Tea Time and Venice

Sorry I haven't updated in a week! I've been super busy, and this is going to be a very long update so brace yourself now, or if you want the abbreviated version you can just scroll through and look at the pictures instead of actually reading the entire thing! :-)

Ok so I'm gonna start with last weekend. It was sunny for 3 days in a row, which I think is a record so far haha. I went running everyday to Regents Park, which was so nice! It was a pretty laid back which was a nice change. On Monday I got to go to High Tea at the Ritz with my two roommates, it was so much fun! I felt like I was in a movie, they were playing the piano and served lots of little sandwiches, scones and desserts. I think I probably drank an entire pot of English Tea on my own and had about 10 scones, I was extremely full by the end of Tea Time haha.

This is a picture of us at our table

This is me with my tea!

This is the room that we had tea in, very fancy

And this is just a picture of some of the desserts and sandwiches and stuff

I had my first paper due for class on Thursday and I was trying to get that done so I didn't get very much sleep Wednesday night and then I had to pack for Venice because we were leaving right after class on Thursday. We left from class around 3:45 and rushed home and took the tube to the train station and then took a train to the airport. The train ride was about an hour long and then once we got to the airport we checked in and went to our gate. Our flight left around 7:30 and it was about a 2 hour flight to Italy. Once we got there we took a 30 minute shuttle ride to our hostel which was a little bit outside of Venice. The lady who was driving our shuttle was really sweet, and she had good taste in music, she was playing a CD with Ricky Martin and Michael Jackson on it. The hostel was actually a pretty nice place...

This is a picture of the lobby, we became good friends with Nenad, the guy who worked at the desk by the end of the trip haha. So once we got there we just got something to eat at the restaurant by the hostel, I got bruschetta and it was SO GOOD! The next day we woke up and got a shuttle into Venice around 10 and got some coffee and a little card that allowed us to use the Water taxi's while we were there because that is basically the only way to get around Venice. The first day (Friday) wasn't the best weather, it was pretty rainy all day long but we got to see a lot of cool stuff. We took the water taxi to a couple of the islands off the coast of Venice. We went to Murano first, which is famous for glass blowing and we saw a demonstration of how they blow the glass, it was awesome.

This is a picture from one of the main streets in Murano, where we also ate lunch (I had pizza and it was wonderful)

This is a picture of one of the guys who makes the glass.

I also bought a mask on Murano because it was Carnivale in Italy when we went, which is a really big deal and everyone dresses up and wears costumes/masks. But I'll talk about that more in a little bit. After Murano, we went to Burano, which was about two water taxi stops away and we got some coffee and walked around for a little while.

They are famous for all of their rainbow colored houses!

The last island we went to was Torcello, which only has 16 people that live on it, however there are still a lot of tourists that visit because of the church that is there,the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta it was built in the 600's.

Here's a picture of the church, we were almost the only people there.

We went back to the hostel afterwards because we were soaking wet and freezing, only to find out that the gas was broken, so there was no heat or hot water. Haha and so we had club sandwiches at the restaurant for dinner because it was the only thing they could make without needing the gas.

The second day (Saturday), we woke up and headed over to Venice to actually go into the City, we took a vaparetto (water taxi) to San Marco Square and went inside of San Marco Basilica, which was amazing

This is a picture of the inside of the Basilica

This is a picture from the outside

The entire square was full of people dressed up and wearing masks, and all of the little kids had confetti, so if they liked your mask or costume, they would throw confetti at you.

This is just an example of how extravagant all of the costumes were haha. I did not wear a dress like that, just a mask, sorry to disappoint.

Afterwards, we went to a little restaurant for lunch, and I had chicken and pasta. Later in the day we went to an art museum The Royal Academy Museum, and then got gelato afterwards. I got cherry, but don't worry I also got about 5 other kinds throughout the rest of the trip :-)

Then we rested in a little cafe, until it got closer to the opening ceremony for Carnivale. We went back to San Marco Square to wait for the show to start, it was really crowded in the square and definitely not what I expected for the start of Carnivale. They had music and then this play that was about an 80 minutes long, that apparently was very funny, however since I don't speak Italian I had no idea what was going on. But it was a lot of fun to see so many people dressed up in costumes and masks and there were lights strung all around the sqaure. We headed home after the ceremony and thankfully our heat was fixed!

On Sunday ( I know this is long, bear with me) we took the vaperatto, to San Marco again to see the Angel Flight, which was basically a lady on a zipline from the bell tower into the center of the square and it was quite possibly the most crowded place I have ever been in my life, even moreso then Franklin St. after the National Championship! On the way to the sqaure our water taxi got held up because there was a huge parade down the Grand Canal, which consisted of tons of gondolas with people dressed up and playing music, it was full of interesting characters, I saw one guy dressed up in a red onesie wearing a Goofy hat.

After that we spent a good amount of time trying to get out of the crowd, we escaped to another island for a while where we took a gondola ride, we went down parts of the Grand Canal and through some of the more narrow canals, it was beautiful.

This is me with our gondolier, Alessandro, he was so sweet haha

After our gondola ride we went to another church, Santa Maria della Salute and then we took a boat over to the Rialto Bridge where we had dinner and hung out for the rest of the night.

Rialto Bridge

Monday, we woke up and checked out of our hostel and spent most of the day on the island of Lido, we walked on the beach there

Me and my roommates on the beach!

and got lunch (I had pizza again) and then we went back towards San Marco and hung out there until it was time for us to head back. We met the shuttle at our hostel and got a ride to the airport, we ate gelato in the waiting area for about 2 hours until it was time for our flight to be board around 9:30pm but after we went through the Passport checking area, we realized that our flight was delayed, so we sat on the floor of the airport for about 2 more hours and played about 50 games of hangman. Our flight was delayed even further, so we didn't actually leave Italy until about 12:30am. This was a problem for many reasons, #1 being that both the tube closed after 12:30, as did the train that we were supposed to use to get to the tube station. When we arrived in London around 2:30 Italy time, 1:30 London time, we found a bus that came at 2:00 and took about an hour bus ride into the city and we got a cab the rest of the way home. I think I probably went to bed around 3:30 or 4, it was definitely an adventure to get home from Italy. Overall I had so much fun, I am still recovering from all of the traveling but I'm so glad that I got to go.

This week isn't as busy as last week, but I went on a tour of Parliament yesterday and I'm going to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof tonight, James Earl Jones (aka: the voice of Mufasa in the Lion King) is in the cast , so that should be fun! I miss you all very much hope everyone had a great week/weekend!