Venezia!

I just got home from Venice last night, and I miss it already! Venice is the most beautiful city I have ever seen in my life! Everything there is just pretty and cute and the most absolutely picturesque place you have ever seen! We spent a lot of time there at the Piazza de San Marco which was really cool, and very fun at night because there were all sorts of little bands that played at all the cafes and you could just sit and listen all night. It was very fun.

The Grand Canal.Yes, that is me, and yes, I am on a gondola on the grand canal!The rest of our group arrives. (With some pretty good looking gondoliers, I might add.)And this, is Piazza San Marco, the hub of all the activity in Venice.

I also spent time going to a couple of museums. One was the Peggy Guggenheim private collection, and the other was in the Duke's palace and in that, there was an amazing exhibit on the relationship between Venice and Islam (i.e. the Middle East). It was very interesting even without being able to read any of the labels. Ibasically just loved everything about the city. There was never a dull moment, because even when we just sat down on a bridge to read, the scenery was so amazing that it was impossible to concentrate on my homework.

This is the canal that I was looking at! Our hotel was off on the right.
The weekend was quite the adventure however, because on Friday morning my knee went out again while I was getting off the bus. I could barely walk and so one of my professors ended up taking me over to the hospital where it went out one more time on the x-ray table. The hospital was very interesting because they would not allow my prof to come back with me, but they didn't really speak any English. My limited Italian was enough to get the point across, but only with a little bit of charades thrown in there for kicks. I ended up crying a lot and felt like a complete idiot in front of all the doctors and nurses. It was quite the traumatic experience, but now all is well. I now have a soft brace for my knee, some pain meds, and of course, crutches. The crutches are quite hilarious because they are not the normal under the armpit ones. They are the ones with the little band around the forearm and they are very difficult to use, but that seems to be all they have here! So, since there is bascially no way to get around Venice except to walk, I used those crutches quite a bit these last three days!

No matter how much I loved Venice, I was still extremely excited to get back to my house in Florence. Anna, had an amazing dinner ready for us when we walked through the door and we had a blast telling her about everything that we did. She is just such a wonderful woman! She has definately made her house a home away from home for me and my housemates!