Venezia: Giorno Uno

Our journey to Venezia was very nice. This started off a bit shaky, but everything smoothed out upon arrival. As it turns out, the bug that has been going around has gotten worse. There are five guys from Calpoly that are sick. Even Jill's (the Calpoly TA) dad is extremely sick. We really need to figure out what it is because students are dropping like flies.

After checking into the hotel, we had a swift walking tour of the city. It was not easy to pay attention on this tour because the lady (Sra. Pietroboun) walks very fast. The streets are so narrow that we walked in single file lines for most of the tour. The radios kept losing reception becuase of the size of the group. Overall, the tour was nice... and later I will learn that is was rather helpful.

I had set up to go to dinner with a group of students, but had to cancel because Sharon said we would have a faculty dinner. Initially, I was unhappy about this because I had no idea what to talk about. However, I sat on the vaporetto with Jere and he kept the conversation light. I dinner, I sat across from Paolo and we had wonderful conversation. He explained to the table that the people would keep bringing food until we said basta. This was true. We had mussles, grits & shrimp, smoked swordfish & salmon, fried calimari and shrimp, sorbet and finished with a cappucino. We had all of this on a day that they don't serve fish in Venezia. It was awesome.

After dinner, Peter wanted to introduce me to some grad students. He also showed me some places on the mainland that the students could hang out. The places were jumping, but I was really tired and ready to go to bed. I didn't get back until about 2am. Part of the reason we were so late is because we were not sure where the place was, nor how to get back. Not to mention that I had to go to the bathroom the majority of the time. The walking tour we had earlier came in handy because I had already taken note of where some local restrooms were. I used this to navigate and orient myself within the town.