Venice...the city of love...love for Christmas shopping :)

Well, this past weekend we had a group trip to Venice!  We left at 5am on Friday morning and returned around midnight on Sunday night.  It was a very fun and eventful weekend.  Venice is a beautiful city with absolutely beautiful churches and buildings at every corner.  We had to hop on a boat to get from one place to the next, so my vestibular equilibrium was definitely off throughout the entire weekend (not sure if that's the correct way to word that, melissa?).  But this was a very successful weekend in the Christmas gift shopping area for Alyson and I...we have decided to do most of our shopping here (since we aren't returning to Ohio till Dec. 10th AKA we are missing out on black Friday shopping!!) Anyways, we are mostly going in with each other and buying the family presents from the both of us, we can only fit so much luggage :/ I wish we could get presents for everyone! But I definitely don't have the money OR the luggage space to have that luxury!

So Venice...two things I will NEVER take for granted anymore: 1) Free meals from my parents and grandparents and 2) Free water at restaurants ....I now realize the life of luxury I live back home in America, a life when you can order a glass of water and not get a bill and see that it cost me 2.50 euros! (which is about $3..for WATER). Also, I came to the realization that I have the ability to have some major attitude with rude people...who woulda thought?  I went to the grocery store that was down the road from our hotel and bought 2 apples and some pistacchios for a snack for the plane ride back for Alyson and I, and I go to the check out line to pay...the lady scanned the pistacchios, then picked up the bag of apples:
Her : bunch of Italian jibberish
Me: umm...sorry, excuse me?
Her: groans huffs puffs eye roll...grab the bag and storm off...come back with a tag on the bag (bc apparently I was supposed to weigh and tag my own produce) tells me the price in Italian and continues with the biatchhh attitude toward me
Me:  Give her the money, look her stright in the eyes ...."THANK YOUUUU"....stare stare stare (dirty look, like the one Mom gives us and it scares us more than anything....what can I say, I learn from the best)
I think I got her a little uncomfortable, but that woman deserved to get fired with her horrendous customer service skills, I would have been fired in a second with that type of attitude.  Oh well.

But the hotel we stayed in was fantastic, we got to go tour a bunch of different churches, and attend mass on Sunday at San Marco Cathedral (SO beautiful).  We got to take a tour of the oldest Murano glass blowing business right on Murano Island, such a cool experience too.

Both nights we went out with some of our friends to local bars and just hung out...it was a lot of fun and we got to meet some really cool people from everywhere like Amsterdam and England, lots of fun.

Overall it was a wonderful weekend, I have to say, Castel Gandolfo is still my favorite place thus far in Europe...it's so layed back and pretty, such an amazing atmosphere in my opinion :)