Venice: The Land of Vino, Gelato, and Pizza!

I don't know why, but it has been one of my lifelong dreams to go to Venice.  Maybe it's because of the similarity between a city surrounded by water where one gets along by gondola and the pirogues in the bayous of Dulac.











...Or maybe not...

 Traveling to Venice was the first time I was officially traveling alone, so I was a little nervous.  That, on top of Venice being one of the most confusing cities to find your way around ever.   I didn't know it, but Venice is an island, actually like 177 little islands with canals dug through them.  There are no cars on it at all and you get around by boat or walking.  The public transportation is called the Vaporetti and it is literally a water bus.  If arriving by plane, you have to take a bus to the closest place that vehicles can go, the Piazzle Roma and then get on a Vaporetti.  

Here's the Vaporetti coming down the canal.

Then, it stops in front of you and you just hop on (well, for 6 euro or 32 euro for a 3 day pass)


Vendors all over were selling the Carnival masks.  They reminded me of the ones I see in new orleans except way creepier.  

My first day, I went on a boat trip to the three other neighboring islands near Venice:  Murano, Burano, and Torcello (you can see where they're at on this map).
The Island of Murano is known for its blown glass.  Back in the day, the glass blowers were exiled from Venice and put on this little island because the glass blowing would cause fires in the crowded city of Venice.  On Murano, we saw a glass-blowing exhibition:



After Murano, we went to the oldest island, Torcello, which is basically now just a quiet, nice park-like serene island with one of the oldest churches in Italy and some sweet old
 statues.

  After Torcello, it was another 15 minutes to get to Burano, my favorite of the three.  Burano is known for its colorful fisherman's houses along the canals as well as its' tapestries.  We went to a tapestry demonstration.  It takes this little old lady 10 days (!) to make one of these.  They were gorgeous, though.

All of Italy, and especially Burano had pasta of every single color combination possible.  I'll be the Jersey Shore cast would have gone crazy!  Especially on the little Italian flag colored bow-tie noodles. 

The hostel I stayed in was quite a unique experience and worthy of a blog in and of itself.  It was in an old museum building, the owner got arrested one night, I woke up to techno at 9am every morning, the people were amazing (especially my 2 aussie relocated in London who I tagged along with), and we made homemade authentic Italian pasta every night.  I loved it and hated it at the same time. 

The next day, I was so excited to meet up with Claire.  She's another Wash U law student who is studying abroad in Trento, Italy (I know, it's a hard life for us study abroad students).  She and I had an awesome day gallivanting around the streets of Italy stopping off for Spritz, Gelato, Pizza, Vin Brule (hot red wine with Cinnamon- sounds gross but is delicious), walking across bridges, taking a million pictures, getting comedically harassed by gondola men, and venting to each other about our experiences with the European law school system.  It was a great day and overall an amazing trip to Italy.
Some more random pics;  I could not get enough of it.