Venice!

The only city in Italy where the seagulls harass you for free! No, but like actually. We arrived yesterday (10 June) and within an hour of walking around we watched a seagull swoop down into a crowd to steal some girls pastry straight out of her hands. It was definitely a new sight. Anyways, we spent the first day walking around just a little since we got in pretty late due to train delays and all. We found a Hard Rock cafe to grab our normal souvenirs from them and grabbed some dinner. We got up early this morning in order to have breakfast through the hotel (great recommendation from the grandparents, by the way!) before making our way to our meeting point for our “Venice in a Day” tour. We started out with some history of Venice and eventually made our way to San Marco and onto a 30 min gondola ride through the canals and on the grand canal. Then we had small break for lunch where we were able to shop a little and look at the amazing Murano glass works (may or may not have gotten a few things from there…). Then we met back up with the group in Saint Marks Square where we took a tour of St. Mark’s Basilica and then took a tour of Doges Palace. History and tour was very similar to the other cities, but still had some unique differences that still made it all interesting. Venice was definitely one of my more favorite cities, especially with the canals everywhere and the beautiful (though none of it is symmetrical) buildings. Tomorrow we head to country #2: Switzerland!