Peace, Love, and Hot Dog Cakes

Buongiorno! Well, we have had quite an exciting week which is good since we leave Venice tomorrow. Tuesday night we made dinner (delicious pasta a la griffin) and then went to watch tango in one of the campo's (squares). After that we went to the cafe Florian, which is in St. Marks Square, and watched a quintet/sextet (i dunno) play while we drank wine and beer and ate peanuts and olives. We were going to go to Harry's bar but it was closed when we finished watching the tango dancing, but we decided to go outside in the square and listen to the music. It was very relaxing and quite fun!

Yesterday (Wednesday) we got up and decided to go see some churches and get our shopping done. I got mom her purse and I got all sorts of Christmas presents for people. Griffin got some really cool pants at United Colors of Bennetton (the american eagle of europe), but not like anyone really cares about our shopping purchases. We went in this beautiful church - San Maria dei Miracoli - which had less artwork and paintings than many of the others but was absolutely beautiful because it was completely marble and just really different from a lot of the other churches. We also went in another one - San Stefano - which had a cool sacristy full of paintings and other little artifacts. We walked around a LOT that morning, so after that we came back to the house and rested for the heat of the afternoon. Once it cooled down some we went out to Bar Ginos and had coke and cappuccino and then went to try and find a gondolier to take us on a ride. Well, we did and he wanted 150 euro (like 175 bucks) for a 50 minute ride so we said helllllll no and did the poor man's tour of venice - we got on the vaporetto at the beginning of the grand canal and rode it all the way down to the train station at the other end. It was awesome because we got the front two seats on the bus and so I took a ton of pictures - which you can find here. After that we went out to a delicious dinner at San Trovaso (we both split an antipasta of french fries and then had lasagne for dinner and then tiramisu for dessert). we also got free limoncello from the waiters because they know us now and love to mess with us and talk to/flirt with griffin. We're probably going there again tonight for our last dinner in venice.

We are doing laundry now for our trip, and we'll pack tonight. We are going to try and leave tomorrow around 1:30 (if possible) and head to cinque terre and hopefully get there by 7:30-8. I'm very excited but kind of sad to say bye to Venice, it's been quite awesome and this city is so unique and interesting. It's very touristy in parts, but the key is to just get lost and find the not so touristy areas because those are the coolest. The big touristy places are neat, but a lot of the not so touristy museusms (Ca'Rezzonico) are the really cool finds. Venice has so many palaces (palazzo's) that if you like architecture, art, and things of the sort, it's heaven. We're going to go get at least one more cappucino at Bar Gino's and then head to a church or two today but we've pretty much done everything we wanted so we're going to take today easy since we'll be travelling a lot until we get to Paris next Thursday. Anyways, time for a quick pick me up - Ciao!