Planes, trains, buses...water taxis?

THIS IS A LONG ONE. VERY.


It took many different forms of transportation to get us to Stockholm and to Venice, but we did it.
After we arrived home on Sunday evening from Rome we immediately threw all our clothes into the laundry and got ready to go on our next trip...and as we were getting ready we realized there was a minor problem...

That day we took a train home from Rome to Florence; the train was scheduled to go all the way from Rome to Milan, but Florence was just a stop in between. Well - Sara, one of the members of our group to Sweden, realized that she didn't have her passport. She had taken it out on the train home to get her train ticket out and somehow left her pouch on the train. Thankfully, about 15 minutes after she realized it the police from the Milan train station called the villa and let us know that they had her passport there at the train station and that it would be best if she could come get it as soon as possible.

Seeing as how we were supposed to get on a train the next afternoon (Monday) at 2:30 to go to a town outside of Venice to fly to Stockholm it meant that she was going to have to leave very early the next morning. Long story short, she went to Milan early Monday morning and met us at the airport in Treviso for a very uneventful flight with RyanAir to Stockholm.
We arrived around 10:45 pm at an airport about 1 and 1/2 hours outside of Stockholm (sidenote: RyanAir is cheap - 19.96 for a one way ticket to Stockholm - but they fly to really random airports that are kind hard to access) and had to take a bus into the city to get to our hostel.
When we arrived at the station in central Stockholm it was freezing. I think the cab's thermometer said -8 degrees Celsius. The 4 of us girls decided it would be worth it to pay 14 euros (140 kronors - only the worst currency ever) to get a cab to our hostel. Of course the 4 boys were VERY stubborn and decided to walk all the way there. We arrived at our hostel a little after 1 am and the boys didn't get there til after 2 and they had lots of icicles on their scarves!

The hostel was wonderful. Probably one of the nicest we will stay in while we are here. We had a room with 2 bunk beds and across the hall the boys had the same. It was minimal, but clean and quiet. It was really convenient to the T-bana (Stockholm's subway). We had planned on walking most of the time, but it was just SO cold that if we could take a 10 minutes Subway ride for 20 kronors (less than 2 euros) we would definitely do that. We did a lot of walking on the near by island (Stockholm is an archipelago, made up of a series of islands) of Gamla Stan which is the 'old town'. There is a church (Storkykan) there, lots of stores and cafes and also the big palace where we saw the changing of the guard.

The first day we were there - after a 2 hour adventure that Nick and I went on to find a ForEx so we could exchange our money into really stupid Kronors we embarked upon our first day of our Swedish holiday. We caught the T-bana and went out into the city and went to Skansen which is the world's largest open air museum. It was very obviously the 'off' season - we felt as if we were the only ones there. There are animals and homes set up for different periods of Swedish history...shops, rides - it really reminded us of Branson and/or Gatlinburg. We did take refuge in a 'shelter' that looked very much like a wigwam (it was used by the Samme people who followed the reindeer in Sweden) and sat at the fire to warm up as the man inside told us we were sitting on reindeer pelts...Weird.
After Skansen we got a very late lunch and somehow found our way to the island that housed the Moderna Museet (the Modern Art Museum). We were lucky enough to be there during the 8 or 9 month period that there was a HUGE Andy Warhol exhibit. While I don't know a lot about modern art - I really and truly enjoyed this museum. We got to see tons of famous artists (Andy Warhol, Picasso, Pollock, Salvador Dali, and many others whose names I can not remember) and lots of Swedish artists as well. Modern art is fun to look at because you just never really know what you're going to get.

That night we spent a long time arguing about what we were going to do for dinner - believe me, free travel is much harder than I ever expected it to be - and Sara and Nathan ended up doing something and 6 of us went down to the central part of town to find food. Guess what I found -- SUBWAY! It was one of the happiest days of my life. We ate pretty quick and then went down to this Jazz Cafe (It was very pretentious; I'm almost embarrassed to say I took part haha) and ordered dessert and enjoyed the company, the atmosphere and the music. And, while it was pretentious and I don't love jazz music - it is neat how music transcends all cultures. It was a nice way to end the night.

The next morning we got up early (the girls were ready before the boys AGAIN) and all went different ways - Leigh and Libby just wanted to roam and get coffee and people watch, but I really wanted to go to the Vasa Museet with Tyler and Nick and JT. The Vasa was a ship built in the 1600s in Sweden that has a story very similar to Titanic's. It was thought (at the time) to be the greatest boat ever built - it had two decks of cannons, it was abnormally large and had all these other innovations that no other ship during that time had ever had. However, when the day came for it to set sail, it set off in the harbor, went about 500 yards caught a gust of wind and tipped over --- the base wasn't wide enough! And, there it sunk in the Stockholm harbor. And it sat there until the 1960s when they finally pulled it up and floated it into this museum.

The whole ship is in there - you can't go in it, but that's okay. The exhibits made up for it. The museum was very well planned with different areas of the ship or different things from the ship on each level of the building.

Nick and I were taking pictures of the ship and talking about how interesting it was to us -- the fact that all this time we've been in Florence we've been studying the Renaissance and it's birth under people such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Da Vinci -- and, how in that 100 year period or so, this [ships like the Vasa] was the Renaissance in Sweden. It was just so different than anything we had been studying so far. And eye opening for sure.

After the Vasa museum we jumped on a bus and headed back to the city center to go to some department store that was supposedly really cool - I can't remember what it was it was initials (not H&M) but maybe N&H - oh well, regardless it was very snooty and very expensive but fun to roam around in nonetheless. We had some extra time so we crossed a bridge to another island and went to Stockholm's city hall. Their city hall is quite famous - mainly because...this is where the Nobel Peace Prizes are presented! Normally you can climb up the tower if you come in relatively warmer months, but unfortunately it was February and freezing and we couldn't - otherwise it would have made for a great place to take photos. We wondered over to another church and then met everyone else at the train station to take a bus back to the airport to fly to Venice.

After taking a bus from Treviso (where the airport is) into Mestre and then a water taxi from Mestre to Venice....we were finally there around 10:15. While we whined about getting in at night - riding on the front of the water taxi was fantastic because we got to see Venice lit up at night. It was very beautiful.

We got off at some stop and everyone was trying to navigate the map to see if they could figure out which way to go in the maze that is Venice to get to our hostel. Tyler thought he would have the bright idea to go ask the Italian man where our hostel was.
This is the conversation.
Tyler: Scuzi?
Man: Si?
Tyler: Do you know where hotel albergo is?
Man: Cosa?
Tyler: Hotel Albergo?
Man: Cosa?
(Tyler getting louder, slower - this is when I hear and realize what he's saying)
Tyler: Hotel ALBERGO??

In Italian, Albergo means hotel. It was funny.
We eventually made it to our hostel (we had a bathroom in our room this time!) and then went out around 11:15 to search for food because we hadn't eaten since Stockholm. It was hard but we finally found a place that served us fantastic pizza.
We agreed to meet at 8 the next morning to pay for our hostel (we were very happy to once again be operating in Euros) and the girls - we were packed and in the lobby at 8, the boys -- well, we didn't leave the hostel til about 8:40. PRECIOUS TIME!!

We went to St. Mark's square together and got pastries for breakfast and sat on the steps of the colonnade and watched the water and the pigeons and the church. We visited the church once it opened; it was very different than most Catholic churches we've seen. You could also see how in danger the city is from inside that church; there were only certain areas that you could walk on and they were very adamant about that - you could see how wavy the floor was because the foundation is settling/sinking. The ceiling has more gold on it than any other church I've ever seen - it's absolutely priceless.

After, Leigh Libby and I did our own thing. We went into about 1 billion glass shops and had a hey-day buying gifts for people! I bought a few things in one shop and as I was leaving the owner/designer came out and handed me a glass bead made for a necklace that was being sold for 10 or 15 euros -- as a gift!! He did that for Libby too. The Venetian glass is beautiful. And very unique.
We went in and out of shops - bought postcards, watched the gondoliers, took pictures and ate lunch at a ristorante on the Grande Canal. We saw a couple that had just gotten married (it was Valentine's day mind you) posing on the Rialto bridge for the wedding photos; I got a great shot of them - it was quite picturesque.
We ended up eating gelato and sitting on steps right in front of the Grande Canal and the train station just watching the gondolas go by and visiting. If I couldn't be with a certain person for Valentine's Day, it was worth it to be in a beautiful city with 2 girls that are becoming some of my very best friends.
While we were sitting there we saw this older couple - mid-60s - walk out of the train station each with their little rolling bag and immediately sit on the steps about 25 feet from us. He put his arm around her shoulder and she held out her hand and he kissed it and they just sat there like that for about 15 minutes. It was really really sweet.

We made it back to Florence just in time for dinner. Since it was Valentine's Mona decorated the entire villa with lots of red, white and pink balloons, tablecloths and confetti. When we sat down to dinner the boys were all noticeably absent. All of a sudden we heard music (for the life of me I can't remember what song it was) and saw Kyle walk in with shades on carrying a boom box and the boys followed behind him with long stemmed single roses and singing this song. They sang to all of us and gave all the girls (even Mona and Mona Lee!) the roses. It was fun and silly - esp. since we (thankfully) do not have any couples on this trip.

I went into Florence on my own (don't shudder too much Mom) yesterday afternoon and continued my souvenir shopping (which is SO fun when you see stuff you know people will like). I went to a part of the city that I had never been to before and not once did I get lost. It was quite empowering.

We had class ALLLLLL day long today and this afternoon I went back into town to search for a leather purse (the one thing I KNEW I wanted from here) and I for sure found it. The price tag said 260 Euros (OUCH!) and I somehow ended up paying only 100. It was such a fantastic deal. And, when I went to pay I carried on a 5 minute conversation (in Italian) with one of the people that worked there. It was awesome.

Okay. I posted a lot of photos on Facebook. Maybe you want to look at them.
Rome - 1.

Rome - 2.

Stockholm.

Venice.

You should just be able to click on those words.

CIAO!