-Dawn- So, what an adventure Venice was:) We arrive from Austria after Dark as this was the only train to Italy not travelling through Slovenia (A country where our rail passes are not valid). So we get in at about 9:00 pm we have no city map, just rather undetailed directions to our hotel. We fisrt ask the guy at the boat station (they have boats instead of busses, as there are no streets for cars in the city, only waterways and pedestrian streets). He says don't waste our money on a boat as the station we want is only a shorty walk. Unfourtuanately we cross the wrong bridge so we ask some ppl relaxing behind one of the venidng stalls in the street and get better directions. We wind our way over bridges and through narrow alleys util we find the boat stop we were supposed to get off at. Unfortunately this is where our directions end and the hotel is nowhere in site. So we walk into a hotel nearby and ask the guy there for directions. He looks up our hotel address on the internet and shows us some basic directions on a map he has. So we manage the first two turns okay, but then miss the street that the hotel is on b/c it is so small we didn't see it! we double back and find it, the street is barely wide enough for two ppl to walk side by side. then just around the courner on this little street we see the sign for our hotel yay:) we made it. so we check in. Then we find out that our actual hotel room is not at check in, it's another 10 min walk through the city, this time however we get a map and the hotel guy draws out where we are supposed to go. We take the turn at the macdonals like we are supposed to, but here the streets got small and a little confusing, luckily aty that moment some other tourists from america passed by who were going to the same set of rooms and they took us right to it. All in all a nice little hour long adventure through vinice at night! :p Today, we saw the city during the day. We went into St. Mark's Basilica and got a tour of the ceiling mosaics, which illustrate almost all of the stories from the bible. The entire celieng is covered in gold tiles and mosaics, it's beautiful. Then we walked through the streets smoe more and I got an awesome looking mask at half price. Oh, and before we saw the church we took a gondola ride throught he canals and saw the Rialto bridge, Marco Polos' house and i think Mozart's house on the ride. (it was way expensive, but I mean what's a trip to venice without a gondola ride?) Okay so back to the walking around after the church. We also got some gelato (ice cream) and a slice of pizza for lunch. I got cherries and cream and Elizabeth got something with nuts and fudge and caramel and lots of stuff in italien in it. both were awesome, but I think the cinnamon apple ice cream i got in Graz was pretty good competition and it may win in the "what city had the best ice cream" contest. So, that about wraps up vinice, we're now catching the train to Rimini to hang out at the beach for a few days:) Ciao! -Dawn-