Arrivederci Venice!

Hi Friends!

Allison and I begrudgingly woke up early the following morning. The reason for our grumpiness wasn't the normal idea of being up that early instead of sleeping. No we were dreading that morning because it was the morning we were leaving beautiful Venice. The good news was that I found 50 euros in my jean pocket that morning. YEA! We went down to breakfast and ended up having to share a table with some Austrian man who was very nice. He told us about how he was some kind of legit photographer and loved visiting Venice. I secretly felt the same about myself. After this trip and all the photos I took, I FELT "legit" which in my opion is all that matters. :)

We then decided to try one last time to get on the correct water taxi and float down the Grand Canal before we left for good. This time we did get on the right boat, thanks to Allison. Italian confuses me. It's too similar to Spanish and since my Spanish is about as good as my Italian, I was never any help to Allison. Sorry Gill! As we floated down the Canal we saw the Rialto Bridge, the Academy Bridge, the Casino from last night, the Santa Maria Della Salute Cathedral, and a few other fun sights that we saw the day before. I liked revisiting them, well at least viewing them from the water. It was a beautiful ride and so it was well worth it. More pictures were taken of course.

We then got off the boat at San Marco's Square again. As we walked around a bit we saw that the line for the Bell Tower was much shorter than it was the day before. Without skipping a beat Allison and I hopped in line. It wasn't a very long line and we actually made friends with the couple behind us who were from Stratford-Upon-Avon which is where Shakespeare lived. We took pictures of them together they got ones of us, it was a win-win. We all crammed into this elevator that took us to the very top and the view was everything I hoped it would be. You could see for miles. I literally saw ALL of Venice. It was so cool to have a bird's eye view of everything. Words really can not express how wonderful it was.

Allison and I took lots of pics and got our new friends to take some pics of us together. Side note: Thats whats silly about going on roadtrips or special vacas, it's so hard to get a picture with EVERYONE in it. You always have to ask someone to take a picture but 9 times out of 10 they want to be in the picture too or you have to ask a stranger to take it and they usually don't get the shot you originally wanted. Lame. Our new friends however got some good pictures of us so this doesn't apply to them.

Being up in the Bell Tower for the morning seemed to be the perfect way to say "Goodbye" to Venice. A beautiful outlook on such a historically, wonderful place.

We then hopped back on the water taxi and headed back to the train station. Time to find another adventure. We did stop to take some pictures with this statue. It was some water girl but we had fun being silly infront of it. Haha! We then got on our train and headed to Milan. Yes Milan. Unfortunately we only had 30 minutes there and couldn't go exploring. Milan has a really famous cathedral that I DEFINITELY remembered learning about in college for all its Gothic Architecture. Good times. However, we couldn't go see it but at the same time I was "ok" with that. We saw a lot of cathedrals in Venice and I felt surely we would see more before I left. The Milan train station was huge though!

We then hopped on another train and headed to the train station in Mondovi where someone was supposedly going to pick us up and take us back to Allison's. On the train, Allison and I made funny videos to pass the time and they will never be viewed by anyone other than us. All you need to know is that they involve us saying weird things about deoderant and its. . . benefits . . . hahaha! After a long day, we finally arrive in Mondovi and Allison's neighbor came and picked us up because something fell through with Simona. No worries. I was kind of sad though that I wouldn't be able to say "Goodbye" to Allison's "family" in Italy. They were so nice and fun! Sadly that night I had to pack up my things to head back to America the next day.  :(

While I was upstairs packing, Allison was being a good little hostess and was making us dinner. She made some kind of pasta with tomato sauce and tuna. Sounds odd but it was sooo good! Allison's a good little cook. Allison had also got a letter from me (I sent it ages ago) while I was there. It was kind of cool to watch her open it. :)

 

 

We then went upstairs and exchanged pictures from our trip in Venice. If you read my last blog you already know that her pictures didn't turn out so well on my computer and I didn't realize this until after I left. It might have been because my computer has so many pictures on it already and when I went to put so many of hers on it all at once, my computer got angry. No big. I'll see Allie in May and we can fix this. Then it was time for bed for these two Gills.

I couldn't help but be sad that night.

 

 

Before either of us took our jobs this year, Allison and I used to have a lot of sleepovers and would sit up and talk about boys, goals, situations with our friends, boys, families, silly "Gill things" and so on and so forth. Sometimes these conversations were extremely sad and we would both weep or we would just giggle until we fell asleep. I couldn't help but think how much I missed nights like that and how our week together went by so fast. I then got even more sad when I realized that it would be a while until we would have another Gill Night. The month of May, at the time, seemed so far away. Allison isn't just my Gill but she is my one true bosom friend. I didn't want to leave the next day.



-Jen