a little delayedddd...

Bruises are doing really well and disappearing. Last Monday (so two mondays ago now...) I went back to working out...I gave it 9 days, I thought that was enough, ha. I did fine, though.

Last week was pretty calm and quiet. One of the best things each week is having dinner with my host family. It's one of my favorite parts of the day. We are usually always all there together...we enjoy the amazing food and talk a lot. Laura and Baldo both have really great senses of humor, so it makes for interesting conversation when we all get going, haha.

Thursday, my friend Kelly and I left for Verona on a train. I actually had butterflies in my stomach before we left because it was the first time I was traveling without an organized group. It definitely was an interesting trip.

We got on the train and ended up sitting in a train room with two guys, around the same age as us. They were Italian and from Rome...traveling to Munich for the week. We spoke Italian with them, Kelly did a lot better with that thought...haha. I was so nervous. They even offered us to stay with them when we visit Rome again, haha. YEAH RIGHT. Maybe we could meet up at a bar but no chance of me staying with them. It was nice of them to offer though...ha.

We arrived in Verona around 12am and got a ride to the little B&B we were staying at. It was so adorable and really clean, Buddha themed which was very cool.

In the morning we got ready and out the door so we could explore Verona. Verona is so beautiful...very italian. We found one of their beautiful churches and paid a small student fee so we could go into all four of the major churches in Verona. They were all gorgeous. For some reason, the first one was my favorite.

We found Juliette's Casa, complete with the Romeo & Juliette Balcony. It was very pretty but the movie, "Letters to Juliet" made the courtyard seem much cleaner.

In the afternoon we got a taxi ride to the train station and hopped over to Venice...which should have it's own blog post about because it was so ridiculous...hahahah!

So Venice...

We get to the train station around 7:30pm. I realize I forgot to write the address down to the hotel, but I remember on the website it said it was really close to the station. We decide to call Kelly's roommate Lauren and ask her to look the hotel's address up. She gives us an address and we head to it. Well...little did we know we were heading to Venice...which is the island. Once we make it to the bus stop at Venice we ask a boat driver how to get to the hotel. He says it'll take one hour by boat to San Marco. We laugh and think he's joking with us. Well we were wrong...he was right. We ended up walking to Piazza San Marco with our bags and everything, which took us 30 min. on foot.

We finally find Piazza San Marco and an orchestra is playing outside. It was so beautiful, it made that walk worth it...plus being able to see Venice at night. We finally find what supposedly was our hotel after a nice Italian man helped us out. He came with us to the hotel and we found out our hotel was back where we started, mainland Venice Mestre.

We were pretty frustrated but at the same time had a sense of humor about it. The Italian guy walked us over to the water taxi for us to get back to where we were supposed to be. He gave us his number and invited us for drinks. We were very appreciative of his help cause otherwise we had been shit out of luck, for real.

We finally got to out actual Hotel and grabbed a late dinner around the corner. We went to this restaurant, sit down, and we re the only ones there except for two sets of couples. We order and are waiting for our food. Kelly tells me to turn around and one of the couples is in the middle of an intense make out sesh...I turn to my other side and the second couple is in an intense make out sesh as well. It was one of the funniest things I've seen...it was like right out of a movie. When we got back to our room, we got ready for bed...and if the night couldn't have gotten any better, a couple next door was having some LOUD sex...we joked around that it was one of the couple from the restaurant. We eventually passed out. It was so nice to sleep after that run around. In the morning we go to breakfast and who do we see? One of the make out couples from dinner...we still think they were the loud ones at the Hotel ;)

We headed to the island of Venice after breakfast, it was a beautiful day. We basically didn't have a plan and explored the whole city. It was a lot of fun this way because we came across cute shops and a bunch of other cool spots. For lunch, we found this whole in the wall pizza place with huge slices for super cheap. We ate the pizza by one of the canals and gondolas rode by us. It was gorgeous. The pigeons tried to invade but I shooed them away. Then, I fed them from my hand with some crust...haha so I defeated the purpose.

We headed to meet this tour guide so we could get a discounted gondola ride. They just organized it and there were 3 other people with us. While we were waiting to go we grabbed a coffee. Kelly had the idea of putting Bailey's in it...which was so worth it. YUM

When we got in the gondola we made friends with an older lady that is here visiting from America by herself. It was really peaceful on the gondola...at a couple spots the canal really smelled but it wasn't bad most of the way. I wish our gondola driver would have sang too but it was still amazing.

After the ride, we wandered around into different shops. We decided to wait to go to Doge's Palace until Sunday because it was going to close soon when we checked. Kelly found a sweet mask and I found some cool things also. Once it got dark, it started to rain pretty hard. I had an umbrella but it didn't help much. We found a cute restaurant to eat at. We started to speak Italian to our waiter and he said "Can you speak English? I'm not great at Italian." We laughed and said sure. We shared some gnocchi which was amazing. Kelly asked me if I minded if we added red pepper flakes to it, then she pulled a little jar out of her purse. It made it spicy good. The waiter then comes over and starts laughing at us, he couldn't figure out where we had gotten them!
We got our main courses and had a good amount of wine. After a bit of wine, the waiter comes to me and says, "You look tired" I started laughing and was like well I have been walking all day...and also the wine doesn't help, ha! Kelly and I thought it was so random, but just added to the crazy weekend.

We decided to take the water bus home because we were feelin' the wine. We had a lot of fun on the way and the land bus was SO packed. We passed out instantly when we got to the hotel.

Sunday...

We had breakfast in the morning, yummmm. It was raining, cold, and windy. I was really not looking forward to doing anything that day. We were going to go to the Island of Murano where they produce all of the Murano glass but it was too expensive to get there on such a miserable day.
We went to Doge's Palace because it was inside and everything. What a gorgeous place! We went back to our secret pizza place for lunch...soooo good. On the way back we stopped in shops and mosied along. I bought a pretty glass ring.
We caught the bus early and went to the train station to try to switch to the earlier train home. Well...that train was sold out. I was in such a bad mood, cold, tired, and annoyed. We ended up sitting in the hotel lobby (not big AT all) and I fell asleep in a chair. I felt a lot better afterwards.

No one was home when I got back because Holly's grandma took my host parents out to dinner. My host momma left me a homemade dinner to warm up. It was the perfect end to the weekend.

My week started off well while Monday I caught up on Grey's Anatomy. I'm lovin it, so thankful I'm able to watch it.
I wore my leather jacket for the first time this week too. I could fall asleep in it it's so comfy and the smell...SO good.

Tuesday I went to this hair salon I've been to before and got three strands of pink hair extensions, very subtle but I love them. I even made her redo one because it didn't match the color of the other two. I knew it would bother me otherwise.

I will update more about the end of the week and this past weekend in a little while. I've been studying for midterms up the wazzzooooo! It's going to be totally worth it though because I'm going to Belgium and Ireland for FALL BREAK!

WORK HARD, PLAY HARD!

<3Alex