Andiamo a Venezia!

Last week on Travel Tuesday, we left off with Amanda and I paying several hundred dollars to leave Paris with our sanity still (semi) intact. At long last, we landed in Venice and made a beeline to our hostel, where we reunited with Jen and Cynthia, who'd arrived there from Paris earlier that day. Amanda and I were still stressed and angry from the day's events, so we dumped our bags in our room and immediately hit up the first gelateria we came across.

Instant bliss, I tell you. Wandering along the canals on a balmy spring night with gelato and a friend? Heck yeah.

We were finally able to put the Paris catastrophe out of our minds, and the two days we spent in Venice were wonderfully stress free. There's not a whole lot to actually do in Venice, plus I'd been there once before, so most of our time was spent wandering the city. And eating gelato. (When in Rome, right?) We did spend an afternoon on Murano island, and found ourselves in a residential area of Venice (because apparently that exists in this tourist trap of a city!), and went to Easter mass in St. Mark's Basilica. And Amanda had a whole lot of fun with some pigeon friends!

However, Venice wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. On that wonderful first night, I quickly developed an intense pain in the arch of one of my feet and was suddenly unable to walk without a limp. I have plantar fasciitis and it decided that this would be a great time to flare up. So that put quite the damper on things, as walking around the great cities of Europe is significantly more difficult when one of your feet is about as useful and painful as a bloody stump would be (I wish I was exaggerating, folks. So. unbelievably. painful).

But it's pretty hard to ruin Italy. Looking back, I don't think of the pain in my foot. My memory of Venice is entirely positive. It's far and away one of the coolest places I've ever been. And I mean, hello, gelato at least twice a day? How could you go wrong?!

And, as this is Italy and all... some of our gelato diaries.

AND, as promised, the usuals...

Fun story about this jumping picture. Remember how I said my foot felt like it was being stabbed? I did NOT want to jump because of the prospect of having to land on that foot. So I was like, "guys, we have one chance to take this picture, because this foot is not coming that far off the ground twice." Boom, first take and it was perfect! Check please, and carry me back to the hostel as I think longingly about burning my Converse as payback for the torture they put me through.

However, I looked through all my photos and apparently this is the last city we get all three of these pictures in. Whoops? I stopped throwing up the U (blasphemous!) and Amanda stopped carrying me (which is ironic, considering all my foot problems). But we did, in some form or another, continue to jump around the world. (Again, ironic, because my body was honest to god falling apart and everything hurt. Spoiler alert: I picked up two new injuries in two more cities, hey heyyy.)

But now I'm getting ahead of myself! Stay tuned, because next week my gimpy foot and I are hobbling through Switzerland and kicking off the Olympic leg of the trip!

For my original post on this stop, see here! Abbiamo finito!