Guten Tag

Our last night in Switzerland was over, and it was time to head to Germany. We caught a morning train and spent several hours riding from Interlaken to Fussen. I think it took a total of four trains to get there. It pretty much took most of the day.

This trip wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for a couple of mishaps. The first was a mean train station worker; the next, a delayed train. The delay caused us to miss our connecting train, and we had to wait for another. While waiting, we decided to eat lunch.

Never. . .

Ever. . .

EVER.

Order a hamburger from a train station in the middle of nowhere, Germany, which comes frozen in a package and gets microwaved before it's handed to you without a napkin.

I don't care how hungry you are. Don't do it.

The bottom bun will be crunchy. The whole thing will be 1000 degrees, with a couple of cold spots. It will not taste anything like a hamburger. (Looks can be deceiving.) It will have some sort of nasty sauce on it, a sad attempt at ketchup with a sweet aftertaste. The sauce will find its way across every square inch of your hands. You will have no choice but to wipe said hands on your tall socks (Josh) or just whimper with a sad face and try to wipe them on a stray piece of paper, followed by a good dollop of hand sanitizer.

Not fun.

Probably our worst experience in Germany.

Luckily, it got better after that.

We got to Fussen in the afternoon. Maybe around 2? I can't remember. We walked to our hostel and then we waited for the owner to get there so we could pay and find our room. He didn't come for a while, so we called him. He told us which room was ours, and that we could take our key. We dropped our stuff in the room (a 6-bed mixed dorm with only 2 other people there) and then headed back out.

We walked back to the train station where we caught a bus which took us to the castles. Mad King Ludwig's castles: Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.

Hohenschwangau

Josh in front of Neuschwanstein

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to tour both castles, so we just toured the cooler one, Neuschwanstein. (The one that inspired the Disney castle.) It had been cloudy all afternoon, and it started pouring while we were waiting for our turn at the castle.

The inside of the castle is awesome, even though it was never completed. The rooms are huge. There are secret passageways inside. (Well, at least one.) There is even a man-made cave in one of the rooms. Seriously. It looks like you're walking through a real cave.

We were not allowed to take pictures inside, so I encourage you to click the Wikipedia link above and read more about Neuschwanstein and look at the pictures. Amazing.

After we were done with our castle tour, we headed back into town. We walked to a place recommended by Rick Steves. Obviously. For my first German dinner, I had sausages with sour kraut and roasted potatoes. And something called a radler. It's beer mixed with lemon soda.

First real German Meal!

Stuffed and tired, we went back to the hostel for the night. We met a really cool guy from Australia and someone from Ukraine.

The next morning, we got up and went to the train station. We had another multiple-train day ahead of us. This time, we were going to Rothenburg.

I want to live in Rothenburg.

The first thing we did was get off the train and walk into the town. We found the street with our Pension. We knocked on the door. An old lady met us and led us upstairs to our room. It was really cute, and the bed had the most comfortable big blanket on it. When (one day) I go back to Rothenburg, I am staying there again. She gave us our key and told us what time breakfast was the next morning.

We dropped our things and headed out to the town. Since we didn't think we'd have time to go to both the Christmas Museum and the Medieval Torture Museum, and because the town was so small, we split up. I went to explore the history of my favorite holiday. Josh went to be tortured. (Not really.)

This was a good plan, because after touring the Christmas museum (which was AWESOME), I spent over an hour shopping for Christmas ornaments. Josh would have been bored out of his mind. We met up later and we wandered around the town. We each got one of these balls. It's a Rothenburg specialty, and tastes like a crunchy funnel cake. They weren't very good, and they were messy. At least they look pretty!

Prettier than they Taste

As we were discussing which direction led back to the main square, a middle-aged man asked us where we were from. Apparently, he used to work in Branson, and currently lives in Tennessee. He actually works for the FAA. (Dad works for the FAA.) He and his co-workers had been working there and staying in Rothenburg for over a month. He walked us down the street and showed us a place to eat that he said was really great.

On that man's recommendation, I ordered the schnitzel with fried potatoes for dinner. It also came with a salad. So delicious. I couldn't eat it all, though, so I gave Josh the other half of my schnitzel.

After dinner, we went back to the pension to drop off the things I had accumulated from all the Christmas stores. Then we went back to the main square by 8 to see the night watchman.

The night watchman gives an awesome tour telling the story of Rothenburg. It is the one thing you must do in Rothenburg. Josh and I were obsessed with it. We bought the DVD (which ended up being a disappointment) and a brochure, bookmark, and postcard of the night watchman. We got our picture taken with him.

Josh, Night Watchman, Me

After the night watchman tour, we did a bit more exploring of the town before going to bed.

Sunset

Rothenburg

Rothenburg

And more Rothenburg

The next morning, we got up early. We walked the wall that goes around the town.

Medieval Wall

Wall

Rooftops

We got back to the Pension in time for breakfast: cheese, meat, rolls with butter and jam, coffee, orange juice, cereal, granola bars. . .

Then we went to look inside St. James's Church. It's actually a Lutheran church, and it has an incredible wood carving inside.

Amazing Wood Carving

Close Up

Then we went to a little shop that gives a discount to holders of Rick Steves' Germany book, and we bought Vince a pocket watch. It's the kind that you have to wind every day, and you can see the gears inside, so we thought it was really cool.

Next stop was the Rothenburg museum. It has some town history and some dungeons downstairs.

We had finished with Rothenburg. We went back and got our things from the Pension, and we walked to the train station. Next stop: Munich

Munich's New Town Hall

Munich is a large city. It reminded me of Milan in that aspect, but it was a lot more fun than Milan. I didn't like the buildings very much, though, but the beer scene was pretty fun. ;)

Our Munich hostel was really close to the train station. We got there in the afternoon and checked in, dropped off our things, and headed into the main part of the city.

We stopped at an outdoor eating area for a giant (like, bigger than my head) pretzel and a beer. It was really crowded so we had to sit with some old German men who ignored us. We didn't have any real plans for the day, and we didn't really feel like going to any museums or anything, so we made our way to the Hofbrauhaus. The Hofbrauhaus is the most famous beer hall in the world.

We sat in the outdoor seating area, and we each ordered a liter (!!!) of beer. I'm not a beer person. But this was one thing I was determined to do while in Germany. I also ordered a plate of wurst and potato salad to help wash down the beer.

Before

Josh and I had a great time. We made silly videos with his camera and we observed the other people around. We were there for quite a while. And I finished my beer.

After :)

After finally leaving the Hofbrauhaus, we walked across town to the English Garden, a huge park. Josh ordered another beer, and I think I had a soda.

Then we started to walk back to our hostel. We had a map, but neither of us knew where we were. (The English Garden was really far from the train station.) We made it about halfway back. It started to rain, and we caught a taxi to take us the rest of the way. Once back, I collapsed on my bed immediately. I don't know what Josh did the rest of the night.

The next morning, we had McDonalds breakfast. We got metro tickets for the day, and we took the metro to the town of Dachau. There, we took a bus to the concentration camp.

The Entry Gate

We went inside, and we went through the museum. The museum is really extensive, really interesting, and hard to go through. They show a documentary inside, too, so we watched that.

After the museum, we walked down the length of the camp. It is huge. I definitely didn't expect it to be so enormous.

Looking out over where the barracks used to be

We looked inside the reconstructed barracks. We went into the crematorium and the gas chambers.

There's a really heavy feeling when you're there. It's not easy to walk around knowing what happened there and that it wasn't really that long ago that it happened.

Monument

Never Again

We were there as long as we could stand to be, and then we went back to the main part of Munich. We went to get a late lunch. I ordered a grilled pork chop with a baked potato with tzatziki, and it was one of the best meals I had in Europe. I got a soda to go with that, too. (No more beer for a long time!)

We spent the afternoon at the Munich City museum. It was pretty cool and gave us something to do besides beer halls. Josh wanted to go back to the Hofbrauhaus to hear the band play, but first I made him go with me to a restaurant on Marienplatz for some warm apple strudel with vanilla sauce. Not ice cream, sauce. It was like a cross between vanilla pudding and melted vanilla ice cream. Yummy. (I can't believe I was too excited to take a picture of it.)

I found a really awesome jewelry store on the way to the Hofbrauhaus, and I knew I'd be there for a while. I sent Josh ahead of me, shopped, and met him at the beer hall a while later. They have really cool sodas in Germany. I tried one that is orange soda mixed with coke. Not bad!

We left there and went back to the hostel. We got our things and then we went to the train station where we boarded our overnight train back to Florence.

Our car had 6 beds: 3 on each side, and Josh and I were on the third level. I love overnight trains! I definitely didn't sleep well, but it was really cool having a moving bed. It was fun going to sleep (or trying to) in Munich and waking up in Florence!

And that's when we left Germany. It had been a wonderful four days, and I look forward to someday going back.

Switzerland!

As I mentioned in my last post, the hostel we stayed at in Interlaken, Switzerland, rocked. In fact, pretty much every aspect of Switzerland rocked. Here are some reasons why:

1. They have the prettiest money ever.

2. Per capita, the Swiss consume 27.28 pounds of chocolate products each year. (I probably consumed half that during my 3 days there, but whatever.)

3. They make really bad a** pocketknives.

It's hard to see because it was behind glass.
Price tag: 1200 francs

4. . . .and watches.

5. They have 4 official languages! (German was the language where we were.)

6. Their unemployment rate is very low, and their standard of living is very high.

7. The Alps. Need I say more?

Josh and I arrived in Interlaken at night. The next morning (officially Day 1 of Switzerland), we spent several hours pocketknife shopping. In Interlaken, there are tons of pocketknife and watch stores. Being the thoughtful siblings that we are, we decided that instead of us each spending a lot of money on a pocketknife we didn't really need, we'd combine our money and buy a really cool one for Vince. We walked up and down the main street, browsing pocketknives and exploring the town. That morning, a watch caught my eye; a watch that I never knew I needed, until then. I decided to think about it.

EVERYTHING is expensive in Switzerland. Though the exchange rate is better than the Euro, it takes a lot of Swiss Francs to buy just about anything. We went to the grocery store and got picnic supplies for lunch, and then we decided we needed to do something besides stare at those little red knife contraptions for the rest of the afternoon. We took a train to the town of Thun. There, we wandered through town, to the castle.

Thun
Picture Taken from inside the Castle

We spent the afternoon exploring the castle and the little museum inside. After that, we found a photo-op we just couldn't pass up.

It's hard to see, but I'm the knight and Josh is the short dude.

Thun was an adorable town. Everywhere we went in the Berner Oberland (the region we were in the whole time we were in Switzerland) was clean and beautiful.

Oh, and the castle was cool, too.

Josh, Inside one of the Towers of the Castle

Side View of the Castle

Cat on a Wall near the Castle!

On the way back to Interlaken, we grabbed some spaghetti pasta, tomato sauce, and frozen broccoli for dinner. Cheapest thing we could think of, since together we had spent 76 francs that day just on transportation plus the castle admission.

When we got back to our hostel, we made dinner in the kitchen there. Then we tried to make a plan for the next two days in the country, and we used our cute little hostel "tokens" on some internet time.

Day 2 in Switzerland, we followed a plan. We took a train from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen. At Lauterbrunnen, we caught a bus to a station where we took a lift up to Gimmelwald. Gimmelwald is the cutest town. Ever. (Well. . . until I tell you about Rothenburg in the next post.)

Gimmelwald is a tiny mountainy village.

Gimmelwald

Building. Fence. Mountains.

I think about 130 people live there. I would have guessed fewer. They do have a schoolhouse. It has one room and a handful of students. One Sunday a month, a pastor comes to Gimmelwald and a church service is held in the schoolhouse.

There are some farm animals. And there's a tiny shop that sells cheese.

This isn't the cheese shop.
It's a place where they keep the cheese for aging.
It's on stilts so the mice don't get to it.

Josh, on a street in Gimmelwald
(See Alps behind him)

Side note: We were really impressed with how the Swiss stack their firewood so neatly. We took a bunch of pictures of it.

Pretty Wood Pile

Barn with Wood Stacked in It

Another Barn. More Wood.

We hung out in Gimmelwald until we saw everything, which didn't take long. Then we hiked over to the town of Murren. (Well, we walked there on a paved path. I guess that's technically not "hiking.") Murren was cool, but when we got there, I was a little hungry. Josh was starving. Have you ever been around Josh when he's starving? Not fun.

The problem was that we were stuck in a tiny town up in the Alps where the grocery store had just closed for the afternoon, and all the restaurants were pricey.

And this is when I had the freaking most expensive Chinese meal of my life. I had sweet and sour chicken. I forgot what Josh got. Mine was really good! But I think we spent over 50 US dollars on something that would have been 10 here. Oh well.

After stuffing ourselves, (at that price, we had to finish everything) we did some more legit hiking. We were going to take a funicular to a different town, but it was closed that week for maintenance. Instead, we were going to take a path up to another tiny town and then hike back down to Gimmelwald from there. These paths were not exactly paths, though. They were terribly marked. We didn't have a good map, and we got lost and never made it to that other town. (Josh is horrible with directions. You can quote me on that.)

View from Halfway up the Mountain

We ended up wandering through the woods, where I had to take a bathroom break right onto the ground. (Embarrassing. It was an emergency. No one saw me. . . Whew.) The woods we were in belonged to someone, I think. We had to go through a couple of gates, but we were going in the general direction of Gimmelwald, we thought. Eventually, we made it to a clearing which led down to that same paved path we had taken earlier.

We headed back to Gimmelwald. We bought some Alpine cheese and some summer sausage from a nice lady there. We wanted to hike over to a narrow swinging bridge that looked dangerous, but it was closed until summer. So we took the lift back down, took the bus back to Lauterbrunnen station, explored the town of Lauterbrunnen, bought more groceries at the store there, and took the train back to Interlaken. We made spaghetti and broccoli again for dinner. Then we spent the evening pocketknife shopping. And. . .

I bought the watch.

I was so excited about it! The rest of the trip, I timed everything we did. I kept spouting out what time it was, or how much time we had until our next train arrived or left, or how long we had been doing things, like pocketknife shopping.

Me and my Watch!

We went back to the hostel that night, and we called Vince to tell him about our adventures. (But not about his future knife)

Day 3, our last full day in Switzerland, we spent the morning wandering around the town. It's confusing, because there are two different train stations in Interlaken, about a 10 minute walk from each other. Which means there are two different bus stations. And we couldn't really figure out where we needed to be in order to get to a certain cave we wanted to go to.

Instead, we went to a campground near one of the lakes. We inquired about renting kayaks for half a day. We had our 60 francs out to pay the guy, when he remembered that it happened to be National Swiss Camping Day, and to celebrate, everything at the campground was free. We got free kayaks. Awesome!

Me

Josh

We kayaked for a couple of hours, I think. Maybe less. Then we stopped for lunch. (Alpine cheese, sausage from the cheese lady, and crackers.) We headed back and dropped off our kayaks. We were also invited back there that night for some food and a play.

As we left the campground, which is close to one of the train stations, we walked over some train tracks. We had the brilliant idea to smash a Swiss coin. This is how the conversation went:

Me: Hey, let's smash a Swiss coin on the tracks!
Josh: Okay! (Puts a 10 cent coin down. Then the red and white things that block the road from the tracks start going down, because a train's coming.)
Me: I hope it doesn't make the train crash.
Josh: Yeah. Coins have been known to cause derailments.
Me: Are you serious?! (Start to feel really bad)
Josh: I don't know. . . It might.
Me: Well. . . it's too late now. Let's get out of the way. (We walk really fast and un-suspicious-like across the bridge in case the train gets derailed.) I bet they have sensers on the train that can tell if there is debris on the tracks, though.
Josh: Yeah, it will probably just stop if there's something in the way.
Me: I don't want to go to a Swiss jail! I hope they don't fingerprint the coin! Oh wait, you touched it. Not me. (The train is coming, but it's squeaky. Josh thinks they're hitting the breaks.)
Josh: Oh my gosh. . .
Me: (holding my breath and feeling really guilty)
. . .
. . .
. . .
(The train goes right over the coin. No problem.)
Josh and Me: Sighs of relief

Once that was over, we felt like criminals escaping from the police. I'll never smash a coin again.

We picked up our shamefully-gotten coin (which didn't even smash that much), and we walked to the station where we would catch the bus to the cave. Along the way, I tried some Swiss ice cream. (Verdict? Good, not great. And at 5 francs a scoop, try to resist.)

The bus ride to the cave would have been fine, except for the mean driver.

The cave was cool, though. We had to walk up a really big hill with a waterfall going down it. The path was wind-y and pretty, and there were some big wooden gnomes, which I would normally hate, but they look like they belong in Switzerland.

Gnome. Me.

We had a cave tour which lasted about an hour or an hour and a half. The cave was huge! We bussed back to Interlaken, got some surprisingly good Swiss beer, and sat on the picnic tables at the campground. Pretty soon there was food, and then a play. The play was a 1-girl act. She was speaking in German the whole time, so we didn't know what was going on, but it looked funny!

Unfortunately, the food they had at the campground (chips and little kebabs of mozzarella and cherry tomatoes) didn't fill me up. Shamefully. . . I had McDonalds again. Mmm.

We went back to the hostel later. Being a student, I got a 10 percent discount on the Swiss pocketknives sold at the hostel. Josh and I bought Vince's pocketknife there.

Swiss Champ

Then we called Mom for a while. And we called Grandma and Grandpa. That was when our phone card got totally used up, and we went to bed.

The next morning, we said goodbye to beautiful, green, clean, Switzerland.

We said hello to the castles, night watchmen, and beer gardens of Germany.

Milan and the Last Supper

We left Venice on Wednesday, May 18 on a train bound for Milan. I was excited because I hadn't been to Milan yet! We (as usual) got to the train station with loads of time to wait, but it was better than cutting it close and missing our reserved train.

We munched on pastries while we waited, and then we enjoyed a nice train ride to Milan, the second largest city in Italy.

It's definitely a city-city.

From the train station, we took the metro to the Duomo. Milan's Duomo is amazing. It is the fourth largest cathedral in the world!

This is Josh in front of it with some birds.

Pigeons

What's the story with the pigeons?

We were standing there taking pictures of the cathedral. A guy walked up and grabbed Josh's hand and shoved some seeds into it. All of a sudden, the birds attacked (the food). The guy started telling me to take pictures, so I did. Then, after the birds had eaten everything and flown off, the guy asked Josh for 3 euro. Uh, that's like 5 dollars. We were walking off, and the guy kept following us. So Josh gave him all the change he had in his pocket which amounted to a grand total of 60 cents, I believe.

Anyway, after that we explored the square we were in and the buildings around it. We went inside the cathedral which was really pretty and really big, but not as cool as the outside would lead you to believe.

After that, we took the metro to another stop where we walked to the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano. It's just a giant cemetery with really pretty tombs.

Cemetery

We walked around there for a while and then we went to go find the Last Supper.

Da Vinci's Last Supper painting is on a wall inside the dining hall of the monastery of Santa Maria della Grazie.

Santa Maria della Grazie

We had reservations made by my awesome mother. (Don't ask what the phone bill was when I made her call that place from home to get us spots to see it. . . ) We made sure we got there plenty early, since this was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing that everyone should try to see in Italy. (Reserve months in advance.)

Last Supper

This painting is everywhere. I've seen countless prints of it all over the place. Everyone knows this painting.

But when you see it in person, it's totally different. When you walk into that room, it takes your breath away.

It's really deteriorated, but it's been restored. You can see the places the paint has chipped away. You can see how the painting actually looks like a continuation of the room it is in. You can picture Da Vinci in that room painting it years and years ago, not knowing that it would be one of the most famous images of all time.

And another cool thing: During WWII, the building was bombed, but that wall remained intact. It could have easily been demolished.

That was definitely the highlight of Milan.

We didn't have much else to do there, so we went back to the train station and ate crappy (yet somehow good enough for me to get two giant slices) train station pizza. We got back on the train for a few hours, and we ended up in Interlaken, Switzerland, around 10pm. It had been a long day!

We checked in to our hostel. It happened to be the highest-rated hostel in Switzerland, and we weren't disappointed. It was very clean, very organized, and had the friendliest staff I've ever met. It was wonderful. We stayed there for 4 nights (3 full days), and we loved our time in Switzerland. However, that is another blog post. Prepare yourself to hear about what might be my favorite country. . . 

Florence and Venice with Josh

I am determined to document the trip I took with Josh, but I've been so busy since I've been home! I'm trying to get caught up with friends, I've started a new job (so I have two jobs this summer), and it seems like there's always something I need to be doing now that I'm home.

Let's rewind to May 14.

Josh made it safely to Florence. He took a taxi to our hotel where I was waiting. We checked in to the hotel, and then we walked around Florence. I showed him all the main sights. We got doner kebabs for lunch and gelato for an afternoon snack. (I've never seen anyone eat gelato so fast!)

Later, we were hot and exhausted from walking all over town, so we stopped into the Lion's Fountain for a drink and to cool down. We walked around some more after that, but I could tell Josh was really tired from flying all the way there and not sleeping much the past few days. We bought some cheese and bread, chips, and chocolate, and went back to the hotel to snack and hang out. He fell asleep pretty early that night and slept till morning.

The next day, it rained. All day. A lot of rain. I've never seen Florence that rainy before! We went to the train station to validate our Eurail passes for the next day. We got coffee and pastries to get out of the rain for a while, and we had to buy two umbrellas from umbrella salesmen on the side of the road, since I left my big one at the hotel. (It wasn't raining when we left!)

We went to the Galileo Science Museum, which was almost totally empty and also really cool. There were tons of awesome scientific contraptions. (I wasn't sure what most of them were.)

Then we ate lunch at Trattoria ZaZa. Josh had spaghetti alla carbonara, and I had a pasta with truffle sauce. It was nice to be inside, because during lunch, it was POURING outside.

After lunch, we went to the Church of Santa Croce. I had been there before with my architecture class. It's the one where Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Galileo are buried. Unfortunately, I had worn shorts that day because the previous day had been so hot. Since my knees weren't covered, I had to purchase a lovely navy blue papery shirt-like thing meant for covering shoulders, and wrap it around my legs so my knees weren't visible.

That was attractive.

We went back to the hotel for a while to recharge. (We had done a lot of walking back and forth around town.) Around 5:30, we set out across the river and climbed up to Piazza Michelangelo. The view of Florence from there is incredible. We went inside the Church of San Miniato, too, because it's really close to the Piazza.

The Town and the Duomo

The Arno and Ponte Vecchio

We hiked down again and walked to Gusta Pizza so we could be there when they opened at 7. We got there in time to not have to wait very long, and we got our pizzas and carried them to the Pitti Palace where we sat and ate (just like Meghan, Hannah, Lindsey, Brittni, and I used to do). It was a long walk back to the hotel from there, so I don't think we got home until around 8:30. We went to bed pretty early again, because the next morning we were leaving for Venice!

We were lucky enough to be able to store my 3 huge, heavy suitcases at our hotel, since we were coming back there in 10 days. We each packed a big backpack of stuff for the next week and a half.

Monday morning, Josh and I got to the train station with plenty of time to sit and wait for our train. It was the first train I had ever been on with reservations, and the nicest train I had ever been on!

When you take the train to Venice, there are 2 stations. One is on the main land, and the other station is on the edge of the island part of Venice. It's ridiculously expensive to stay on the island, so our hotel was a 10 minute walk from the first station on the main land. (10 minutes if you have good directions. . . We didn't.)

We checked in to our Venice hotel. Then we caught a bus from a nearby stop which took us over to the real, island part of Venice. By then, it was lunch time. We got sandwiches. I had some pink grapefruit gelato, and I officially decided that pink grapefruit is my all time favorite gelato flavor.

The first day in Venice, we just wandered around all day without a plan. Venice is the perfect place for wandering. There are so many twists and turns! So many similar bridges and narrow back alleys. There is no point in trying to use a map in Venice. Just wander, and when you feel like going back, look for signs that say "Per San Marco" and you will be led to Saint Mark's Square.

Saint Mark's Basilica
(With a Light Pole in the Front)

After walking so much all day, after four straight months of pasta and bread and cheese, all I wanted was some McDonalds.

Don't judge me.

We went to McDonalds. Burger and fries, and I was a happy girl.

We took the bus back to our hotel. Nearby was a grocery store. Josh got dinner there from the deli. He had a fish. And a bag of plain lettuce. And a can of Pringles.

Josh and his Feast

Neither of us know what kind of fish it was, but when he walked into the hotel room with it, I couldn't stop laughing. He polished off all but the head, and then had me take this picture. . .

I have no words.

The next day, we got to Venice, and the first thing Josh said was "I just need a pastry." This is the boy who lives on steak, bacon, and eggs. I couldn't believe my ears.

Being quite the pastry connoisseur myself, I was quite pleased to hear those words come out of his mouth. He got a pastry, and then another one. Success.

We needed to do something that day besides wander, so we went to the Duke's Palace. I had been there during Carnivale, but I thought Josh might like to go, so we explored that for a while. I was hungry afterwards, so I grabbed a mozzarella and tomato sandwich. Then we both got gelato. Of course.

We went to the Correr Museum after that. It's a museum of Venetian history and art, and it was pretty cool. The admission for that was included in our ticket to the Duke's Palace, so we had to go. We walked around some more. Josh got a hotdog for lunch. Have you ever ordered a hotdog in a foreign country? He ended up with a weird looking bun and a sliced hot dog. He said it was gross. It looked gross.

"Hotdog"

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering.

Wandering in Venice :)

Now I have a confession to make:

I had McDonalds again that day for dinner. 2 days in a row?!

. . .yeah. Another hamburger. Another small fry. Another happy yet shameful moment.

We took the bus back, and Josh went back to the grocery store for dinner. This time, he returned with rice and some giant-looking shrimp on a stick. He said, "I don't really know what this is. . . I think it's some kind of sea worm. . . No. . . It tastes like chicken. . . I think it might be Chicken of the Sea."

What the heck? It was most definitely shrimp!

Day 2 in Venice was complete. Next blog post: Milan