My Wonderful Weekend in Venice

                                                                         Venice, Italy

  This weekend my friends and I had a free weekend in Arezzo, so we decided to go to Venice! Venice is a city on the water! There are no streets for anyone to drive on, they get around by walking or using their boats on their many canals throughout the city!

   The first thing we had to do was look up train times to see what time we could leave for Venice. You do this by looking on the trenitalia schedule online. (https://www.lefrecce.it/B2CWeb/search.do?parameter=searchOutputViewer&cFID=mFuH3oMwblGd) They have multiple train stops in Venice so before we left we had to find out which one was closest to our hotel! Once we got into Venice we had to get a taxi to our hotel! It was hard finding a taxi for fourteen people, so we had to split up into four different taxis. 

  We stay in a hostel in Venice called Camping Village Jolly. A hostel is a type of cheap hotel that people use when they're traveling, sometimes a hostel can be unsafe so you must always research and look at the reviews before you book a hostel. Camp Jolly was very safe! They had different options for our stay, you could stay in a tent on the grounds that had bed, or you could stay in a small mobile home that had beds and a bathroom. 

  We had to take a public bus in order to get into the city center of Venice. The bus was super crowded and very hot! The bus dropped us off at Piazzale Roma which was about a thirty five minute walk to Piazza San Marco! We decided to get an all day pass on a water taxi that took us through the canals of Venice instead of walking! (http://www.venicewatertaxi.it/en/index.html)

(http://cruisebuzz.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/water-taxi-by-DislOck-580x385.jpg)

  We ended up going to the two islands off the coast of Venice called Murano and Burano! 
Murano is know as the glass island, because people who live on the island create glass blown items, and give glass blowing demonstrations. We were able to see a glass blowing demonstration. Seen below. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glassblowing (here is more information on glass blowing) 

Burano is known as the color and lace island. Burano was full of colorful houses, the colors of the houses ranged from pink to green to blue to red, any color you could think of a house was painted that color! They also had beautiful lace pieces that were sale. Many individuals on Burano created the lace clothing items themselves and decided to sell them!

 To end our day three of my friends and I went on a gondola ride! Gondola rides are a must in Venice. A gondola is a small wooden boat that fits up to six people, and using the currents of the water and a Gondolier who steers the boat cruises you through the canals of Venice! It was so beautiful and the gondola ride we went on had someone who serenaded a group of gondolas with Italian songs!