Venice and Bologna

This past weekend was amazing! We traveled to Venice where we spent all day Saturday exploring. I think my new favorite city in Italy is Venice. Before it was Assisi, but the presence of the canals is so calming a beautiful that I cannot help but love it. The Gondola rides were too expensive so we did not go on any, but we enjoyed ourselves in spite of that. Closer to the evening it started raining, and it was chilly all day. I was glad that I had a coat, it would have been miserable otherwise.
After Venice, we caught a train to Bologna where we made reservations at a town house called Bed and Breakfast a Bologna. It was ran by a cute lady who spoke only a few words of English and who was extremely friendly. Our room was comfortable and it cost only 28 euro for each of us, and it was a 2 minute walk from the train station. In the morning, we checked out of our room after having breakfast and walked around Bologna. We went Mass at “chiesa di San Bendetto”. After lunch we went to a couple of free museums and then stopped for coffee at a little bar. It was raining the whole time we were in Bologna, but we still managed to have a good time. Our train was to leave at 5:18 so we headed to the train station to board our train.
When we went to find our seats on the train, we noticed that someone was already in our seat. So we asked him what number seat he had and it was the same number as us. We were very confused. But we squeezed together and soon the train started moving. After half an hour, the conductor came to check our ticket. We had accidentally bought our ticket for the 18th and not the 17th. He told us to get off at Firenze and request a ticket change, he was even nice enough to write the information down for the train we needed. When the train stopped at Firenze we got off and went to the ticket counter. As we tried to get our ticket changed we discovered that we were in the wrong station in Firenze. Apparently, there is another station that had trains departing for Rome. So, we hopped on the next train going in that direction and got off at the right station.
The train that we wanted to get on was to leave in half an hour, and the line to the ticket counter was very long. I stood in line while, Bethany and Meghan tried to see if the tickets were cheap enough to buy. They were not. So with 5 minutes before the train left we got to the counter, but of course, the lady didn’t speak any English, so It too k her 5 minutes to get a translator. We finally managed to get another train, but it was a fast train, which cost more, so we had to pay a little for an upgrade which was fine with us because we just wanted to get back to Rome. Finally, with the right ticket in hand, we were on the train back to Rome. It was a pretty stressful evening. So we made it back to our hotel safely.
This coming weekend, we gave a day trip to Praeneste and Tivoli and next week is our southern Italy trip where we will travel to Cumae, Naples, Paestum and Pompeii. The week after that is our weekend in Paris. For Paris, we have a overnight train with beds, pretty nifty.