Venice, Day One

It had been a few weeks since our last weekend trip, so six of us decided to spend last Friday through Monday in Northern Italy. We headed to Bremen by train early on Friday morning, and made it to the Bremen airport in plenty of time before our 11:30 flight. The flight was right on schedule, and we arrived at the airport an hour outside of Venice. Even from the airport, there was a beautiful view. The snow-covered Alps looked incredible in the distance. Upon arriving, we bought bus tickets to Venice, and had a bite to eat while waiting for the bus to arrive. After about a 45 minute wait, we were able to catch a coach bus into the city of Venice. From there, Ray found us our way to our hotel using the little bit of Italian he knows. Actually, I could pick up on many of the words, as it was very similar to Spanish. So, we usually had at least somewhat of an idea of what people were saying. The ride from the main bus stop in Venice to Hotel Villa Dori took about 40 minutes, and a local was able to point us in the right direction. When we arrived, we were actually surprised at how nice it was for what we had paid. A lot better than most hostels, that’s for sure! We got our room keys, sorted into the 2 rooms, and then headed back into the city. The bus ride into Venice took half the time it did to get to the hotel. We arrived at the bus station, and bought 36 hour tickets for the buses and water taxis. Then, we hopped on a boat and headed off around the many islands. No cars are allowed at all within the city of Venice, so boats and walking were the only form of transportation, which was really neat. Of course, that also means that everything there must be shipped in, and is therefore very expensive. It was already dark, but the city was beautiful all lit up. We got off of the water taxi near Piazza San Marco, and found a restaurant for dinner. After supper, half of the group wanted to head back to the hotel to go to bead, but me, Chris, and Loren decided to stay back and catch the last bus back at midnight. We walked around a couple of the islands, stopped into a few pubs where we met a handful of people from Rome, then finally ended up at a busier bar, where we stopped for a couple pints of Guinness. We managed to find our way through all of the winding alleyways back to the main bus station, but were not sure of which bus to take back to the hotel. Luckily, we bumped into a group of Americans from Temple University who were studying in Rome, and just so happened to be staying at the same hotel as us. We all took the long bus ride back together, then hung out in the hotel restaurant for a few hours before calling it a day.