Last Day in a Great City

Ok, hands down, Venice is my favorite city.  The water is a gorgeous blue-green, the people are nice, the gelato is fantastic (from best to most interesting: hazelnut, lemon, cherry cream something or other, chocolate, coconut and pistachio), and it's (kindof) cheap (in the scheme of European prices).

Tomorrow I have to get up at 4/430 to leave this beautiful city, but it's been fun and we've exhausted our options on things to do.

Seriously.

This morning we went to Lido, which is the beach 10 minutes away.  We walked around for a long time (couple of hours) and took some really pretty pictures.  The "boardwalk" was closed for the winter, but we hopped the fence and had some fun.  There weren't very many people, but there were all of these little wooden huts covering the ENTIRE beach.  It made me sad.  I'm not too much a fan of the beach, but to cover it with cabanas so you can't even see the ocean from the street is a little excessive. 

We walked back and took the vaparetto up to Rialto, where James got a mask but my puppet man wasn't there anymore.  (I've had bad luck with returning to places.  The puppet man and the jewelry store being the most notable.  I went back to that store both yesterday and today and it was closed all day both days.) We grabbed hot drinks at the same place we got our mini sandwiches yesterday, and then headed over to this bookshop we had heard about.

It was definitely worth the hype.  It was PACKED.  It made me sad that I didn't speak or read Italian, but there were some cool books in English and some diagram books (like boat details and stuff).

Oh, and the best part? It looked like this:

 

Awesome, if you ask me. 

Then we went our separate ways.  We were bored and wanted to see different things and didn't have anything else in any of the three guide books that we hadn't seen or said no to. 

 I wandered east and James wandered west.  We both saw some pretty cool things.  We ended up meeting at the hostel by chance, and I grabbed the marketing book and my laptop and James went out to explore some more.  I felt bad about not having studied yet...

On his adventures, James found a couple little restaurants, and we went to one for dinner.  I got pasta and bean soup that was very tasty and he got lamb that was incredible.  We shared fries (under "vegetables" on the menu) and then afterwards, we decided to be adventurous and tried profiterole.  We didn't actually know what it was, but we pointed at it and it was very, very good. It tasted like a chocolate dipped ice cream cone and vanilla ice cream - pure, creamy heaven.  

During dinner we talked about this and that, but I now have proof that I truly am my father's daughter...

Yup.  That's the paper tablecloth. Yup. That's our renditions of Idaho and South Carolina.  (Don't ask.) Yup, that's my failure to draw Europe under my attempt at the continental US. Yup. I changed Scandinavia into a cape-toting fat gingerbread man (or something). 

It was fun(ny), and we left a very nice note to the restaurant.  All in all, dinner was very tasty and good.

We just got back, I'm going to read marketing and then go to bed early.

Goodnight, world.