Day 9: Ravenna & Venice

Ravenna
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Starting our day waking up in Rimini, we skipped the town to see Ravenna.  Ravenna was a nice town and the weather was great for us.  We saw some beautiful Byzantine churches with mosaic decorations.  The buildings aren't decorated on the exterior only the interior, so just from looking at the outside you wouldn't expect the interior to be so amazing (that is, unless you took architecture history). :)

Our next city was Venice...and also our last city with Jacek.  We got off the bus at a town right outside of Venice and took the train over the water into Venice.  Venice doesn't have street signs, so from the train station, we had to follow signs saying "Per S. Marco" to get to the main square.  The signs telling you where to go were sometimes on buildings as an actual sign or even painted onto the building side, or they were sometimes written on the sidewalk.

Ravenna
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We took a maze of streets to the square.  The buildings are so close to each other and the sidewalks are so small, sometimes only like 5 feet between buildings.  Venice is a romantic city with all the streets of water.  It was a nice walk to the square.  The square was so beautiful.  Jacek talked to us some and took us along the water.

After a little time with Jacek, we split for lunch.  Most of us went to a restaurant right by the water.  We sat outside because the weather was amazing.  I ordered lasagne and before it came, this guy came by our table trying to sell us roses.  He was telling us he had a deal, buy one get one free...3 euro.  After talking to him for a minute, Collin gave him a euro for a rose.  Our server came by during this and walked up and pretended to shoot the guy with a shotgun.  Then he talked to the guy in Italian and told him to give us all roses.  All the girls were so happy and were even more in love with Venice!  It was a good first impression of Venice.

Ravenna
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After eating, Natalee, Meghan, and I went to see if we could get in line for S. Mark's Cathedral, but it was closed.  We walked up to the main doors and Natalee realized you could kind of see inside.  So we peeked inside and then decided to go to the other front doors..the other doors were actually just gated so we could see completely inside!

Some of us decided to go up the campanile to overlook Venice (there's an elevator!).  It was absolutely beautiful on top!  While on top, I happened to look down at the square the same time Collin and Drew decided to look up, so we were waving and taking pictures of each other.  It was really funny we happened to see each other.

Ravenna
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After the tower, Natalee, Meghan, and I walked around looking at the glass jewelery (Venetian glass).  We also got delicious ice cream...probably my favorite in Italy.

We then met back up with everyone and took the ferry to the bus.  It was a nice ride on the ferry.  When we were leaving Venice the sun was setting so it was gorgeous leaving on the water looking back at Venice.

When we got back on the bus, the girls all gave their roses to Bear Cub.  He seemed excited about it.  We had some trouble finding our hotel so we stopped at this bar to ask someone for directions.  Jacek at this point was pretty drunk, he had spent his time in Venice drinking and had got on the ferry with a big water bottle filled with red wine.  So, he talks to some guy outside of the bar and the guy gets on his motorcycle and showed us the way to our hotel.  Italians are so friendly!