It's a Sip of Wine, It's Summertime

Happy First Day of Summer!!! As previously mentioned, the semester is now over and I am on what is commonly referred to as SUMMER VACATION! I have never been this cold on my first day of summer vacation but then again, I have never spent my first night of vacation in my beloved Venice, Italy. Our plan for "travel week 3" is Venice for a night, then a train to Vienna, fly to Dublin then the inevitable flight home.

Venice on Saturday night was a struggle. Can you imagine going from 5 exams in 3 days, and packing 3 months of your life up and then traveling to a different city? We all struggled a little bit but we were happy to see everyone and say goodbye over one last drink. Although I knew I would see some of the people the next day and in Dublin so I didn't feel as bad about wanting to go to sleep early. Sunday we got up and went back onto the island to walk around. I love Venice in the day light! We got a cappuccino and panini for breakfast and then walked lazily along the canal and thought the streets toward the Rialto bridge and St. Mark's square. Venice is beautiful. It is small and a little sad though. You really don't need to spend more than a day in the city. We took pictures, watched the gondolas glide under the bridges, watched the tourist, had gelato one last time, ran into the other CIMBA students, went mask shopping and bought some Murano glass gifts for the family. Time seemed to move so slowly and our train didn't leave until much later. We sat in St. Mark's square and just watched people and chased pigeons before the clouds came out and we decided to head back over to Mestre. We had our final Italian dinner near our hostel before walking to the station and getting on our train to Vienna.

The train was an overnight train so we wouldn't be getting to Vienna until 8:08 Monday morning. I swear, people just want to see how I long can function on only a few hours of sleep post-exams. Normally at home after my two week exam period ends I crash for a straight week and here I am 48 hours our from my three day exam period sleeping on a train traveling to Austria. It was not until about 4am that we realized that the chairs in our six person cabin could be pulled put to make a huge pallet so the four of us who were traveling together got really close and finally got some sleep. When we arrived in Vienna it didn't take us long to get to the hostel so we were there by 9am. However, our room wasn't going to be ready until 2pm we dropped off our luggage, ate some breakfast and headed out to walk around the city. I don't know a whole lot about Vienna but they sure are proud of Mozart! We saw some cool buildings, the Spanish riding school, old Roman ruins, and more churches! They are all starting to look a like. We even walked into the University of Vienna and lounged in their court yard for a bit. For lunch, at 3pm...,we had traditional Viennese food, I had soup which was really good considering my developing cold/sinus infection. The guy who owned the restaurant insisted upon taking a group picture of us and with us, he then proceeded to bring us complementary desert cocktails. It was a good lunch! We went back to the hostel after to check in and shower because we were all exhausted and quite frankly, we didn't smell too nice. We were slow movers and had planned to go to an opera/ballet at 7:30 so when it came time for dinner we needed something quick. We weren't too interested in eating traditional food, so we had Chinese. This was my first time having Chinese food since January, Walk to Wok in Amsterdam doesn't count. Sweet and sour chicken never tasted soooooo good. It's a shame that they didn't have sesame chicken on the menu though. At 7:30 we went to the show which was nice, it was all Mozart of course. After it was over went to the bar for a drink before heading to bed because we were all still exhausted, plus I had a flight to Dublin to catch the next day...