Holidays Abroad | Pt 2 | Venice, Italy

We came to Venice from Florence. We had booked all of our trains before we left for the trip because websites said you needed to make reservations for the fast trains. Well, we thought we'd want to have PLENTY of time to get to train stations etc so we booked our trains at around noon. Our last night in Florence we realized, that if we didn't leave to Venice until noon, we wouldn't get there until 3ish, and by the time we found our hotel and got into town...daylight would be gone. Since we were jetlagged anyway, we decided to wake up at the crack of dawn (literally like 4am) and catch an earlier train to Venice. Good thing we did! We barely had any sunlight, and it was FREEZING before the sun went down, and even more freezing after. 

It was freezing cold. We just took the water taxis, we didn't go on one of the little gondola man boats. Maybe they are super cool, but we didn't really care to go on one. There really weren't very many out and about because it was the middle of winter. We did snag a picture though! Ha. 

So this is what Venice looked like to us. We felt like the pictures we'd seen of Venice were a little bit misleading. This picture is probably a little bit misleading even. Again, like in Florence, we were in a foggy land. It made the ride down the canal kinda "mystical." I was a little bummed that everything wasn't as vibrant, BUT it was still pretty radical. 

Tyler mentioned, he expected to see lots more of these barber striped looking poles. There wasn't too many of these on our journey. 

San Marco Cathedral in Venice was AMAZING! Holy smokes. One day I will go back on a sunny day. The ceiling throughout the cathedral is all gold mosaics. I can't even imagine how amazing it would look with sun coming through the windows. PS it's very hard to take self pics with no flash in dim lit churches. Pardon this blurry photo. 

I'm always amazed by the detail in everything. We weren't really supposed to take pictures in the Doge's palace, but this room was insane. The ceiling was amazing. There is blurry Tyler probably about to tell me not to break the rules :)

So we tried to get some photos before the sun set, but it set fast, and it was FREEZING. We found this little bridge for the perfect photo op. I got this great picture of Tyler!

This was the best of all the photos Tyler tried to take of me. He was shaking because it was so cold, hence the blurriness. I must have steady hands, because Tyler's picture looks great. 

We pretty much spent the rest of the evening wondering around. Ate some over priced, but still delicious pizza, and wandered in allies. I lost our "day pass" water taxi tickets at some point. That was a bummer. I'm just glad I lost something that was replaceable, and not say, our passports.

Since we booked our trains late...and were paranoid about missing the trains, we had time to hangout and chill with the birds before our train left and took us to Rome!

This picture looks like I photoshopped myself in for some reason. This is why I usually don't use flash. 

Ditto on Tyler looking photoshopped in. 

I loved these birds. 

This is my favorite shot of all in Venice. 

Good bye Venice. 

We were professional train riders. 

Should've taken more pictures of our train rides!

Next stop (blog) Christmas in ROME!!!!

Holidays Abroad | Pt 1 | Florence, Italy

Well well well. As you might have noticed (via the social media channels or lack of our attendance at a a holiday party) we were in Italy and Albania for Christmas and New Years respectively. I have been dying to go back to Albania since the day I can home in 2009. Tyler is the radest ever because although he was totally terrified, he came along and spent his entire break from school on this fantastic adventure! We booked the majority of our trip through airbnb.com which helped us cut on costs. Our first stop was in Florence, Italy. We stayed in a pretty sweet apartment with Francesca.
Let the photos begin!

Our first night we hit up the David ("NO PHOTOS!"-courtesy of museum security) and our first pizza....of many pizzas to come! We didn't know Italian, so this pizza just looked good from the window and then once we started eating it we noticed it had a layer of egg under the cheese. Which actually ended up being pretty good!   

As you can see all the little streets were strung with lights for christmas, it was great. Also, the Duomo. This place was INSANE! Seriously. I had actually studied it in Art History back in the day, but they always focus on the dome (which was a spectacle as well!) The exterior was insane. I could've looked at it for hours on end. They had just cleaned 90% of it so it was lookin gooood! The next morning we decided to wake up at the crack of dawn and go up to the top of the dome. Which entailed about 30 minutes of stairs, old old cement stairwells. LOVED IT! 

We were in such a hurry to beat any crowds and have time to see everything we wanted to in Florence since we didn't have much time there. We booked it up those stairs of death (seriously DEATH!) and got to the top for the best view ever aaaaaaand, it was covered in fog. We laughed, I mean we were bummed, but it was still pretty sweet to be up in the fog! This picture is supposed to have the faint bell tower behind us...Seriously, the fog was insane!

FOG! FOG! FOG! We could see a couple blocks out in front of us. Can I just mention that after the day of traveling...our shower didn't have hot water, which happened quite a few times. In fact, I think we had more cold showers than hot showers. (This is because we didn't stay in hotels for the most part of our adventure!)

View from the top.

Tyler loves bikes! I love the roads. 

One the left is a shot of the bridge where we took the photo on the right...

Later in the day we went to the Bobili gardens. They were gorgeous! Massive and gorgeous. There was maybe 3 other people in all of the gardens. It was like we had them all to ourselves! Nice romantic strolls through this place! 

Good times in the gardens. This head is actually not as old as it looks, and it's actually made out of bronze, not cracked stone. Pretty snazzy! (I'm running out of adjectives already.)

The fountain of Neptune in the Gardens.

As we left the gardens we saw this HILARIOUS little cherub on the fountain that reminded me of this  meme. We love memes. If you are totally confused, see that link. We had a good laugh.

And if you are wondering, this is my new dream car. It's like a MINI mini van, AND it plugs in! If you know me, I'm a fan of anything but gas! 

Tyler in front of a Medici I statue at the Piazza Della Signoria. Tyler absolutely loves history (hence the reason he's a history major) so stuff like this, he was ALL about, that I would've just walked on by. This, and every other thing we went to. He was my personal tour guide. Sometimes I would glaze over...ha, but I still learned loads. Thanks Tyler for making my trip much more educational!

Our time in Florence was short, but we spent it well!