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.