Venice turned out to be a very interesting and awesome place to be. Some parts relaxing, some parts adventure and some parts partying. As has often been the case I originally booked just 2 nights here but stayed 4.

When first arriving at the train station I was a little worried that I would struggle to find my hostel. Everyone kept saying how much of a maze Venice was and how you could so easily get lost or turned around and that maps are useless. Well I didn't have a map, I had GPS. And between that and the really good directions the hostel gave me I found it no problem.

It was a nice little hostel too. It was in a 600 year old building surrounded by a canal with it's own little private bridge to the door. The bottom floor was basically a basement with nothing in it and the hostel was on the next floor up. The reason for this became apparent on my second day. Upstairs opened into a large sorta dining area with a large table and at the end a few couches around a coffee table. Straight away I could tell I was going to like this place. It was cozy. 3 rooms came off this central dining one. At any given time there was only about 10-15 people in this hostel and by the end it felt like everyone almost knew everyone else. This was thanks in part to the fact that every night the hostel would cook up a massive batch of pasta and then serve it with a beer for 5 euro at 8pm. That's a good price in Venice where everything is super expensive, so a lot of people opted in for it.

On my first day I decided to mostly just wander around, but head in the direction of St Mark's square. I haven't often read or been told that the best way to experience Venice is to simply get lost. And that proved to be quite easy to do. On more than one occasion I found myself looking over the sea at the northern tip of Venice despite thinking I had been heading south. Only in Venice can you leave your hostel in a easterly direction, take a right turn and end up heading north. But in the end I did make it to St Mark's.

This is where pretty much all the main tourist attractions are. The cathedral, the clock tower, the palace and of course the plaza itself. And along the way I saw the Rialto bridge. The inside of this cathedral was actually really something. I've seen a lot of cathedrals over the last few months and they all start to look very similar. It really takes something to stand out. And this had it. For a couple of reasons. One was that the floor was all bumpy and uneven due to the fact that it's kinda sinking. The other is that the entire ceiling in does in gold mosaic. There must be billions of those tiny little golden tiles. Very impressive. Upstairs was also a museum which was quite interesting and where the original horses of St Mark now are (only replicas are on the basilica itself). These are quite impressive, all pure copper and dated to around the 200AD.

In terms of touristy things to do, this was really kinda it. The next few days consisted basically just wandering around a bit, hanging out with people at the hostel or the pub and playing a lot of beer/wine pong.

The next couple of days however is when it got really interesting. This was when Venice flooded. The one not so great thing about the hostel actually is that they kicked everyone out between 10am and 2pm for cleaning. This is the only hostel I've stayed at where they have done so, but apparently they needed to due to the chemicals and work required for cleaning a 600 year old house. Now this became interesting on the first day of flooding because this downstairs area which was empty, well, now it was filled with ankle deep water. Ice cold ankle deep water.

In order to even get out of the hostel the girl working there got us a single pair of gum boots so we could go across one by one and she would then get the boots and bring them back from the next person. Walking around in these two days of flooding essentially boiled down to going in whichever direction I actually good walk. In the more flooded busy areas they had put out wooden raised walkways. The second day we tried to do the free walking tour but failed miserably when at the very first turn we could go no further without getting below our knees soaked. Many people had either gum boots or plastic shoe cover things which reached to the knees. Even those were being sold for about 15 euro though, so I didn't think it was worth it. A few of the guys I was thing (2 English guys, a Canadian and a Argentinian) decided to just go it anyway and deal with the soaked shoes later.

Me and one of the English guys decided to just go on our own dryer walking tour. We actually managed to make it all the way to St Marks square which was basically a swimming pool at this point. Pretty cool to see actually. Even the cathedral was flooding. Experiencing Venice like this was a really cool experience. I'm glad it happened even if it did make things a bit tricky.

The next few days with these guys was spent basically just trying to stay dry. Hanging out in pubs when we couldn't be in the hostel, and when we could, buying cheap wine and playing wine pong. Good times. Turned out a couple of them were going to Vienna next, so that's where I went too. We booked a 10 hour long overnight bus. Our plan was simple. Get crazy drunk off cheap wine and sleep the whole way. It kinda worked. Then was the start of our Vienna adventure.