First few days of Summer Project at Walt Disney World!

After arriving in Orlando late on May 28th (early May 29th), the Bickerstaffs were amazing and clutch allowing me to crash on their couch that night. They were a little worried that it might not be comfortable, but compared to some of the beds I had in Italy, it was amazing. Also I was extremely tired after traveling that day, so I would not have had trouble sleeping anywhere basically; May 28, 2012 was literally the longest day of my life, I think that it was about 30 hours long since I was traveling back time zones.
Anyway, I woke up the next morning with more sleep than any night I was over in Italy, so I was feeling pretty good for the day. I worked on some of the wrap-up stuff from my study abroad trip and prepared myself for the day. Then I packed up my little amount of luggage that I brought with me to Italy and went over to the main lobby for the resort. I was greeted by a bunch of smiling faces and hellos from the lovely staff and interns for this summer project.

 I got all of my registration stuff figured out and since I was one of the first people to check in, Lee helped me take my stuff over to my room. Here are some pictures of our condo we will be staying in this summer...
(bathroom, living room, bedroom, and kitchen)

We figured out that some of the guys rooms had been mixed around so the staff were calling each other figuring out what happened, but everything was straightened out before most of the guys came to check in, so it was all good. As Lee likes to say, "In grace, we have freedom to fail." Failure to have everything perfect for where people are staying is not a huge deal, and we all make mistakes. I'm glad that we can all come together with all our junk and serve the Lord this summer...

Then I just chilled and hung around the registration area for quite a while, since I did not really have any stuff to move into my room. My parents shipped me a box of clothes and other things that I packed up before I left for Italy, so it should be here on Friday.

Then I went back to my room and met my roommates for the summer: Chris, Rob, and Johann. We talked for a while and had some of the other guys visit us, we all started to get to know one another. I decided to do a little laundry from the small amount of clothing that I do have, so that I would have clothes for the next few days while I wait for the rest of them to get here. We then had a group meal where we got to see how big our group was and realize that this is really happening right now.
After supper we had one of the interns take us to Wal-Mart to go buy food supplies and other things to start us off for the summer. We split up in the store to go get group items that we would be sharing and individual items. We did pretty well picking up things that we knew we would need and we ended up with a pretty good sized receipt. It was good that we all figured out fairly well what we are going to be doing for meals and other necessities so that we can buy in bigger amounts and save money that way.

That night, I finally received my email so that I could begin filling out my paperwork for beginning employment at Disney. There are an unbelievable amount of forms that you have to fill out and I spent a good chunk of my evening reading huge PDFs and filling in information, but I was able to get it all done.
Then on Wednesday, we had our first big day of training and preparation for the rest of the project. We drove over to a local church where we were informed of a few of the details of what it is exactly that we will be doing in our time not spent working. There is still plenty that we don't know yet, but at least we now have a glimpse at it. It seems as thought "Going Surfing Every Day" is kind of our motto for the summer. The staff members did a good job of comparing how what we are going to be doing this summer to surfing. Our walk with God, sharing the gospel with people, and our whole summer can relate to surfing and the ocean. God is powerful like an ocean, untameable and majestic. Living for God and sharing our faith is like surfing in that while you know that it has the possibility to be phenomenal and amazing, there are elements of risk involved, but in the end it is worth the risk. This is just the beginning of the growth, and I'm sure there will be plenty of things that I will learn throughout the summer as we continue to spur each other on to live for Christ each day.
Later that evening, we had a group activity where we went and did a photo scavenger hunt in Downtown Disney. It was quite a bit of fun, and later on I may add some pics of it to this blog.
Thursday we will go and get all of our paperwork straightened out and find out what section of the park we will be working in. I can't wait!

Day 19 - Traveling back to US

Today, we left Italy and headed back to the good old United States. A group of us had flights at about 11am on May 28, so we all got a shuttle ride to the airport together. This experience was much less stressful than the previous time at the airport in Rome. We had to take a shuttle to get to our area for customs and airport security, but after that it was pretty much a breeze. I did get checked at the carry-on baggage check area for drugs, so that was kind of interesting. Then all the other people that I rode with made it through and we met at the gate area. Then their flight boarded and I got to say goodbye to all of them. Then I headed over to my plane boarding area, and I got shuttled out to the plane. This time, I actually got to keep my seat on the plane, and not basically get blackmailed into switching seats with a baby, like on my flight over to Rome. This flight was also much more enjoyable than the one that I had coming to Rome; the plane was nicer, the flight attendants were more kind, the food was better, and the entertainment was better. I was able to watch four movies on this flight, since the flight was over nine hours long. When the flight arrived in Orlando, it was even actually a little bit early, but that didn’t really matter since I already had a 3.75 hour layover scheduled. I was able to spend time responding to emails and other stuff through my phone since they didn’t have free Wi-Fi at the airport. Then I got some Taco Bell for dinner and was super excited to have free refills on my drink and all the water I could drink without paying an arm and a leg. It turns out that I even had more time than I anticipated since the plane I was supposed to ride on was broken, so they had to find us a new plane and we didn’t get to take off until two hours later, so I was not able to get to Orlando until 12:15am or so the next day. My ride, Lee, was clutch and was able to come pick me up this late in the evening, so everything worked out. Now I am ready for the next phase of my summer, Walt Disney World Summer Project!

Here is a little wrap up from the study abroad; We had to do five sketches for the class, so here are the five that I choose to do: Castle type building in Florence, Flying Buttresses on Duomo in Milan, underside of interesting bridge in Venice, column capital in the Colosseum, and the Pantheon.

Day 18 - Rome (The Last Day)

Today was our last day in Italy :( I leave tomorrow morning at 11:35am, but that means that I need to be there at about 8:45 or so, so a group of us will be taking a shuttle to the airport early tomorrow morning to be ready in plenty of time.

Today was kind of a travel and housekeeping day to get everything in order for everyone to depart and go their separate ways. We got up and ready to go at 8am and had breakfast. We tried to leave as soon as everyone was finished with breakfast, but as soon as we got the bus started, we got stuck in the mud from the serious rain we had the night before. The lightning last night was so cool and different from most times because the storm and lightning must have been right over the top of us; the thunder was so loud and immediate after the lightning, I had never heard or seen anything like it. So anyway, we all got out of the bus and started pushing.

It had to rock back and forth about 5 times, but we finally managed to get it out of the rut and onto solid ground again. After that, it was pretty smooth sailing the rest of the bus ride; we made it back to the hotel where we stayed the first time we were in Rome by about 1pm or so, and then we headed off for lunch. We had a group meeting at 6pm that night and got everything squared away with going to the airport and just getting ready to go our separate ways. Then we went out and had supper later that evening and we had a really good time. We had some of the best servers, no, the best servers we have had the entire trip tonight! They were great, teasing us and having fun. They even gave us some free wine! It was awesome! Then we headed back to the hotel to regroup before going out for one last hurrah of gelato.

Day 17 - Paestum II

Today was our last day of actually going around visiting sites and learning about different architectural styles. We went to the ancient city ruins of Pompeii and ancient Greek temples at Paestum.

We started off with a good breakfast at 8am and got on the bus right afterwards. We had a nice hour and a half ride to Pompeii. Once there, we bought our lunches outside the ruins, so we would not have to take a very long break for lunch. We were able to walk around the streets of this ancient city and see all the remains that are still there from when it was covered in ash from a volcano explosion. Quite a bit of it was well preserved because of this and there is still more that could be excavated today. We were able to go around and see kind of how the city would be set up and how the transportation worked. The wheel ruts from the carts that would haul things around the city were extremely visible in most places. It was a completely different experience than most of the other places that we have visited because we could actually walk through the town and get a feel for how it would be to live there and walk around to the different places they had. We could see some well preserved shops that would have been used as restaurants, some theaters, plenty of residences, and many other places. 

There was also an exhibit that had the bones of some of the poor people who died from either the heat or the ash from the volcanic eruption. They had been preserved by an archeologist by using plaster, so most of them is covered in plaster, but you can still see some of the bones. There were also some mosaic/tile floor decorations that were preserved that were pretty cool to see. One of the more interesting things about the city was that you could see how cheap the people actually were there (more cost effective? however you want to look at it). They built a lot of their columns out of masonry and then added a marble covering or finish to the outside of them. I suppose this is like today when we take precast concrete and cover then panels with brick to give it a masonry look when it actually isn’t.

We also got to see some amphitheaters and coliseum areas that were still preserved as well. Most of the seating for the theaters was still in good shape, but the coliseum’s seating was mostly gone. All of them were still interesting to see, and some of us were thinking that if something happened and down the road people were visiting somewhere in the United States, it could be like walking through Memorial Stadium. We also listened to a couple of presentations on the city and the aqueducts and those were both pretty interesting. After we finished up visiting Pompeii, we left to go back to Paestum and see the ancient Greek temples there.

In Paestum, there was an ancient Greek city that has 3 remaining temples and mostly just a little rubble for the rest of the town. The temples were pretty cool to see and Nate did his presentation on them so we got to learn about the history of them. Originally they were thought to be Roman temples, so there was some confusion on what was what. They were built by the Greeks, but then the Romans came in and conquered them, and then there was some evidence that they could have been converted to Christian churches before they were abandoned. 

These were quite large, some of the largest ancient structures with giant pillars that we got to see, and I thought they were a neat thing to see as the last major part of this trip. Then we were able to go visit a museum of artifacts and pieces of the buildings from the town that they could not leave out in the ruins. There were quite a few pots, some coins, and statues. Then we left our last place we were visiting for class.

We headed back to the hotel/farmhouse place and decided it was time to blow off some steam in the pool they had there. The water was nice and cold to start off, but then we started up some kind of water polo game with the soccer ball our bus driver gave us. We all got pretty physical and were pushing each other around and having a good time. Since we haven’t been able to keep as hydrated as we should, a few of us got calf cramps which aren’t exactly fun, but we just got back in and kept going after it went away. It was fun to just play around in the pool and get some physical activity besides walking a million miles every day. Haha! Then we had our last group dinner together and since this farmhouse place makes their own cheese from the water buffalos they have everything with it was amazing. They had some really good lasagna that I wish I could have had about 10 servings of. Then we had a time with everyone to just share stories, highlights, lowlights, and just whatever came to mind about the trip. It was fun to hear some stories that I hadn’t completely heard before, and listen again to some of the best of them. Then I headed off to bed because we are leaving nice and early tomorrow to get back to Rome to complete our journey.

Day 16 - Paestum

Today was a nice relaxing day for me because we woke up and had some time in San Gimignano and then were going to spend most of the day traveling to our next city. We woke up for a great breakfast at La Cisterna Hotel followed by a visit to a couple of places around town before we had some free time to go shopping, exploring, or whatever.

First we went to a museum there, where they had a little bit of art and some more medieval type artifacts. It was pretty cool to see something different than just art that was fairly similar to the other styles that we had seen throughout the trip. Then we got to go up to the top of the tallest tower in this town that has several prominent towers in its skyline. It seemed a like a longer trip up the stairs than how tall I had assessed it to be from the ground. 

When we finally made it to the top, there was a very large bell up at the top. The views that you could see from this high point of the valleys and rolling hills with vineyards below were absolutely beautiful and fascinating. Seeing these views from the bus the day before was awesome, but this was so much better. Nature is just so calming and breathtaking. On this trip, I have seen some of the world’s most famous architecture, art, and creative expressions, but I don’t think anything can replace the original creation of nature and the wonders of it. I could go around looking at architecture all day, but I am glad that I have my whole lifetime to observe the vastly different landscapes of the earth because it never ceases to amaze me. After we had sufficient time up there to take photos and just observe the surround areas, we headed back down to go to our next thing.

The next place that we had the option of going to was the torture museum that they have in town. This was an interesting experience to say the least. It is just really sad to see all the different ways that the corruption of the human mind can come up with to inflict pain onto other people. It was an educational experience for sure, though, because I had seen some of these devices before, but not most of them. The ones that just seemed the worst to me were the ones that involved cutting a person in half in some form. There were various devices to contain the victim and many different tools or saws that were used in this way. I think the phrase, “Those who don’t learn their history are doomed to repeat it.” is an appropriate thought on why people should go see things like this. Now looking back on it, I think many people can see why it was so wrong, and I wonder and hope that people down the road will find some things in our society that are cruel and will think the same thing about. Anyways, after having seen quite enough of ways to inflict pain on people, I left and waited for some other people so we could head out and just look around at the shops in town.

We went around and just looked at the many different shops that this small town has to offer. There were a lot of shops with knives and swords in them, and those were interesting to look at. Probably the coolest thing that I saw in any of the shops was an incredibly intricate chess set. It was really cool with the pieces all being forged out of different metals. I’m sure it was quite expensive because similar figures with the chess pieces were about 20 Euros a piece. The set didn’t even have price listed on it, but had something written on a card on it, so either it wasn’t for sale, or you would need to talk to them to establish a price for it. After spending a while looking around at all the shops, we went to go get some gelato, having to decide between two shops right next to each other: one claiming, “The World’s Best Ice Cream” and the other “World Champion Gelato.” How could we go wrong with either of them? After hearing that some of the other people had tried them last night, we went to the “World Champion” one and I got some that was mint flavored, and it was the most realistic mint flavored Ice cream or gelato I have ever had. It was not artificially flavored with mint, but had little bits of mint leaves in it and it was extremely good; I might actually buy that they won some World Championship in gelato. Then I just waited around at the fountain in the middle of the square where we were to meet. Then we all headed back down to where our tour bus was going to pick us up.

We started our longest traveling time together on this trip: about a eight hour ride from San Gimignano to Paestum where we would be staying the next two nights. For me, I do not mind long rides like this, especially with as much room as we had. We don’t have a ton of room on the bus, but it is more than I had on most of our family vacation roadtrips. For our family vacations, almost every year we went on one we drove there with three kids all in the back of a car, so I am used to this type of a trip and I enjoy it for the most part. It was a relaxing time for me because even though I am in a bus with about 22 other people, I could just shut out the rest of the world with putting in my headphones and listening to music or my audiobook. After spending a couple of weeks surrounded by people, I just need a little time to myself every now and then, so I accepted it with open arms. About halfway into the trip, we stopped at a rest stop since there are some laws about how long our driver can drive consecutively, so we had to have a rest stop for 45ish minutes. After visiting the store to get some snacks and the restroom, our bus driver Jonfranco bought us a soccer ball and we had a good game of keep away going for quite a while with the whole group which was pretty fun. Then we hit the road again and after quite a while we made it to the farmhouse/hotel that we were staying at. At this place, they make most of their own food, and they are famous for their mozzarella made from their water buffalo’s milk. We arrived and after we were assigned our rooms, we had the privilege to have one of our two group meals there. We got to taste some of the mozzarella, and it was as good as advertised along with some homemade pizza topped with it. After a tasty meal, I headed back to my room to get some journaling done and head to bed since it was already pretty late by the time we had arrived and eaten supper.

Day 15 - Pisa and San Gimignano

Today was an absolutely awesome day! We got to see a lot of natural beauty, man manufactured beauty, have beautifully delicious food, and beautiful relaxation time. This was one of my favorite days of the trip so far and am excited to see what we will be doing the rest of the trip.

First we had the best breakfast of the trip so far at 8am this morning with freshly made breads and other goodies. Then we had a nice four hour bus ride to Pisa. I know that a bus ride may sound kind of boring, but I really enjoyed it a lot. It was nice to just get to relax, watch the scenery go by, and go into my own world in my audiobook when I wanted to. It was one of the most relaxing times that I have had on my trip thus far. When we finally arrived in Pisa, we were shuttled over to Piazza dei Miracoli which is the location of The Leaning Tower of Pisa. 

It was really cool to see how it looks so good after they finished stabilizing, cleaning, and restoring it. It exceeded my expectations by far; the whole area was very nice and well maintained. We got there around lunch time and our appointment to go to the tower was not until later, so we had a few hours to eat lunch, buy souvenirs, and take pictures with it.

Lunch was an interesting experience for a reason completely unrelated to any type of problem that you would typically associate with a restaurant and eating there. I ordered a pizza and while we were waiting for our food to be delivered, one of the waiters dropped a glass and it broke over in the kitchen area. I didn’t think too much about it and even made a joke about it. Then our food was delivered and I started cutting my pizza (they don’t cut the pizza for you over here). I started eating it and got about one-fourth to one-third of the way through and I noticed that there was something clear and jagged looking on my plate. My first thought was how a piece of ice got onto my tray, since they don’t seem to have ice very much over here either and no one at my table had any, so I picked it up. To my surprise, it was not a piece of ice, but a chunk of glass, about 1 cm² in size, had made its way onto my pizza! I showed my friends at our table and so then I checked over the rest of my pizza to make sure it didn’t have any on it, and was okay to eat. We were trying to think of how it could have gotten onto my pizza, and then I connected the dots; that there had been that glass broken not too long before my pizza was brought over to me, and that was the only reasonable explanation. I eat the rest of my pizza, being extra careful just in case there was another piece that I missed, but it seems to have been fine. After my meal I showed it to the waiter, and he was very apologetic, and I think he realized where it had come from, so they gave me my meal for free. I was okay with a free meal, since there didn’t seem to be any damage done.

Then we went looking around at all the shops and took some fun pictures and some cliché photos in front of it. Then we met up with everyone and Rae did her presentation on The Leaning Tower of Pisa. There were many different efforts in construction and after completion to correct the lean, but all were fruitless until the last one where they excavated the land and removed enough to stabilize it, so now it is stuck at a 4° tilt. Then we got walk up to the top of the tower, and this was more exciting than you would think, because although 4° doesn’t sound like a lot, it is very noticeable when you are walking up and down the stairs. When you were on one side, you would be leaning back trying to walk up the stairs, and when you were on the other side, you would be falling forward up the stairs. Oscillating back and forth like this made me feel kind of loopy, but it was certainly entertaining. The view from the top was fantasitic; you could see Pisa all the way to the mountain ridges. It was fun just to walk around it feeling the tilt of it and seeing the displacement of it all the way at the top; I believe it was about 3.9 meters displacement.

After we had finished our time up on the tower, we went over and toured the Duomo and Baptistery of the complex. They were both were interesting because they had been built slowly over different time periods and styles of architecture, so it made an interesting conglomeration. There were aspects of Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic all in this one building. They also apparently reused some of the marble from other buildings to construct it, because there were inscriptions chiseled into some of the blocks used on the outside that were oriented differently than they were on their previous building. The Baptistery was interesting because it had a dome that had some interesting acoustical properties to it. People were just whispering in there and it was so loud it there, and then they have a guy come in to sing a few notes because the sound lingers and echoes so long, he could do harmony with himself. It was pretty neat.

Then we hung around a little longer so that people could get all their shopping done and get any more photos they wanted. Then we shuttled back to the bus and were off again, this time to San Gimignano. 

This is was another two hour bus ride and was very relaxing after being out in the hot sunny weather today. The terrain and scenery in the Tuscany region is absolutely beautiful with the rolling hills, vineyards, trees, and Italian style homesteads. It is so calm, peaceful, and serene. When we finally arrived in this smaller Tuscan town, it seemed that way as well. Here we have a very nice hotel that is right off the town center square. We hiked up here to the hotel through the small streets because it would have been a little difficult for the bus to maneuver this. Then we had a little time to settle into our hotel before we had supper in the hotel on the top floor. They make their own wine here in San Gimignano, so we had to try some of it with supper. 

Tonight was one of our group dinners, so we had a delicious four course dinner of some kind of rice and vegetables, ravioli, peppered boar meat (I think), and strawberry crème dessert. This was probably my favorite meal of the trip so far because it was so good and it was also extremely filling! I fully enjoyed every minute of it, and I didn’t even mention the beautiful view that we had atop the hotel which is on top of a hill! You could see down into one of the valleys around San Gimignano, and the lovely countryside. It was so serene and nice change of pace from all the extremely chaotic, tourist filled cities that we had visited. If I were to take a vacation to Italy, I would definitely choose this to be the place; it seems so relaxing and magnificent.

After the awesome dinner we had, I headed down to our room and got to work on updating my photos and this journal/blog and just had a good time reminiscing on a good day in Tuscany, Italy!

Day 14 - Ravenna

Today, we left Milan to go on our crazy fast tour of at least a city a day for the rest of the trip. Early this morning at 7:30, we got up and ready to go, and the tour bus that was going to take us to our new destination showed up and we packed in. We went on our way to Ravenna which was a four hour bus ride away. I took advantage of this time and slept and listened to my audiobook. It was really nice because I have not really taken too much time to relax. Since I am here in Italy for only a short time, I want to take full advantage of it, so it is good that I had this time that I couldn’t be doing anything else so that I could just rest. After we finally got to our destination, we headed to the hotel. The hotel that we have tonight is by far the nicest one that we have had. It has a nice big shower and bathroom with big towels. Everything seems so nice and I am hopeful of a good breakfast tomorrow morning.

First we went and visited the tomb of Dante the poet. We got to learn about him and his “Divine Comedy” from one of the students giving his presentation. It was interesting to learn that it is easier to rhyme in Italian than in English because of the endings of the words, so he could effectively have a complicated rhyming scheme in his poetry. Also learning about the different thoughts of the church on what heaven and hell were at the time was also intriguing.

We went out and toured Basilica di Santa Apollinare Nuovo. This was the first introduction we had into Byzantine architecture. 

This building was a combination of different styles, but Byzantine style was the most prominent. Byzantine architecture has a high usage of mosaics and tiles to decorate the interior and sometimes exterior of the building, and this was definitely evident here. This building was also interesting because of the fact that it was so poorly designed and/or constructed. The roof in the middle was caving in and the walls were weaving back and forth from too much weight in the middle. There were many columns with metal bands around them to keep them together and from buckling, two different types of vaults on the two side aisles around the nave, and you could physically see the walls deflected at the top of the building in the middle to the ends of it. 

Since Dr. Erdogmus is into restoration and rehabilitation of older buildings, it was cool that we all got to see this building, because she had not been to Ravenna before this trip either.

Then we went to Basilica di Santa Vitale which was also in the Byzantine architecture style, but probably more so than the previous one. This basilica was round in shape with decorations of mosaics everywhere along with the columns and had Byzantine characteristic construction materials (masonry construction). It was a very different feel than any of the other cathedrals or basilicas that we had been to before on this trip. 

The round shape with different levels to it made it feel a lot taller, even if it was not any taller than some of the other ones. It just felt like it went up instead of spread out in a cross shape, like most of them are. Getting to visit and see a completely different style helped a lot of us appreciate it more than I think we would have if we had just seen this at the beginning of the trip.

After we were finished there, we headed back to our hotel and relaxed until we headed out for supper. Most of us went to this kebab place that some of them had found earlier, and I was kind of skeptical about eating those while we were in Italy, but they were extremely good. Then I got some gelato and headed back to my room where I got caught up on some of the work I needed to do for this class and relaxed until it was bed time.

Day 13 - Milan III

Today started off pretty well because I got to sleep in for the first time this trip, and by sleep in, I mean I got about 8 hours of sleep last night. It felt great and refreshing, and I also got to lounge around for the morning, so I completely caught up on my journaling and tried to do some laundry. I was able to finally get some laundry done in a regular washer and dryer which was awesome. Then we went to the grocery store and got food for lunch. We bought a ton of food for 4 of us and we still ended up paying less for this than probably any other meal. I was stuffed for one of the first times all trip long and it was so good. We got a bunch of freshly sliced ham, some salami, cheeses, bread, chips, cookies, and cokes. It was one of the most satisfying meals I have had in quite a while. Then we met up at 3pm to go to the National Science Museum. We got there about 3:35pm and thought we had until 6:30pm before it closed, but unfortunately we got kicked out at 5pm, so we didn’t get to see everything we wanted to. They had exhibits on technology and how it has improved or how it works. There were some about televisions, radio, fiber optics, clocks, and a lot more.

Then we got to see a bunch of machines that were models of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and ideas for different machines. 

He was extremely creative in his design for work machines and war machines. There were ideas for smashing metals, dredging, hydraulic powered devices, war boats, catapults, movable bridges, and flying machines. They were all pretty cool to see along with the ideas behind them in his notes (translated of course).

Then there were also some cool models of architectural design by da Vinci. He has some really cool ideas for different styles of design. Then there was a copy of “The Last Supper” in the museum, because the real one is in an area all by itself in a building fairly close to that one, but we were not going to get to see it. Getting to see all of this work by Leonardo da Vinci was an awesome experience and I’m glad I was at least able to get through that before we got kicked out of the museum.

Then we went to a bar, because Dr. Erdogmus promised some of the students that she would have a beer with them, so we went and had a happy hour time where if you bought a drink, you could also get some food with it. So a lot of us got a beer and some grabbed some mixed drinks. I had my first Guinness and it was actually pretty good, and I also had some fried bread stuff and cheese covered bread. We just sat around and talked for a while until we had all finished and then we headed back for the hostel. We stopped for a little while in the mall and I finally found a map of Italy that I wanted to buy. Then we went back to the hostel and hung out for the rest of the evening. It was a pretty relaxing and enjoyable day before we travel like crazy for the rest of the trip. We will be going to at least one new city each day for the rest of the trip!

Day 12 - Milan II (But truthfully, Venice)

Yesterday was a “free day,” but there was a recommendation that we go see Venice today. Since we would not actually be going to Venice as a group, and you don’t see waterways and canals like Venice anywhere else, I definitely wanted to go. The weather forecast was kind of ominous for the day and it did hold true for the entire time we were there. We left in the morning on a 3 hour “fast train” train ride to Venice from Milan. I was a little tired, so I just listened to an audiobook and rested by head. When we finally had arrived, unfortunately like the forecast of 100% chance of rain, it was raining. It was still a cool experience to see the city of Venice and I would have kicked myself for missing it since I am already here in Italy. First, we wanted to start out by going to St.  Mark’s Square, so we got on one of the public transportation water ferries and headed around to the other side of the island. It was kind of fun to get to see a lot of Venice from the water ferry, since that is the major method of transportation there. 

Once we finally arrived at St. Mark’s Square, we found somewhere to eat and had lunch. A lot of the experiences that I have had with service here in restaurants make me really enjoy eating at them in the US more. Since here they just have a “service fee” there is no need for tipping and the place we ate at also included a “cover fee.” These would be all fine and dandy if the waiters actually gave a crap and provided decent service, but here they are all just pretty lazy and some of them like at this restaurant are jerks. We were finished for about 10 minutes before we even see him to ask him for the check and then he doesn’t even acknowledge that I asked him for it, he just keeps on walking. He is setting up tables right down about two rows from us and then I ask him again and he gets irritated apparently and says that he will bring it to me in a few minutes… and then continues on setting up tables right next to us, even though the restaurant is far from busy. Then finally after finishing up setting all the tables, he proceeds to get us the check. That was one of my most expensive meals because of the cover fee and service and it included okay food and awful service. I am usually more generous with my tips than most of the service fee, so I would prefer to tip instead, but since they seem entitled to the service fee, they don’t provide good service. I will not miss this part of Italy.

Anyways after we were done there, we head out into the rain again to go actually take a look around the square and go get some gelato. It was pretty neat, and I could only speculate as to how crowded it would be if it wasn’t raining. Then we got in line to go into the actual St. Mark’s Cathedral. It was a pretty neat cathedral that was covered in a lot of gold colored tiles to make a lot of mosaics on the inside and outside. They didn’t let you go too many places in there without paying so we didn’t spend too long in there. After we looked around the square a little more, we headed for the Rialto Bridge to get some pictures of it and head back towards the train station. After we had finished getting pictures there, we started wandering around in the general direction we needed to go to get back to the train station. After a while of wandering around and ending up in dead ends and small alleyways, we decided to actually use the map, and then we at first couldn’t find out where we were, so we walked around a little more until we figured out exactly where we were and then it was a breeze to get back there. 

We ended up by this really cool bridge that I saw when we first got on the water ferry, so we went over and I got some closer pictures to get a good look at it. It was a really interesting design, and yes, I am an engineer, so I thought the bridge was really cool. Haha!

Then we got our train tickets back to Milan, this time on the “slow train” which would take about four hours. We were looking for some seats all together when we spotted some of our other group members on the same train that we were going to take, so we grabbed some seats near them. I listened to my audiobook some more and was apparently pretty tired, because I fell asleep in the middle of it and woke up to see that the people sitting across from us had gotten off the train. That was kind of weird to wake up to there being nobody in those seats, because it just seemed like a few minutes ago that they were there. Then I was able to enjoy the countryside scenery the rest of the way back. They have quite a bit of agriculture in this region, so I saw corn fields, vineyards, wheat, and other things that I am not totally sure what they were. Then after the long train trip, we finally ended up back at the station in Milan. We stopped to get some food in the station and then headed back towards the hostel via the subway. We got off at the same stop as we had before, but somehow we ended up coming out at a different location than before, so we just guessed where we needed to go and walked around for a while until we asked a woman for directions to the major street we needed to get to. She was able to point us off in the general direction and we hadn’t done too badly in guessing where we needed to go. Then we found it and went back to the hostel. I spent the rest of the evening resting and catching up on journaling for the trip and catching back up with the world. Then I went to bed knowing that tomorrow was the last time I would get a chance to sleep in since we had half a “free day” tomorrow.