11th May

going to venice from prague's a pain in the ass. we would have to go back to germany, and then to venice, italy. and then we'll have to pass through austria, which our railpass did not cover, so we had to pay extra. it's an overnight train from munich to venice too, and there weren't any seats available, so we had to reserve the couchettes, which was quite interesting.

and here are two idiots on their way to venice.

carmen choy has no photos of the couchettes, and my card reader is fucked, so there's no photos (anyway i don't think i got good photos). but it's this really cramped sleeping area with 6 beds, three on each side, and the beds are kinda like stacked on top of each other in some strange sort of triple decker style. the bed's actually like some sort of platform fixed to the wall, and you end up sleeping on it through the entire night.

in venice, we stayed at hotel vienna, which was off the main island (santa lucia) and on mestre. the hotel... the staff was pretty nice, enduring all our stupid endless questions. and the food was relatively ok. and the laundromat was nearby. that's about the only thing good about the hotel. 

in fact, the hotel was ahtiong land, with an ahtiong smell. it's probably run by an ahtiong, and ahtiongs were coming in and out everyday. we witnessed this hilarious conversation with the receptionist and a china tour guide. the china tour guide was speaking in italian, and the receptionist was replying in italian as well. we didn't think there was anything wrong, as the tour guide sounded quite pro. until the tour guide said to some tourist, "我也不知道他在说什么." OMG. that totally had me and carmen in hysterics. i was controlling my laughter, not laughing at all, until we looked at each other and burst out in laughter. it was kinda rude. but seriously. wtf is wrong with the tour guide.

and the hotel room. toilet's fucking pathetic. the shower is this tiny area bounded by the shower curtain, with really poor drainage system. the beds were fine, and the room rather big, but OMG the worst thing was MOSQUITOS. i had like ten bites the first night, and more the second. lucky we only stayed for two days, if not i'll have more bites than i ever had in my life. the mozzies here are fucking big, and different from those in singapore. the bites they leave makes my skin swell up really badly, and they bit my face too. and it's really itchy. i have no idea whether it was venice with the mosquito problem, or the hotel, as we never got any bites other than in the hotel itself. the morning we left, carmen killed two mozzies, i killed four, and there were at least two big ones still flying around. i killed the mozzies by smashing them against the wall, so there kind of are like blood stains on the wall with the dead mozzies plastered to them. hope the ahtiongs cleaning the room notice the stain and do something about the MOZZIE PROBLEM OMG.

We hung out around santa lucia the first day. a super touristy area with lots of gelato shops. we had gelato TWICE in venice and we forgot to take photos both times. oops. i had the cookies flavour, with "bits of cookies in it" claimed the shopkeeper. and she gave me a HUGE scoop. turns out that the bits of cookies weren't bits at all. you know the size of an oreo? well the bits were like half the size of an oreo cookie. yum yum. and it only cost like 1 euro. gelato in singapore is so much more expensive. :(

and we kinda got ripped off when we bought orange juice to drink. 2.5euros for a carton?? the orange must have been plucked by the hand of god or something.

right. anyway, you guys remember social studies classes about venice, the city on water or something like that? yeah well that's only true for the main island, where the only available form of public transport is boats. they have the water bus, the water taxis, their own private boats, and the gondolas. we bought a 36hr travel pass which gave us unlimited rides on the water bus, so we definitely spent a lot of time on the bus. 

one extremely stupid incident. our first time on the water bus, we scanned our ticket and crossed the tiny bridge, to what we thought was the bus. we wondered for damn long why the hell aren't we moving yet, before an actual water bus CAME and we realized we were on the station. wtf we are idiots.

the streets of venice are pretty small, unless you're walking out in the campo or something. the streets are kinda like alleys, and pretty hard to navigate, with the numerous turns and stuff. it's quite easy to get lost in it. and we wouldn't dare to walk around at night.

this is me eating a slice of actual italian pizza. cost about 2 euros, and it's SO DAMN FUCKING GOOD. hello gimme moar please thank you. it's a crime not to eat pizza in italy, so go do it or something.

and this is the piazza which venice is so damn famous for. cultural idiot here, so no idea what's the significance of it. lots of pigeons here, and was kinda scared that birds would poop on my hair, so i actually bought a cap before that. but i forgot to bring the cap, and was lucky enough (or unlucky) not to have a bird poop on me. i nearly wanted to say how lucky we were, but was afraid of being乌鸦嘴, so i kept my mouth shut.

there's another church at one end of the piazza, so we went in too. i have no idea why we keep going into churches, seeing how unreligious we are.

after this, we travelled by the water bus to santa maria, another church. same old, same old, photos to see, nothing to describe.

got carbonara and lasagne for dinner, which was at this place which served cheap and good food. yay for the find. also, the sinks in the toilet were pretty interesting. in singapore, as long as you don't see any way to turn on the tap manually you assume it's an automatic one, don't you? well, we definitely thought so. after sticking our hands under the tap for awhile and with no water coming out, we started looking for ways to turn on the tap, including twisting the tap and stuff. turns out there's this pedal thingy under the sink where you step on it to get the water flowing.

and then came my favourite part of the day. cheapo sim and cheapo choy took advantage of the travel pass, and we went to take the water bus with the longest trip, slightly more than an hour. this bus brought us about the grand canal of venice, so we got to see many of the sights we saw on foot. extremely enjoyable for me, seeing how much i love sea travel, but not so much for choy who gets motion sickness at the drop of a hat. on our way back (we took it back and forth), the sun was setting, and the lights were coming on, so we kinda got to see venice at night (kinda because it was still quite bright at 8 plus and we didn't want to stay too late).

and then it was heading back to mestre and our hotel. by the time we reached mestre, the sky was totally dark and the streets were pretty deserted, so we were a little freaked out and walked extremely quickly behind another guy, figuring that no one would rob us with another person nearby (the other guy was dragging a luggage and came from the station, so we assumed he wasn't a robber in disguise). it was definitely a relief to reach the hotel. but at that time, we didn't know about the MOZZIE problem...