Gelato in Venice
We have tried to make the most of any free time. Today, we went to a little unknown place called Venice. I’m sure you’ve heard of it? Beautiful canal streets? Incredible restaurants on every corner? Sick Commedia masks showing the incredible history of the city? Don’t worry about it, it’s not a well-known place.
Our day started fairly early to make the most out of our free weekend. A tip about traveling on Italian trains in a group, stick to the Italo trains with assigned seating. We were a group of six and tried to sit together… it didn’t work. Make it easier for yourself and learn from our mistakes.
As soon as we got to Venice, we rushed to find a restaurant. We were ready to eat a horse, a cow, an hippogriffo… anything. We did not have to look far. We found a nice restaurant with garden seating. We shared some appetizers, wine, laughs, and, of course, some upset stomachs afterwards. It was a nice start to our trip. I got a plate of salmon cream pasta, starting my spiral of eating pasta every day. I wish I was exaggerating.
We had a filling dinner with wine, octopus salad, black squid ink pasta and seafood soup. It was vital that we got seafood at every meal. And to finish off a great Italian meal we had to get gelato, right? Little did we know, that gelato did not want us, or at least, it didn’t want Faoilean Cosgrove. After buying gelato, a couple of us went ahead to make sure we got to the airbnb on time. Suddenly, I hear a loud scream right next to me. My thoughts during this moment were: “oh my god, it could not have been that bad, why do we need to scream?” But it was. It was that bad. I looked to my left and my friend Faoilean is juggling her gelato across her body. Just in time, our friend Ian sticks out his arm, catching all of the gelato with his hand. We were all screaming. It was complete insanity. Faoilean is covered in her signature choice of lemon and chocolate gelato. Her phone is on the ground also covered in gelato. Ian’s arm, hand, and watch are stained with the deceivingly innocent Italian delicacy. And I am standing still in complete shock about how this happened in the first place. I’ve heard a lot about being careful with your personal belongings (“all of your things will get stolen if you leave it alone!”), so I turn the attention to the gelato covered phone on the ground. With perfect timing, our friend that stayed behind calls us. Picturing the phone on the ground, with the name "Sam Chachra" peering through the chocolate will forever make me cackle. This chaos was a omen for the rest of our trip, and bad luck managed to follow us in the smallest, but definitely noticeable, ways.
The rest of the day included a lot of sightseeing, coffee drinking, and pretending we were British (we even managed to fit some Southern, Russian, and Australian in there). St. Mark’s Square was beautiful, the mussels we ate were perfect and the nightlife was nonexistent. We spent most of our night at a colorful little place called “Bra Bar” where the drinks taste like actual candy. Little suggestion, once you get to Bra Bar, don’t leave Bra Bar. Bra Bar is home. Bra Bar is comfort. Bra Bar is life.
The first day was fairly normal compared to the scares we would have to endure on the last day. Even though we were safe about picking where we were staying, evil can creep in any corner. All I’ll say is, stay covered while you sleep. Take precautions. The devil spares no one, and by the devil, I mean bed bugs.
Thankfully, we didn’t actually have bed bugs. But it was fun thinking we did. Pictured below: getting back to Villa Natalia and having to place all our belongings in trash bags. Win, we did not.
-Milena Kayla Makse
