Venice, Italy. It's actually Venezia, just like Florence is Firenze. I'm not sure why we don't just call them the name they are, we can pronounce it.

I most definitely dropped my pencil into the canal while drawing a picture in my journal. Don't worry, I got it back. 

Wendy and I woke up early, around seven. Despite the tent being hotter than hell during the day, ti was lovely at night. I slept very well which I wasn't expecting to happen. Florence is a night city, at least it was loud like one. 

We checked out and grabbed a bus to the train station. Not having to climb down those stairs again was a blessing. We arrived with plenty of time so we got coffee and a croissant to eat for breakfast then boarded our train. I've decided I enjoy train rides away more than planes. They are far superior. The view was nice, I got the window seat. We were able to plug in out devices and charge them. The train was maybe three hours, it was really nice. At least I thought so, Wendy... not so much.

"These seats are disgusting, do you think these seats are disgusting? Maybe I'm disgusting..." She said the whole sentence in under a second. We were pretty disgusting human beings at this point.

The weather in Venice was much more tolerable than the rest of Italy. Wendy had no idea that it as an island. We got a map but it turns out the city is extremely hard to navigate. There is no view of monuments to see and walk towards, and a lot of allies change names or aren't on the map at all! It took us ages to find our hostel, but once we did we showered and it was glorious. (Even if it was cold).

After the showers we got dressed and went to explore Venice. I really had only one destination, a book store called Liberia Aqualita Alta. It was covered in books that were stacked on top of crates and a gondola inside. It often flooded so all the books were on crates so they wouldn't get wet when that happened. It was a fantastic place and the owner was very nice. Italian people have been very helpful and friendly. I am a little worried about Paris. 

After the bookstore (with constant navigation of our map), we got hopelessly lost looking for the Rialta bridge. We finally found it, but I hadn't found any artists. (I really wanted to support some artists and get some lovely prints of Venice) so I was getting antsy. We figured my bad mood was due to the lack of food so we stopped for dinner. The food was good, but overly priced for the portion. 

At dinner we met a lady who was from the states (Phoenix) but had lived in England for the last 15 years and gave us some great suggestions of places to go. We ended up at St. Marco's Plaza, which was beautiful with the sun setting. I ended up finding some artist closing up shop and bought a few pieces. A street artist stopped us and cut out our profiles expertly in under a minute and gave it to us for free. We tipped him as a result. He also knew a little about diabetes which gave him some cool points. 

After we just walked around and got lost, on purpose. Venice is a wandering city, not a navigating one. We headed back home and I called family and friends, I wrote that I missed them and would be happy to go back home even though leaving Europe would be hard.