Day 8: Venice

I woke up with a sore throat that morning, so after a breakfast that consisted mostly of tea with honey, I tried to speak as little as possible. Ariana woke up with 6 mosquito bites (because she didn't want to be left out of the fun of physical ailments). Clearly her blood is much sweeter than mine, because I was completely untouched.

Wandering around, we found a pharmacy, and we were greeted by a pharmacist who spoke English with only a slight accent. I figured that means he's fluent, so I started telling him what I wanted to buy - cough drops and vitamin C. This was too fast for the poor guy - he had me slow down and Ariana translated a couple words into Spanish (which is very close to Italian) to make sure he understood.

We spent most of the day walking the city - we walked through the Rialto shopping district and bridge over to Piazza San Marco. It was packed! Lines to get in everywhere were very long, and the restaurants were the most expensive in this already pricy city.

We saw the other main bridge over the Grand Canal - the Ponte dell' Academia - located near the university. Then we tried to go back to our hotel for a nap (since it was so hot!) but we ended up getting lost over on the far western side of Venice and had to stop into a cafe for directions. Another wander around our neighborhood and a pasta dinner closed our last night in Venice.

Day 7: Venice

Our first morning in Venice, we slept in a little later than we meant to. We woke up right as the free breakfast was closing. We quickly ran to the breakfast room across the hall and knocked on the closed door, hoping it wasn't too late. Luckily, the nice Italian woman let us in and made us delicious hot chocolate. She also gave us some bread and jams, which were delicious.

That morning we bought our train tickets for our future travels through Italy. They were expensive, but surprisingly easy to buy. It was nice that our hotel was right next to the train station, it made leaving Venice much less stressful than it otherwise could have been. After we got our train tickets out of the way, we set out to figure out how the rest of Venice's transportation worked. We bought vaporetto (water bus) tickets and headed over to the glass-making island of Murano.

Murano is famous for its gorgeous glasswork. Around the year 1300, all the glassmakers in Venice were exiled to Murano because their glass-blowing created a huge fire hazard on the mainland. Today, Murano is filled with little shops with lovely glass art. Upon arrival, we enjoyed a pasta lunch and quickly discovered that few places on the island accepted credit cards. Luckily, I exchanged my travelers cheques for cash before leaving Sevilla, so we were able to buy lunch and various gifts at Murano.

We accidentally hopped onto the wrong bus to get off Murano, but we still ended up near our hotel. We just ended up making many more stops and staying on the bus longer than we otherwise would have. Marc decided that waterbus was not the most fun or comfortable method of transportation.

That night for dinner, we had more delicious Italian food, and we also drank the most expensive Fantas we'd ever had (at 4 euros per glass). After dinner, we found a new favorite grocery store and bought a couple of delicious dessert items. We then wandered over in the direction of the Rialto Bridge. Venice was nice enough to provide us with many signs to follow, directing us pretty clearly. I took pictures of gondolas, and in turn, the passengers in the gondolas took pictures of me.

At the end of an alley, we made a turn and SURPRISE! We stumbled upon the Rialto Bridge. The bridge is huge, and during the day its filled with little touristy shops. At night, it's just filled with tourists taking pictures of the beautiful view. We included ourselves in the group and tried to capture some of the memorable sights of Venice.

Day 6: Paris to Venice

We had a nice leisurely morning wandering around Ile St. Louis and seeing the cute stores and restaurants. We went to Au Bon Marche, an amazing food market/spice market/clothing store/etc and picked up some nice chocolate and drooled over all the amazing food there. We wandered back to our hotel and had our last Nutella crepe and grabbed a panini for the airport.

After a long metro/shuttle/airport/shuttle/walk, we finally arrived late at our hotel in Venice. Everything in Venice is so expensive! Our one-star hotel was just as expensive as much nicer hotels in other cities, and there weren't many luxuries - shared bathroom down the hall, no AC (which is fine, except for the next part), no screens on the windows (which is unfortunate due to the monstrous Minnesota-like mosquitos).

Every restaurant in Italy has a few standard dishes. One of them, which quickly became my favorite, was the penne in a smoked salmon cream sauce. We also got gelato and decided that chocolate hazelnut was the best flavor in the world.

Day 5: Paris

We woke up to enjoy another French hotel breakfast, bought a 10-pack of Metro tickets, and headed over to the Musee D'Orsay for some art. Marc found his favorite sculpture of a polar bear, and I found one of my favorite paintings, the Birth of Venus. I was surprised to see artists sitting in the museum painting replicas of the existing works on the walls.

We had reservations for lunch at a very fancy restaurant and needed to change out of our day clothes and into something nicer. We had our dress clothes in a backpack, but the museum didn't allow backpacks past security and had no external bathrooms. We finally managed to convince the security guard to let us bring the backpack in so we could change in the bathrooms. We made sure to pass him on the way out, and he finally understood our odd request and gave us an appreciative "ah!" on our way out.

We wandered over to Carre des Feuillants for one of the best meals ever. Some dishes included interesting ingredients such as sea urchin, squid ink, lavender marshmallows, and escargot. After lunch, we walked over to the Louvre to top off our cultural experiences of the day. We made our way in through the secret back entrance, avoiding all the lines. We visited the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa, and the crown jewels. On the way back to the Metro, we stopped by a special exhibit in a museum next door. The exhibit had many toys displayed, including an army of My Littly Pony dolls.

After a rest at the hotel, we ventured out again to find dinner. We decided that it would be a night of restaurant-hopping. We went to a restaurant around the corner from our hotel for an appetizer of fois gras. We then bought dinner crepes at our little crepe stand down the street. It was my first dinner crepe, and I had difficulty eating it without spilling egg out of the side of the crepe every 15 seconds. We finished the evening with creme brulee at a cute outdoor cafe. Our crazy energetic waiter tried joking with Marc in French, but the language barrier always makes jokes confusing and seems to lose them in translation.

Day 4: Paris

A nice thing about Paris is that almost all the museums and sites recognize a common pass. So Ariana and I got a 2-day museum pass to get us into almost everything that was on our list.

We visited Notre Dame, the famous cathedral on the island. After looking around inside and seeing all the amazing stained glass, we decided to try to climb the big towers. Unfortunately, the line was incredibly long and extremely slow-moving. We watched as a street performer dressed in funny clothes started wandering around and interacting with people walking down the street - greeting people as his mother, pulling people and cars with invisible rope, challenging people to martial arts fighting, etc. It certainly kept us amused!

Sainte-Chapelle resides in the courtyard of the French Supreme Court. We ended up making a complete loop around the building before finding the entrance (long line for security). We also stopped at the archaeological crypt on the same island - there are Roman ruins located just a couple hundred feet from Notre Dame.

I was all excited to go to the museum of coinage, but we got there and found out it was closed for renovations. So instead we went to the Musee du Quai Branly - it's a new world culture museum with hundreds of instruments, masks, and other artifacts from around the world.

The view from the top of the Arc de Triomphe was not quite as impressive as from the Eiffel Tower, but we could see for miles down the nice straight roads. Our legs were tired after that walk.

We also managed to find a restaurant right on the Champs-Elysee that wasn't too expensive, so we had a nice leisurely dinner there.