Buongiorno!

I took the night train from Zagreb and arrived early this morning in Venice. At the Zagreb train station, I got chased by the bathroom lady. Seriously. I entered the bathroom and right outside of it, she was sitting at her desk. The bathrooms were disgusting, so she obviously was just reading her paper and not doing her job. They were so disgusting that I didn't feel it was worthy of a tip to the bathroom lady. She, however, disagreed and ran after me yelling. For whatever reason, I stopped and she continued to make a scene by waving her arms and screaming, "3 kuna, 3 kuna", until I paid her. That's a great start to my solo travels...

Upon arriving in Venice, I wandered aimlessly to find a hostel until running into a girl traveling solo from Brazil. None of the buildings here have signs on them, so I was a bit frustrated in trying to find a bed. Luckily, they had an opening at the Venice Fish, which has breakfast and dinner included. YES!!!

I wanted to take roccia back to my parents for a gift and they went overboard. Half of my pack is filled with liquor, and I can hardly walk with it on, let alone pick it up to get it onto my back. I need to give some away or possibly find another bag to put it in, because my pack definitely weighs more than I do. My adventure in trying to find a hostel was a bit more painful than expected.

I expected Venice to be touristy, but not to this extent. There are so many
tourists here, so I am rethinking my Florence visit. I am more of an "off the beaten path" kind of girl and hate fighting the crowds. It is beautiful though. Suella, the Brazilian girl, and I toured Venice for the bulk of the day and saw many of the sights. The streets are confusing, but we finally got them down.

We looked for this small museum for 5 hours...of course we saw other things along the way, but kept going to find this museum...anyway, after finally locating it, we found it to be closed on Tuesdays! Perfect.

I love the gelato! I think the spending money that my dad gave me might all go to gelato treats. Also had margherita pizza for lunch on the Canal. I could get used to this Italian diet!

After dinner at the hostel, most of the guests went to San Marco Piazza, where there was Italian band playing outdoors. Many of the locals were dancing and then the tourists were attempting to dance, but just looked like fools in comparison. We had a fun evening out on the town!