Over 20 hours of travel, but so worth it!

I can’t believe that another weekend has passed. We’re currently sitting in the Munich Hbf, 7 hours away from Bonn. We spent 3 days in the beautiful city of Venice, Italy. But before I begin about our weekend, I think it’s appropriate to talk about our adventures getting to Venice.

A month or two before we even left for Europe, 4 of us decided we would fly into Milan and then take a train over to Venice. The flight went fine…no problems at all. Our travels to Venice from Milan are a different story. The most eventful of our stops was our stop at the Verona train station. We had a lay over there for about 2 hours (2:30am-4:30am). Let’s just say that the people at train stations changes dramatically at this time of night. As we played SKIP-BO to pass the time, at least 5 different “creepers” made their way over to us. And…I don’t think they wanted to play SKIP-BO. Thank goodness for big man Justin. He scared all of them away. After they were all gone, we boarded our train to Venice. In Vienna, I was told that we didn’t reallllly need to reserve our seats for this train. Boy was she wrong. Every seat was taken because it was a night train so where do we end up?? On the floor with everyone else who didn’t have a place to sit. I thought my back was permanently disfigured when I woke up.

After 2 hours of floor sleeping, we finally made it to Venice. As soon as we walked outside my mood changed. To get to our hostel, we had to take a water taxi 30 minutes through the Grand Canal of Venice. The whole town is surrounded by water so the only way to get around is by water taxi. It’s a fun system, but is really crowded and busy on the weekends. When we finally made it to our hostel/bed and breakfast we were very pleased. These were last minute reservations and we didn’t really know what we were in for. It turned out to be a very nice place with a great owner named Marco. That day was spent in town enjoying the “touristy” part of Venice. We even did the classic gondola ride through the hidden canals of the city. Sunday was my favorite. We all woke up early and rented bikes from a local place. We spent 2 hours cruising around the streets of Lido (the island our hostel was on). We couldn’t have had better weather. After a quick lunch break we headed out to the beach. 3 of the 4 boys may or may not have been wearing speedos…just saying. But the funny thing was that NO ONE cared at all! Speedos are the norm. It was awesome. We ended our weekend at a nice Italian restaurant with wine and great conversation.

I can’t decided which city has been my favorite thus far. Each one has something completely different that I like more than the other. Italy is definitely at the top of the list though. I’ll make it back some day for sure.

It’s very hard to believe that there are only 2 more weeks left of the trip. This week we’ll be in Bonn and Cologne, spend the weekend in Paris, and then finish with a week in Berlin. It's crazy to think of all the cities I've been to in just the past 4 weeks.

Cheers!
Coral