nice - ve - nice

Hiiiiiiii everyone!

Welcome is our new blog entry. Get ready to experience an adventurous tale full of both joy and tragedy. But mostly just mildly exciting sight-seeing activities.

Well we left Barcelona on Wednesday for Nice. Basically we spent the whole day on the train, got there, checked into our hostel, had dinner, went to bed, got up and spent the whole day on the train again. I know, mad life, but that's what happens when your lack of organisation skills and geographical knowledge of europe collide with your unwillingness to pay 80 euro for a couchette.

Anyway we got to Venice on Thursday evening, feeling a leeeeeetle bit in need of a shower and rest etc. We had managed to find a wallet belonging to some girl on the train, which seemed to contain every piece of paper/card she had ever received but no phone number, so we headed to the information centre at the station. We were then directed to the police office, which we managed to walk right past. Lucy went up to some guy and said 'excuse me where is the police station?' and he said 'right there' and she said 'what does it say on the sign?' and he said 'Polizia' which I feel was a tad embarrasing for her but oh well. So we went in there, and said we wanted to hand the wallet in, and the woman told us we couldn't, because she couldn't do it without her hat (or something to that effect). We were then told to hand over our passports by some man who appeared to have some form of tourettes, and spent a confusing few minutes being mildly outraged as they told us to go to some random square to find another police station. Eventually we established that we had in fact found, as opposed to lost, this purse, and everything was much easier from then on. Just another of the countless hilarious language barrier incidents we have encountered on our trip.

We found our hostel, which was quite surreal at first, but we soon adjusted. It can fit max 20 people, and there were never more than about 8 while we were there. To put this in perspective, most of the hostels we have stayed in have about 80 beds, and the Generator in Germany had over 900.

So it was quite... intimate. Everyone seemed to be best friends when we arrived, which was a bit intimidating at first, but we were soon welcomed into the fold. It seemed to revolve around the crazy Iranian guy supposedly called Alex who worked there and who is the sort of person who becomes best friends with everyone he meets. We spent the evening sitting by the grand canal on some sort of picnic blanket just chilling.

The next morning was unfortunately a bit of a waste as the flipside of our hostel being small and cosy was that it had no laundry. We were both desperate for clean clothes so we spent a couple hours in a laundromat. Fun times. But in the afternoon we walked to San Marco Basilica, via the Rialto Bridge so that was quite exciting in tourist terms. San Marco was beautiful, although we didn't get to spend long in there because some lucky bitch was getting married there. She appeared to be about six months pregnant, which was slightly incongruous with the fact that I had to wear a shawl because I was wearing a singlet top. Hmmmmmm.

We wandered back to our hostel via Rialto again to figure out what to do for dinner. One of the other girls had told us that if you were really 'nice' to Alex, he would cook you dinner, but as soon as we walked in he offered anyway, which saved a bit of effort on our part. It was a Friday night, so he said he'd take us out to some ragin club. We set out about midnight - Lucy opted out but one of the lovely American girls came in her stead. Anyway, the club was quite empty and although Alex insisted that it would fill up from about 2, it stayed that way for the rest of the night. It was good fun though, and I am not one to stay off a dance floor even if it is empty.

The next morning we walked down to a point in the south of the city called Salute. There we went to see the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which was probably one of the best things we have done in Europe. It is in her old house, and is a truly amazing collection of modern art and installations. There was also a sculpture exhibition called Gluts by Robert Rauschenberg, which was completely made of debris-esque stuff... like old street signs etc. It was really cool.

That afternoon we managed to visit 2 Santa Maria Basilicas, which was pretty cool. Not that that was our aim, it just happened that way. The first was one we had spotted while walking back from San Marco the day before, and the other was built in the 1300s and was massive. We caught the ferry down the Grand Canal between them, which was mildly extortionate but really really cool. The heavens opened and we had a fun half hour running around looking for an ATM without an umbrella or even appropriate clothes, as we had somehow managed to get down to 70 cents between us and the ATMs in Venice seemed to be experiencing a mass breakdown. Eventually we got directions from a waiter, who took the opportunity to ask us if we were sisters and invite us to drink with him that evening. Nice guy. Not creepy at all.

That evening we ate a quick dinner and then headed to that station for our first overnight journey on couchette! Therefore stay tuned, for exciting stuff happens in the next entry!


BYE!