Venezia: Part I

So I realize I haven’t really been updating my blog lately…but I see that as a good thing. It means I’ve been so busy that I don’t have the time to sit around and type out my life. And I’d much rather be busy than bored here.

So last week I didn’t stop working. After the most fun weekend spent in Navalmoral so far (a friend’s birthday), I was tutoring and teaching all week. On Thursday, I went into the elementary school across the street from my apartment and gave four, 1-hour long presentations on Halloween to the kiddies. Four of the exact same presentations. I was exhausted after that, but still had to tutor, then head to Madrid so I could go to Venice very early Friday morning!

So begins the weekend… I was planning on taking the 7:55 pm bus out of Navalmoral to Madrid, Thursday night. However, when I got to the station, I realized that the ticket office was closed. I dashed across the way to the bus station and was able to get on the last bus to Madrid that night at 7:40pm. Good thing I get places early.

The bus ride was lovely. I tried to sleep a little and listen to my iPod. When I got bored with that, I watched the movie that the bus was playing. It was dubbed in Spanish and starred Tim Curry and was absolutely ridiculous. I was so confused the whole time, and think I still would have been if it had been in English. I highly recommend YouTubeing the movie, “Bailey’s Billion$.”

When I got into the city, my friend Juan David (from Navalmoral but lives in Madrid) met me at the station. We dropped my stuff off at his apartment, and then went out to dinner. We ate at Foster’s American Restaurant (I had one next to where I lived in Valencia, but never ate there). It was actually really good, and really filling. It was “Buy 1, Get 1 Free” night, so we each got an appetizer and an entrée. I had some chicken fingers and tacos…just like home. After dinner, we met up with some of his friends at a bar and hung out. It was a great mix of Erasmus (study abroad in Europe) students: Dutch, French, German…very international. We spent the night dancing at a club and around 4:00am, Juan David and I made the long walk (metros stop running around 2:00am) to his apartment to pick up my bag, then he drove me to the airport. He dropped me off at Terminal 1, but once he left and I was inside, I realized I had to be in Terminal 4. I flagged down a taxi and had to pay the stupid airport fee on top of the regular fare to drive just a few seconds away. Once in Terminal 4, I went through security and by the time I was at my gate, the 5:45am flight was getting ready to board.

Despite a bit of turbulence, the flight was fine, though I didn’t get any sleep. When I landed in Venice, I had about an hour to kill until the flight that my friends were on from Sevilla landed. I ordered my first (of many) Italian cappuccino in the café and people-watched until the other girls’ plane came in. Once they were there, the five of us hopped on the airport bus over to the main island, tired, but excited to be there.

We wandered around for a while, figuring we would stumble across our hostel eventually, stopping for some more cappuccinos, then eventually asking (in broken Italospanglish) how to find the hostel. Once at the hostel, the real fun began. At one point in the past, the building the hostel was in used to be some sort of house of royalty. However, hundreds of years later, things have definitely changed. A skinny, wild-haired British guy named Sam greeted us. Sam told us that there was a mandatory lock-out every day from 11-2 so that they could clean the place, and that no one could be in the hostel at that time. What they spent the three hours cleaning, we never figured out. So we dropped off our stuff, tried to make ourselves look a little human (almost 36 hours with only about a half an hour of sleep), and headed out to explore the city.

When we had researched what the best things to do in Venice were, the thing we kept finding online was “Get lost in the streets.” We took this advice to heart and did just that for all 3 days we were there. We spent Friday afternoon walking wherever we felt was right. We found the cutest, most delicious café ever (took a picture of the street name so we could try to find it again later), ate wonderful pizza at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and took some beautiful pictures of all of the bridges and canals. It was so surreal that I was actually in Venice. At one point I said to the girls, “I feel like I’m in Busch Gardens.” Such an American/Virginian thing to say, but it was true.

So around 4.00, we headed back to the hostel, as Sam said everything would be ready by 2.00, we thought we would be able to check-in and take a much needed siesta. Wrong. We did check in, paying an absurd amount of money (5 Euros each if we wanted sheets and towels, 5 Euros a night in Italian tourist tax, plus the steep nightly charge) for a hostel that was looking more disgusting by the second. One girl even saw a rat on the first floor at one point. Then, after paying, Sam said that the room “wasn’t quite ready yet” and that we could hang out on the common room couches for “10 minutes” while he finished fixing it up. “10 minutes” turned into about an hour waiting. We did manage to make friends with a British boy who was also sitting on the couches and looked to be about 12 years old. He told us he was 16 (yeah, right), his name was Zak and he had “been done with school a long time ago.” This kid had spent the last month on the Camino de Santiago, before that spent time in Venice (training at the hostel to work there eventually), and had traveled a lot more. Was he a run away? Did his parents kick him out? Did he even have parents? So many questions. Now, Zak was starting to actually work at the hostel as a paid employee. Good thing, because he had showed up to Venice with only 4.80 Euros in his pocket…

When we finally were able to go into our room, we tried to nap for a bit, but only really managed to lay there. Still having not slept, we all took turns going upstairs to the one shower/bathroom. The shower was an experience in itself. The water pressure was non-existent (about 8 drops a minute) and it was the moldiest shower I have ever seen (on the walls, the shower curtain…).

That night we wanted to go out to dinner, but it took a long time to figure out where we wanted to go (many places were full, had creepy-looking people outside…). Finally we decided on one that looked good, had a lot of people in it, and seemed like it might have space for us. But, when I asked for a table for five, the waiter said that we would have to wait about 20 minutes. We all looked at each other, hungry and not wanting to wait, and the waiter said “one second.” He walked up to a table of two (man and woman) and asked them to move tables so he could push two together for us. They already had their drinks and had ordered their food and he made them move! I guess the waiter really wanted the American girls to stay…

So we sat down at our table, mumbling an embarrassed “grazie” to the couple who switched tables and ordered our bottle of wine and food. The food was pretty good (I had spaghetti carbonara) and once we were done, the waiter brought over a round of brandy shots for us. In many parts of Spain (and apparently Italy), it’s normal to get a free shot (to sip on) after dinner as a “palate cleanser.” So we reluctantly, but graciously sipped on our brandy. Once we were done, we asked for “il conto per favore” (the bill). But, instead of bringing over the bill, the waiter brought over ANOTHER round of brandy shots for us…now this was not normal. Again, we graciously sipped the shots, our throats burning from the alcohol. Finally, after getting through that, we asked for “il conto per favore” again. And what happened? ANOTHER round! Ugggh. So once again, we took our time and finished the brandy, telling the waiter that we could drink no more. Finally, he brought us the bill.

That night we headed over to the students' area of Venice and went to a few bars. A very exciting thing, I found a place with a mojito that is a close second to Laboratorio’s mojitos in Valencia. We hung out around there for the evening and at the end of the night, we could definitely say we went out full force in Venice.