Days 11-14

Day 11: Monday, March 30
We woke up, showered, and had our oh-so-delicious breakfast of toast. And nothing else. Just toast. So we set off in search of breakfast. We ended up a bakery that had giant pretzels. Unfortunately it wasn't fresh, but it was still tasty and bigger than Jake's head. Then we basically spent the day wandering around Innsbruck and looked at stuff. We went in St. Jakob's chruch, and it was pretty fancy inside. Wait for pictures. Then we went and looked at various statues and fountains, saw the gold roof, and found a mall that had a 7th floor observation deck, so we went up and looked at the mountains and stuff. Also, it was kind of overcast, so that was why we decided to not go to the zoo or anything. But it wasn't raining! Dinner we went to a mexican restaurant. It was very tasty.

Day 12: Tuesday, March 31
Zoo day! We were going to go up to the zoo and then go to the castle, but due to how their buses are not where they're supposed to be, and the fact that the castle and zoo are really far apart from eachother, we ended up just going to the zoo. There were animals! Lots of them! We got to see the wolves run around, and the Bear was all, RAWR I EAT MY MEAT NOW! Then we wandered around the old city some more. At some point, Jake got liederhosen for Landon and I got various things for various people. Innsbruck is nice, because you can just wander around and not actually do anything, and it still felt like you were doing stuff. It was really just nice to stay in one place for a couple of days and not have to worry abou switching hostels every night.

Day 13: Wednesday, April 1
The weather was like, perfect on Wednesday. Perfect. Warm, clear blue skies.. We were originally going to leave around 11 to go to Venice, but because it was so nice out, we stuck around for lunch and then got the 1pm train. Train was once again uneventful, we got to Venice and tried to find a hostel. The magical all knowing book said there was one really close to the train station, we got to where it was supposed to be, and ITS NOT THERE. It's not down any of the little alleys nearby either. So we decide to go to the next closest one, and we kinda get lost, finally find it, it's only got two beds in separate rooms, so we decide we'd rather just get a cheap hotel room since it'd be the same price and that way we'd at least be together. After, we find a suitably cheap hotel (yay 2 stars). Then we went out and found a place to eat. Itallian restaurants like to have people outside, and if you show the SLIGHTEST interest in their menu, they jump on you, and are like, ooh, ooh, table for two? And you're just like, um, no, and then you run away. And there is no exaggeration there, at all. We ran away whenever someone would try and push us into eating there. All we wanted to do was look at the menus to decide, and they were all sorts of pushy. Eventually we went to one of them, since there weren't any places that didn't have people outside. Then we wandered around a bit, but Venice is super sketchy at night, since they don't have street lights and everything turns into an alley. When we got back to the hotel, around the world in 80 days was on in Itallian. So we watched that until the super funny part, which is funnier in English. Then sleeping! Also, I would like to mention, that Italy was way warm. It was nice after being cold and wet for so long.

Day 14: Thursday, April 2
We woke up, checked out of the hotel, put our stuff at the train station, and then worked our way to St. Marks plaza, and the Doge's palace. Again, they felt my purse was too big and made me check it. They also had no picture signs all around, so I figured I'd just leave my camera in my bag. Then we actually get inside, and not only does everyone have their camera out, but it's only certain places where you can't take pictures. I was a bit upset. So we looked around and saw all the artwork and stuff, and the prison/dungeon, and by the time we finished, it started raining. The rain did however shorten the line to the church/basilica next door, but they wanted us to check our bags too, and were like, the bag check place is over there. We did not see "over there" so we just went and found a vaporetti (bus boat) to take back to the train station, instead of trying to walk back. We get to the train station, get in line to get tickets, say we want to go to Florence, and the lady is like, oh, there's one leaving in 6 minutes. You sure we can make it? Oh, yeah, plenty of time. So the trian is on platform 14. Our luggage is over by platform 1. We have 6 minutes. Luckily we made the train! It involved lots of running and running. Itallians also don't like to hurry, so when we were paying to get our luggage back, the guy took forever to get us our change. Meanie. So we get to Florence, and by this point, I'm really thinking that we need to get a suitcase, because all our bags are stuffed and heavy, and we keep buying bottles of alcohol to take back. Venice had a couple of stands of people selling suitcases, but we didn't really have time to get one. So we get to Florence, and try finding the hostel that we wanted to stay at, and where it was on the map and where it was in real life were different, but we eventually found it, and it was really nice. Very colorful. Everyone who stayed wrote on the wall somewhere, so the walls were full of grafitti basically. Jake and I left GT marks. :) After we dropped our stuff and called Adam to let him know we were there, we went out and I got a suitcase for 15 euros ($20). Went back, packed it, and then Adam showed up, so we went out and had dinner at what is apparently the best pizza place in Florence, then we went and looked at the duomo. It was the prettiest church we saw, in my opinion. It's all green and pink and white on the outside. While we were walking past it, we ran into a kid from our Chivalry class with some of his friends. That was kinda weird, although I had been wondering if we'd ever run into people. Then we had some tasty tasty gelato, wandered a bit more, and went back to our hostel. We used their internet for a bit since it was free, then went to sleep.