Venice!

We made it to Venice! We stayed there for two nights just off the island of Venice, because property there is some of the most expensive in the world and we figured everything else would be too! We had the internet and requested a lot more couch surfers, including one in Parma, Italy for when we left Venice. Then, we showered and got some sleep! The next day, we woke up just for breakfast, but went back to sleep until about 1pm...it was much needed! We headed out to the real Venice by train (about 20 minutes) it just had to cross the water out to the island. We got there at the perfect time! About 3pm everybody was leaving and there were a lot of cool shops and it wasn't beaming sun straight down on us. We got a map and went exploring. We made our way to the famous Rialto bridge, seeing a lot of canals and bridges on the way. Madonna made a music video there (and through the canals) there were lots of cool alleys and buildings. There hasn't been a newly constructed building in Venice in forever (~200 years). We stopped for some pizza and a Pepsi on our way to Piazza St. Marco, which is a huge square and church. We found the church that one the Indiana Jones movie was filmed (the one where they go into the church and break through the "X" in the floor to find the Holy Grail). Then we walked around taking pictures and checking out the many Murano glass shops, because Venice is famous for their awesome glass blowing. We found a cool canal with the sun setting right in the middle of it, so we went down to the end of it and watched it. It was awesome! We hopped on train and went back to the mainland for the night. The next day, we slept in again and headed for Milan, Italy on our way to Parma. We walked down the "Haute Couture" streets in Milan and looked at all the rich people, we didn't buy a thing! Then we got the hottest, slowest, train in the world...again. When we got to Parma, we called Sasa Maric, our host for the night and he came to the train station to pick us up! We ate pizza and got huge Coke, talked about camera stuff all night because he is a photographer. Tomorrow, it's time to get the heck out of Italy!