Did anyone know it floods in Venice?

So Matthew and I decided out of the blue to go to Venice for the weekend. We invited everyone else but no one seemed to want to go so we headed out ourselves. We bought our tickets on Wednesday and left Thursday morning. Thursday morning was crazy because Matthew was late. We were supposed to meet at 11:15 to go to the train station but Matthew came back t 11:30 and still had to grab his stuff. He was running around getting things together and when he was done we walked really fast to the bus stop. He kept saying "I'm sorry!" over and over again. At this point I didn't think we were going to make the train because it was cutting it pretty close and we had a long bus ride to the station. Once we got off the bus we booked it to our platform. Our train was set to leave at 12:12pm and we got on the train at exactly 12:11pm. It was definitely a relief! Then we had a two hour train ride followed by a four hour bus ride until we got to Venice. By the time we got there it was dark and we had to find our hotel. I had printed walking directions but we couldn't find the street we wanted. We decided just to walk to see if we see any of the streets on our sheet. Venice is so confusing! There are so many "streets" (they are not really streets because cars can't drive on them) and they go every which way. We eventually bought a map which helped and we found our hotel after walking for an hour and a half. The hotel was another story. We got there and the person at the desk did not know English very well at all. I gave him my confirmation and everything and he had me sign some things and then gave us a key. There was not much talking involved at all. We went up to our room which was absolutely hilarious! It was a hotel room from hell! It didn't have two twin beds in it like we signed up for online and the door hit the bed because the room was so tiny. It had curtains which were hanging off the pole they were supposed to be connected to and the room smelled horribly! It was terrible but all I could do was laugh. We dropped off our stuff and headed out to get some food. We walked for awhile and could not find anything. There was only one place we found which was right by our hotel. We went in and the waitress went off in Italian and I had no idea what she said so I said the only Italian I knew which was "Pizza?" and she understood what we wanted. She then spoke English and kind of ripped us off. We were planning on splitting a pizza and when we asked how big it was she said it was really small and we should get two. The pizzas were definitely not small and we could have shared. It was a crazy night and at one point Matthew said "Venice can just go ahead and sink!". That became the saying of the day!

The Flood

Friday morning we woke up pretty early and were ready to hit the streets of Venice! Little did we know what was waiting for us outside. We walked down the stairs of the hotel just in time to see water splash under our hotel door. The entire street was flooded!!!! There was atleast a foot of water in the street. I was laughing until I cried. I could not believe it! We went back to our great hotel room and watched a movie until the tide went down. At about 11:30am it was ok and we could go outside. We walked around the entire city that day. We first headed to San Marco Cathedral which was really pretty except people had to swim to get there! The San Marco square had a foot of water on it. Luckily they put up platforms for us to walk across but most people were just walking through it in their knee-high galoshes. It was completely crazy! We walked along all of the canals and had lunch. We saw the Rialto which is a large bridge over the grand canal and saw about every church in Venice. In the afternoon we got gelato. How can you go to Italy and not get gelato? It was really good but kind of a cold day to have ice cream. I felt so bad that I didn't know the language. It is really difficult sometimes. I was thinking about how nice it is that I know German. My friend Laura was in Italy for 6 months and I can't imagine being in a place for that long and not knowing the language. I would feel so trapped! We didn't have too many problems. I just said "grazie" a lot so they knew I was trying. Definitely did not use "no capeesh"! In the afternoon the sky opened up and it was beautiful! Everything looked a lot better when the sun was out. We walked around the entire city and then went back to our hotel and watched a movie. It was a great day walking around Venice. It really is a cool city!

Saturday was a pretty long day. We had to check out of our hotel at 11am and when we got outside it was absolutely pouring! The tide had just gone down so water was still washing up on the streets. We were soaked! We tried to find a coffeeshop or somewhere we could sit and dry off but there really was nothing. We decided to sit in the train station until our bus came. The train station was right next to the bus stop so we got lunch there and sat in there for about 2 hours. It was pretty boring but it was so cold and rainy outside that we did not want to be out there. We caught our bus around 3pm and it was nice and warm! The bus was about 4 hours and then we had another two hours on a train. The trip actually went by pretty fast. We got back to our dorms around 10:30pm. Then right away I went out with Aimee, Sean, Dan and Kolby. They are all so much fun and it was nice being in a smaller group. The whole group is great but sometimes it is just easier when it is smaller. The only problem was that we got checked for tickets on the bus and Aimee got written up. She had her ticket but it wasn't stamped with the date yet since we just got them. The guy was a jerk because he didn't let her stamp it then but gave her a 70 Euro ticket. It was terrible. Then we went to Flip for a couple drinks and afterwards I went to bed. I was surprisingly not as tired as I thought I would be. It was a fun night!