Cheers from London!: Full, Tired, and Happy

So I survived my very first European adventure!!

I made it safely to Venice and back- full, tired, and happy.

We had such an amazing trip- spent the majority of our time walking and the rest of the days were filled with eating and drinking espresso.

We arrived in Venice around 11 on Thursday night and immediately found a gelato place. The first of many this weekend! Delicious treats in hand we made our way to the hotel we were staying in that night- Hotel Airone. It was nice and clean and right on the Grand Canal which was perfect- what a beautiful view to wake up to in the morning!!

Day 1

We woke up really early on Friday and walked over to San Marco Square

- Thanks to Megan and her trusty map we walked all over Venice and always knew where we were. We didn't always where we were going...but we were never actually lost! It wasn't hard to find the major places, like San Marco's Square for example, because there were usually signs with arrows. Clearly Venice is mainly a tourist location- this became even more evident as the weekend went on.

Allie and I outside of Doge's Palace

Doge's Palace in San Marco Square

We wandered around San Marco -

It was pretty empty because, as it turns out, February is off season but it was still fun to walk around and take lots of pictures of course! Then we just walked along the canals and spend the morning drinking espresso in coffee shops, eating gelato, and looking for places to eat lunch. We had some suggestions for places to go but we decided to see what we could find ourselves first. We ended up in little place where we got delicious pizza and of course a nice bottle of wine.

After lunch we found the B&B we were staying in for the next two nights- Nice and clean.

It was run by a really nice man and he had the most adorable little girl.

After that we went to Accademia - which was incredible and then just wandered around taking pictures of the sunset until dinner!

Day 2

The next day we got up early to go to Dodge's Palace. It was absolutely beautiful.

We walked around the courtyard and then went inside to see all of the incredible rooms. There were incredible halls with gorgeous paintings and elaborate details. Then we got to see the Bridge of Sighs which is where all the prison rooms where. That was pretty scary and intense but also really cool. It was incredible to be in a building that was so old and had seen so much history.

After that we decided to walk over the Jewish Ghetto and eat lunch there.

Unfortunately we forgot it was Saturday and everything was closed.

So we walked around and saw the synagog and the memorial plaques.

It felt really intense and empty.

After that we found a place to have lunch and then continued to walk around

for a few hours before going over to the Guggenheim!

Then we went home and took a nice long nap and spent some quality time looking up restaurants to make sure our last dinner in Venice was amazing...and it really was!