Venice

Swiss Alps

Swiss Alps

 Our group took a bus to Venice. We drove through the Swiss Alps on the way there. No offense to the Rockies, but the Rocky Mountains have nothing on the Alps. It took almost two hours to drive through the winding roads and tunnels of the Alps and I couldn't tear my eyes away the entire time. Every turn revealed another beautiful snow-capped mountain or quaint mountain town. It was really something to see.

Streets of Venice

After seven hours in a bus, we made it to Venice. We took a train to get into the city. Venice is the first island I've been on, another first for me. It was rainy and cold again, but the city was still so beautiful. It is still hard to wrap my mind around the fact that the entire city is built on water. There are no cars, only boats and foot to get around. We took a water bus through the Grand Canal to get to our hostel. We walked the winding and confusing streets to the Academia bridge and then to the main square. There we saw San Marco Basilica, the clock tower, and the Parliament building. We walked around a lot that day. Venice is purely a tourist town, there are almost no locals still living in the city. So, literally every shop is full of souvenirs. One thing I noticed in almost every store are masks. The masks are of every color, size, and shape you can think of. Venice celebrates a similar holiday like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It was fun to see all the masks, some were quite pricey.

Venetian night with fellow Americans!

That evening after a delightful dinner of pasta and wine we ran into a group of Americans from Minnesota. They were studying in Italy and this was there last night in Europe. So we all went to a pub and celebrated their last night in the city on water. One kid was originally from Nebraska and now goes to school in Kansas. The next day we went to see the old parliament building in the main square. The Italian government was comprised of a select group of families, although they held "elections" for government positions. These families also had a great deal of money and every ceiling and wall in the parliament building was covered in gold. After seeing all the gold I thought to myself, that's why gold is so expensive now, because the Italians used it all in their parliament. Dinner that night was expensive... Again. I loved Venice but everything was so expensive! The next day was the official start of our week of Spring Break. Hayley, Evan and I didn't leave until late afternoon so we went to another museum. Jan, our guide, took us to an old royal family's house that is now a museum. I enjoyed seeing the way the home was decorated, it was very lavish. One interesting thing I saw was a couple of the rooms had glass chandeliers. There were really extravagant and had little glass flowers where the candle sticks would have been located. The third level of the house was a gallery of art. There were some really nice paintings there. We left Venice about five o'clock to get to the airport and catch a plane to Malta!