Day 34 - Venezia

We got up around 10 adn cleaned up from the night before, then checked out of our room. Dave was heading back to Florence to see his mom and sis for a few more nights and Anna was taking a late train, overnight to Nice. Me and Rob were booked on a 8:30pm train overnight to Vienna. The hotel let us leave our bags so we didn´t have to lug them around all day.

The day was really shitty weatherwise because it was cold and drizzled softly basically all day long. We still had a good time though, spending the day just basically wandering around town. Venice was pretty much exactly what i was expecting with narrow, narrow, streets with canals and bridges everywhere. It was really weird not seeing one car the whole time we were there. I guess really there were no ´streets´ at all, just walkways all over the place. We walked to the main square, which was pretty impressive, and just wandered, checkign out lots of stores and shops along the way. It was amazing how many of the shops sold the same old shit, but obviously must do good business otherwise they wouldn´t be there. Florence was big on leather shops, but Venice was huge on glass (anything made with this special glass that i can´t remember the name of) and masks. Tons of shops had masks, like glass or porcelaine masks, all over the place. The shops actually seemed kinda creepy cause of the makes everywhere.

Near teh main square, there were HUGE packs of pigeons, and i bought a packet of birdfeed from a vendor and holy shit, the birds literally attack you. As soon as they see you getting the pack they start following you and trying to land on you. I opened the package and it was game over. They were all over me. Landing on my head, shoulders, back, arms, everywhere. Everyone else was laughing and taking pictures of me (even strangers), at which point i took a small handfull of feed and stuffed it into Rob´s jacket hood. It was HILARIOUS. The birds attacked him, landing all over his back and head trying to get the food and Rob screamed like a little girl. He was making this really weird noise that was like half a scream and half a laugh. His eyes were full of terror mixed with severe embarassment because at this point there was a large group of people watching me and now him, have these pigeons land all over us. I gave some seeds to a little boy and girl with their parents and they handled the birds much much better than Rob did (you´ve got yourself a real macho man Marissa).

So we walked for a few hours, took lots and lots of pictures, and then took a waterbus back to the station area close to our apartment. We grabbed some lunch at a buffet restaurant and then went with Dave to the station so he could catch his train back to Florence.

We said our goodbyes to Dave and tried to convince him to extend his trip and come with us, but he has to get back to Canada, so he took off. Me, Anne, and Rob did some shopping for the next couple hours, bought some groceries for the train, and then hung out in the station till our train arrived.

We said our goodbyes to Anne, and then me and Rob jumped on the train. We were going to get beds for the overnight train, but to reserve them cost 25 Euro each, so we decided we´d chance 2 seats instead. We ended up finding an empty compartment which had no reservatino signs, but sure enough, 1 minute before the train was about to leave, we lost our empty compartment of heaven, having to share now with 3 people from Taiwan for the next 10 hours.