2016 Summer ROMEance Part 2

After being in Italy for only a week, we were rushed for our first free weekend. They certainly did not give us much time to plan or get to know each other before hand. And that turned what could have been a really awesome adventure for me and two other girls, into a weekend of drama and tiptoeing around each other's feelings.

What started out as three of us, quickly doubled, and turned into basically me and one other girl planning the whole weekend for six girls... 😬 It was not what most of us wanted, but there really was not a good way for us to split up. So in the end, a two of them did nothing to plan and were literally following along. Hopefully, they had a good time.

We ended up going toward Northern Italy, to the cities of Padua, Venice, and Verona via train. 🚄  🇭🇺

I am definitely not the type of person to plan a super relaxing vacation; I would rather go and see as much as possible. And to tell you the truth, these were the exact three cities I had wanted to go to for the free weekend. Luckily, a couple of them had really wanted to visit Verona and Venice, so it worked out perfectly for us!



We stayed Friday evening in Padua. I had really wanted to visit the basilica of St. Anthony of Padua and luckily we got there just in time to visit it before they closed it for the night! 🙌🏽  That evening, I went out with K and E and we just walked around, then got drinks. It was nice to sit down with them and chill away from the others.

Okay here's the drama for the weekend: after arriving in Padua, we were a little confused at the transportation (we had gotten use to the metro in Rome), so it was a little different having the tram instead. And after an annoying round about trying to figure out where the station was and how to get the tickets. We headed to our Airbnb.

Fast forward to the next morning, we got on the tram headed back to the train station and at the last stop, it gets barricaded by the police so they can check the tickets. Now here's the thing we all had just gotten one ticket each the night before and half of us (me included) had validated them that night and really should have gotten another ticket for the ride to the station. I had originally wanted to purchase two from the very start, but J talked me out of it and look what happened... a nice scare and a 50 euro fine.... It ended up that K, J and I were the three who had to pay the price of our stupidity.

Naturally, afterwards we did the whole blame game - J blamed K and I for not stopping the night before like she had wanted to, to get another ticket (now we did not want to that is true, but we also did not stop her from getting one for herself either.) And I was mad at J, because like I state above, I was so close to have bought two tickets the night before.

After that whole incident, there unfortunately became quite a bit of tension between myself and J. And thinking back, that might have been the start between our while back and forth all summer. 😕 But what can you do? We did apologize to each other and I was (even though it made her madder) trying to keep my distance for a little while that morning, so I wouldn't start yelling at her. Literally, it took the train and water taxi ride (so maybe three-four hours), before I pulled her aside to talk.




Not quite the way we had wanted the day to start out. Venice was so cool! I completely agree with well everyone and anyone who has been to Venice, there are just way way too many tourists. And what's worst, it because it is so expensive to spend the night, it's a ghost town after dinner time. Unfortunately, we were among the group of people who leave the city early, although really if we had more time, I would have definitely stayed the night and some of the other girls would agree.

And well in this case, maybe it was a good thing we left when we did, because a huge storm came through, maybe half an hour, after we reached the train station. But some of the boys had also gone to Padua and Venice (apparently I can influence most people with my great ideas... jk!) and they reached Venice right as the storm came through, so they got caught in that mess. But they stayed there Saturday night and said it was super quite.




 I had mainly wanted to visit Verona after some pictures I saw on Pinterest. 😏 But E had wanted to go because that is where Juliet's House is. That also meant we really needed to get the other girls to agree; it had taken us almost the whole week to convince J about Venice (mainly cause she thought it was a different city than it was.). After the trip, almost all six of us agreed that Verona was our favorite city. Probably because it (and Padua) was not as touristy as Venice and Rome. And we just loved the characteristics and charm of the town.

Honestly, that is one of my favorite favorite parts about Italy, every town and city is completely different in the way it is set up, to the atmosphere and even churches and architecture is different.

Because we had left Venice around 4pm on Saturday, we had enough time that evening to start exploring the city, as we would not have the full day on Sunday there.

After we attended Sunday Mass at the closest church to us, we started exploring the city again. The nice thing was get really got to explore and see more of Verona than the other two cities, but it was probably the best city for the most time. I only wish we had maybe half a day more so we could have visited the Lake near by.

We stopped at a local cafe for muffins and cappuccinos, while we were there it started to lightly rain. Because of the that, it took E, K, and I a while to convince the others to keep exploring, luckily we did as it kept up pretty much the rest of the time we were there. So we visited the duomo, Juliet's House and then we stumbled upon a giant stair case that lead to the perfect lookout of the city. Afterward we then visited Giusti Gardens (did have to pay, but the guard was kind enough to give all of us a student discount and let us leave our bags there 🙌🏼 ). Definitely worth it!














XOXO,
Suzanne Marie