For our last night in Interlaken we took it pretty easy because we had a 7:30am train to catch. Balmer's had a laundry room, so Mallory and I decided it would be a good time to do some laundry. We took showers and started to pack up everything that we could. Mallory is pretty much an all-star packer, so she helped me roll my clothes and put them in my bag to make sure I had as much room as possible. While we were packing, our roomies, old man river and the family from China all came back and wanted to go to bed. We continued our packing as much as we could and during that time, our new roomie…finally someone our age…came into the room. He was a nice guy that was from DC and went to Virginia Tech. We packed all we could, besides our clothes that were in the washer and decided to go downstairs to have one last beer in Switzerland to give our roomies some peace and quiet. We finished our beers in the laundry room, folded our clothes and headed back to our dark room. I had a reading light that we used when we finished packing. We laughed, basically the entire time, because of all the loud snoring that went on and the nice man across from us that decided to sleep above the covers in his whitey tighties. Mallory diagnosed him with sleep apnea, basically because he was quiet..and then all of a sudden would gasp for air and do this loud snore. After we got done packing, we put in our ear plugs (thank goodness we had those…thanks Mom!), and went to bed. We thought we would only need the earplugs to block out drunkies…but really we had the oldes, loudest snoring roommates in the hostel. The 6:00am alarm came quickly after only about 4 hours of sleep. We both slept in our clothes that we wore on the train, so we got ready quickly and headed to the bus stop. Balmer's gave us a free bus pass, so that came in handy. We waited on the wooden bench and got on the train. Unfortunately…which we noticed when we got to Milan…Mallory's shoes did not make it onto the bus..or the train…or the next train. Basically, we liked Interlaken so much, Mallory decided she would sacrifice her tennis shoes to the city of Interlaken. Some Swiss girl is probably enjoying running in them right now. The train ride was pretty long and I needed to sleep. Unfortunately, there was a loud American talking negatively about our government to his new found friend on the train. He was basically screaming, so we got some use out of our earplugs…again (Thanks Mom!..again). When we got to Milan and switched trains, we decided to look on the map for our hostel. We looked all over our map and couldn't find it anywhere. After searching for quite a while, Mallory looked closely at the address and we realized it was in Vecenza, not Venezia (Venice). I was so confused because I booked the same place that the girls stayed in last year..so I'm not sure what exactly happened. When the train got to Venice, we got out of our little room where our seats were and all we could smell was weed. There was smoke coming out of one of the little rooms too…not sure how they didn't get caught. Thank you boys…for hot boxing the entire train. We decided to call the hostel when we got to Venice to see where they were located. After many attempts, we finally got a hold of them and they did not speak English, which was strange for a hostel. When Mallory tried talking to them, they kept asking her where she was and laughing. Since I booked online, I am worried that I may have been scammed. Since we had such a short time in Venice, we went to the tourist area and had a lady there book us a place that was less expensive than the hostel. We walked the 15 minute walk down the beautiful, quiet streets of Venice, got some Gelato and found our little bed and breakfast type place, Alloggi Sardegna. We buzzed the door and a little (only about 4'11"), cute old lady opened the door. We checked in and she let us choose between two rooms. The room was soo cute! The whole place looked newly renovated. The ceilings were wooden and had wooden beams and a beautiful chandelier hanging from it. The bathroom had really pretty tile and the shower had a back/head massager thing that was pretty cool. After we got all settled in and changed, we decided to hit the streets and canals! Venice is so old and beautiful. We walked around and got a beer from a stand. One of the cool things about Italy is that you can take your beer on the streets with you and just drink it while you're walking. After walking around, taking tons of pictures and looking at all the stands and shops along the road, we decided to take a gondola ride. It's just one of those things you have to do while you're in Venice and they even gave us a discounted price because there was only two of us. The gondolas are really pretty and the one we rode on had my name on it…only without an H. Mallory and I took a ton of pictures of that and of the scenery on the ride..of course. While on the ride, our gondola guy showed us some important buildings in Venice history…like the first building to be built on the Grand Canal, the old jail, and the longest/biggest bridge in Venice. We also saw where Madonna filmed the "Like a Virgin" music video, where "Casablanca" was filmed, and where Casanova lived. There were a ton of cats sitting in the building's windows and our gondola guy told us how back in the day, because of all the water, rats were common. Because of that, there were a lot of cats to help get rid of the rats. We both thought that was pretty interesting. As we passed the other Gondolas, most were families and couples. Our gondola was the only one that had two girls. Because of this, the Gondola guys were sort of creepy and were talking about us to our gondola guy when they passed us. Our gondola was kind of creepy too and kept wanting to get pictures with us, so he would stop our boat ride to have us stand up with him and take "senior picture poses." He was worried about any jealous boyfriends as if they were going to fly to Venice, find him, and kill him if we took a picture with him…but don't worry Max..I told him you weren't and he took a picture with us anyway. While we were on our ride, we thought the best person to ask about a place to eat would be a local, so we asked him. He told us about a little pizza place that he said had the best pizza in Venice. Before we ate, we went around and saw some sites. I bought a cheap, cute blue dress and Mallory got an orange pok-a-dot shirt on our way to Piazza San Marco. The church in Piazza San Marco, Basilica de San Marco, was gorgeous, huge, and had wonderful artwork and statues on the outside. Also, we were really close to where Indiana Jones Last Crusader was filmed and there was a stage set up for Elton John to play there the next day. As we walked through, there was this area where there were a TON of disgusting pigeons.People had food in their hands and were feeding the pigeons right out of their hands. Some people even would sit down and let the pigeons crawl all over them, on their heads, arms, legs….gross. Mallory and I were NOT going to partake in that event. There was this one boy who had them all over him, even one sitting on his head. Mallory took a picture with him in the background acting like she was throwing up….and about ten minutes later….Mallory got pooped on. Karma is a b****.

After that little excursion, we decided to go eat. After hand sanitizing our hands…and Mallory's back, we went to a small pizza place called Trattoria Casa Mia. We HIGHLY recommend this place if anyone ever goes to Venice. I got a pizza with tomato, mozzarella, gorgonzola, parmesan, and asparagus. Mallory's had tomato, mozzarella, prucietto, artichokes, peppers, and onions. To give you a little insight if we thought it was good….they were twice as big as our heads and we both ate our entire pizzas…it's fine. Our waitress was a little shocked, but she doesn't know how Mallory and I can eat. We were pretty full, but of course we had room for more gelato. There is one of every corner here, so we can't resist. I'll just say…we have hit up a lot of those corners. Our favorite gelato flavor was Fruito de Bosco. Bridget can be jealous because that translates to blackberries. J After our big dinner, dessert, and a long day of walking, we were both pretty pooped….Mallory, literally (Italian pigeon pooped). We went back to our little home for the night and decided we were too tired to go out. We showered in our nice, private bathroom and packed all of our stuff up and fell asleep. It was much needed. We got up in the morning, must say! We decided to take an early train, so we checked out, put our heavy bags on, took a picture out the window and went on our way to the train station. We stopped at few places to look at and buy postcards. When we got to the train station, the line to change our reservations was long, so we just got on the train. Since we didn't have reservations for that time, we weren't guaranteed a seat. We sat down in what would have been our seats if we would have stayed on the later train and hoped no one had those seats too. It was fine for the first trek, but when we stopped at the next stop, we had to give our seats up to ticket holders. The train was full, so we really had nowhere to go. We hung out by the luggage rack and eventually thought it would be a good idea to go to the food cart and sit there. You had to buy food to sit there, so after we were done eating, they kicked us out. After every stop, we would try to find a spot…but with no such luck, we were train nomads. After the 3 hour train ride, we arrived in Florence, Italy.

Love and Miss you all!

Sarah