VENICE!

This weekend (Feb 17 - Feb 20) I took a trip to Venice, Italy! I went with my friend Anna and we met up with our friend from high school, Chelsea, Saturday night. We went to Venice to see Carnival. It almost felt like a big party for my birthday because my birthday was the day after we got back. I think for this blog I'm going to use mostly pictures with captions to tell the story of my adventures in Venice and it's surrounding islands. 

Friday night, Feb 17: 

It wasn't that late when we got to Venice, so we walked around Venice for a little bit before heading to the nearby island of Lido where our hotel was.

My first view of Venice!

The bus system in Venice is all boats! The "water bus" is called Vaporetto.

This is what the bus stops look like from the canal.

Saturday, Feb 18: 

The view from our window in Lido-Venice

The sea! I don't think it's technically called the Mediterranean here, but I forgot what they called it.

Down by the sea.

This is the main road that our hotel was on. It was probably about a 5 minute walk from the bus stop on the Venice side of the island to the beach on the other side where the pictures above were taken. 

Hotel Reiter: Our home for the weekend.

We stopped at a little cafe and got cappuccinos and treats for breakfast. P.S. I didn't even have to put sugar in the cappuccino because it tasted so good already!

I saw this parked on the road and thought it was adorable!

View from the water bus stop on Lido

There were lots of people coming to the bus stop in costumes

It's sooo beautiful! I love the sea. 

On a water bus

Our island as we drive away on the water bus

The path we walked to the Plaza St. Marco on (it's all the way down by where that big tower is)

The restaurant we had lunch at

We kept seeing all these bright orange drinks everywhere, so we pointed them out to our waiter and he told us they were called "Spritz." They were delicious!

This purple chick was sitting near us while we ate.

It got so warm sitting in the sun that we could sit comfortably in our T-shirts! I love the sun!

Once we started getting closer to the main plaza, there was a lot more people and shops

At the plaza!

These are all cool costumes I saw that afternoon.

There's much more to my adventure in Venice, but I'll have to finish up with a second post later because the pictures aren't loading very well right now. Cliff hanger!

Ecole Etoile

So I thought I should let y'all know that I haven't just been bumming around Paris for a month (although that would've awesome!). We've been taking french language classes at this little school called L'Ecole Etoile (Star School roughly) until the actual Paris University started class. The little school is only a school to teach people french. It was more like a review in french to make sure we have the necessary language skills to take a class at a french University. So I was taking french classes here until Friday, Feb 17th. My classes at L'Institut Catholique de Paris started today, Feb 21st. (Will get you pictures later). It was a great birthday present. :)

This is the view you get of the school right after walking into the little courtyard from the main street. Our building is the one on the left, but the door's on the other side of the sicky outy part.

Picture of the door and some classroom windows.

This is a picture I took leaving the school on our last day! That creeper's name is Elise and she's in the Cenrtal College Abroad program in Paris too. (PS I'm  actually kidding, Elise is really cool).