So
I know I’m long overdue with updating everyone about my Eurotrip I went
on! Here is the first post of many
about my 3 weeklong trip! On Wednesday
March 28, 2012 Mike and I left for Milan and got there pretty late with only
enough time to check into our hotel.
The next day we spent the morning in the city. We saw the Duomo Cathedral and went inside of it. We then walked around the streets and
saw the La Scala Opera house.
After walking around and going into a few touristy shops we then had
lunch and went on our first train ride of many on our trip. We started to make our way to Venice
with our Eurail passes!
That
afternoon we arrived in Venice and checked into our hostel which was right on
the Grand Canal. Right when we
arrived in the city I was blown away by it. It’s SUCH a unique city with only vespas and people walking
everywhere since some of the “roads” are pretty much alleyways. That evening we walked around the city
and saw the Rialto Bridge, the Bridge of Sighs, and St. Mark’s Square. We then decided to go back to the
hostel since it was starting to get dark and we had a 30 minute walk ahead of
us through the maze of Venice “streets”.
Unfortunately, we kind of got lost and ended up walking around for an hour before we found our way home.
On
Friday March 30, 2012 we spent the day touring around the islands in
Venice. We first took the waterbus
to Murano where the famous Murano glass is made. We started off with seeing a glass blowing demonstration
where the two men made a vase and a gorgeous horse in just a couple
minutes. We made our way along the
main canal in the island and went in MANY small shops that sold Murano
glass. Even though most of it was
out of our price range, it was worth it just to see the beautiful art the
people of the island make. Next we
went to the island of Burano, which is famous for its differently coloured
houses. The famous leaning church
steeple was there and it made me wonder if it would ever fall down. After exploring the island, going into
shops, and getting some gelato, we then made our way to the main island of
Venice again to St. Mark’s square.
We decided to splurge a little and go to a restaurant for dinner so we
found a cute restaurant and ate our amazing pasta we got outside. Afterwards, we walked around St. Mark’s
square more and listened to the music that was being played by musicians. Since it was already 9pm at this point,
we decided to take the waterbus home since there was a bus stop right in front
of our hostel. It was nice taking
the waterbus at night since we basically got an amazing tour of the Grand
Canal.
On
the Saturday we went inside St. Mark’s Cathedral – wow! The whole inside of it has mosaics on
the walls that were individually placed there by people many, MANY years ago. The mosaics themselves were
incredible. We then went in the
museum and the terrace at the top of the cathedral to overlook St. Mark’s
square. Next, we went inside the
Doge’s Palace, which had amazing artwork on all the walls inside the giant
rooms. It reminded me of the
Palace of Versailles. We ended up
seeing the dungeons and walked inside the Bridge of Sighs. Next, we went to Academia, which was a
famous art gallery. We then walked
around that area and found an area where gondolas were made. Since it was a warm day right by the
water, we then decided to have some gelato beside a large canal. We ended up walking along the canal and
then had a private “gondola” ride of our own in one of the traghettos, which
were basically retired gondolas (rides were only 50 cents to get across the Grand
Canal!). We then made our way to
our hostel and ended the night with making our own dinner with multi coloured
and different shaped pasta we had gotten earlier in the day.
Sunday
was our last day in Venice since we were leaving that night to go to Vienna on
an overnight train. We spent the
day walking around Venice in the area by our hostel. We walked all the way to the Rialto Bridge and market where
we got lunch as well. Of course we
went in many cute shops and bakeries as we walked around. Since we had walked around a lot during
the past few days, we decided to sit around more to rest our feet. We went to the Jewish Ghetto and people
watched in the main square there.
We saw a few churches including the Frari as well. Lastly, we sat by the Grand Canal for a
while and walked to a nearby park and through laneways. Finally we left Venice in our 6-person
couchette within the train to Vienna.
