Venice

So this morning we woke up to catch a 10:20 flight out of Barcelona.  We left the hostel shortly after 8 and walked to a bus stop, which took us 30 minutes to the airport.  We were not really sure to expect since we were flying RyanAir a smaller cheap airline which supposedly is really stingy with their carryon luggage.  We got to the airport around 9:00 giving us 50 minutes to get our documents checked and pass through security.  It took us a few minutes to figure out where to go, but we made it to our gate by about 9:35 without too much stress.  I was thankful I didn’t have to take my computer out of my bag, which is buried under clothes, so that made it a lot easier.  When we got to the gate, we had to see if our bags would fit in the overhead which mine clearly does because I put it in the overhead on the way here. Anyway, they brought out this metal frame box type thing for us to put our bags in.  I had made my pack as small as possible and I actually ended up jamming my pack into the allotted size container.  The man said I could do whatever I wanted to get it to fit, so I actually ended up jumping on my bag and sitting on it and it fit. But then a lady came over and said I wasn’t allowed to do that and that my bag was too large so I had to pay an extra 40 Euros. Oh well I guess; two of the other guys also had to pay to check their backpacks. 

The flight was fairly short, about 90 minutes, and we arrived in Italy about 12:30.  Unlike normal airplanes, we exited the at the back of the plane and walked onto the airport docking area walking next to the plane and into the baggage claim terminal.  We didn’t have to go through customs which I was a little bummed about because I didn’t get my Italia stamp!  But after that, we caught a 30 minutes bus from Treviso to Venice. I think we checked into our hostel around 2:00pm because we had to wait 30 minutes for our bus to depart. After checking into our hostel, we walked 5 minutes to a restaurant named “Brek” where we had lunch.  We all had spaghetti and it was a really good cheap meal compared to what we had been paying; I think the whole meal was 6.90 Euros. We then went to the train station and reserved our train tickets for tomorrows train to Florence; it was real easy and we got in and out. 

We started exploring the city without much aim. Our hostel is at the north end of the Island so we just walked south.  We ran into some churches and walked by the fish market. The main site I wanted to see was the famous white building on the water that I’ve seen in all the movies. I’m not even sure what the building is exactly but I think most people would recognize it.  We stopped to take a bunch of pictures throughout the day and ended our day at the big plaza.  Tomorrow we head for Florence which I’ve heard is beautiful.  It’s been a busy six days and it’s gone by really fast with all the travel. We hardly have any down time and are always seeing the city, buying train/bus tickets, repacking our bags, taking an hour rest and trying to keep our blogs updated. Definitely enjoying the trip, and looking forward to this next week.