Before I get into talking about my day and what we did in Venice, I just wanted to mention that I was so frazzled when I got onto the internet in Italy. All of my bookmarked websites were in Italian! I checked Yahoo just to see what was going on and it was all Italian news and when I logged on to update my blog it was in Italian as well. Ahh! Hello culture shock!
Anyways, I'll start with the plane ride to London and then to Venice. I kid you not, every seat was filled on this flight from Dallas to London. We were like a bunch of sardines in a can! There was an asian girl about my age sitting next to me and an Indian woman sitting in the aisle seat. I kid you not, those two talk the entire flight. 8 hours straight. I don't think I could even talk to my closets friends for that long let alone a stranger. Overall the flights were fine. I manage to watch 3 movies, change terminals in London Heathrow/ go through security in 20 minutes and read 4 pages of a book my mom gave me. Very productive right?
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| Sunrise in London |
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| Flying over Swiss Alps |
Besides loosing my luggage back in London, my first day in Venice was quite a success! First Sarah and I took an airport bus from the airport to our hotel. Then we freshened up and hopped on a local bus to Venezia, which is the area where when people think of Venice. There were water taxi's, water busses and gondola rides galore! (I forgot to mention we met a girl named Callie in the lobby of our hotel. She is also studying in the CIMBA program with us. So the three of us decided to explore Venice together.) We started to walk around the winding streets and eventually got lost. No surprise there. Using our map of Venice and using the churches and landmarks, we found our way to one of the top tourist spots in Venice, the Rialto Bridge. This bridge over looks the Grand Canal and is located in the center of Venice and the water canals. On the bridge, there were all these couples there taking pictures of each other kissing on it which was kinda bazaar, but we managed to get a good view and a couple snapshots!
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| The Rialto Bridge on Grand Canal. |
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| Our view of the Grand Canal. |
After a long day of traveling, the three of us were pretty hungry, so we ate at this cafe next to the bridge. The pizza was pretty tasty, but the people watching was prime! Even inside the cafe there were some wacky people. Needless to say hanging out at the cafe was a relaxing way to end our first day in Italy. Tomorrow we are off to Paderno del Grappa! That's where our school is located. We have to catch a train bright and early in the morning! Ciao for now!
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| Sarah and I in front of Venice's version of Wescoe Beach at KU. |
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| Me, Sarah, and Callie on the Rialto Bridge. |
