Venice and Being Back in the States

After the study abroad program ended, Lindsey and I had a couple days to travel anywhere and celebrate my birthday. We decided to stay in Italy and visit Venice. Venice was remarkable, I couldn’t fathom that the entire city was built on water. The people of Venice have a daily life that I can’t compare to any of the other places that I went to in Italy. It is a relatively small city and it was crazy to see that there are not any streets! Instead you can go everywhere by boat. In Venice, there is one big canal, and over 100 little canals. Two things that blew my mind were that instead of having an ambulance vehicle, they had a boat with a siren and instead of taxi vehicles they have taxi boats. You can get around the city by ferry boats that run every 10 minutes, or by walking across the little bridges that connects everything. Most of the locals in Venice had their own boat. Venice also had the best food I have ever had in my life. We actually didn’t stay in Venice. Our hotel was located on Lido, a 7 mile long sand bar near Venice. We spent one day at the beach, which was packed with people. Lindsey got really burnt, which was a little funny. We spent another day walking all over Venice. The coolest thing we saw was the St. Marks Square. Its size and the amount of tourists there was pretty overwhelming. We also spent $80 on a gondola ride, and it was worth every penny. Lindsey and I were very sad to leave Europe. All I can think about are all of the places that I didn’t get to see. I definitely plan on going back to Europe to see Ireland, Germany, and Greece. Being back in the United States has brought lots of mixed emotions. It is weird hearing everybody speaking English again. But I have lots of stories for my family and friends. I would highly recommend anybody to travel to Europe, and I feel so lucky UNK gave me the opportunity to study abroad in the beautiful country of Italy.