Verona, Venice and Lake Garda.

My first weekend was fantastic! I love it here. I am ready to live in Europe for the rest of my life. It is wonderful here!

We left after school on Thursday for Verona, Italy. The train ride was almost four hours long. It is easy to tell when you cross the border from Austria to Italy by the architecture and agriculture. I fell asleep then woke up and there were vineyards outside the window, thats when I knew we were in Italy.

When we got to the train station we got on a bus to our hostel. We did not pay for our bus ride when we got on, whether it was out of laziness or we just didn't know how I don't remember. But at one stop a bus official guy got on so we immediately jumped off because we didn't want to get a ticket. So then we waited for about 30 minutes at some rando bus stop waiting for the next bus to come by. When we finally got to the hostel we had to use some james bond moves. We booked a hostel that slept four people but there were six of us. After getting around the front desk and dropping our stuff into our hostel we hopped on the bus to go to the city center.

After walking around a while we found a spot for dinner then kept walking and would run into random squares. 

And of course gelato

After having drinks at some hippo restaurant... only place open... we made our way back to the hostel. Luckily at this hostel we had our own bathroom which was really nice. Unfortunately since there were only four beds two of the guys slept on the floor. 

The next morning we woke up, ate breakfast and checked out of the hostel. We made our way back to the city center to see it in the daylight. 

Our first stop was the Verona Colosseum. The night before they held an opera there so the stage was still set up. When we walked in the colosseum there was a woman standing on the balcony singing opera. She was really good at it and it echoed through the whole colosseum. Everyone in the colosseum was dead quite and just watched her sing in awe. She sure knew how to calm a crowd.

After that we kept walking around Verona seeing the sights. The architecture is just gorgeous. Even the shudders on the colorful stucco buildings.

After one last gelato we made our way back to the train station and got on a train to Lake Garda. We decided that we wanted to go to a cool lake town just for lunch really fast and it was only 15 minutes away. Definitely one of the prettiest lakes I have ever seen. Lake McQueeney has no comparison, sorry grandpa. We walked along the water until we found a nice little italian restaurant to eat at then we lounged along the water until we had to leave for the train station.

Sarah, me and Michelle (my roommate)

We got back on the train and made our way to Venice! I am so glad that I went back to Venice. My first trip was not as exciting. We had bad weather and it was cold whereas this trip it was hot and sunny, perfect water weather. As soon as we got to Venice we wanted to go to the hostel first because some of us, me, don't know how to pack lightly so I had to lug around this giant backpack everywhere we went this weekend. 

Let me just say that trying to navigate yourself through the alleys/canals of Venice is one of the hardest things to do. Good thing the people of Venice are really nice and don't mind helping you. But since it is so difficult they can't give you the full directions, only parts. So a typical answer we would receive would be, "go over three more bridges then ask someone" or "go all the way down here take a left then find someone to ask," they just give you the general direction to where you need to go then pass you off to someone else. When we got to the square where we needed to be the hostel directions said to find this specific cafe and ask for the hostel. So this guy that works at the cafe lead us out and down this kinda sketch alley to a door that doesn't have a sign, windows or anything. He yells for someone inside to throw him down a key and then we go in. Of course we are all looking at each other thinking what the hell have we gotten ourselves into. We follow him upstairs to the "office." I pretty sure the bed in the corner no longer makes it an office. So here we all are sitting on a bed in these Indian's office and they are speaking to each other in a different language. You can imagine out freaked out I was. But then he looks at our reservation and realizes he made a mistake. He only made a reservation for one person instead of six. So again we all started looking at each other with one thing in mind, lets get out of here! But luckily they moved some things around and had rooms for us. The first night it was the three girls in one room and the three boys in another. The second night they put us all in one room. The rooms weren't bad which is why we probably decided to stay in the end. The only creepy thing was the bathroom on floor that we had to share with everyone else. It was a large bathroom but it wasn't made to be a communal one. We were always to scared to go alone so we always brought someone with us. Once we freshened up we headed to Piazzo San Marco to see the bell tower and the church. We found a random restaurant for dinner without thinking it could get that expensive. Little did we know that it is more important to look at the drink menu than the food menu when it comes to prices. Our dinners were reasonably priced I had a 13 euro ravioli. The wine was good too, it was 14 euro for half a bottle. I also tried Bass! But after dinner I ordered lemonchello for the group, thats what I was taught from my lovely grandparents. I didn't think it would be 42 euros for a round of lemonchello. I could have bought a whole bottle for 15 euros. But it was worth it! Our total bill ended up to be 320 euros, so warning... venice can get very expensive! After dinner we made our way back the square our hostel was in. There are a lot of bars and restaurants there. The university is around the corner so it was a very youthful area. 

The next morning we woke up early to start our touristy adventure in Venice. I'm pretty sure we did everything one could possibly do; museums, churches, palaces, bridges, and gelato... I think thats all you need. 

my first cappuccino 

Just for you Lauren!

 The main reason we picked Venice was because of a festival they were having this weekend. I cannot remember the name of the festival but it is an annual event they hold to celebrate the ending of the plague. Basically an excuse to have a giant firework show. We made our way to the very tip of venice with bottles of cheap wine, thank you Indian hostel owners for the tip on where to sit and what to drink. We got there at about 9:30 and the show did not start until around 11:30 so we had time to kill by just sitting and talking. 

The firework show was so fantastic, mind blowing. I have never seen a better firework show ever. It was along the grand canal and we really picked the best spot. It was right in front of us. They had the firework cannon launchers, whatever you call them, lined along the other side of the canal where everyone was sitting. It was just the best. I loved Venice and this past weekend was so much fun!!! It is making me even more excited from Vienna and Praque next weekend!

This is a picture I took from our way home. Austria is so pretty rain or shine!