7.12.09 Venice to Paris.

we were so sad to leave the palace. you can see it in our eyes.

Sadly today was our last day in Venice and we had to leave our palace of a hotel. We didn’t have to check out until noon so you better believe we stayed there as long as we could before we had to leave our beautiful room. We had the day to ourselves since our train for Paris didn’t leave until 8 o clock that night. We decided to go to St. Mark’s to see the interior since we didn’t get to go inside yesterday when we walked past it. We made it there and got in line to go inside. We had to hike up this tiny little stairway that smelled like major BO and when we finally made it to the top we realized it was the line that you have to pay to see more of St. Marks. We were not about to pay so we hiked back down and saw the interior that you could see for free. I have seen many mosaics in all the churches we have been to on this trip thus far but never have I seen mosaics like here. They were all pure gold and so so shiny. They glittered so brightly and were so detailed and like I had never seen before. Like I mentioned before, the architecture of St. Mark’s is much different than we have seen in Italy before. I feel like we are slowly moving ahead in time as we move to each city and seeing how the architecture developed overtime. That has been my favorite part of this trip is just being able to recognize the different time periods that the buildings in each city come from. St. Mark’s is almost gothic in style which is similar to what we will be seeing in Paris so we are clipping right along the timeline of architecture.

st. mark's cathedral.

interior of st. marks...terrible quality but you can sort of grasp the beauty of the mosaics

After St. Marks we didn’t really have anything on the agenda that we wanted to do so us girls decided to walk around all the many shops Venice has to offer and see if we could find some fun stuff. A few of us bought some stuff and then we all became too tired to walk anymore so we just sat in a square in Venice and watched everyone walk by. I was so content just knowing that I was in Venice and wanted to eat up the atmosphere as much as I could before leaving my favorite country in the whole world. There was a serious need for some gelato one last time and we had to go say goodbye to the beautiful crepe man we had come to befriend. I’m telling you gelato will never disappoint and I will miss it very much as we move on to Paris. We grabbed our last Italian pizza for dinner and started our trek from our hotel to the train station. Four bridges later and lifting over 60 pounds of my luggage over all those bridges and across the entire city of Venice, we made it to the train station. I am going to have some serious biceps at the end of this adventure needless to say.

final gelato...strattechella & caramel cream. YUM

this was a must to post because..well it pretty much explains itself. red hair. red rat tail. red rat tail sideburns. priceless.

final meal in italy. i could eat this everyday in fact i did but SO good.

4 bridges and who knows how many stairs later we were so excited to be at the train station

heading to our train car...the excitement was building

We were SO excited to experience this train ride we were about to go though because we thought it was going to be like on Harry Potter and the night car they take to Hogwarts. There are 6 beds in a car and the fab 5 were all put together plus Courtney who is a theater design student. We made it to our car and were the only ones getting on our train so that kinda worried us but we got on anyways. It was a sauna on there because the air doesn’t come on until the train starts moving. We got to our car and looked in and all of us just laughed. There was no way 6 of us plus our luggage was going to fit in the sad excuse of a room they wanted us to fit in. There were six seats and then 2 bunks above and the backs of the seats folded down to make 3 bunks on each side of the car. After some cursing and much maneuvering, we got our bags situated and waited for our interesting ride we were about to take.

and this is what we found...not happy about it.

self timed distressed photo. this doesn't do justice the cramped space we were in.

By this time it had been about 4 hours since eating and knowing that we would be on this thing for 12 hours, we needed food and fast. Pulling all of our resources together, we began rationing food. Courtney had our first course: cheese and crackers. Eating slowly, we tried to savor that so we would fill more full.

course one: cheese and crackers

Course two was granola bars and fruit roll ups. I had stolen an apple from the hotel so we passed that around as well as Ashlee’s pear she had taken too. We were feeling pretty good at this point but still weren’t satisfied.

course two: granola bars and cheese crackers (not to be mistaken with cheese & crackers like course one. totally different.)

It was time for course three: dessert. Courtney had these fun chocolate pudding cups from the market in Venice and the rest of us had an assortment of candies. We stuffed our faces with the little food we had and I seriously felt homeless or something and nibbled at my mamba to make it last longer.

course three: chocolate pudding cups and assorted candy with a side of fruit roll ups

At this time we were visited by the train car head hancho man. He said he needed our passports and tickets. I get a little nervous when some stranger asks me for my passport after our experience with the Italian police. We gave our passports over to this man and he tells us in broken English that he will bring these back in the morning and to shut and lock our door to our cabin and walked away with all our information. Scary? I’d say. As we are sitting there wondering who this man is that just took our lives really was and still so hungry, some people from our group walked by and said they were on their way to…you guessed it. The train restaurant. Yup, there was food on the train this whole time and we didn’t know. We laughed pretty hard about that one. It was time for sleeping so we all took some Ambien or whatever was in Brady’s unlabeled pill bottle and watched as we all felt the effects of drugs kick in. Too bad mine never did. It was the longest night of my life sleeping in my clothes with my scarf as a blanket. I thought we’d never get to Paris by the speed of our train…To be continued.

as we fell asleep in our cramped room, we tried to hold hands to comfort one another. this was after taking sleep drugs hence why it looks a bit strange.