Friday, July 29th - From San Marco to the Discoteque
We got up early Friday (now being accustomed to under 5 hours of sleep a night anyway) for breakfast and met up with Geoff, as promised. After a quick bite and stopping to get extended water taxi passes, we hopped on a boat and ventured to the island of San Marco.
We basically wandered around all day, just exploring the streets and seeing the sights (without spending time in lines for grand basilicas).
Water taxi:
San Marco Square:
Me and Geoff on a bridge over a canal:
Gondolas (which were of course too expensive to take for "100 euro"):
Venetian masks are huge there:
After walking around for a few hours, we found a pizzeria by a canal to have lunch at. (Including the American or Cheeseburger or French Fry Pizza, whatever it was)
With an always charming accordion man:
We spent a few hours hanging out there and just talking before taking the water taxi back to the island where our hostel was. Views from the water taxi were always cool:
Then we wandered the streets for a bit and found some cool lights, and boats and things...
Then we went back to hang out around outside the hostel, where we met the Austrians. We hung out by the canal for a bit before they told us that it was their last night in Venice, and they were going back to Austria the next day. In the interest of shaking things up and making their last night memorable, we rallied everyone and decided to try to find a club.
So we hopped on the water taxi and off we went...
After unsuccessfully trying to find a club for a while (and Geoff unhelpfully muttering "We're never going to get there" all the while), we stopped at a cute little restaurant for some wine:
And with the help of our waiter, we GOT TO THE CLUB! Haha...unfortunately all the pictures are quite dark and you can't see a thing that's going on. It was a tiny club that only played like 11 songs over and over (all popular American music, of course). We all had to pay like 10 euro to get in though, so we made the most of it. Geoff had to buy a shirt b/c his tanktop wasn't allowed by the dress code, and the Italians were creeeeeeeepy.
By the end of the night we were all feeling pretty good, and Geoff went his own way for the night while Jenna and I ventured back to the hostel with the Austrians.
Thanks to the triple-V threat, I didn't end up going to bed until well after sunrise...all in all, a very, very memorable night.
Saturday, July 30th - Adventures of a Different Kind
After less than two hours of sleep, I was awoken abruptly by Geoff around 9 a.m. when he bursted into the all-girls dorm where Jenna and I were staying. After the fastest shower of my life and unsuccessfully trying to get Jenna up (and taking pictures of her blackened feet), Geoff and I decided to go somewhere and have lunch.
First we tried to go to the train station, since Jenna and I had just realized that our train tickets to go from Venice to Rome were booked for September 1st accidentally, and needed to be changed to August 1st, and because Geoff needed a ticket to Florence. It being a Saturday, the train station was a disaster and we quickly abandoned the plan.
We found a pizzeria, as per usual (as felt as though the whole island was swaying the entire time)
At a loss for what to do next and not feeling terribly motivated to explore, we found another restaurant right by the canal and hung out there for several hours, having all kinds of great conversations about life in general...
And wine and cheese to boot...
Eventually we went back to the hostel to see how Jenna was doing. We found her in the cafeteria area and hung out before deciding to go hang about outside and see who we would meet that evening.
After talking to a few people, we decided to venture out on our own. Little did we know, the rain was fast approaching, and we soon found ourselves ankle-deep in water on the island we had discovered the previous night...
We had some adventures after that (which included a poorly thought out bag purchase)
And Geoff ended up not feeling well, which led to a seriously hilarious (in hindsight) excursion involving Jenna trying to find the water taxi stop while both of us dragged Geoff around (who is, as the pictures have surely made clear, a very tall man). It was quite entertaining telling him "up" "down" "left" "right" as we wandered the soaking streets before finally finding the taxi stop.
Apparently getting lost in Venice is something of a rite of passage, so glad we got that out of the way!
There is literally a place called "Ghetto" in Venice...really?
Me trying to hail a water taxi...
While Jenna tries to find where we're going...
And Geoff is man down...
Happily, we made it back in one piece...
Sadly, Geoff was leaving for Florence the next day. So we made sure he got to bed and had a hurried early-morning goodbye, again involving him waking us up in our room before he departed. Thankfully, he appeared to feel a lot better the next morning.
Sunday, July 31st - Continuing our Trend of Relaxing in Venezia
Pictures of the hostel!
The cafeteria area
The bathrooms
Our beds
Jenna and I decided that on our last day in Venice, some exploring as well as beach time was in order. So we went back to San Marco square for some gelato and souvenir shopping...and Jenna braving the pigeons!
Then we hopped a water taxi and went to Lido where the beach was! We met some nice ladies on the water taxi ride who come to Venice (sans husbands) every year. We thought that was pretty cool.
Beach!
Afterwards, we found a great little pizzeria in a garden.
Then we took a taxi ride back at sunset, hoping for a decent amount of sleep before our excursion to Roma the following day, where we would be meeting back up with Maureen!
Monday, August 1st - Roma Termini
We got up super early (like 4:30 a.m.) to begin our excursion to Rome. Little did we know as we sat on the water taxi that morning what the day held in store...
Not having gotten a chance to change our train tickets, we went to the station as early as possible in hopes of doing so. After checking out the trains and talking to the "customer service" people, who were no help at all and kept telling me we would have to buy new tickets (for 145 euro) even though the mistake wasn't our fault, we decided to take our chances and get on a train anyway.
You can imagine how that turned out.
For the first hour, it was fine. Until they came around checking tickets.
The lady told us all this nonsense about how normally they charge a fine if you get on without a ticket and blah blah, and kicked us off at the next stop.
If I haven't mentioned it yet, we had the misfortune of Jenna's bank not allowing her to access any money in Italy for some arbitrary reason that we've never figured out. Due to our general lack of planning, we suddenly found ourselves with very little money that I had left for us to get anywhere.
Due to some miracle, my card went through at the tiny train station we ended up at, and we purchased tickets on the inter-city train to go the remainder of the way to Rome.
Jenna found her missing water taxi pass that she had been looking for over the past few days while we sat on the platform...
Unfortunately the train took about 3x longer than the high speed train we had started on...and was super cramped.
After the longest 5 hours of our lives, we soon realized our troubles were far from over.
Charging the tickets had overdrafted my account, so I tried to get a cash advance, causing Chase to put my account on lockdown. We were now stranded in one of the highest crime locations in Rome with no money, no food, and virtually no way to contact anyone. I had messaged Maureen (who was staying at our same hotel) when I had Wi-fi, but that was few and far between.
Things looked grim.
We sat on the floor in the middle of the terminal trying to figure out what to do. Eventually we got her computer out and I ventured to find a Wi-fi connection, which, happily, I did. On a street corner. I sat in the middle of the sidewalk and got online. It was absurd.
After many back and forth trips where I talked to Sam, who then talked to my mom, and getting a hold of my dad and everyone, I got my mom to transfer some money into my account. This left the problem of my bank having a hold on my account.
After sitting across from the Cash Exchange place for roughly 6 hours, Jenna went to ask if we could use his phone to make an international call to my bank. The man who worked there, Roberto, was one of the nicest people we met on the entire trip. He had sat there all day and watched Jenna and I's various reactions to thing that were happening (my favorite being when a gypsy came up to us looking for money - do we LOOK like we've got change to spare?), and gladly gave us his personal cell phone to make the call. I got in touch with Chase and they took the hold off my account.
At long last, after a grueling 7 hours at the terminal, a wire transfer from my dad and money from my mom, I got cash and we caught a cab to the hotel where we met up with Maureen!!!
Park Plaza hotel
After a quick catch-up session, we all went to bed, Jenna and I especially glad to have made it to Rome, and the hotel, at all...
Tuesday, August 2nd - Who Says You Can't See Rome in a Day?
We got up the next day and had a lovely breakfast at the hotel, which a large, yummy breakfast buffet and plenty of coffee.
Then we started hitting the sights.
We started, of course, with the Colosseum!
There were gorgeous ancient ruins and arcs and all kinds of things everywhere...
Then we hit the Pantheon...
Got fresh water...
And saw some more stuff...including throwing some pennies into a fountain for luck!
Then we stopped in a square for lunch, which was delicious as always!
More sights...
Finally we returned to the metro to go back to the hotel and get ready for a pub crawl we had learned about during our wanderings. We had initially planned to take our final (due that Friday by 5 p.m. US Eastern time) that night, but decided the pub crawl would be a better use of our time.
Also, the metro was terrifying. We had to go down about 17 escalators, and it was so far underground it was unreal.
Maureen chillin on a lone bus seat:
We got ready and went to meet up with the pub crawl at the Spanish Steps!
We met some cool girls (and creepy guys) right from the outset, and were provided a free hour of open bar beer and wine...
I don't think many more pictures need to be shared....but things got crazy (in a good way...mostly). We had yet another late night and made it all the way to the club at the end of the crawl, closing it down. Little did we know, that was the last night we would sleep at all in Europe.
Wednesday, August 3rd - Wandering Rome
We got up and decided to head to the pub crawl office to get the free t-shirts we were promised for going on the crawl. We got pizza on the way, had some heart-to-heart discussions about where life is going, and went to the office to plan the rest of our short trip.
We went through a park (and had a very funny Kenyan moment) on our way to the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, where Maureen wanted to see a piece of art her husband had told her about.
Unfortunately, we couldn't even see the art we came for because that section was closed down. But it was still a pretty cool museum. I'm assuming the reason I don't have pictures is because they weren't allowed...
We wandered around for a bit after that...
We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant near our hotel and had a hilarious near-death encounter trying to cross a blocked off road to get back that left us laughing hysterically.
Then it was time to get down to work. With only a matter of hours left to do it, it was time to take our final exam...
So we stayed up all night.
Thursday, August 4th - Vatican City and the Sistine Chapel
Our hotel room was looking a little worse for the wear following our all-nighter.
But we rallied and hurried to Vatican City, since we had tickets to be there at noon that day.
Lots of cool stuff to see there, of course...
The Sistine Chapel...
Then we went for lunch and explored Vatican City...
We found an adorable church where you could light things up for a euro...
And decided one last, quick shopping trip was in order before our departure...
We spent our final hours in Rome wide awake, rallying through...and our hotel room suffered the consequences.
Jenna and I's flight was at like, 4:30 a.m. or something ridiculous, so staying up "all night" wasn't even that hard at that point.
Friday, August 5th - Welcome back to the USA
Maureen's flight was later than ours, so we had a tearful goodbye outside the hotel as our taxi left. After 42 straight hours awake, I passed out briefly in the taxi before we arrived at the airport. It was there that I had one final battle with a bottle of wine, and I emerged victorious...
Somehow Jenna ended up with Maureen's sunglasses...
And the airport shops expressed our sentiment perfectly...
Eventually we hopped on our flight to Amsterdam...and from there, Detroit. After several long and emotional hours, we made it back to the US.
And that, as they say....is that.
