venice, Italy

Yesterday we drove back from Croatia, and then relaxed the rest of the day until dinner time. Rj made everyone a pasta dinner, which is amazing. Ben and Kerry, Kristen and Clayton's friends, came over. They are leaving Sat. to move back to the states, so it was kind of a good bye dinner. We all had a great dinner and time hanging out. In the morning we woke up early to go for a day trip to Venice. We decided that we all would take the train to Venice, which is about a hour and half to a two hour ride. Right before we got to the train Kristen tells us that some times the people at the train station go on strike. This kind of made us worried, but she said it was a planned event and only for a few hours that day. And of course the time we want to go to take the train, they are not running for at least an hour more. This delayed our trip to Venice, only by a little. So of course we had to get ice cream (gelato), which Rj loves here. Then we finally got on the train and were on our way to see Venice. Once we got there, we had to move through crowds of people to really get into Venice. This was the first time that we saw so many people in one area at a time. Kristen and Clayton were our tour guides and took us around the town. All of the walk ways were very close together, so in most areas we had to walk in a line to get where we wanted to. There were a lot of boats and gondola's on the water. A lot of the gondola's were fancey, and looked really comfortable, but we never took one. Then we made it to San Marco square, which everyone goes there to look around at all of the old, big buildings. It is kind of over rated, because it was cool to look at, but not anything extremely amazing. There were tons of people and tons of pigeons in the square. People go there to feed the pigeons and hold them. I have never seen so many pigeons in one area! Then we went back through the town to were the little shops were and went shopping. After shopping we decided it was time to go back and go to dinner. We went to a place called Befed, which has a fun atmosphere. The meal they are known for is chicken, fries, and beer. It was so good, and we would have to say that Italy's fries are the best fries that we have ever tried. At the restaurant they also have peanuts, so you eat them before and after dinner and then throw the shell on the floor. Similar to the restaruant Texas Road House.