"There's grass in Venice? What is this, America?"

Today, we started the day early. Ostensibly, we got on the bus in Castiligone-Fiorentino at 7:15. In reality, everyone got up there at 7:10 and then decided they needed breakfast. The end result was that we finally left Castiglion-Fiorentino for the last time at 7:30.

On the bus, most of us slept. We've all been running pretty hard, so the long bus ride was a welcomed break, even though the seats were terrible uncomfortable. We made a quick lunch stop at the Auto-Grill, which was essentially an expensive Italian subway, and then continued on our way. After 2 more hours, we finally arrived in Venice.

The first thing you need to know about Venice is that whereas the average city has a bus system or a subway system, Venice has a boat system. Luke went and got us a water taxi which took the entire group and our luggage to the hotel. We are staying in the Hotel Cristallo, which is in Lido, a sort of suburb of Venice.

After checking in, we caught a boat and went to the Plazza of St. Mark's. There we took a tour through the Doge's Palace, and some of Venice's streets while being serenaded by the musical talents of our tour guide. The Doge's Palace was very interesting, with weapons, torture chambers, and the world's largest canvas painting. After the end of our tour, we broke up for dinner. Our group went to a place recommended by the tour guide, but the Qatar contingent+Kevin wanted to go to this Halal Kabab place down the street. We separated and agreed to meet back at a gelato place.

When we finally met back up later, Kevin came running up and said "Guys! This creepy guy took me in a dark alley and showed me this thing." Talal followed up by saying "We should have taken pictures." It took us several minutes to discern that Kevin had not in fact been molested, but found an interesting building. Kevin then insisted that we all go see the thing this guy showed them.

Five minutes later, we were standing in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa's little brother, complete with a spiral staircase and several arcades. It turns out Kevin's creepy man had been one of the engineers working on the restoration. Otherwise, we would never have found this.

After that, we went to the Rialto bridge in Venice. We watched the sunset over Venice, and then caught a boat back to Lido. Of course, we kind of pushed the timing. The end result was that Talal left his backpack on the dock, along with Mohyman, Kevyn, John, and Taylor who were too slow to catch the ferry. Fortunately, the next boat left only five minutes later, but took them another half hour to get back, since they missed the express. Now we are all chilling in the hotel, waiting for our first free day in Venice tomorrow. Pictures will be up later.

By PFM and Pipe Andrew