Venezia! I must first write about this crazy little place that we're staying at. It was on the hostel website from which I booked all the rest of the places, but it's actually a B&B (though cheaper than most of the places we've stayed so far). We were a little apprehensive when we had these pseudo-ambiguous directions to this place about 20 minutes away from the train station. We got to this little suburb of Venice called Mestre, and, just minutes away, it has gone from this super crowded tourist infested city built on water, to Italy's equivalent of Corvallis. Everyone (and I mean everyone) bikes here, but REAL bicycles and not the crazy mopeds. Also, drivers actually stop and let pedestrians cross at crosswalks, which I haven't seen in any of Italy (though this is something innate to any big city I'm sure). The people at the local supermaket, though they spoke not a word of English and we not a word of Italian, let us call our hostel for free and were very friendly. So we get to this place and it's run by this couple who speak English twice as fast as I do (and twice as loud). There's another couple staying here, a middle aged Italian couple. Breakfast was quite entertaining, as we've got the owners and this Italian couple talking over eachother so fast (in Italian, of course) that we can't believe that one can understand any of the words that any of the others are saying. It's hilarious. I love Italians, they're so funny.

To get to the bus stop from the B&B, we bike. We're given these super old road bikes to lock up near the bus stop. It's only about 1.5 kilometers, but of course Sharon and I get lost. This old Italian man on his bike who speaks broken English with a very thick accent stops to help us after telling us that he lived in America and how much he loves Americans. His conversation is peppered with hearty back slaps, and he gives us very precise directions in English-Italian. Eventually we get home, but not before agreeing that the Venetian countryside is actually the Bermuda triangle, complete with corn fields that make it look more like Ohio than Italy.

Venice is pretty cool too. Water....everywhere. Then there's the token gondolas, that look more cheesy than romantic. We saw a basilica that was covered on the inside completely with mosaic and walked down tiny alleyway after tiny alleyway, only knowing where we were going by following the other herds of tourists. We almost took a water taxi, but were feeling too poor. So we just sat and watched all the tourists board the boats to who knows where and sat and sweated in the hot hot hot Italian sun and ate our gelato.