Venice in a day!

I went with the FlorenceForFun group yesterday and we did Venice in a day. I wasn't sure that Venice could be done in one day. However, after 6 hours on the train and 7 hours of straight walking the answer is yes, it can be done, and here is how it all went down.

Up at 6:30 and on the train by 8:30. We arrived in Venice around 11:30 and started walking. We first hopped on one of the water buses that took us to the far side of the city near the church where there was a festival going on. We just happened to be lucky enough to end up in Venice on the same day as this one day festival which was cool. The festival brought in WAY more tourists and brought every local out of their houses but all in all made the day a lot more fun.

We walked around the one part of the city for awhile and then stopped for "lunch". I say it in "" because I'm not sure you can actually call what we ate for lunch, lunch. lol There was one street that had been converted into what looked like a fair zone. No rides but food galore! It was awesome. I ended up getting (along with everyone else) an elephant ear. I think they called them just giant sugar donuts here but back home, we call them elephant ears and BOY was it yummy. I was pretty pumped that I was eating a donut for lunch but was still a little hungry so I went to see what else deep fried I could eat. I came across these big deep fried balls (a little bigger than the size of a tennis ball) that were filled with rice and a meat sauce. I bought one of those and after eating half of it, I was done! I had been sugar and greased out.

After our lunch we headed over to see a glass blowing demonstration. It was really cool to see. He made a glass water pitcher, which actually took only about 5min for him to make. Once it was done, we were all so impressed. Then not 10 seconds later, he smashed it into a bucket! They do not have a proper place to cool down the glass gradually so they must break everything they make for demonstrations so it doesn't shatter later on. Sad, but still it was great to see how it was made.

We had about an hour of free time after the glass blowing demonstration. I took that time to do some much needed shopping! ;) I bought a few small glass pieces and then I headed back to meet the group. It was already 4pm by this point and we had to start heading back to the train station.

We stopped around 5pm and had our gondola ride. I was actually quite nervous about it for some strange reason. I am a great swimmer but I think because I had my camera on me and there was about 20 people in the gondola combined to make me a bit nervous. Also, the water was not the nicest to look at and falling in did not appeal to me one bit! Once on the other side of the grand canal (it was only about a 1 minute ride across) we walked the rest of the way to the station.

It was well after 10pm by the time I made it back to my place. I was hoping to go out with my roommates for Marlene's birthday supper but I was literally exhausted! Oh well, another time I guess.