Venice:
Over rated, expensive, and really not that exciting. I’m glad that I was not there during tourist season which I can’t believe actually has a “season” because it seems like the streets are always full of them. Now a little point on being a tourist; I don’t classify myself as a tourist but more of just a ‘traveler’, the difference being I don’t have: A fanny pack, take 3000 obnoxious pictures of every little thing I do and see, use a pocket dictionary, rather I stay in hostels, I’m broke, and I don’t snore. Speaking of snoring that is one of my damn pet peeves; actually not even a pet peeve, it’s more of a ‘I will seriously hurt you if you don’t stop snoring’ peeve. While in Venice the second night there, Michaela and I didn’t have a private room and were posted up in a six person dorm-sleeping room. Now most of the time my issues with snoring are mild because I go to bed early and can sleep through most human snores until the morning but in this case I was woken up. My eyes shot open after waking from a dream where a bear was growling and about to make my face for his breakfast. Unfortunately this was not my fate and it turned out to be like you guessed some old dude two beds away snoring his hardest. It was a deep deafening snore that told stories of flem, the flu, and too much Burger King. Now there is something about snoring that enrages me, I have no idea what it is but upon hearing any sort of slight snore I get hot and my patience drops to 0. Being in a hostel dorm I decided to try and relax thinking of ways around not dumping smashing a coffee pot on this dudes face so I grabbed my set of earplugs, threw them in and obnoxiously turned on my side throwing my pillow over my head. I repeated in my head, relax, relax, ignore, ignore…snore, snore…more snoring, shit this lasted about 2 minutes before something had to be done. The smartest way to deal with someone who snores is to keep objects that can be easily thrown at them within arm’s reach; in the case of my room in Ingolstadt I have a few sets of shoes, empty water bottles, an alarm clock, and a roll of toilet paper which have all been thrown at snoring roommates but being in Venice I didn’t have the convenience of these arm’s reach objects so I was going to have to improvise. I sat up and scanned my area for something, anything that could inflict the right amount of damage…my area was scarce, I glanced at Michaela and she was up too and I could see the restlessness in her eyes also, I murmured an “Are you ******** kidding me?” becoming more infuriated with each growling snore. I gave it one more desperate attempt looking around for anything and finally laid eyes upon my Excalibur, a nice waterbottle with cap (the cap gives it more oomph and makes for a nice sting), the glass was defiantly looking half full. I gave my arm a quick rotation for a warm up then with my might threw a perfect lofter soaring throw the dark room like a pop-fly that was gaining speed on it’s decent. Now the first rule to waking snoring people by throwing things is to not let them know who woke them so I quickly laid back down and assumed the fake sleep position waiting with anticipation to hear if I was on target. CRACK, direct hit right to the dome; immediately the snoring halted as the sound of the blow echoed through the room. Trying to hold back giggles I imagined how it must have felt being woke up by a half full water bottle striking you right in the temple. After my giggles were at rest there was some sort of superior gratification that made my eyes grow heavy again and within a few moments I was sound asleep again.
Florence:
After a gorgeous day in Florence I had a mysterious feeling of greatness, I felt or rather knew I had luck running through my fingertips.
Michaela and I had a night train to catch at 9:35 and had to check out of our hostel earlier so we were on our own for a few hours to kill time before heading to the station. It had been a beautiful mid 70’s day of exploring up to the Michelangelo statue and back down, to the hostel and back, finding food, wandering and also 463 steps to the top of the Duomo. Our trembling, weary legs screamed for a place to rest; we found a little dive shop that had sandwiches, drinks, and a single Italian slot machine, what else could you need to kill some time? Michaela and I shared a sandwich and a beer thinking of saving money being it’s extremely expensive and that beer really isn’t Italy’s forte. They did however have Heineken so we made due. After our stomachs were full and our feet had a little bit of rest under them we still had a few hours to kill. Getting up from the table feeling a little bored I caught eyes with my new love, she was bright, colorful, and made amazing sounds. I walked up to her and slipped a single euro in and pressed the green button. BING slot machine, I really wasn’t sure how to play so I called over the owner of the shop and tried to have him explain in Italian how to play but it was just one mixed message after each wrong assumption. We slowly got through it and finally got to close to the end of my euro; I received a last chance game with the little I had left. It was poker; my fingers tingled with the sense that I was going to do it; my push of the button would be a winner. Oh how the mighty did not fall, I drew a flush and before I knew it euros started pouring out of the machine; I had hit a 3-pointer with 0.002 seconds left and sank it with glory. At this point there was just a lot of jumping and shouting apparently making a fool out of myself according to Michaela but who was to care I just won more money than I put in! In total I won 60 euro ($90), after this I obviously bought another few rounds of beer for us and we enjoyed our last few hours in Florence with a perfect buzz.
Also we ate the best pizza I have ever had! If you are there it is a must go…standing in front of the Duomo facing the Baptistry directly to your right there is a little pizza place and it has seating in the basement. SO GOOD!
Paris:
Was nice, expensive, and the people were quite rude. I thought the Eiffel Tower was actually pretty ugly during the day being it’s just a big hunk of rusted metal but at night when it’s all light up it can be pretty wicked. Everything else in Paris was alright, the Louve was huge and a little too busy for my taste but I did see the Mona Lisa and yes, she did wink at me. My favorite part of Paris was the baguettes, 90 cents for one and with a jar of peanut butter, bottle of wine, and some cheese for all under 5 euro that is a pretty good deal for two.