And so the story continues. After returning from Monaco I spent only 10 days swamped in midterms and group presentations/reports before Jess and I whisked ourselves away to Venice, Italy on Thursday November 4, 2010. We had both visited Italy on previous trips to Europe but my cities travelled were limited to Rome, Pisa, Florence, Naples, Sorrento and Capri so Venice was one I wasn't going to miss out on a second time around. Not only that but we managed to get our flight tickets for only 100 euro round trip and a hotel reservation for a hostel price of 20 euro a night! We definitely scored a deal. However, we spent the whole week leading up to this trip not only anxious about our school work but anxious about another French strike. Seemingly, Air France (our airline of choice) was planning a strike of their airport staff for the day we were planning to leave as well as the day after. To top it off, French transport unions had decided to strike the 3 days after which included the day of our flight home to Grenoble. Well weren't Jess and I just soooo pleased.
In the end things worked out fine and although there was only one Air France rep working the counter at the airport, it wasn't very busy anyways so we made it through and the planes still flew the skies. Luckily, the French transport unions actually shortened, or limited, their strike the following days so we were able to make it home (barely) but that's anoth
er story for later.
er story for later.Jess and I quite enjoyed our 5 day weekend in Venice. It was a bit warmer than in Grenoble (12 degrees) but the sun was nowhere to be found. I heard later on that intense fog is pretty typical of Venice for that time of year but it did add a mysterious feel to the city on water. We voted against doing the super touristy things so Jess and I spent lots of our time just wandering around, shopping, and eating gelato and pizza. Of course we visited the Piazza San Marco and the Ponte Rialto but our favourite turned out to be the island of Murano or the "glass island." It was so easy to spend a whole day there just admiring the hand blown glass art and far to easy to spend our money on unique glass jewelery.
We had a project to submit online while we were in Venice so it was the first time we took our laptops on a trip and I would never do it again. Travelling on weekends has acted as our relaxation time and escape from the craziness that school brings and bringing our laptops and having access to email just didn't provide us with that same freedom. However, homework did NOT stop us from enjoying wine in our hotel room and picking up a delicious pizza (flat crust with roasted red peppers, eggplant, zucchini and cheese) to-go from the local Restaurante Palladio up the road...YUM, YUM!
We managed to avoid rain all weekend except it caught up to us our last night there. We were quite a sight running around the main island with our shoes soaked and broken umbrella in hand trying to find our way and duck into stores whenever possible to stay some kind of dry. After a tasty meal we decided to check out a live show about Venezia at the Teatro San Gallo. It was actually very interesting to learn all about the history of the city and how they became known for the strange masks and stories, although it would have been better had we seen it at the start of the weekend and knew more about the things we saw along the way. Either way, our last night was a good one and we tried to head to bed by 10pm since we had to get up at 4am the next morning to head to the airport....early morning flights were only our choice because we still had class to attend that day.
The airport story (long story short): Jess and I were informed only a day before our flight that there were no busses that actually ran to the airport early enough to get us there for our flight at 630am (since we were staying in Malcontenta which is outside of Venice). Thus, we had to figure something else out and were advised that the best idea would be to bus to one of the train stations and catch a taxi from there to the airport, which was still going to cost us 30 euro. We weren't happy about that but we were informed that there would be taxis at the train station at that hour and they were more reliable then hoping the busses would run on time. Boy was THAT a wrong assumption! We made it to the train station on time only to find out there were no taxis. After some waiting, panicking, then imagining of the worst case scenario and the amount of cash we might have had to dish out to get home for classes, a taxi waiting for a reservation at a hotel across the street called in another taxi for us. By this point we were running out of time and had about 45 mintues before our flight was going to leave. I feared for my life as we flew down the dark, slippery roads at 110 km/hr in a 70 zone but the amazing driver got us to the airport in 7 minutes (a supposed 15 minute drive). We made it through check-in in time but boarding had started and finished while we waited through the security line up. We heard "Spillett and Steingard" paged not one but three times before we cut in line and sprinted to our gate, panting and getting a dirty look from the gate attendant. 
Of course we made it home safe and sound and off to class that afternoon but boy were we already worn out from the day by the time 7am rolled around and we had classes until 8pm that night. No....we didn't end up making it and skipped the last hour and a half of marketing. You try paying attention to a class you've already taken after that kind of day!
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