the day of our italy trip i took a three hour nap in preparation for the 6 1/2 hour night train i knew i had ahead of me. this turned out to be bad decision number one. because of that nap i wasn't able to sleep on the train. at. all. lack of sleep combined with how unnaturally hot our cabin was combined with the two dudes who, every time i looked at them while they were awake, were staring at me, made for a very... interesting, and not in the good way, train ride.
we arrived at our destination in vincenza at 5 AM, and had a little bit of time to kill before 6 when my aunt was coming to retrieve us. so we were chillin in the... the room with all the chairs... area. we'd been sitting for maybe five minutes and i had just settled back into my grumpy/tired pants when an interesting african guy came over and asked us for change for 10 euro so he could buy coffee. i put on my best "go away" face and told him no. but instead of seeing how much i did not want to be alive at the moment, let alone talk to him, all he heard was my american accent. he promptly sat down between me and marissa and started talking. his topics of choice included, but were not limited to: asking where i was from, my name (which he proceeded to laugh at since i was american with a supposedly italian name), if i had a facebook, if i'd add him on facebook, how long i was planning on staying in Vincenza, if i'd ever been to Amsterdam, if i would like to join him in Amsterdam, if i wanted him to buy me a coffee, if i was willing to meet up with him that night to go to a club. he also felt the need to tell me, multiple times, that i had beautiful eyes, that i wasn't like most italian girls, even though he thought i was italian at first, and that he liked my shoes. he also told me his name was, and i'm not even kidding, Freedom Rasta. i swear it. after about 20 minutes of painfully one sided conversation i finally pretended our ride was here and so we got up and left to go stand outside and wait. he then promptly followed us outside and offered me a smoke and luckily our ride arrived just in time so i didn't have to give him an answer. (keep this encounter in mind for a story of similar unwantedness is to come.) i was praying this strange interaction was not to be an omen of how the whole trip was going to be.
luckily it wasn't... entirely.
it took us ten minutes to get to my aunts house which, turns out is beyond amazing. she lives in a house connected to an old church built in the 1200's. the house is fantastic, gorgeous, and beyond anything i can ever hope to live in myself. i was planning on taking a million pictures of it while we were there but exhaustion and traveling got in the way. i suppose i'll just have to go back. pity.
eventually we got some good food in us and around 10:00 we found ourselves on a train to go spend the day in venice. only, it wasn't a train on it's way to venice. turns out it was a train coming from venice, to milan. yes folks, that is the wrong direction. but it wasn't until we reached the verona train station we realized our mistake which, unfortunately, that's half an hour in the wrong direction. double unfortunately, we didn't realize we should get off and switch trains util we'd already pulled out of verona. it took another hour to reach the next train station, the name of which i still don't remember, where we smartly hopped off the train to find the next train back to venice. when was the next train leaving said unnamed town, you ask? in two hours. so we walked from the train station to the center of town, which also happened to be a shoreline of a massive lake, and we bought some gilato, took pictures, and chased pigeons. i suppose if we had to be stranded in a random town for two hours, the place we ended up wasn't so bad.
you can't read it but it says maria on that lighthouse. just like everything else over here.
so after the four and a half hours it took us to travel a 30 minute distance, (wow this is getting long, honestly i'm amazed you're still reading. shall we continue? we shall.) we ended up in venice and oh my lanta was it worth it. guys, lets all go to venice, ok? because, get this, they don't have streets, but instead have canals. yes. canals. those gondola dudes in the striped shirts that you have probably seen on tv or some chick flick movie? they're real. and it turns out they're also really expensive, unless you're simply taking pictures of them like a poor college student, like i was.
we wandered around venice for four hours, watching random groups of tourists pay for a bag of what i'm going to assume was full of bread crumbs, in order to bribe disease ridden rats with wings to land on them and eat out of their hands. yes, there were tons of groups of people doing this. and yes, i got pictures.
the pigeon trainer himself. he came to venice without diseases, and he'll be darned if he leaves without 'em.
remember when i told you to remember that creepy man story from before? well i was planning on telling you another story that had to do with that, but i'm getting tired, it's getting late and this is getting really long, so i'll give you the condensed version.
so we were traversing the back-ish alley ways towards the train station to end our tragically magical day in venice when these two dudes started walking behind us. they heard us talking in english and so they asked, in their thick accents, if we were headed towards the train station too. i replied accordingly so they said they were just going to follow us. but they didn't just follow us. instead one of them insisted on asking me questions from like 15 feet behind me... which was awkward and difficult to hear. and here is a list of questions he was asking me: where are you guys from? (utah) oh, i'm from there too! (oh yeah? because you totally sound like it) ha, no. i am from california though *wink* (really.) yep. *wink wink* so you guys ever been to turkey? (nope.) ah, too bad. you want to go!? (nope.) do you have plans tonight? (siiiiigh)
it continued like that until we took a purposely wrong turn and lost them. i must say italy, for all your enticing ruins, your men kind of come off as desperate scum bags.
our day ended similar to the way it began. i bought a massive white dessert thing that ended up being nothing more than a glob of meringue bigger than my face, which after one bite, neither me nor marissa wanted it.
until next time venice, you were truly... something else.
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