"What could it be, WHO IS FLYING THIS THING? ... Oh right, that would be me. Back to work."

So, I already took a couple pictures here in Athens. Tonight (Thursday) is going to be a night to veg out and do NOTHING but internet stuff. Probably mostly to do with leviosarpg. No Dante or Brancacci Chapel or Brunelleschi or whatever in sight. I am here at the beautiful Athens Golden City Hotel and am doing fantabulous thank you. And do you know why?

Because I found Chee-tos. Honest to god Greek Chee-tos. I am in heaven.

Anyway, a week ago on Thursday I was very early for class and so took some pictures. I was waiting outside Santa Trinita (well, okay, actually across a tiny, tiny piazza from Santa Trinita) and... just started snapping.

( A city made of statues and stories... )

Meh. The next Janet!Paper is on Palazzos, but it's meant to be written as a narrative so it's not really a paper. LOVE.

Venezia!

Arguably the best part about Venice is when we returned and got to tell our Italian professora about the trip in Italian and Eric said he bought a man (masche) rather than a mask (machere).

That nonwithstanding, Venice itself was pretty great too.

Friday the train left at 8:30, so yeah. Early. x_x Janet insisted we draw slips of paper for our seat numbers, despite the fact that as more or less mature adults (okay, I don't know about mature, but adults at the very least) we should have been able to organize the sixteen of us into sixteen seats. But no. So we got there after a three hour train ride and... yeah. At first it looked sort of like New Jersey, but we got past all that and into the train station and it was like OMG WE'RE HERE. The Grand Canal was RIGHT THERE and it was beautiful. We boarded the vaporetto (water bus) to go to our hotel (which Janet said wasn't that nice but... well, let's say that it was a step above the Albert as far as accomodation goes and the breakfast was delicious).

( Here are some pictures from the deck of the vaporetto. )

That was that for Friday. Dinner was lackluster, although at dinner Janet insisted (against hotel staff's requests) that she be tacked on to our table. It was like customers_suck but I was in it. I wanted to weep. I even apologized to the hotel guy. I mean, come on. He just wanted to keep the aisle clear so that our food could be delivered in a timely fashion.

A bunch of people went out and even though I was determined to see more of Venice, I was exhausted and went to bed quite early. As I said, breakfast was quite delicious. See, Italians like to have chocolate things for breakfast. Which I have absolutely no problem with. Afterwards, we went to Santa Maria Gloriosa di Frari (although on our itinerary, it was typoed as Frafi, which I think is funnier), which is the big Franciscan church in Venice. It's gorgeous inside, as you'll see, although all the brick work on the wall? Not all brick. A lot of it is painted to look like brick. *nod*

( Saturday. )

Sunday was the going home day. :( We were, by this time, all pretty much in agreement that it shouldn't be the London/Florence program, but the London/Venice program. It's a beautiful city. My favorite part was no traffic, i.e. no motorini ready to run my ass over. A motorini is either going to kill me or I am going to kill them. One of the two. Anyway.

( Sunday. :( )