Day 69

This morning I woke up at 9:00 again and decided that it was time for a shower so I took my things to the shower building and almost froze. Yes I was in Italy, but for some reason it was about 50 degrees. Needless to say, the time between the end of my shower and getting dressed were extremely short. The check out time was 10:00 so I packed up my things and stripped the sheets off of my bed. Janaya had woken up and was also going to shower. She asked me to take her phone to the picnic area to charge. So I did. She came to the picnic area about 30 minutes later. My internet time had expired so she used hers. Anneke was on the morning train scheduled to get into Venice around 2:00, but apparently the Italian train workers were on strike so she had to board a bus at the border that would be taking her to Venice. While Janaya was figuring out plans for the day I worked on updating my journal with bullet points. Eric and Rebecca came to our table and chatted for a bit. Then we all took the 11:20 bus into the city. Janaya was set on finding a church for Palm Sunday service so we found a church at around 12:15 and went inside and sat in the back of the congregation. We couldn’t understand a thing, but it still was pretty nifty. The service lasted until about 1:00. We left and then decided that we’d try to find a bakery that we had visited yesterday. I had ordered a slice of spinach torte there and had had Janaya try some. We were both hooked, but didn’t remember the name of the bakery. Luckily Janaya had remembered the name of the neighboring church so we looked at our map and navigated our way to the bakery. We found it after about 20 minutes and I bought a €3 slice of the spinach torte. We went over to a open square and sat down to snack on the torte and to figure out where we going to go next. We decided to go see the third bridge that crosses the Grand Canal. We had already seen and walked over the first two yesterday and the day before so seeing the last one kind of made the trip to Venice complete. When we got to the bridge we spent some time looking over the canal, watching the boats going under us. Two of my favorite things about the city is that the „city bus“ is a boat with docks all throughout the city and that there are these beautiful wooden boats everywhere in the city. It’s all just so cool! We eventually made our way to the water’s edge and found a spot in the sun. Despite the cold temps in the morning, the weather was very warm and perfect for getting some vitamin D. Janaya worked on writing some postcards and I unashamedly took off my shirt and soaked up the sun. It was so great; this was what I had had in my mind when I had thought about vacationing in Italy! There was even a couple a ways down that had begun playing some songs with some sort of a guitar thing and a recorder-ish instrument. The best part was that I recognized one of the songs, „Down by the Sally Gardens“. I had sung the song in Glee Club and so I started quietly singing along. Once Janaya was done with her postcards we packed up and walked towards the end of the peninsula and then turned the corner and made of way back up the other side. On our way we witnessed a seagull attacking some sort of fish in the water, but then as we got closer we saw that it was a squid. Just then it squirted ink at the seagull, but missed. We watched the battle. It only took about four minutes and a lot of shaking on the seagull’s part to get the squid onto the sidewalk. Janaya and I made our way to the bus station thinking that Anneke would surely be in Venice by that time. Janaya checked Facebook and found out that Anneke had already been there for an hour and was already making her way to the campsite. Janaya and I talked and decided that she should head to the campsite to help Anneke get settled. We had been planning on a nice dinner all together, but it was okay that the plans had changed. I gave her a hug and wished her a happy Easter vacation then I headed to a nice restaurant for an authentic Italian meal. I ordered spaghetti with white clams and a cafe espresso. It was fantastic! After dinner I found free wifi and checked in on Facebook. I headed over to the train station and boarded my train. Luckily it wasn’t cancelled!
I found my reserved seat and started to work on my journals. Two girls came into my compartment and we all started talking. They were both heading to Vienna. One was from Russia and was currently studying in Finland, but was doing a semester in Vienna and the other was from Brazil and traveling Europe. I worked on my journal and caught myself up completely!!! About an hour into the ride a very loud group of young Italian teenage boys infiltrated the train. I think that they were a part of a traveling soccer team. They took the empty seats in our compartment and were crazy loud. However, I didn’t have a problem with it because I had my movies to occupy me. I first watched Gladiator, then switched to the last 40 minutes of The Adventures of TinTin, and then finished it up with The Perks of Being A Wallflower. By this time it was about 5:00 in the morning and we were stopped at the main train station in Salzburg. Once we started moving again, I fell asleep.