Part V: V is for Venice!

The last leg of our journey had finally arrived. It was amazing how many Italian trains we’d seen the inside of at this point. We got to the Venice train station at 5:30 in the morning – exhausted, freezing cold, and in dire need of showers. We waited in the lobby until 6:00, when a café in the station opened. We went in to warm up and have a little breakfast (of things we had packed, of course…we needed to eat stuff up before flying back home), and make our plan of attack. After checking our big luggage into the drop-off place, it was off to explore the main island of Venice! Which is apparently where all the action is…there’s nothing of interest on the mainland, as we found out later. Anyway, even though we were extremely exhausted, it was still fun to see the canals-for-streets and watch people getting around on vaporettos and water-taxis. We took a look at the Rialto Bridge and the cool-looking houses, and pondered what on Earth ever possessed Italians to build a city on 117 tiny islands in the Adriatic Sea. I guess we’ll never know…

We also took a look at some gondolas! We didn’t ride one, though, because we weren’t willing to shell out the bucks for something that would probably be really awkward anyway. Gondolas seem to be the realm of cute coupley-ness, which we most certainly didn’t qualify for.

After doing a good deal of entertaining shopping for glass jewelry, it was time to head to the hotel. It had been the longest morning EVER, but 2:00 had to come sometime. And boy, were we ready for it. After crossing over to the mainland on yet another train, we found the bus we needed and got on. We quickly found out that the bus had a lot more stops than we originally thought, and also that our hotel was apparently way out in the boonies, so much so that it didn’t really feel like Venice anymore. And thank goodness that there were two nice Italian ladies on the bus to help us (they didn’t speak English, but with our knowledge of Spanish, the very few Italian words we collectively know, and some hand gestures, we figured it out), because we never would have found the hotel without them – poor European signage strikes again. But we made it, nonetheless. The check-in lady also did not speak English, but since we were mostly talking numbers, cognates came to our rescue again. After getting our money figured out, we headed up to our room.

The hotel was quite nice – the first legit hotel I’ve stayed in since arriving in Madrid, I think, and when it’s at a hostel price, how can you go wrong? We had our own little room and bathroom, decorated in a pretty antique style. This was somewhat lost on us, however, as all we wanted to do was sleep. Which we promptly did. For fourteen hours. It was glorious! We went to sleep at 3:00, fully intending to get up at 6:00, but didn’t wake up to the alarm and slept until 9:00 p.m.! We stayed awake for three hours to re-pack once again and get everything in order for leaving in the morning, and went back to bed at 12:00, sleeping until it was time to get up, take wooonderful showers (finally!!) and then get to the airport to fly back to Spain.

We were almost home! We couldn’t wait. Unfortunately, however, we had to do so for longer than we were expecting. When we got to Barcelona, we had to hurry to catch the last bus of the night back to Pamplona. After going to the wrong station and then scrambling to find the bus company’s office, we arrived there only to find out that every bus back to Pamplona that night was crammed full. And we hadn’t bought tickets beforehand, since we didn’t know for sure when we would land and what bus exactly we would be able to take. Perfect. After feeling desperate for a while and hoping in vain that the waiting list would come through for us, we ended up buying tickets for the 7:30 bus the next morning and making plans to wait out the night. Megan and I were ready to hole up in the station and take turns sleeping through the night since we didn’t want to pay for yet another hostel, but Lauren really wanted to try to find a room. The lady at the bus station gave us the name of a hostel close by, and we figured we might as well go check it out. This turned out to be a good decision – in any case, I could totally feel God’s guiding hand in the whole experience. He’s working overtime with us this semester, let me tell you! And I’m so very grateful for it. When we got to the hostel and buzzed in, this nice older lady came down to talk to us – I can’t explain it, but I got this weird feeling like she knew we were coming! Kinda cool. She was super nice when we told her that we had nowhere to sleep for the night, and told us that she had a triple for us for 20 euro apiece, which is a great price on such short notice. Especially since we overheard other people who checked in who had to pay 35 euro for a room. So we were very blessed! I ended up being quite glad that we hadn’t opted to stay in the station – a full night’s sleep was so needed at that point.

The next morning, we got up early and made SURE our butts were on that 7:30 bus. We made it with no trouble (we could see the station from our hostel window) and were finally, finally on our way home to Pamplona. And one long bus ride later, we were there! I’ve never been so happy to see the inside of that bus station.

So after a long, amazing adventure, we were finally back! A little more tired, a little wiser, and a lot poorer, we were back among familiar things again. The trip had its difficulties, but it also had some wonderful moments! There are so many things that I know I’ll never forget.