Merry Christmas Everyone! I hope your was well, and I know mine was! My Christmas was spent in Venice, Italz which was amazing, and the most nontraditional Christmas I've ever had. The trip started on Thursday night when we (Esteban (my friend from Ecuador) and I) had to sleep on the floor at the airport because we had an early flight to Venice and public transportation wouldn't open in time for us to make it. This was quite a poor start to the trip because it was the coldest night I've ever spent. The floor was like a refrigerator and all the benches were taken. Esteban ended up sleeping on a bench and looked quite homeless which I laughed about quite a lot after not sleeping most of the night. I was waiting for him to get up to go to through security and I was sitting in a place where two benches had been pushed together to make more comfortable for sleeping, but these were very dirty and I was crunched up on one side of them where it didn't look quite so nasty. Esteban came over to me and said with the most excitement I'd heard all day, ˝You didn't tell me you got this place!˝ As if I'd been sleeping at the Hilton while he was on some broken bench. Again, after no sleep this turned out to be one of the funniest things I'd ever heard and I proceeded to laugh for about twenty minutes and start all over again whenever I remembered the story.
When we got to Venice, we were met by Diana who is an Ecuadorian friend of Esteban's, and she's studying in Venice. She was awesome and took us all around the city and the islands of Murano and Buran. Murano is famous for the glass making and Burano was the cutest little town of all different colored, gorgeous buildings. The weather was a little rainy on Saturday, but we made the most of it and marched around with our umbrellas and cameras ready. If you've never been to Venice, let me just say it is remarkable how much you can feel like you're in a maze. Sometimes you walk with a purpose and you're like a mouse trying to get to the cheese, but other times you're walking absolutely aimlessly and happy to find whatever may be around the next corner. I was oblivious and had no clue what to expect there. I had no idea there were no cars and how tiny the ˝streets˝ were. Over every bridge and down every alley was something new to discover but very old and beautiful. We made a dinner at home on Christmas Eve which was the most ridiculous, but hilarious, Christmas dinner I've ever had. Any kind of traditional Christmas food you can think of, I'm sure we didn't have it. But, I loved it and it added a great new Christmas memory, all though I did miss my family and thinking about what kinds of food they would be having at home. Christmas was a day completely devoted to exploring. I didn't really care to enter any of the buildings or museums because I was having such a good time wandering and exploring. I love the city of Venice and would highly recommend it as a vacation destination.
However, today is Monday and time to move on to the next city. I was panicking this morning because we didn't have a print-out of our bus tickets from the Venice airport to Ljubljana, Slovenia. So we found our way through the maze which is the city of Venice to a print shop early in the morning. After, a couple of guaranteed wrong turns the shop turned out to be closed so we hurried home to try to pull up our tickets on an iPod to make the most of it and hope the bus people don't care. Then, we were off to the airport. What we didn't anticipate is that absolutely no one at any information desk or bus ticket counter had ever heard of the company we had bought our tickets to Slovenia through. Good thing we got there an hour early because, of course, I started freaking out and scurring around to find anything. I was feeling completely panicked and asking anyone I could find and searching the bus areas for anyone who could point us in the right direction. Esteban, however, being quite smart while I was running around thinking we got ripped off and bought our tickets through a scam website, found a computer at the airport that could be used for a couple euros and found where the bus was supposed to pick us up ˝exactly.˝ This didn't turn out to be so exact though because with ten minutes until the bus was supposed to leave we still had no sign of where we really needed to be and get on. So, of course, and international bus would be like a tour bus with bathrooms and a giant display right? Well this is what we'd been looking for until I noticed a couple around our area wandering and searching and appearing just as panicked as we did. I finally asked the guy where he was going and he said Slovenia as well and he had luckily just found the ˝bus˝ which actually turned out to be more of a van with a driver who spoke zero English or Spanish and very little Italian. We showed him our little iPod tickets and, after a few seconds or realizing we were never going to understand each other enough to explain ourselves, he just passed us through with a kind of, ˝whatever; get in,˝ kind of look. There turned out to be a total of 5 passengers in our van and it looked pretty sketchy. I told Esteban that this is where they drive us to the middle of nowhere and kick us while driving away with all our stuff. The driver was driving 150 km/hr in an 80 km/hr zone, and I quickly put on my seatbelt. We ended up dropping this one guy off in the middle of nowhere off some random exit which didn't make us feel anymore comfortable with the whole situation. A little while later, we pulled over at some random gas station just before the border of Slovenia where 6 very large, Slovenia women approached the van. There were only 4 seats available so we all kinda exchange worried glances. Luckily, only 3 of them got in and not to be mean but one of the women had the thickest mustache I've ever seen. We continued on our trip and the driver took out something that looked like a strange water bottle, and as we slightly swerved back and forth over the centerline, Esteban leaned over and said, ˝Gosh, I hope that's not Vodka.˝ Needless to say, we arrived in Ljubljana intact and 45 minutes earlier than expected as a result of our speedy driver.
Anja picked us up promptly and took us with her cousin through some of the Christmas markets and to see some of the little sights of this little city. It was really cool and completely different from the other big, European cities I've been to which made it a little exciting. When we got to Anja's house, her mom had made us a traditional Slovenian meal which was AMAZING! Her parents are crop farmers and everything we had a dinner was homemade. We had a veggie that was pretty much saurkraut and a homemade sausage with homemade wine and cornmeal and mashed potatoes. Everything was so tasty and they made us eat until we were stuffed out of our minds. Anja's parents can understand some but don't speak any English so it was kind of exciting to be a table with constant translations. Esteban, being a food scientist, wanted to know all about the food and what her dad does while Anja's dad wanted to know all about the food and landscape of Ecuador. It was really fun, and we were welcomed so warmly. So far it's been amazing, and I'll try to keep up with the next adventures soon. Tomorrow we're going on a tour of the farm and Anja's little village which consists of about 300 people.
Merry Christmas Everyone! I hope your was well, and I know mine was! My Christmas was spent in Venice, Italz which was amazing, and the most nontraditional Christmas I've ever had. The trip started on Thursday night when we (Esteban (my friend from Ecuador) and I) had to sleep on the floor at the airport because we had an early flight to Venice and public transportation wouldn't open in time for us to make it. This was quite a poor start to the trip because it was the coldest night I've ever spent. The floor was like a refrigerator and all the benches were taken. Esteban ended up sleeping on a bench and looked quite homeless which I laughed about quite a lot after not sleeping most of the night. I was waiting for him to get up to go to through security and I was sitting in a place where two benches had been pushed together to make more comfortable for sleeping, but these were very dirty and I was crunched up on one side of them where it didn't look quite so nasty. Esteban came over to me and said with the most excitement I'd heard all day, ˝You didn't tell me you got this place!˝ As if I'd been sleeping at the Hilton while he was on some broken bench. Again, after no sleep this turned out to be one of the funniest things I'd ever heard and I proceeded to laugh for about twenty minutes and start all over again whenever I remembered the story. 
When we got to Venice, we were met by Diana who is an Ecuadorian friend of Esteban's, and she's studying in Venice. She was awesome and took us all around the city and the islands of Murano and Buran. Murano is famous for the glass making and Burano was the cutest little town of all different colored, gorgeous buildings. The weather was a little rainy on Saturday, but we made the most of it and marched around with our umbrellas and cameras ready. If you've never been to Venice, let me just say it is remarkable how much you can feel like you're in a maze. Sometimes you walk with a purpose and you're like a mouse trying to get to the cheese, but other times you're walking absolutely aimlessly and happy to find whatever may be around the next corner. I was oblivious and had no clue what to expect there. I had no idea there were no cars and how tiny the ˝streets˝ were. Over every bridge and down every alley was something new to discover but very old and beautiful. We made a dinner at home on Christmas Eve which was the most ridiculous, but hilarious, Christmas dinner I've ever had. Any kind of traditional Christmas food you can think of, I'm sure we didn't have it. But, I loved it and it added a great new Christmas memory, all though I did miss my family and thinking about what kinds of food they would be having at home. Christmas was a day completely devoted to exploring. I didn't really care to enter any of the buildings or museums because I was having such a good time wandering and exploring. I love the city of Venice and would highly recommend it as a vacation destination.
However, today is Monday and time to move on to the next city. I was panicking this morning because we didn't have a print-out of our bus tickets from the Venice airport to Ljubljana, Slovenia. So we found our way through the maze which is the city of Venice to a print shop early in the morning. After, a couple of guaranteed wrong turns the shop turned out to be closed so we hurried home to try to pull up our tickets on an iPod to make the most of it and hope the bus people don't care. Then, we were off to the airport. What we didn't anticipate is that absolutely no one at any information desk or bus ticket counter had ever heard of the company we had bought our tickets to Slovenia through. Good thing we got there an hour early because, of course, I started freaking out and scurring around to find anything. I was feeling completely panicked and asking anyone I could find and searching the bus areas for anyone who could point us in the right direction. Esteban, however, being quite smart while I was running around thinking we got ripped off and bought our tickets through a scam website, found a computer at the airport that could be used for a couple euros and found where the bus was supposed to pick us up ˝exactly.˝ This didn't turn out to be so exact though because with ten minutes until the bus was supposed to leave we still had no sign of where we really needed to be and get on. So, of course, and international bus would be like a tour bus with bathrooms and a giant display right? Well this is what we'd been looking for until I noticed a couple around our area wandering and searching and appearing just as panicked as we did. I finally asked the guy where he was going and he said Slovenia as well and he had luckily just found the ˝bus˝ which actually turned out to be more of a van with a driver who spoke zero English or Spanish and very little Italian. We showed him our little iPod tickets and, after a few seconds or realizing we were never going to understand each other enough to explain ourselves, he just passed us through with a kind of, ˝whatever; get in,˝ kind of look. There turned out to be a total of 5 passengers in our van and it looked pretty sketchy. I told Esteban that this is where they drive us to the middle of nowhere and kick us while driving away with all our stuff. The driver was driving 150 km/hr in an 80 km/hr zone, and I quickly put on my seatbelt. We ended up dropping this one guy off in the middle of nowhere off some random exit which didn't make us feel anymore comfortable with the whole situation. A little while later, we pulled over at some random gas station just before the border of Slovenia where 6 very large, Slovenia women approached the van. There were only 4 seats available so we all kinda exchange worried glances. Luckily, only 3 of them got in and not to be mean but one of the women had the thickest mustache I've ever seen. We continued on our trip and the driver took out something that looked like a strange water bottle, and as we slightly swerved back and forth over the centerline, Esteban leaned over and said, ˝Gosh, I hope that's not Vodka.˝ Needless to say, we arrived in Ljubljana intact and 45 minutes earlier than expected as a result of our speedy driver.
Anja picked us up promptly and took us with her cousin through some of the Christmas markets and to see some of the little sights of this little city. It was really cool and completely different from the other big, European cities I've been to which made it a little exciting. When we got to Anja's house, her mom had made us a traditional Slovenian meal which was AMAZING! Her parents are crop farmers and everything we had a dinner was homemade. We had a veggie that was pretty much saurkraut and a homemade sausage with homemade wine and cornmeal and mashed potatoes. Everything was so tasty and they made us eat until we were stuffed out of our minds. Anja's parents can understand some but don't speak any English so it was kind of exciting to be a table with constant translations. Esteban, being a food scientist, wanted to know all about the food and what her dad does while Anja's dad wanted to know all about the food and landscape of Ecuador. It was really fun, and we were welcomed so warmly. So far it's been amazing, and I'll try to keep up with the next adventures soon. Tomorrow we're going on a tour of the farm and Anja's little village which consists of about 300 people.
