Walk. Train. Plane. Bus. Train. Walk. Sleep.

Unfortunately for me sleep did not come easily last night. I think I was up until at least one before I fell asleep. As such, getting up and out of bed at 3 was a near impossibility. In fact I woke up and turned both of my alarms off. I woke up again at 3:36 in a mild panic, not because I wouldn't have time but because I was going to be cutting it close.

Showering that early in the morning is always strange, but in Groningen it is when a lot of people are just getting home. I got myself organized, finished packing my bag, and left the house just after 4:30am. Yikes. When I walked out the door it had snowed! And it was even quite warm. It was the snow that is quite wet and sticky and it felt about plus 2. The walk was quite pleasant, I saw a bunch of people biking home from the bar.

I boarded my train and found what I thought would be a nice quiet seat. However, a number (say about 12) fellow young adults were on their way home from the bar to a city about an hour away. They party all night and then catch the first train home. This is not condusive to a quiet car to sleep in. However, drunk people who have been up all night tend to loose their steam so it didn't take too long for them to quiet down.

To give you a quick overview, I spent most of my day dozing in and out of sleep in the seated position. I made it to the airport and my flight was delayed, heavy fog had delayed the previous flight. I think we left over an hour late. I slept a bit on the plane, "enjoyed" a sandwich on the plane. I arrived at the airport in Milan, well the airport is actually outside of Milan so I caught a bus into the city centre. Unfortunately, the train to Venice was leaving at the same time I got there so I had to wait for an hour for the next one.

At first I thought I would walk around the city a little bit but upon exiting the train station I saw people sizing me up with all my bags. I was suspicious and unwilling to try my luck at finding my way around without having any of my stuff stolen. I found some cheap pizza and waited it out.

I boarded the train to Venice at 2:30 and took the 2.75hr train to the end of the line. I unfortunatly chose the wrong place to sit and did get a good view for a lot of the ride but from what I can tell I didn't miss too much and it just gave me another opportunity to sleep. Before the train made the final venture from dry land to Venetian soil I was wide awake and excited! Finally, almost 12 hours later I would be at my destination.

I was immediately taken by the sheer beauty of the place. Venice is gorgeous, it is a photographers dream. Not that I'm a photographer, but everything looks like a post card.

Fortunately for me the instructions to get to my hostel were both easy to follow and very accurate and my hostel is less than 5 minutes from the train station and right off the Grand Canale. Divine.

Although I was exhausted there was a little bit of sunlight left so I decided to venture out for a little while. I crossed one of the main bridges and made my way to a main shopping street, well I say that like it was one street but it quite literally went on forever. I followed it for almost an hour. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself, I dropped my bags off and went in search of some gelato! It took me about 3 minutes to find. So good. I didn't even care that it was freezing. Then I started to walk forever. Within this time a very friendly Italian man stopped me in the streets to see if I wanted to go to his restaurant to chat. Clearly alarm bells start to go off, no matter how nice he may be. With each question he asked I flashed back to my predeparture meetings: "Are you here with a group?" "No" UofC voice: consider what kind of information you give people that might put you at risk. Ridiculous. Anyways, I shook him off and carried on my way.

So this gorgeous shopping street did just go on and on and on forever, although it was the same thing again and again it was still fun to just walk around. The "streets" which are more like narrow alleys seem friendly.

Initially I was planning on going back the way I'd come to avoid getting lost but by the time I figured out how far I had walked I thoguht it would be quicker and easier to do a full loop. This is where navigation got hazzy. These streets start and stop at their own whim, they curve and turn, get narrow, then turn into a piazza, then look like somewhere you could be murdered. I did a lot of fruitlessly looking at a map and following the flow of people and I don't know how I did it, but I ended up exactly where I needed to be.

When I got back to my lovely hostel I had to lay down and wrap in a blanket to try and get warm and because I hadn't properly relaxed in so long and I was running on little sleep. Shortly after I laid down the girl sharing my room came back from being lost herself, turns out she is from Calgary. Small world.

So the guy who owns this hostel has this deal where he makes dinner for you and you pay him €4.00. Best deal of my life. I joined everyone for a lovely pasta dinner and now everyone is headed off to bed. The room is cold but I am so very very excited to have a proper sleep. Tomorrow will be a full day of touring around and I'm really excited to start taking pictures, hopefully the sun keeps shining. I also have a tour in the afternoon of some of the islands just north of Venice which includes a glass blowing factory. Very exciting!

I'm not really looking forward to going back to Milan because it is so beautiful there and Milan felt like it had so much attitude and because my hotel is way out of the way and I'll be lost at night trying to find it. The worst.

Sorry if this was riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes, the keys are different here in Italia, there is no automatic spell check, and I'm way too tired to do anything about it.

Oh and as an aside, I learned that Johnny Depp bought a house here in Venice just moments from where I'm staying, so I might have to stalk that.