From The City Of Lights To The Eternal City: Part III

Sunday, May 17 {Venice}

"A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him." --Arthur Symons

 

I awoke on the night train with the bright Italian sun greeting me.

Katey and I watched the sunrise and the beautiful Italian countryside from the train... We are ready to take on Italy!

After 13 hours on a train, we finally arrived in Venice.

We immediately found our hostel, dropped off our bags, and headed back to the train station.

Took a train to Ferrovia (a station right on the Grand Canal).

At the train station, we ate lunch... thin crust pizza and a cream and chocolate gelato (first of 20!)... delicious! 

After lunch, we got on the vaporeto (water bus) and went down the Grand Canal to San Marco.

On the water bus we met a guy named Charles (student from Florida that is spending a semester in Venice for school ...AND he knew all about the NBA scores so he updated me on all that! Lakers were still in the running!)

We got off the water bus and headed towards the Basilica di s Marco.

Apparently everyone gets lost in Venice. Luckily, we had Charles and he showed us around (the streets were small, windy, and long).

We spent some time doing what girls do best... shopping! I bought a beautiful blue glass ring that was made right there in Venice.

We ended our walk through the city at the Ponte di Rialto (bridge).

From the bridge we took a water boat back to where St Marks was.

We went inside (Charles had already been inside so we said goodbye) and it was gorgeous (no pics please)! The ceilings were cover in gold mosaics and were beautiful!

After, we got some more gelatos (chocolate) and kept on shopping.

We decided to take a break from walking and shopping so we got some pizza and sat down in the Piazza San Marco.

From here we could see the basilica and the campanile (bell tower).

We left the area via water boat and headed back to the hostel and called it a night.

Sunday, May 17 {Pisa}

Under the Tuscan sun

Got up early and left for Florence via train.

We found our hostel (Plus Florence) and found out that we accidentally book our hostel for April instead of May... oops! Luckily for us, the hostel wasn't full and we got a room.

It was late in the day so instead of venturing out into Florence we went back to the train station (got another gelato [tiramisu] on the way) and headed to Pisa.

We got to Pisa and got another gelato (hazelnut)... try and stop us!

We walked through the town (which was beautiful) and headed towards the Piazza dei Miracoli where the Duomo, the Leaning Tower, the Baptistry and the Camposanto are.

The leaning tower was crazy! I never realized how much it leaned!

We took a lot of pictures and then went over and took naps on the nice grass by the Duomo.

After we got all we could out of Pisa, we left and headed back to Florence. We found a nice little outdoor pizza diner where we ate more pizza! Gelatos and pizza... Italy has it all!