea food. Sunday we spent shopping again and visiting the palace where all the old important governmental figures lived. We left Venice at around 1pm and got home about 8:30pm. It was a lot of driving, but completely worth it. If you ever get a chance... go to Venice. It is my favorite city in Europe so far. After we got home, I met up with my mom and we went for a French steak dinner. It was pretty surreal seeing her in Grenoble. We have had a lot of fun together the last couple of days! I have been staying at her hotel and showing her around the city. So it was an amazing weekend and a great start to the week! Ok... I have class now... Miss you all! Ciao!