Yay spring break! (part two)

I slept almost the entire time on the ferry back, said my goodbyes to everyone, and then got on my train to Venice. I realized pretty quickly that "Camping Fusina" was no where near Venice after the 20 minute bus ride to get there, but it was a nice camp site (I stayed in a cabin). I met up with Megan and Genevieve and had dinner at the campsite restaurant which was really good. The next day we went into Venice and we attended Easter Sunday services at St. Mark's basilica which was absolutely beautiful. We then walked around St. Mark's square, went to the top of the Campanile tower and then visited the Doge`s Palace, including the prisons and the bridge of sighs. Included in the armory room was a chastity belt, and wow it was vicious. I wish I could have taken a picture of it, but it was completely metal in the outline of underwear with sharp teeth-like bits around the private parts. We waited around to meet up with our friend Jessica, and then went to dinner at this place with over 90 types of pizza.

We spent the next day at 3 major islands - Murano, famous for it's glass, Burano, famous for it's lace, and Torcello, famous for being basically deserted except for a Monastary. We saw some glass making in a factory at Murano and went to the glass museum which was nice but not exactly what we had expected. Burano had the most brightly colored buildings I've ever seen and we had a good time drinking some wine and eating some strawberries by the water, though our ghetto corkscrew couldn't open our ghetto 2 euro wine so we had to ask a restaurant to open it for us. The monastary on Torcello had just closed when we got there but it was a good place to see anyway. We went to a crazy expensive seafood place that night, with an appetizer that included snails and octupus. My main dish was, of course, fish but it was still whole. After watching me try to pick at it without eating bones the waiter cleaned it for me crazy fast and I felt very uncultured.

Megan, Genevieve and I wanted to go to the Dolomites the next day, but trying to figure out the train was ridiculous. The information desk said to get on one train and the conductor said to get on another. We got to the station where we had to switch trains and found out that there was only train back from the Dolomites and it left too late for me to make my train to Interlaken and possibly too late for them to get back to the campsite. So instead we spent the day in Conegliano. It was actually really great - there was a castle on the top of the hill so we walked up there and up to the top of the castle which had an amazing view. We then wandered around to try to find a field to play in and we had gymnastics lessons in a church yard. We had dinner once again at the campsite and then I left for my overnight train to Interlaken.

I was supposed to go to Lake Como that day before going to Interlaken, and I had my ticket to Como, but when I asked several days ahead of my trip to get a train from Como to Interlaken I found out that there weren't any. My two options were to either stay in Como for the night, which I remember was going to be very expensive, or take a train directly from Venice to Interlaken. I went with option two, and the only thing available was a very expensive sleeper train that left at 22:52. The bus from the campsite got into the station at 22:25, and there was supposed to be a train from that station to my station of departure at 22:35, and I knew the train only takes about 5-10 minutes so I waited for it. Then a tragedy occured: the train was 10 minutes late, and on the way there it stopped half way and then took 3 years to pull into the station. I got in at 22:56 - I had missed my crazy expensive train. I got my luggage out of storage and headed back to the campsite to see if I could stay on the floor of Megan and Genvieve's cabin for the night. I freaked them out a bit, but they were nice enough to let me stay, and headed out the station first thing in the morning to see what I could do about my ticket. After much arguing, misdirection (ticket office sent me to information which sent me back to the ticket office), and waiting, they agreed to get me the next available train without any extra charge - THANK GOD.

The train ride into Interlaken was soooo beautiful. Switzerland is the most beautiful country I've ever seen and I'm in love with it. I want to marry Switzerland and have it's children that's how great it is. Interlaken is an outdoor center of the country with tons of cool activities. I decided to go with paragliding and it was AMAZING. Very chill, no rush of adrenaline, although you do have to start by running off the side of a mountain but you have an instructor with you so it's not scary. The closest to flying I think you can get, I highly reccommend it. I wanted to also do canyon jumping - like bungy jumping but you go down feet first and instead of bouncing back up you swing out and back along the canyon 10 feet off the ground. However, it was too expensive and I couldn't get together a group of 5 to go. I also went on a pretty serious hike up to the top of Harder Kulm - 4365 feet! The Canadian girl I went with was in such good shape - I was stopping every 10 minutes and she wasn't even tired. At least now I'm all serious about getting in shape. The hostel was so cool and the bar was good - my first time ever having beer that I liked. I did the waterfall hike the next day and saw about 15 1,000 foot waterfalls - so great. I hated leaving but I had to get back to Paris that night. It was a great trip though and that's all the travelling I get to do since I am now out of money = (. Also, I miss real italian gelato...