Italy stop #6-7: Venice-Milan

On Saturday morning, we trained it to Venice.



After a quick stop in the hotel (that's right, not a hostel, we're moving up after buying gucci and ***** bags), we went wandering around. After a quick stop in a Museum (last one of the trip) we went to Realto Bridge (famous one) and randomly wandered around town.





In a dramatic contrast from our housing, we had the least classy new years every. First up, New Years Dinner at Burger King. Yup, you read that right. It started raining the mad so we just stayed and chill here for a while (i think a lot of people we're doing it as well).



When it got around time, we went to San Marco Square to get ready for the celebrations. Unfortunately the fireworks and all that was cancelled this year (problems last year) so we had to rely people bringing their own. Also there was no countdown, we just waited for the church bell the ring. And to show how unclassy new years was, check out our toast.



We couldn't stay out too long since the last bus left really soon, so we stayed out as long as possible and took the bus back. I guess all the running really got annie's blood going as she was totally hammered and couldn't walk once she was on the bus (that's one powerful 1/2 cup of prosecco (italian sparkling wine)). IT took about 2 hours to get her from the bus stop to the hotel (was rather dangerous, had to cross the highway, across a path between the highway and hte river...ect) It was rather comical though, was good laughs all around the following day :)

Everything was closed on Sunday since it was new years so we just wandered around Venice taking pictures here and there. We went in San Marco Church, it was crazy, so much gold and stuff everywhere.





The rest of the day was just more pointless wandering around.




We decided to give a resturant 1 more chance and went to this place to get pasta and pizza. It was so crappy it's safe to say i will not be going to an Italian resturant every again. We saw them take frozen pizza/pasta from the freezer and pop it in the microwave. All they did was reheat grocery store frozen food, what a crappy place!!! We ended up paying the entire bill in coins to vent our anger (so many 1 and 2 cent coins!!) so that made me feel a little better.

On Monday we took a nice nice train to Milan so that was a nice ride. We only had a few hours in Milan so we walked to the big church as well as a grocery store to load up on cheap pasta and stuff to bring home.



The train out of Milan was late we figured it would throw our whole train transfers outta wack, but it all worked out luckily. When we go to the first Swiss city, we had to go jump off the train to get customs stamps (For the Gucci bag and my bag), buy tickets for Annie and Dima and run back to the train we just got off). We barely made it, but it was so delayed from being in Italy (every thing is slow in Italy, trains, people...ect) we thought we'd miss out next connection. We go to the switch point 10 minutes late buy just as we arrived we saw the next train we had to run to so we bolted from our train and just made that one (it's nice how everything works out nicely once you get to Switzerland but turns to #$^# when in Italy). After 1 more last minute transfer we were back home.

All in all it was a pretty nice trip. Some places (Rome, Venice, Pompeii) were nicer then others (Naples, trains) but it was a nice balance. I think I'm more or less done touring Italy now but will do 1 more (probably Rome a but more then up to Turin for the Olympics, can't wait to watch the Hockey game, gonna rock!). It was also a sweet trip since Dima was here. Help tune down the homesick feeling.

Well, that's it for now, I wont have this posted till I'm back from Paris, but o well, all good. Later