Me Encanta Venecia

Bonjourno,

That's about the only Italian I learned over the weekend. Bonjourno, prego (which seems like it pretty much means anything you want it to - thank you, excuse me, may I, etc.) and ciao...and that's the span of my Italian vocabulary. I do LOVE Venice though. I would say this was one of the best weekends we had, but, then again, I say that after every weekend?! It was so much fun though. Venice is such a cute, quaint, little town...I just couldn't get enough of it. We had so much fun just walking around, shopping, eating and people-watching. I think we ate more this weekend than we have our entire trip, but you just can't say no to some good Italian food. :)

During our flight in, we flew over the Alps - it was amazing and something I wasn't expecting. I have never seen mountains like this before (I have now one-upped Granada/Sierra Nevada), and it was so neat to see them from up above.

Here's our view coming into Venice - the Alps right next to the coast line.

These are a couple of the first canals I saw in Venice. They all look so much alike and so different at the same time. Each one was so charming and cute - I loved it. :)

This is our hotel room in our little Bed & Breakfast. It literally looked like it should have been a room at our grandma's house in Venice, Italy - HA. It was so cute though!

The view from our hotel room window. It was so weird to watch people float on by in their boats.

Kels and I standing on the Accademia bridge overlooking the Grand Canal.

Standing on one side of the Grand Canal - that's the tower from the Basilica behind us.

My first Gondola ride and with our precious Gondalier, Stefano. He was funny and entertaining and he spoke great English. We fell in love with him!

This is the Rialto Bridge that gives a great view of the Grand Canal. We got some gelato, stood on the bridge and people-watched...it was very entertaining and the gelato was amazing. It was actually pretty cool to eat REAL Italian Gelato considering my first job was at a gelato shop and I had no idea what gelato was before I started working there...ha. It definitely brought back some memories.

Venice - view of the Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge.

There were tons of little streets like this among all of the canals and squares. I loved the little twinkle lights in the streets like this...it made for cute scenery. :) We walked around a ton and went into all of these different little shops with Venetian trinkets such as masks and Murano glass. I wish we had time to go to Murano and see the blown glass being made, but I guess I'll have to plan on that for next time.

Dinner our first night sitting out on the patio of a restaurant in one of the many squares. Our waiter was adorable and so sweet and patient with our delirious-selves. He was half Romanian and half Italian and we could pretty much tell you his life story now.

Sidenote regarding us being completely delirious - we had to wake up at 3:30 a.m. on Friday morning in order to catch a cab to take us to the airport at 4:30 a.m. to be on time for our 6:30 a.m. flight to Venice. Needless to say, by dinner time on Friday, we were all exhausted, haha.

This is St. Mark's Square and the Basilica. It was all so pretty and I am glad we went to see it although we did not go inside, but this area was PACKED with people and tourists. We didn't like it as much as the other areas, where we had been in previously, that were more quiet and charming.

That's pretty much it for Venice. I had a blast and would love to go back! I can't wait to see more of Italy with my parents once my semester in Spain is over. Also, speaking of my parents, they're coming to Spain in about 19 days and I am SO excited!! :)

This is the official end of our first mini-mester, so we have a TON of school work to do this week. I don't know if I'll get to blog again any time this week, but I'll do my best! This weekend we go to Lisbon, Portugal, and it is one of my friend's 21st birthdays, so it should be a fun weekend full of birthday celebrations! Our trip to Lisbon kind of acts as our break between our two mini-mesters of the semester. We'll be there from Saturday through Tuesday and I'm excited to see what it's like!

Work has continued to be good. I met my boss's wife one day last week. She likes to talk...she even told me that she likes to talk. It's nice though because he hardly ever talks, so it's entertaining to have her around every-so-often to talk my ear off. I don't understand everything she says, but she wants to help me learn and understand, and she's very interested in me and my life, family, etc. One day last week she decided she wanted me to go run errands with her, so, in the middle of me putting books in order on the shelves, she made me leave the store with her. It was raining that day, so the two of us were under her umbrella together just walking down the street - ha. I can only imagine what we looked like to other people. She is probably in her mid 60s and is shorter than I am - we bonded over the fact that we are both short. First, we went to a store so she could buy a lottery ticket. On Friday the lottery was supposed to be at 28 million euros (or something like that), so she was pretty excited about it. After that, we went down a couple more stores to a bakery where she said she wanted to buy a package of cinnamon-sugar donuts for her "amiga." I asked if that "amiga" was me and she said yes. I told her I didn't need them but she didn't care and insisted I take them so I could eat them for breakfast, or a snack or just whenever I wanted to eat them. I think really she just thought I didn't eat (little does she know) and wanted to fatten me up, ha. After purchasing the donuts we went back to the bookstore and I went back to work. Overall, I really like my boss's wife. I still don't know her name, but I like her...she's definitely entertaining.

I guess that's it for now...I'm going to go catch up on sleep tonight after my amazing weekend in Italy! Hugs and love to Texas!

Ciao :)

Paige