Ciao, Venezia!

Gondola rides cost about 80 euro, so we walked up and down the waterside looking for two people to share a ride with. We found two girls from South Korea who were also looking for two more passengers to make the ride cheaper.
The ride was beautiful. We went under the Ponte dei Sospiri and wove through smaller canals, admiring the colorful architecture of the tall, Venecian buildings.
And the girls were really nice. They were traveling for a couple of weeks, on their way to southern Italy, and - having already been there - we gave them some good pointers.
It was a short ride, only half an hour, but it was something we just had to do while in Venice.

To finish our day, we sat down at a an alleyway restaurant that offered a ¨tourist special¨- which is a flat price for a 3 course meal and includes service charges. The meal begins with an appetizer, then a delicious pasta dish, and ends with a meat dish. It was great.

And then we just wandered around a bit more, admiring the city at night. We got gelato by the Rialto Bridge and then sat down with our feet danging over the canal to enjoy our dessert. While we sat there, it actually started to rain, and we watched as various types of motorboats pulled over one by one to the side of the canal and docked while the drivers put up their rooftops. And then we strolled home through the empty streets in the rain, soaked by the time we finally got to our hotel, but loving our leisurely pace.

When it rains like that in Venice, the shops close down and outdoor restaurants bring in their chairs and tables from outside. The city gets quiet except for the soft patter of the rain. It´s beautiful.

Our Japanese roommate had moved on, so when we returned, we were sharing a room with a guy from Finland who spoke very broken English. We didn´t talk a lot, he was on his way back out to smoke and get a drink, but the next morning we sat in the hostel kitchen with him and chatted.
He had come for the art festival that goes on in Venice every four years, which we knew nothing about. He told us a little about his previous travels...how he had gone to Spain, but no one spoke English, something we never noticed as Spanish speakers. He too was traveling alone and just enjoying his vacation.

So, our last day in Venice, we left our luggage at the hostel and had a relaxing day in the city. We got an early lunch and just wandered for awhile, until we found a good place to sit down and have cafè lattes. I read and Leslie drew, and after a few hours we got up and continued on until it was time to collect our monster backpacks and head to the train station.

Our train ride to Paris was basically just horrible, but an experience nonetheless. The car was FREEZING, and we only had a sheet for covers. Leslie and I ended up with the lowest two beds, crammed in between the seat armrests (the train has chairs during the day that convert to beds at night) and the flat cushion we were sleeping on. What was worse is that I was sick before we boarded, but after that ride, I felt horrible. Just awful.
I think we slept about a total of 2 or 3 hours the entire night. Ugh.
But, we did meet a guy from Barcelona, and it was nice to chat with him for awhile, though I could barely understand. He was speaking so softly that I kept leaning forward and trying to understand a language that I´m not quite yet fluent in. Good times.