Venice

On our trip Adam and I both read the book The Thief Lord, which is a fun story about two little boys who run away to Venice to escape their aunt.  A detective comes looking for Bo and Prosper through venice and it all ends up in a grand adventure with flying lions and thieves and evil old men.  So, when we showed up to venice I expected to see winged lions everywhere, however, we looked in all of the wrong places and somehow missed them.

Venice's streets would be a perfect place to play hide and seek, the only problem would be ever finding each other again.  The walkways are windy and small and we felt like we were walking in circles all day.

What I was most excited for was our Gondola ride which was my anniversary present from Adam.  Although more expensive than we would normally pay for something like that, we had to because we were in Venice and the odds of us going back to Venice anytime soon are nil.

As we walked through the streets we weren't sure how to get a Gondola ride.  I am not sure if this is normal etiquette, but we just walked past some Gondoliers and asked how much they charged and hopped in.



Gondolas are especially cool because they are asymmetrical and it takes years to learn how to be a gondolier to steer without running into walls or bridges while making their way through Venice.  There are just over 400 gondolas in use around venice, and each gondolier has his own gondola.



It was fun to go under the bridges of Venice and down tight alleyways.  It was the perfect gift for our first anniversary.  I got this picture while almost tipping the Gondola while trying to turn around to get a picture of our gondolier.



After a wonderful thirty minute ride we hopped back off and set on our way venturing through the rest of Venice.  We went over the Rialto Bridge and found tons of shops with the most unique and beautiful masks in them.

Instead of staying in Venice we headed about a half hour outside of the city and stayed in a little bed and breakfast in Treviso.  Treviso just so happened to be a place that was the setting for the latest Grisham novel that we traded for with a girl in Prague, The Broker, which is a great read.  We got lost several times on the way to this B & B in 90 degree weather carrying our backpacks.  As we got more and more frustrated it got hotter and hotter.  Finally we found a gelato shop, stopped to regain our composure and ate cantaloupe, watermelon, Lindt chocolate, and pear gelato to boost our spirits and finally made it to our place.

Hunger got the best of us as we dropped our bags and headed back out to find dinner.  Not wanting to try anything new we ordered a pepperoni pizza to go without really thinking much about it.  They handed us our pizza and we walked out the door and made it halfway down the street and decided to take a look at our pizza.  We were totally confused because our pizza didn't have any pepperoni on it, instead it was covered in yellow peppers.



It was only then that it dawned on us that duh, peperoni in Italian means peppers.  We took the pizza home and were a bit nervous to try it out.  It was amazing.

Italian pepperoni pizza is by far my favorite kind of pizza that we had on our whole trip.  The roasted peppers were delicious and added great flavor to the pizza, so our lack of travel sense turned into a unexpectedly delicious meal!

Early the next morning we went back into Venice to catch our train back to Rome only to find out that all of the trains for the day were booked.  We had forgotten to make reservations the previous day and our Eurail passes wouldn't do us any good without a reservation.  Luckily the man at the ticket window worked some magic and after making a few extra stops and changing trains a bit we made it safely back to Rome and to our last few days of our adventure.