Venzia!

We got in to venice around 10:30 am and were instantly taken back by how cool it was. We were lucky that we were there at the peak of carnevale! So we got to go around and see all of the street perfomers and take a bucnh of pictures with people dressed up as arisotcrats and hoity toity rich people. It was really cool and one thing we noticed about venice was that people were doing everything for fun. Taking pictures, dressing up, street acts, etc. They didn't ask for money or anything like most people have in the touristy areas we have been through... we both liked that! Everywhere you walk around in venice is a foto op. I have been itching to buy a cool italian style overcoat, but so far the only one I looked at was about 1,000 dollars... YIKES! I wish I had looked around more in Milano, there were some shops going out of business and the had 50% off. Its like that everywhere in Italy right now, the new collections have come out so you can get last seasons stuff for pretty cheap. We walked all around the different shops and tents that they had in the city centers, signed up for a cooking class/demonstration that I wanted to go to. We decided we are never going to cook with different flavored smokes and that we didn't want to lose out on the little time we had in Venice. So we decided to eat instead. I thought of you dad and got some Gnocchi! We were not very happy with the meal we got in Venice. We went to one of the nicer places and did like a 4 course meal for 15 euros, salad, gnocchi, steak, and cream caramel for me. Rook got the same but with lasagne and roast chicken (we shared). It was a little dissapointing, bland, and not very much food. Oh well, not everything is perfect in Italy. We stopped into a sunglass shop and Rook got some sweet orang and black carrera aviator shades. He got them for about half off and it was a real good deal! We both like them a lot.

We went around the city some more. Got some Gelato from a very nice lady who thought Rook looked like he used to Box, prob since we are running on little sleep and look beat up! I told her it was because he is gay (called him a finocchio) and she busted up laughing so hard... it was hilarious and Rook and I couldn't stop laughing either and almost lost our Gelato. We then went around the city center more and there were some guys on stilts acting like giraffes (very life like) and one of them tried to steal my gelato and I was ducking and dodging his fake giraffe head! He ended up breaking my cone a little, but we kept the crowd entertained and everyone was laughing and cheering!

We then went through the Duomo, it was awesome. The entire ceiling is mosaic, I have no idea how they did it or how long it took, but it is breath-taking. After a foto session and hanging out and talking with some people from spain we decided to take a gondola ride. It took some convincing, but I got Rook to break down and do it. We met a nice couple from Germany looking to save some money like us and we teamed up to get a deal on our gondola. Rook's Italian got us another 20 euros off and we got it for 100 euros. Not a bad deal. It turned out to be a great idea. We learned a ton about the city and had the coolest gondolear we could have asked for!

After the gondola ride we went on a search for the library that indiana jones and the last crusade was filmed in. It turned out to be a church and there was an inventions of leonardo davinci going on. We felt we had spent enough money so we decided against it and ran back to the train station. We picked up a gift for shelby at a hand blown glass shop (it is super cool) and looked for carnevale masks for Rook and me. We both wanted the same masks so we got two different ones. We'll see how that works out. Grabbed a couple of pieces of pizza and got to the train. Only to sit next to an american family visiting their daughter who is studying in Florence. They were really nice (from Valencia) and gave us some advice on where to eat in Florence. They told us in a Rick steve's travel book he mentioned a restaurant in florence called il gato e la volpe (the cat and the fox) we went there twice over the next two days. It was amazing! More on that later.