Up to the minute update: It’s 6-9 and we’re in Rome. We finally got some Internet and are back-posting the dry blogging, but there’s a lot of re-writing to do, so it might take a bit!
Greetings from Venice! Since we’re doing so much over the coming few weeks, we decided it would be best to try to blog as we go. We can’t really blog without Internet though, so we’re “dry blogging” until we can really blog. You know how that works, right?
So we’re in Venice right now. We left Linz this morning at about 9:30 and headed to a town called Innsbruck in Austria. The trip was pretty uneventful. We just rode along and played a new game on the tablet.
At Innsbruck we had to change trains, so we hopped off and had our lunch on the platform while we waited. We’d never been to Innsbruck before, so it was interesting. You can tell we were really excited!
It’s actually in the mountains and has this wicked looking ski jump!
We’re really not sure what was going on with this mountain. Dominoes maybe?
After lunch, the train we were taking to Venice showed up. We hopped on and found that some guys were thinking about taking our reserved seats. We told them and they moved on. A little bit after the train got going, they came back and took the other empty seats in the compartment. Turns out that they were Americans from Kentucky and Ohio. They were engineers and one computer science major, so we chatted a good portion of the trip.
Italy is very similar looking to Austria in the north. Weird how just crossing an arbitrary border doesn’t change the landscape, huh?
Coming into Venice is weird because it’s an island. We had to cross the Adriatic Sea via bridge to get there. It’s not a huge bridge, but it’s enough to let you know you’re on an island.
We got in to Venice at about 6:15. We found the hostel easily and threw our stuff in the room. The room was actually really nice. It was a hostel, but it looked more like a hotel:
It was a very pink room though, so the camera was all confused about colors. I’m sorry I didn’t reset the white point before taking the pictures. Anyway, it even had a little fridge!
It even had a hat hook. I was really excited about that.
We headed back out to walk around a bit and get some food from a grocery store. We spotted a vendor selling hats, so we made a detour for Joni to pick one up. Hats in hands… hats on heads, we headed… ahem to the grocery store and got some cheese, mini baguettes, and strawberries. We dropped them off in the room, then went back out for a bit.
The canals are really neat to see and are just what you’d expect.
There are bridges and boats everywhere!
One thing that really surprised me was that the canals aren’t exactly super clean. I kind of figured they’d be clean, since they’re like streets. But no, they have plants and whatnot.
Venice is basically one big maze. All the streets and canals just blend together. It would be very easy to get lost! We didn’t though. There are enough landmarks and unique views to keep us oriented.
Also, old building that has an honorary consulate to both Germany and Austria!
It was fun to see how they parked their boats. It did make Joni ask “How do they get to their boat?” Most boats are next to buildings and whatnot, but then you’ll see this:
We have no idea how that’s supposed to work. Come to think of it, how do they do anything on the canal facing sides of their houses? How the devil would you pain this?!
We walked a bit, but it was getting late, so we just turned around and retraced our steps. We had stooped next to some university, but when we turned around we saw this:
Don’t see anything? Look at the bottom:
It’s a dang boat garage! How cute!
We got back into the room, had our little dinner, and watched some video on the laptop. Now that the dry blogging is done, it’s time for bed. We’ve got a full day in Venice tomorrow and we don’t want to be tired!
No Comments