Venice and Padua and Verona...Oh my!

wow what a fun weekend!as the title states, I was in venice (venezia), padua (padova), and Verona with my friends Katie and Rachel. we left early friday morning to catch our train to Venice. we got in around noon, so we decided to walk around and find a place to eat lunch. we ended up at The church of St Mary Magdalene. Lunch was bad as usual. we have only had one really good sack lunch since we have been here. AFter that we decided to go shopping and find out how to get to St Marks Square. Once we got back to the train station, a man told us to just head back the same way that we had come and keep going and follow the signs and we will get there. so we were on our way...even though it took us for ever to get there, Bc we shopped way to much :) we also stopped at a lot of churches. then we finally made it. It was amazing!!!!! There we soo many people but it was amazing still. we wanted to go in the cathedral, but not luggage was allowed. our backpacks were considered luggage. they told us that we could drop them off some where but we were not going to do that at all. so we decided to walk around and take pictures! got some gifts while we walked too. after that we headed out on our way to find san barnaba church. this church was used for the outside of the library in Indiana Jones and the last Crusade. it took forever to get there, and we were lead the wrong way at first but we finally got there. we couldnt go in because there was an exhibit going on so we would have had to pay. :/ after that we were getting tired so we had to find a place to eat. we did and the girls realy wanted fish. me not so much and i was feeling really dehydrated then too. so i just got some pasta carbornara. it was really good and the girls liked there fish soup. we made sure not to get the water this time since rachel and i had learned our lesson a few days before. once we were done we got to take on eof the boat rides back to the train station. That was really cool to see the city at night along the water. once we were back to the station, we had to get our ticket to the other venice station where our hotel was located. we could not for the love of us get a ticket! i mean its only one euro! finally we found the right machine and all i had left was a 20 and 2 50s so i put the 20 in thinking i would get my change back...no i got my ticket and a little slip of paper that said 19 euros on it. i started flipping out. the ticket office were close so i couldnt ask them so i went up to one of the vendors and asked them what it meant. the lady told me i just take it up to the window and they would give me the change. i felt relieved when she told me that. so we got the tickets and were on our way to the hotel. we got lost finding it and had help from some very nice people. one lady even called the hotel for us. once we got the directions it was fairly easy. we got there and passed out, well only for a few mins for me...i had a coughing fit and was dehydrated from the day and ended up getting sick, but i didnt make it to the bathroom :/. after that i passed out. the next morning we got up somewhat early to head out to padua/padova. we went to the ticket line and i got my money back :). it was a 30 min train ride there. once we were there we decided to buy a map just in case. good thing we did we would have gotten very lost later in the day. 1st we decided to go to the convent of the Fransician Elisabethian sisters, which was a convent that a blessed Elisabetta Vedramini on my dads side of the family founded. on our way there we stopped at even more churches. katie brought up the point of saying that she hadnt seen any other church besides a catholic church since we have been here. but we finally made it. we walked in to see if we could tour around, but the sister at the front did not speak english and she couldnt understand our broken italian so we took a few pamphlets and a pin and took some pictures of the sign. next we were on our way to the cathedral of st antony. this is where we would have gotten lost, because we wanted to stop by the church of st benedict on our way there. we made some pit stops to on our way too. we went to this really cool breadstore and we even stopped at a card store where i bought my brothers magic cards :)it was amazing going in there. we even got to see his tomb and walk by and touch it. we knelled down to pray afterword and both rachel and I had this weird feeling after we had gotten up. it was very strange. we even got to see his relics too! after that we headed back to go to verona! once we arrived, we made our way to the wall. we had to pass by a lot of fancy highend stores so we didnt bother looking. once we got there, we took some pictures and wrote our names on the wall. it didnt really live up to the expectations of the movie but it was still cool to go see. all in all we had a good weekend and i am still super sore from carrying a backpack all weekend but we had a blast. we would all like to go back to vencie though :) Ciao!