About this point in the trip Chadly and I were starting to get a little temperamental with each other. This was put to test when I booked our train to Florence instead of Venice (I kept getting those two mixed up for some reason). Because of this little error, we had to jump off of the train in some random city outside of Venice and take a night bus into the city. This put us in a DESERTED Venice at 4:00 in the morning.
I don't know if you are very familiar with Venice (Venezia), but it's most commonly known for being the city with all the water canals and the maze like alleys. This was probably the most stressful part of the trip, and by far one of the most memorable. We had no map, no hostel, no clue about where we were supposed to go. We were in a foreign country, no one was on the streets (I mean NO ONE), we didn't speak or understand any of the language, and we were exhausted from having zero sleep. We had these 50 lb back packs strapped to our back, our feet were killing us, and we had just shared a train car with some very interesting nuns followed by a pretty sketchy bus ride. We were tired.
Luckily, after about an hour of doing the ole heel-toe through the mazes, we stumbled up on a bakery that was just opening. Actually, we followed the scent of his crescents from about half a mile away. BEST CRESCENTS I'VE EVER EATEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.
This was the turning point for our Venice trip.
We stayed in the bakery until the sun gave us enough light to do a little self-touring. After we got a map, we made our way to the center of the city where we got to experience a sunrise at St Marks square without any tourists around; a very RARE occasion. Venice was really fun to tour because of the boat rides through the canals. While in Venice, we did all of the typical touristy things: toured the entire city, climbed the famous Campanile tower of the St Mark's Basilica, got a bottle of wine and pizza to watch a sunset over the ocean on the side of the canal, saved two girls from getting sold into sex trafficking (true story but too long to tell), then take 1 million pictures with the saved girls in St Marks square at about 3 in the morning. Yeah, it was a long day; we probably had the best sleep of the entire trip that night in the worst beds of the entire trip. I always slept on the top bunk in our hostels, and I'm pretty sure that this night the bottom of my mattress was only hovering about 5 inches over Chadly's face.
I loved Venice. The way of life there is just so different from the way we are used to living. A visit to the city-on-top-of-the-water should be on everyone’s bucket list.
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