No, Jill and I did not take a gondola ride

Pictures of my trip and graduation can be found if you click here. I haven't had a chance to label them yet. Sorry.

Well I've been back in the US of A for about two weeks now and keep thinking that I need to finish telling the tales of my travels. Life has just turned crazy since I've been home. I started bar review classes last week and they are just killing me. I have class six days a week for 3 1/2 hours with random 8 hour days thrown in every now and then just for good measure. On top of that, I'm supposed to be studying for 4-6 hours a day. HA! I had to basically quit my job again until August. I still have to pop in every now and then to make sure the place doesn't fall down, but I'm trying to stay away as much as possible. (By the way, I don't really think the place will fall down without me, but I need to check messages and filing dates and stuff.) The moral of the story is that the bar is HARD! There is so much to know. For all 2 of you that are interested, here's how it breaks down:

Day 1: 6 hours, 12 essay questions - each on a different area of law.

Day 2: 6 hours, 200 multiple choice questions.

Not only is it a test of knowledge, but also one of straight endurance. Okay, I'll stop trying to procure the sympathy of the 2 people still reading and move on.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

We arose with the sun, or maybe a little before, packed our bags and left the beautiful city of Florence to embark on our next train ride; destination Venice.

Now finding our way in Venice was the hardest yet because everything is on water. All the taxibuses are really boats. So we thought we were supposed to take a bus to our hotel, but no, it's a boat. The boats were crowded and we were lugging a lot of stuff. Somehow, though I have no idea how, we managed to find the right taxi boat and board it without much trauma. The problem started when we got off. We started wandering but our map was not matching the street names that we were seeing. By this point in our journey, I had learned to stop wandering and ask for help. The only people around were two older women who were clearly natives. I approached them and rudely interrupted their conversation to ask for directions. Neither of them spoke a lick of English so I showed them the address of and the map to our hotel. Apparently we got off on the wrong place. She walked us back to the taxibus stop chatting all the while in her native tongue while I nodded and smiled. She motioned for us to follow her back onto a boat where she saw another woman that she knew. They chatted for a while and we were told that the new woman would be our companion. At least that's we gathered. We rode the bus for a while until our new companion walked off the boat and motioned that we follow. She then proceeded to lead us through a maze they call the streets of Venice for quite a while until we ended up at the front door of the most obscure hotel I'd ever seen. I tried to pay her for her time, but she would not accept it. I swear, the nicest people in the world are in Italy. Well we checked into our hotel, then headed off to explore Venice.

We first went to the famous San Marco Square. We walked through yet another beautiful church and just looked at the shops around the square. We hung out with the 3 million pigeons in the square. Those pigeons are absolutely not afraid of people. A couple landed on the head of a little boy, probably about 3 or 4 years old. I have no doubt that that little boy will be deathly afraid of birds for the rest of his life. He was screaming! So sad.

After wandering around for a little while, we decided to just ride the waterbus up the canal and around for a while to get a broad view of Venice. That was nice. We got off for a little jaunt down some of the streets of Murano. Murano is a little island right next to Venice that is famous for glass blowing. All the glass blowing stuff was closed, but we walked around the neighborhoods. I fell in love. The houses were SO CUTE! I wish I could live there forever. I really felt like I was in a movie.

We eventually finished our waterbus ride around the city and went back to freshen up at our hotel. We weren't ready for bed, so thought we'd wander the city at night. Venice is beautiful at night. I just love water so much though that it made it even better. Watching the gondolas and the boats run on the canal was just so peaceful. Also, it was this night that Jill and I stumbled across a gelato store that was selling crepes. Each of us ordered a crepe that had chocolate and bananas in it. Words cannot express the delight that my tastebuds experienced upon partaking of this chocolate fantasy. I may seem to be a little dramatic about this, but it was THAT GOOD. I almost cried. Eventually we ended back at our hotel room for the night.

What I learned in day 6:

1. Venice does not smell as bad as everyone says it does. In fact, it didn't smell at all.
2. (Dedicated to Jill) When the menu says Pureed Sea Bream, it really is going to be the puree of something that came out of the sea. Why did that surprise you? Nasty!
3. Chicken Croquettes are really chicken nuggets (like the kind you get from Costco) with spaghetti sauce on them.
4. Don't kick the pigeons in San Marco Square. At least that's what Jill's friend Dave says.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

We awoke at our leisure (finally). There are less "sights" in Venice, so we just wandered around the city. We went to a different neighborhood, San Paulo, which was very cute. I just loved all the canals running through the city. We didn't do anything specific, but time seemed to fly by. We did have lunch at a restaurant right on the edge of the Grand Canal. Wow! You know, there are some things you just can't explain. I will just say that it was very cool.

We had to catch a plane to Paris, so we had our last gelato of Italy. I chose 3 flavors: coconut, banana, and peach. I was very satisfied with my choice. I don't think Jill liked choices, but if I remember correctly, she ordered mint, peach, and some berry cream. What kind of combo is that? After we finished our gelato, we gathered our bags and embarked on the longest journey of my life (it seemed).

Keep in mind that throughout this whole journey that I am about to describe, we were carrying a whole bunch of STUFF and also that Venice, as with all of Italy, is full of STAIRS! At about 4:00 pm, we started off by walking to the taxi bus which took us to the bus station. We then waited a while for an actual bus to come. That bus finally came and after about an hour dumped us at a small airport. We waited in line for about an eternity before getting to the counter. I thought that my baggage was going to be overweight, so I tried to take something out of it and shove it in the duffel bag that had all the purses. The result of that maneuver was a gaping tear in the duffel bag. What on earth was I supposed to do about that? The check in guy gave us some tape that was about as useful as...well you get my point. I think my dad would have said "As useful as tits on a boar hog", but since I'm a lady, I won't say something like that. I digress. So basically, we just hope that our stuff doesn't fall out and go ahead and send it on the conveyor belt. Turns out my bag was actually underweight. I'm an idiot. After we checked in, we waited FOREVER in the least organized facility I've ever been in. We did meet some nice girls that were doing the exact opposite trip that we were doing. We traded tips and eventually boarded the airplane to Paris. By this time, it's about 9:00 pm. We got to a small airport outside of Paris at about 11:00 pm. From there, we got on another bus to take us into Paris. We got into the city at about 12:30 pm. I swear I was a complete zombie by this point. We were supposed to catch the subway, but it had closed. We were on the completely opposite side of the city from our hotel, but it seemed we had no other choice but to get a taxi. I hailed the first one I saw. Are all taxis in Paris Mercedes or was I just lucky enough to hail the most expensive mode of transportation possible? I honestly would have paid someone $100 at that moment to just take me to my hotel room. We got the added bonus of driving past and seeing the Arc de Triumph in the middle of the night without any tourists around. It was very surreal. Luckily it only cost about 30 Euros, which is still not cheap but I could have kissed the taxi driver for taking us directly to the door step of our hotel. It was the first hotel we didn't have to search for. Well, we checked in and went right to bed. It was probably the least comfortable bed of the trip, but I didn't even care.

What I learned in day 7:

1. Flying may sound way easier than taking an overnight train, but it's a big lie.
2. Taxi drivers with GPS systems are my new best friends.
3. There are way less naked statues in Venice than Florence.
4. Glass is beautiful, but really not my style (as in the stuff they make out of glass at Murano).