Greece and Venice

Hi everyone! We had a wonderful 10-day break and once again, are caught up on pictures and blogging. So! It all started on Thursday October 4th or whatever it was... we left right after class and took a train to Amstetten where we reserved our night tickets, got on our train and rode through the night to Venice. It wasn't too bad sleeping on the train though I was pretty tired, Alden can sleep anywhere, like a rock! So we saw Venice briefly on Friday before we caught our ferry to Greece. What a long couple days!!! We left Friday afternoon, slept on the deck that night (VERY cold) and spent all of Saturday napping, playing cards, and waiting. We couldn't see much because there was quite a bit of fog and also, you can only look at the sea for so long... the Adriadic Sea really is pretty though, very blue.

We arrived in Patras, Greece Saturday night, exhausted. As we were walking around looking for a taxi, we stumbled upon our hostel, if you want to call it that. We stepped in the... refugee home? and I was immediately uncomfortable and did not feel safe at all. Soiled mattresses, rickety doors, and disgusting bathrooms. We didn't even want to shower after 3 days! We would have felt more dirty i think... We decided to stick out the night and went to an internet cafe to book the next few nights at a different hotel. We got some dinner, tried to relax, and survived through the night. I was so tired I actually slept but Alden didn't do so well and slept with a knife at his side, haha. The next day we got out of there, found the bus station and drove away from Patras! yay! The bus attendant stopped us where we needed to get off, told us to go down the road and take a left at the sea. Great. Well, we were hiking through private residences, orange orchards, on the coast, etc. Somehow we did find the little village of Silianitika! Our hotel was nice and CLEAN. It was very quiet and peaceful and besides feeling like a couple ugly ducks from people's stares, we had an awesome time. Great food and relaxation. We swam in the beautiful water and drank wonderful Greek wine. We had marvelous seafood and it was on that beach, going for a night walk in our barefeet, that Alden fell on his knee on the rocky beach and asked me to marry him. It was perfect and I now have a beautiful ring on my finger. :)

Wednesday we wanted to be adventurous and decided to go to Athens. Bad idea! A huge city and a couple ignorant tourists do not go hand in hand! We were completely lost, had no idea what we were getting into, and wasted the day just trying to find the train station. Allwell...maybe someday we'll see the Parthenon! haha... We went back to Patras, had our last Greek dinner, and got back on a ferry, yuck! But this time we found floor space inside, esp. cause we had 2 nights on the boat this time.

Friday morning we arrived in Venice. I immediately loved it. What a unique and beautiful city, so different! We learned how to use the water busses and saw alot of the city that way. We found our hostel which was actually more like a hotel, nice for a change, and cleaned up before hitting the town for some Italian pizza, mmmmm. We went to St. Mark's square for some shopping, amazing sights, and to play with the psychotic pigeons, haha, what fun! We had a blast and I think besides the engagement and swimming in Greece, it was one of the highlights for me. :) Unfortunately we couldn't do one of the romantic gondola rides, 80 euro was a little steep for us! We slept good that night but were ready to go home the next day. We hung at the train station pretty much but there was jellati and live music so it wasn't too bad. Here we bumped into both of our roomates, my roomate nearly killed me in excitement when she saw my ring, haha. It was nice to see old faces. We trained the night again back to Gaming.
How nice to be home!!!!

So that's about it. Back to classes and quiet Gaming town life. So nice. Hope you all enjoy the pictures! Look forward to seeing pictures of the Eagle's Nest next week which is where we plan on going this Saturday. We had to cross off Switzerland due to money but it's ok, can't do everything!

Much love!
-catherine*