Italia: Day 6

Today was my first day in Venice. I woke up early and took the train from Florence to Venice. At the end of the train ride, we go on a long bridge over the ocean, which was something I wasn't expecting. It was beautiful.

We made our way to the hostel, dropped off our things, and headed straight to Saint Mark's Square. On the way, we crossed numerous bridges, each more beautiful than the last. I have about 500 pictures of bridges on my phone! Venice was the most beautiful place I'd seen, and I'd only been there 20 minutes. There were many shops in the square, so we looked around those. There were also a ton of stores

along the way, which is perfect for me, because I love to shop. The most common store that I saw were mask stores. Carnival is a very popular party in Venice, and it happened to be a week before we arrived, so there was an abundance of cool masks. I bought a black metal one that I thought was really beautiful.

Once at the Square, we entered the astounding basilica. On the outside, it was covered in glowing gold-leaf and it had colorful paintings. The inside matched, as almost the entire interior was lined in gold.

On the way back to the hostel, we noticed something strange happened as it was starting to get dark. The streets of Venice were empty. I think we crossed paths with only four of five people during the thirty minute walk back to the hostel. What was even creepier

was that the water in the canals was so dark and still. I thought something was going to pop out. But once we got back to the quarter where the hostel was located, everything was fine. There were lights and people, and stores were open again!